Chapter 9 – The Nightmare Ignited

Judith, who had been staring at the flickering lightbulb, suddenly grabbed her hair with both hands. Her assistant, who had been seated at a desk some distance away scribbling something down, shook their head. She had been like this for days. Blank, violent, noisy. Thud. Thud. Thud. The sound of something being kicked continued, and then. Scrrrk. Crash. It ended with the sound of a chair scraping over the rough floor and finally toppling backward.

Maybe she’s finally going home? The assistant only moved their eyes and looked over at Judith, who was standing rigid in place. Her condition was fairly serious. To the assistant’s eyes, Judith suddenly lifted her head, paced around where she stood, and muttered something quietly to herself. Either she was possessed by a ghost. Or she had lost her mind. The assistant briefly wondered whether they should run to the church and bring a pastor, but for the moment decided to wait. Because going outside, where people crowded together, was more uncomfortable than staying in one room with a professor who had gone out of her mind.

The assistant opened the drawer and took out a penknife. When the mind was complicated, nothing was better than sharpening pencils. They spread dull pencils out over scrap paper and began sharpening them. Ssk. Ssk. The sound the blade made each time it passed was pleasing. Only then did the noise Judith was making disappear. The assistant withdrew their attention from the professor and focused on sharpening pencils.

‘Did he get hurt?’

What stuck in her mind was what she had said, that if she had known it was him, she would never have dragged him into bed. Thinking about it from the opposite side, it had been the worst thing she could have said. She was the one who had touched him first. This was only Johannes’s testimony, of course, but since she did not remember anything for now, she had no choice but to accept it that way. It would have been enough if she had simply said that one phrase, that she was sorry. This was all because of that damned confession. Her heart had turned crooked from the aftermath of being rejected. It was foolish and childish. Not the method someone called a professor should choose. She could have rejected him in a more adult way. Simply saying it had only been one night, and that she had no intention of continuing any kind of relationship. That she was sincerely sorry about what had happened that day.

“Ha…… this is suffocating.”

She had mountains of work to do, and she also had to solve the problem her grandmother had set before her. But Johannes filled her head so completely that he would not leave. As though it ought to be enough for her to be branded a bad woman the way Johannes had branded her a bad man, she had no idea why her heart felt so uneasy.

“Get a grip. I don’t have time to be like this.”

At some point Judith had walked all the way to the assistant’s desk and suddenly shouted. Startled, the assistant dropped the penknife they had been holding. Pencil lead scattered everywhere. The assistant brushed off the lead that had flown onto the back of their hand and rose silently from their seat.

“Professor.”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry, but please leave.”

“What?”

“I said leave, because you’re noisy and disruptive. Before I flip over the dancing figure painting completely. Leave.”

Still holding a pencil, the assistant walked toward the large table in the center of the room. It was the dancing figure painting from the Kingdom of Alkairo that had just arrived yesterday. Judith stared blankly at the assistant’s actions, then saw her raise the hand holding the pencil high into the air and immediately threw both hands up.

“I’m leaving. I’m leaving.”

“Right now.”

“Fine. I’ll go. So just don’t touch the dancing figure painting. It’s worth more than our lives.”

“I don’t care about that. All the responsibility lies with you anyway, doesn’t it?”

As the assistant’s arm slowly came down, Judith snatched up the cardigan hanging over the back of the chair.

“I said I’m going!”

Bang. The door shut the moment Judith left the lab. The assistant warned her not to even think about coming back into the lab until she had regained her senses. In other words, not to return until she had resolved the lump of thoughts squatting in her head.

“So it must have shown.”

Normally she went about without thinking, yet at times like this she was sharp. Someone who saw what others did not, and who could grasp the large thing from one tiny clue. The only flaw this talented person had was poverty, and Judith was always worrying about how much longer she would have to keep her under her wing. Archaeology really was a pitiful field. Whether excavating ruins or doing restoration, it all required money. And there were not as many wealthy people willing to support a poor scholar as one might think. Even professors had a hard time obtaining research grants from the state and foundations, so how much worse must it be for students?

If not for the influence of her grandmother and the noble house of frontier Earls, Judith too would never have been able to smash through the disadvantage of being a woman and become a professor at such a young age. The world was not the kind of place where one could unfold one’s dreams through ability alone. In that sense, the dancing figure painting from the Kingdom of Alkairo absolutely had to be restored nearly perfectly. They had said that the amount of funding allocated to the archaeology department would be determined by the quality of its restoration. She had to work hard, if only for the sake of her assistant. Otherwise, how was she supposed to get her into even an assistant professor’s seat?

“Right. So I need to get myself together.”

Stop thinking about that damned Johannes. I needed to think only about work. Ah! There was still one more thing she had to solve. King Pirap’s old book. By Christmas, she had to bring a man who said he loved her before her grandmother. The painting restoration and a man on top of that.

Could someone like me, who has never even dated once in twenty-eight years, really find a man at all? It was enough to drive her mad. What drove her even crazier was Johannes suddenly reappearing. It was already too much just trying to focus on the task her grandmother had given her, and on top of that, the man who acted familiar as though he had been her one-night partner had built a house inside her head and refused to leave. Her mind was a complete minefield. Johannes here. Johannes there. The mines named Johannes were exploding noisily everywhere.

“Ah! Stop it. I have to find a solution. At this rate everything is going to be ruined.”

Johannes must have only stopped by his grandmother’s house for a short while. It could be a vacation. Or maybe he had simply wanted to see her grandmother. So she must not be shaken. His purpose was not her. She must not get caught up as some brief plaything either. She was not fifteen anymore.

“Right. I’m twenty-eight-year-old.”

As Judith walked down the corridor connected to the lab, she shook her head over and over again. Her hair, tied up in a single bundle, had become a mess, but she did not bother fixing it. Even as she climbed the stairs leading to the main Loewe residence, she was so deep in thought that she noticed nothing around her.

Judging by how noisy things were near the drawing room, it seemed her grandmother had guests. Avoiding the drawing room, Judith slipped past the archives and the music room and crept into the kitchen.

“It’s not snack time, is it?”

“I just had nowhere else to go. But what are you doing here, Nanny?”

“Serving tea to the guests.”

“It must be tiring, living as one of Madame Loewe’s workers. There’s no time to rest.”

“If even this much stops moving, I’ll become an old woman in no time.”

“As for me, I’d rather become a lazy old woman than a diligent elegant one.”

“They do say using your head is harder than physical labor. In that sense, Miss, I don’t think becoming a lazy old woman will be easy for you. You never leave your mind still for even a moment.”

Judith went into the preparation room and took out cake made with dried figs and Earl Grey cookies. The nanny lifted the cast-iron kettle with a cloth folded over several times. Hot water poured into the open teapot in a cloud of steam.