Erased Story (3)
Erased Story (3)
Fortunately, time was on her side.
Because Canaria had stayed beside her and purified her mind with holy power every single day, Isabella managed to pull her shattered heart back together relatively quickly. Even if the effect was only temporary, a promise was a promise.
At last, Isabella could face a mirror again. The sight of herself after so long felt utterly foreign. The face she saw now was starkly different from the one she had known the day before she left for the Holy Kingdom.
She couldn't even remember how much time had passed. Her neatly trimmed bangs had grown long, beginning to cover her eyes, and she looked like a filthy outcast, unable to wash properly or even go about daily life.
She hadn't been able to eat or drink water properly, barely clinging to life with only Canaria's help, so her gaunt face and emaciated body were unmistakable.
And above all, there was no light in her eyes. It was painful to look at, but not abhorrent. Rather, thinking this was the image that suited her, Isabella began to belittle herself.
She mocked herself, saying this miserable appearance suited her better now.
Then, demanding the promise be kept, Isabella asked Canaria to tell her everything that had happened. Canaria hesitated for a moment, all the while continuing to heal Rosaria. The hesitation didn't last long, of course.
After all, it was a promise she had made with her own lips.
"...Where do you want me to start?"
So Canaria turned the question back on her. She asked for the precise scope — where to begin, and what story Isabella wanted to hear.
"...From the changes that happened after the day I left the Holy Kingdom."
Isabella assumed there must have been some trigger for everything to change so drastically. She asked Canaria to explain the entire process, from the trigger that brought about the calamity all the way to its end. It was an unreasonable request.
It was obvious it would cause Isabella agony.
But Canaria knew her. She knew that once Isabella pushed forward with this kind of stubborn resolve, nothing could stop her — and that trying to stop her would only bring about the opposite effect.
"...Fine. I understand."
Flatly as she could manage, she began to recount the story from that trigger.
The very beginning was the story of the day Canaria was exposed as a demon and dragged into the underground chapel. It was a snowy winter day, the day everything began to twist, and the moment Canaria started her story, Isabella's expression began to twist in just the same way.
Ignoring it as best she could, Canaria continued.
The days of being tortured and forced to swallow demons; in the midst of it all, the story of Rosaria, who had lived abused as a saint; the day she became the Demon King by swallowing Isabella's siblings' eyes as an offering; fighting Rosaria as the Demon King; the brief happiness they barely managed to enjoy after she returned, and the everyday life that began to crumble again; the days they were cruelly tortured together, used as pawns in the Pope's schemes; from the very moment Rosaria officially became the Saintess —
The days of living as a shadow of the Holy Kingdom and staining her hands with blood; the tragedy that unfolded on the day she was forced to join the Holy War and departed for it; the powerless moment when she could only stand by and watch Rosaria die; the Demon King's subsequent massacre; and finally, the blood-red path Canaria had walked to this day in order to bring her back.
There were so many stories within it.
And Isabella broke a little more with every single one she heard. Fractures slowly began to spider across her mind. She wanted to retreat, but she couldn't tear her eyes away, so she just kept listening.
It was a tragedy.
During the days she was absent,
they had lived inside a tragedy,
and even the end of that tragic story was a farewell.
An unforgettable shock struck Isabella hard. The moments that began to play out in her imagination were dark and bleak. Isabella kept feeling a guilt that felt as though it were setting her own body aflame.
"...But why am I alive?"
That was when the question occurred to her. The Empire had definitely sent an assassin. Canaria had been aware of it, and Rosaria had noticed it too, which ultimately led to her choosing to take her own life.
But Isabella had never seen that assassin. Wasn't that why she was still perfectly alive, why she had returned to the Holy Kingdom like this?
And if someone had told them that fact, Canaria and Rosaria might have made a different choice — so why had that fact been deliberately concealed, twisting the outcome into this?
Swallowed by questions. Even as she felt sick, even as she blamed herself, Isabella resolved to curse whoever had perpetrated that nauseating hypocrisy. Thinking this, she asked Canaria for the perpetrator's name.
"...The Hero must have stopped it. Carrying out some petty sense of justice."
Canaria knew the answer. It was a one-sided deduction by simple elimination, but she couldn't not know it was correct. On that day in the Empire, there was only one person who would call such hypocrisy a virtue and actually possess the power to carry it out.
Jik Seikrid, the Hero who made the wrong choice. The moment Canaria named him, Isabella let out a hollow laugh and simply began to repeat that name over and over in her mind.
'...Jik Seikrid.'
I will curse you for the rest of my life.
I mean you, you coward, you son of a bitch.
I will resent you, you half-hearted piece of trash, forever.
Isabella thought this, listing her reasons for the curse.
Why didn't he just kill her? If he had, she could have closed her eyes peacefully, knowing nothing, and waited on the other shore beyond this life. Or if not that, if he had even whispered a word that he had spared her, they could have made a different choice — so many stories could have changed.
Why he had made such an ambiguous choice, she couldn't understand.
This was a life lived but not truly living, wasn't it?
Better to die than this, since Isabella and Canaria's daily life had begun to shatter from that day onward. Isabella resented the Hero, who had left the worst curse upon this world.
But more than anyone, the one she resented was herself.
"...If I had been right beside you, if I hadn't left the Holy Kingdom, would the outcome have changed, Canaria?"
So she asked her directly. If she hadn't gone to Fran — if she had been close enough to stay right by their side — would the direction of that day's tragedy have been different?
"...Don't talk nonsense, Isabella."
But Canaria thought that was a foolish thing to say. There was no way the Pope would have left Isabella alone, was there? That was why Canaria and Rosaria had always lived thinking it was a relief that Isabella had left the Holy Kingdom.
If she had remained in the Holy Kingdom, the fear that she might have suffered the same pain they did had always dominated their thoughts. Her life would have been weighed on the scales, and Isabella would have been used as a hostage, a means of blackmail. They would have suffered together, lives bound together, living as slaves.
Why on earth would she wish Isabella had been at their side that day?
"...Isabella, Rosaria and I lived thinking we were fortunate that you were spending your days happily in Fran."
Every time they read the letters that occasionally came, they felt relief. Isabella's letters always said she was sorry she couldn't come to the Holy Kingdom, but if she had set foot in the Holy Kingdom back then, she would have met a terrible end. It was a cesspool where they gouged out her siblings' eyes as a threat; they couldn't even begin to imagine what they would have done if she herself had come.
But Isabella couldn't understand.
She thought it would have been better to suffer together;
that it wasn't right for only her to have been so happy.
Isabella wailed, saying so.
Of course, she knew it was a tantrum, an unreasonable stubbornness. But if she didn't at least do this, the contradictions felt like they would drive her mind to ruin, so Isabella continued to blame herself, whipping her own heart.
She had been forgiven, but she only rejected that forgiveness. Believing that what she needed now was resentment, Isabella kept denying that forgiveness.
And negation only bred further negation.
Isabella, who denied forgiveness, soon came to deny herself. Isabella, who denied herself, denied happiness, and Isabella, who denied happiness, denied even her own life — she went on living in a state of constant denial.
She simply could not forgive herself.
She could not accept her own happiness,
and she could not affirm the life she had enjoyed, knowing nothing.
Having heard the tragedy, Isabella wanted her own life to become a tragedy.
Only then could she be together with them — with that warped way of thinking, Isabella accepted her heart crumbling day by day, wishing it would destroy her life and her memories along with it.
Canaria did not interfere with Isabella in this.
Because it was Isabella's choice. She didn't want Isabella to stop being herself because of her, so Canaria maintained her silence and simply continued to watch over her.
Sadly, time did not help this time. It only festered the open wound, and made the festered wound rot. It could not heal Isabella, who was broken and festering.
Isabella lived blaming herself every single day.
And she spent her days cursing everything.
Her self, who couldn't stay by their side.
Her self, who had lived happily.
Her powerless self, whose life had been used.
Her self, who committed a sin that must never be forgiven.
She kept on creating dozens of reasons, deliberately seeking out each and every trigger, and lived cursing herself.
But that alone felt too faint to end it.
Isabella's curse began to reach outward, creeping into her surroundings.