Chapter 445
Chapter 445
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 445
Chapter Title: Your Memory (3)
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1.
The day Amelia inherited the Stigma.
Her master was slain by Amelia Merigold, without so much as leaving any final words.
At least, that was how Amelia saw it.
In the cruel twist of fate, Amelia wept and collapsed over and over.
She stood alone, guarding the funeral attended by scarcely anyone.
Once the rites for her master—who had no body to bury—had ended...
Amelia no longer shone.
The dreamlike natural vistas that had bloomed in her light, the warm days in that cozy cabin... all sank into profound darkness.
In an abyss deeper than the ocean, in a solitude blacker than any mire.
She sat at the table, clutching her magical tomes, researching spells without end.
As if that were the sole reason for her existence.
Not a single word escaped her lips. She skipped sleep, skipped meals, retching dryly now and then as she threw herself into it endlessly.
In that pitch-black space.
Time flowed on.
Spring came, then summer, autumn, winter... and spring once more.
Even as the seasons cycled endlessly, as if magic were her only calling, her sole refuge... Amelia simply held her ground.
"......"
Si-woo could never claim to comprehend her despair.
Amelia quietly chipped away at her own emotions.
Betrayed because she had believed. Resentful because she had loved.
Thus, she numbed herself until she could feel no more sorrow, no more pain... burrowing into a world of her own making.
Even reaching out in pity to rest a hand on her shoulder only made her form flicker like a phantom before reforming.
He knew it well.
This place was merely an echo of memories long past.
No amount of heartache would let Si-woo do a thing.
And so, an eternity dragged on.
By the measure of her tenure as associate professor—or her true age—it was a span well over a century that she endured alone.
At last, Sophia arrived.
The moment she found Amelia, she pulled her into a tearful embrace and led her by the hand to become an associate professor at Trinity Academy.
2.
In truth, becoming an associate professor changed little for Amelia.
Sophia began frequently barging in to disrupt her research, and her workshop had simply shifted to the academy's public facilities.
In the early days, she even took charge of tutoring the twins, so her routine remained much the same.
She was still shut away in her own world of gloom.
After that came the events Si-woo knew all too well.
Amelia summoning him to sweetly torment him, Si-woo helplessly suffering through it.
In the process, he later learned the backstory: Sophia provoking Amelia, Si-woo rejecting her clumsy advances, and the ensuing disaster.
Back then, to Si-woo, it had felt like relentless harassment.
No excuse from anyone could justify such behavior.
But now, armed with knowledge of Amelia's past and her brokenness, that same memory looked entirely different.
Amelia had simply been inept at it all.
She had never approached anyone before, so she didn't know how. She instinctively crushed any impulse to open her heart to another.
Terrified of being hurt again.
Terrified of being left alone once more.
Was it mere fancy to see her pointless flailing as something heartbreakingly poignant?
Amelia issued another pointless errand, as always.
Si-woo had assumed she was wholly consumed by her magical research.
But after some three years had passed, whenever he turned away, her gaze chased after him without respite.
A space overflowing with darkness, blind to all else around her.
As her connection to Si-woo deepened, faint glimmers—like fireflies—began to flicker into being around Amelia.
Yet whenever those lights tried to bloom, Amelia always smothered them through sheer force of will.
Shaking her head vigorously or quietly redirecting her eyes to her research.
She must have been afraid.
Clumsy and lost in how to handle her own feelings, she only confused herself more.
The memory grew hazy once again, skipping ahead.
It wasn't something he could linger on just because he wanted to see more.
"......"
The scene shifted once more.
The landscape began to shine brightly, just as it had in Amelia's childhood—and Si-woo felt his legs go weak.
A gentle hill thickly carpeted in wild barley, a tree of nameless make.
Memory fragments, shattered sharp as glass yet crudely crammed back together, burst forth anew.
For Si-woo, it was his most regretted moment.
That day, Si-woo had recovered his memories.
Amelia, sensing something off in his demeanor, shrank back in fear.
Before his curt, mechanical replies, she blurted out excuses like a guilty prisoner.
The Si-woo in the memory slapped away Amelia's approaching hand with the back of his own.
He flung it aside.
The Si-woo in the memory screamed.
A shout so deafening it numbed the ears, ridiculously clutching at his hair as he berated and condemned Amelia.
Amelia could only weep and plead.
The scene of the two drifted away, as if viewed from a vast distance.
Afterward, Si-woo left Amelia behind with cold finality.
Unable to hold on properly, Amelia stood dumbfounded as the world she had only just begun to let shine was stolen from her once more.
Si-woo—the first person she had opened her heart to since her master's passing—had abandoned her too.
Amelia set off on a journey.
Kether demanded she carry out the executions on the kill list in exchange for sparing Si-woo's life.
Left like a hollow doll in solitary darkness once again, Amelia simply fulfilled it all.
Just as she had obsessed solely over magic when her master departed.
When Si-woo left, she threw herself madly into the hunt alone.
For the man who had so callously cast her aside, she risked her life on the hunt... and afterward suffered pangs of guilt in isolation as she slew public enemies one by one.
"......"
Si-woo had no words.
He had no right to find her frustrating.
Why she acted so foolishly, like a fool who never even properly read the note before plunging into self-torment.
Why she behaved with such idiocy.
Didn't he already know?
Amelia had grown so inept with every other emotion, walled away alone for far too long after her master's death.
But there was one feeling she understood better than anyone.
Love and hate.
Amelia had already mulled over the pain of betrayal by the one she trusted and loved most, chewing on it in her lonesome solitude.
For ages several times longer than Si-woo's entire life, she had resented her master, loved her... and suffered for it.
She knew that assuming acts born of goodwill and love would always be accepted was mere arrogance.
She knew that one-sided feelings could scar someone for life.
Amelia understood Si-woo better than anyone.
That was why she waited like a fool for him to someday turn back, hiding away in some unseen corner to suffer and atone.
Right up to the very end.
Up to that final moment when she fell for the Whispering Witch's wiles and unleashed great magic upon Tarot Town.
She never once resented Si-woo to the last.
She blamed and hated only herself.
"......"
Si-woo wiped away his flowing tears.
At the end of Amelia's memories, at the close of the path they had walked apart, stood a door.
A door black as night.
With trembling hands, Si-woo twisted the knob and pushed it open.
In the cramped space barely big enough for two, Amelia huddled.
Wearing the flower crown Si-woo had made her in childhood atop her head.
She clutched her knees to her chest, curled up like a fetus.
He sensed it intuitively.
This was not the Amelia from the memories—the one he could neither embrace nor apologize to.
This was her inner self incarnate.
The woman who had seemed so inscrutable, forever out of focus like a blurred subject... now stood in sharp clarity.
Powerlessly fragile. Yearning for love yet too cowardly to reach for it. A timid, tiny girl.
So that's you.
Amelia.
Could he approach her?
Did Si-woo—who had lived in peaceful ignorance of her pain—have the right to take her hand now?
"Lady Amelia."
As Si-woo reached out...
A deeply unsettling sound began to emanate.
"Stop it!"
He didn't know what that snake truly was.
But he felt it instinctively: it had to be stopped now.
Though she was right there, within arm's reach... an unbridgeable chasm yawned between them.
The spear Si-woo swung sliced futilely through empty air.
Eyes flying wide in shock, he scanned around. Amelia's inner landscape—all her memories—were crumbling.
No thunderous roar of collapsing buildings... only this:
Whispers.
Only fragments of the incomprehensible voices that plagued sleep paralysis could be made out.
A sweet, someone's voice—echoing through the din, distorting as it crushed everything.
Si-woo gazed at Amelia with trembling eyes.
In the collapsing darkness.
Amid the shattering memory shards, Amelia and Si-woo locked eyes for the briefest instant.
Her eyes were startlingly clear and cold, devoid of all feeling.
At last.
Amelia's inner world went dark as a stage after the curtain fell—every light extinguished.
With the sensation of endless gravity yanking at his feet, Si-woo's consciousness was dragged down into the depths without end.