“Ah, that was to ward off bad luck…”
“Bad luck?”
“Yes.”
“Did Abel buy flowers too?”
“No. He helped me return the flowers.”
“So, what does that have to do with bad luck?”
“……”
Right. Helping to return flowers had nothing to do with bad luck. The problem had been returning them in the first place.
The road to deliver flowers for the dead had been long and exhausting. It had felt even worse because she had walked it beside a raging wolf.
The cemetery they reached was desolate and dry. The graves were packed so tightly together that it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began.
She bought the flowers they lacked and placed them one by one. In her haste, she brushed away the fallen leaves. She had been arranging them for a long time when Abel approached.
Then he grabbed an armful of flowers.
The problem was what happened next.
“Did you throw the flowers onto the tombstone?”
Impatient, Oscar spoke before she could finish.
Seo-ah, still searching for a polite way to describe it, widened her eyes.
“Or did you throw them down and stomp on them?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“With my foot… I brushed the fallen leaves off the tombstone…”
“But why?”
Why?
“If I were a ghost, wouldn’t I follow it…?”
A low laugh wrapped around her timid voice.
Seo-ah forced her gaze to stay lowered.
In the study, washed in dull golden light, the man leaning against the doorframe let out a quiet chuckle. The sound seemed to press against her hollowing mind.
She tightened her hands unconsciously. Oscar uncrossed his arms and swept his hair back. His dry, cold laughter faded like winter wind.
“So, what does that have to do with salt?”
“…They say salt purifies ghosts.”
“It didn’t seem to do much.”
She wished she could disappear.
“In my hometown, we take a handful of salt from a jar and sprinkle it. It was awkward because it was my first time using a grinder, but salt is still salt…”
Oscar laughed again, and she couldn’t finish.
Yes, it must have sounded strange. Still, laughter was better than being cursed.
When the laughter stopped, she would go back to her room.
She remained standing, enduring the air that seemed to swirl around her.
Then he moved.
It was only a few steps, but the distance felt shorter all at once, as though an invisible pressure had closed in on her.
“But you asked how much five hundred thousand Kertes a week was, and you only spend that much in a day? I heard you spend tens of thousands.”
“……”
“Then you bought that too?”
“…Yes?”
She answered a beat too late.
Oscar replied lazily.
“Your attire was unfamiliar.”
“……”
Unfamiliar?
Reflexively, she lowered her gaze to herself.
For a moment, time seemed to stretch like taffy.
Her brown hair, now down to her waist. The thin white hem of her nightgown. Bare feet in slippers beneath it.
Then the moment snapped back into place.
“Um… ah, that…”
Heat rushed through her as if she had been set on fire. Her words tangled together.
Her mind went blank. Even the foreign languages she had studied disappeared. I’m sorry. Excuse me. Good night. She couldn’t recall how to say any of it in Norfolk.
Cold sweat gathered on her skin. The floor felt unstable beneath her feet.
What should she do?
To be seen like this in front of everyone in the household—and worse, wandering through his private space in the middle of the night—
If he thought of her as troublesome, or suspicious, he might tell her to disappear somewhere out of sight.
The anxiety, something Oscar would probably laugh at, kept growing inside her.
Oscar watched quietly.
His clear blue eyes never left her face, which had begun to redden.
Seeing how flustered she was, he remembered that day again.
Why was she so shaken over something this small?
The first day he saw her, it had been worse.
He wondered what expression she would make if he said that aloud. Then he grew tired of her frozen, dazed state.
He tilted his chin toward the door behind her.
“Go back.”
For a moment, it looked like moisture gathered in her widened eyes. She lowered her head.
Then, as though she had been waiting for permission, she moved past him almost as if fleeing.
A faint breeze stirred as she brushed by.
The air she left behind carried a trace of warmth close to body temperature, along with a scent that was difficult to name.
Not perfume. Not soap.
Something closer to herbs. Or greenery.
Oscar’s gaze followed the scent carried on the breeze.
The afterimage of the woman, who had fled like a fugitive, disappeared around the corner. The faint trace of her scent wavered with the air and gradually faded.
Still, it was strange.
It should have vanished.
It wasn’t a strong perfume that made the head spin, nor the smell of tobacco that clung to the lungs and irritated the nose with every breath. It was something faint—so faint he could barely tell whether it was real—that lingered stubbornly.
That lingering scent brought fragments of her back to him.
That scent, like formless moonlight, brought to mind the woman’s secret face, which he had watched hidden in the moonlight’s shadow, and then—
The thin white nightgown. The small, pale feet.
Then the rest followed, one after another.
Her rounded shoulders harmonized strangely with the sharply defined collarbone line, and the soft, full curve beneath the collarbone. The ruffled hem of her skirt, like a distant coastline, and the slender legs visible beneath it. Her ankles, which were surely no thicker than a handful, were precarious, and her protruding anklebones seemed faintly flushed.
Formless, yet unmistakably real.
As if moonlight itself had taken the shape of a person.
His thoughts halted.
A faint crack appeared across Oscar’s expression, and the corner of his lips twisted into a silent sneer. He drew a slow breath and ran a hand through his hair.
Why was he lingering on this?
Instead of drowning the bothersome night in alcohol, why was he clinging to an afterimage that had already disappeared?
…Frustration?
Was that all it was?
Even the self-directed curse that rose in his mind felt pointless.
Lowering his head, he turned away. His blue eyes darkened, sinking deeper than before.
What he wanted now was the harsh, suffocating smell of tobacco.
A long shadow stretched behind Marquis Reihnhardt as he walked back toward his bedroom.
—
Seo-ah fled into her room and shut the door.
Then she stood there, frozen, like prey hiding from a predator, barely able to breathe.
Nothing in front of her held any meaning. All her senses remained fixed on the door behind her.
Even after the heavy presence outside had disappeared, her feet refused to move. Only after standing there for a long time did she make her way to the bed.
She should have eaten—for Barbara’s sake at least—but she couldn’t bring herself to.
Out of habit, she lay flat and pulled the blanket up to her chest. It didn’t feel like enough, so she pulled it higher, to her neck.
Still not enough. Her heart felt strangely light and unsettled. She turned onto her side and curled up tightly. It helped for a moment, but the feeling didn’t last.
She pressed her palm against her chest. The skin felt cold.
Still insufficient.
Eventually, she lay face down and dragged the blanket over the back of her neck, hiding herself completely, leaving only her eyes exposed as she breathed shallowly.
If only she could fall asleep like this. As if she had fainted.
If she could escape, even just through sleep—
A low, cool laugh echoed in her ears.
“Because your attire was unfamiliar?”
The childish edge beneath that low voice made her body curl tighter on its own.
She had waited for him to return.
She had felt relieved when he did.
And yet—
He was someone she didn’t want to face.
Someone she wanted to keep her distance from, just as she had watched him secretly from the train window.
Someday, she would have to confess her sins to him. Just thinking about that day made it difficult to breathe.
Seo-ah squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the mattress.
If only the entire day could be undone.
No—
If there truly were a god who could turn back time, she would rather go back to before she had ever been born.
If this useless body and soul could be exchanged for that, she would give every last fragment without hesitation.
Why was even taking one step so hard?
Life had never been easy. Not for a single moment. But life in this strange world made even breathing feel difficult.
By morning, the night had faded into a colorless white.
For someone who struggled through every waking moment, sleep should have been a relief. She tried to force it, to drag sleep back toward her.
But even with her eyes closed, everything remained white.
The low, cool laugh refused to disappear.
No matter how tightly she covered her ears, it persisted.
It wasn’t coming from outside.
It was coming from within.
—