Chapter 21: Misunderstanding and Truth (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 21: Misunderstanding and Truth (3)
Misunderstandings are born from the slightest twists.
Whether they are large or small.
If discovered early, they can be laughed off, the gap easily mended. But what happens when that small gap widens until it becomes impossible to fill?
For instance, what if an act you thought was abandonment was actually meant to save you?
What if you planned the revenge of a lifetime, only to find your target had already died after suffering horrific torture?
What if they bit their own lip, clinging to their fading consciousness, just to buy a little more time?
And what if that person was family?
By then, that small gap will have become a bottomless abyss, one from which you can never escape once you fall in.
And you will regret it.
You’ll wish you had never known the truth.
*
“Ah… ah…”
Mirabelle’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
Faint syllables escaped her lips, broken and halting.
Hot tears streamed down her cheeks.
“We don’t have time for this. Please, I’m begging you, take Mirabelle and leave Fracture.”
Before her, Harold was on his knees, pleading with Karami.
Despite having died so horribly because of her.
Despite the fact that, in his timeline, he must have only just awoken from his torture.
Despite not having had enough time to process his reality.
Watching Harold cast all that aside as ‘trivial,’ begging to get her out of this place, Mirabelle was speechless.
This was nothing like the inhuman man who would abandon his own daughter.
In fact, it was the very opposite.
This was the image of a father who loved his daughter dearly. It matched the Harold from her memories, the one she had tried so hard not to recall.
“Urp.”
Her legs suddenly gave out. Collapsing to the ground, Mirabelle gagged uncontrollably, disgusted with herself for having known nothing, for having treated Harold as the target of her revenge.
“M-Mirabelle! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
Harold rushed to her side in an instant. Mirabelle couldn’t meet his eyes and lowered her head.
Karami had said it.
The slave girl’s soul might have disappeared because time had passed, or because she had no lingering regrets in this world.
But Harold, who had died on the same day, had his soul perfectly intact. That must mean he had lingering regrets. And what could those regrets possibly be?
…
Mirabelle wasn’t so naive as to not know the answer.
“There’s no need to beg, Harold. I take the best care of my slaves. Besides, Mirabelle is not the helpless girl she once was.”
“Not helpless? What do you mean?”
“She’s become a proper witch. A Great Witch who could easily destroy a kingdom. Dozens of knights wouldn’t stand a chance against her.”
Harold stared at Mirabelle, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Is that true?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Mirabelle slowly nodded.
“You weren’t hurt or anything, were you?”
A nod.
Harold sighed in relief.
“Well, that’s a relief. When Naredi awakened, electricity sparked everywhere. It was absolute chaos.”
At the mention of her mother, Mirabelle’s head shot up.
“Mom… too…?”
“Yes. Witches have trouble controlling their powers right after they awaken. We couldn’t even hold hands, you know? But Naredi kept trying to grab my hand, and she’d get upset if I didn’t. It was really something.”
“She did?”
Harold smiled and nodded.
“She did. Did anything happen when you became a witch, Mirabelle?”
“For me, there was… thunder and lightning…”
“Haha, thunder and lightning! That’s incredible. Then again, maybe I should have expected it. I was always certain you would become a great witch.”
“Really…? You’re not lying?”
“It’s true. You had immense mana even when you were in your mother's womb, Mirabelle. Sometimes it would even leak out. A witch I knew even said you’d become a Great Witch someday. That’s when I told your mother…”
Harold continued, lost in a fond memory.
“‘This child will create a world where we don't have to live in hiding. She'll be the one to bring a miracle to our family.’ A person who creates miracles. Mirabelle, from the word ‘miracle.’ What do you think? Don't you think your dad is great at naming things?”
Tears welled up in Mirabelle's eyes.
Her vision blurred until she could barely see.
“……Yeah.”
She affirmed in a tiny voice.
Tears she could no longer hold back streamed down her cheeks.
After that, Harold continued to speak in a calm, gentle voice, sharing one story after another, and Mirabelle listened intently, her ears perked as she committed every word to memory.
It was like a father telling his child a fairy tale before bed.
Under a sky of softly glowing stars.
But a meeting between the living and the dead cannot last forever. Harold’s spirit form began to fade. It was only thanks to Mirabelle's exceptional magic that it had lasted this long.
“Oh, it seems it's already time to part.”
“W-What?”
“It’s a shame we have to say goodbye, but seeing that you’re safe is enough for me. I can leave in peace, knowing you’ll be alright.”
“I, I…”
Mirabelle felt she had to say something, but she didn’t know what. Her lips only trembled.
She was too overwhelmed to form a coherent thought.
Harold smiled gently and placed a hand on Mirabelle’s head. Though it couldn't be touched, it felt as if it could, stroking her hair with a soft touch.
“It must have been so hard for you, all alone. I'm sorry you had to go through such a terrifying experience.”
“I, I’m…”
“Living as a witch, you'll face many more hardships. But I know you'll overcome them, Mirabelle. Because you're our daughter.”
His tone was full of conviction.
The look in his eyes was so gentle that Mirabelle superimposed it over a memory she had buried deep in her mind.
The look in Harold's eyes she had seen from the departing carriage that day.
There is a cliff where no light can reach.
Once you fall in, you cannot escape on your own, and no one will come to save you. To reach for someone in such a perilous place is to risk falling in yourself.
And so, the one who has fallen gives up on escape.
What follows is endless despair.
But sometimes, there is an exception. Someone who, seeing another on a cliff they themselves have given up on climbing, throws themselves in without a care for their own safety.
Someone who reaches out a hand, pulling you from the darkness into the light.
“I love you, my daughter. No matter what anyone in the world says, your dad will always be on your side.”
That person's name was Harold.
His other name was Mirabelle's Dad.
We call such a relationship family.
“You can be strong, can't you, my daughter?”
“Mhm.”
Her reply sounded almost like a petulant whine.
Harold smiled, satisfied.
He stood and turned his gaze to Karami.
“Please take good care of my daughter.”
“You're a strange one, entrusting your child to a slave trader,” Karami said with a shrug. “Then again, I suppose that’s why you married a witch.”
Harold’s spirit, which had already begun to blur, was now nearly invisible. Mirabelle reached out desperately, but her hand passed right through him. His spirit form became smoke and scattered into the air.
—Dad is always watching over you, Mirabelle.
With those final words, Harold’s soul vanished without a trace. Mirabelle tried to use her magic again, but he did not appear.
As if… he had no more lingering regrets.
*
In the plaza where Harold had disappeared, Mirabelle sat huddled against a pillar, clutching her father's skull to her chest. Her eyes, unfocused and troubled, stared blankly at the ground.
She was bewildered by the situation and had no idea what to do.
Revenge, the driving force of her life.
Her father, the target of that revenge.
But it turned out her father had loved her. He hadn't abandoned her; he had sacrificed himself to save her.
He was never a target for revenge.
So, what should she do now?
…She didn't know.
“Why the long face? Your father just told you he’d be watching over you.”
“M-Master…”
Karami, who had been loitering nearby, approached her. He, too, held a skull in his hand—the slave girl’s.
“It’s just…”
“Are you flustered because you came for revenge and things didn’t go as you expected?”
“Yes… I don’t know what to do now…” Mirabelle answered honestly, the question hitting its mark. Karami asked, his tone suggesting he didn’t understand her dilemma.
“Why not just get your revenge?”
“B-But my dad…”
“Does the target have to be your father?”
“…What?”
With a smile like an incubus, Karami murmured, his words bewitching.
“You saw it in his memories, didn’t you? The people who tormented Harold. The people who did this to him.”
She had seen them.
The people who had dragged Harold to prison and subjected him to horrific torture.
The people who had laughed as they pressed blades against his body, ignoring his writhing agony.
“Don't you want revenge on them?”
She did.
She wanted to make the people who hurt her father suffer the same pain he had endured.
“Then do it. You have the right, Miss Mirabelle. And you have the power.”
Karami’s plausible words infiltrated Mirabelle’s mind, meddling with her thoughts, which had grown weak and vulnerable.
……
Mirabelle, who had been sitting motionless, slowly rose to her feet.
She gripped her staff, lost in thought.
Wuuuuuuuush.
The atmosphere grew heavy.
The skull floated into the air.
The very air seemed to scream in terror.
The stars that had been shining in the dawn sky vanished behind the clouds.
Fwoosh.
A black haze swirled from out of nowhere, gathering above Mirabelle’s hand. Floating within it was Teacher Go’s Pro Tips Grimoire, which should have been incinerated and gone.
When Mirabelle opened her eyes again, an unnatural light shone from her pupils. A glow of the same color erupted from the skull’s eye sockets, flooding the plaza with light.
Thud.
Mirabelle struck the ground with her staff, and a navy wind whipped around the skull. When the wind subsided, a reaper floated there, clad in a robe woven from mana and wielding a giant scythe.
Hand of the Death God.
Mirabelle, the Witch of Judgment.
“The people who hurt my father. The people who know no gratitude.”
The witch delivered her judgment.
“I’ll destroy them all.”