The Return of Lilietta

Episode 15

Hannah came before I could call.

Rita was taken aback for a moment, then raised her voice.

“Okay, come in.”

Hannah entered the room. She was pale and shivering.

‘There are no bruises on your neck. Fortunately, you received good treatment.’

Rita figured she was frightened by her own epileptic seizures caused by the scent of patchouli.

‘If I had any memories of that night, I wouldn’t be working at Birch Castle until now. There’s a high chance I don’t remember anything. And my family has never figured out that Hannah was involved in my disappearance.’

If it had been a normal child, she would have been caught without a doubt. Perhaps whoever was controlling her had covered up the traces well.

Lilietta looked closely at Hannah, who was standing trembling in the doorway.

Auburn hair, light freckles, a round and gentle face, and hazel eyes.

‘If you look at it closely, you can definitely see the resemblance. But their impressions are quite different.’

Rita Pascal had auburn hair, light freckles, sharp features and hazel eyes.

Living on the front lines, I rarely had the chance to look closely at my own face, so I didn’t notice it right away. I just thought, “The hair color is similar to mine, but the eye color and face are different.”

‘They feel like distant cousins. It’s hard to tell at first glance, but if you compare them consciously, you’ll see that they’re similar.’

Hannah’s face grew pale as Rita remained silent, staring intently at her.

“Um, Miss…….”

“ah.”

Lilietta, who was feeling a little embarrassed, pointed to the sofa and gestured to Hannah.

“First, come and sit here, Hannah. I have something I want to talk to you about, too.”

But instead of following her words, Hannah fell to her knees, banged her head on the floor, and opened her mouth.

“Miss, please kill me!”

“What? What’s that all of a sudden…….”

When she asked again in confusion, Hannah burst into tears and continued speaking.

“Ugh, it was me, miss. It was me.”

“……You, no way.”

Rita felt her expression harden.

“You remembered everything? About that night? And you kept your mouth shut and continued to work around our family?”

Hannah looked up as she asked sharply. She shook her head, her face streaked with tears.

“Oh, no, no! I’m not that shameless, I, I, I mean…….”

She put her hands in her bosom as she sobbed. Rita instinctively braced herself for the surprise attack, but what Hannah pulled out wasn’t some kind of memorized weapon.

Pieces of cloth and leather so charred that their shapes were barely recognizable.

She put it on the floor with trembling hands and shed tears.

“Miss, do you know what this is?”

“……I don’t know.”

“These are the slippers the young lady wore that night.”

“……!”

Rita recalled her regained memories.

That night, as I struggled while being held by Hannah, the hem of my pajamas ripped and the slippers I was wearing fell off.

The hem of the dress caught in the bushes was not noticed, but Hannah, or perhaps some author possessed by her, noticed the fallen slippers and clearly took them with her.

But when she lay in the coffin, Lilietta was barefoot, and when Rita returned to her original body and emerged from the lake, she was also barefoot.

The Duke’s people didn’t question the whereabouts of her slippers, as they thought she had gone missing with her shoes on, but her slippers were definitely left somewhere that night.

It seemed like Hannah had those slippers with her the whole time.

“I heard that last night… when there was a loud noise from the lake, you …

Hannah cried and told me everything. She was rambling, but as I listened, I could guess what had happened.

‘When I broke the coffin with the magic circle engraved on it yesterday, it affected Hannah in some way.’

The morning after Lilietta went missing ten years ago, Hannah didn’t wake up. She was bedridden with a high fever.

He said that his whole body ached, he vomited, he had a skin rash, and he even had a seizure, but even the Duke’s doctor examined him and said that he could not find the cause.

In the end, only antipyretics were prescribed as symptomatic treatment, and miraculously, the patient got better on his own in a few days.

‘After hearing the symptoms, I think it’s a side effect of Odd. It must have happened because the culprit used magic on Hannah’s body, which has a bad affinity for Odd. Then it makes sense that she got better naturally.’

Hannah woke up so sick that she had no recollection of what happened that night.

The Duke’s people, who were turned upside down by Lilietta’s disappearance, questioned Hannah, but no one seriously suspected the child who had just woken up after being seriously ill for several days. When they said they knew nothing about that night, they just let it go.

When searching the castle, Hannah’s room was also thoroughly searched, but the slippers were not found at that time.

There were no footprints or other traces in the garden or birch forest path. There were no clues or witnesses that could connect Hannah. Only a piece of Lilietta’s blood-stained nightgown was found in the bushes.

Hannah didn’t question herself at all either. She just mourned the girl’s disappearance.

It was just last night that she remembered something.

“I suddenly had an idea. Vaguely… I, I went to the main office, to the young lady’s room… I clearly didn’t know where the young lady’s room was at the time, but somehow, I went there exactly, and asked the young lady… to do something together…”

He said that something was stuck in his head and he kept doing it. He couldn’t resist, and he couldn’t even think about resisting.

She moved as if possessed, following the voice that whispered so ceaselessly, and when she stuttered and stammered, it seemed to click its tongue… … and she couldn’t remember anything after that.

Rita made her own judgment.

‘Hannah suddenly became fluent in her speech and smiled. Since it didn’t work out well when she was ordered to do something, it seems like the culprit was directly controlling her from then on.’

He said that when he came to, he was standing in the room, completely soaking wet.

When Hannah saw that her clothes were wet, she thought she had messed up during the night, and because she was afraid of getting in trouble, she secretly washed her pajamas, hung them out to dry, and went to sleep wearing different clothes.

After that, I got seriously ill and… …I lost my memory. Just like Lilietta.

“But yesterday, last night, I woke up to a loud bang, and there was something shining under the bed. No, no, I was startled and I lay down to look, and there, oh, this is ridiculous, but there it was, there it was, a little slipper…….”

He said that it was a slipper that he had never found even after cleaning and looking under the bed countless times for 10 years.

It glowed with a strange golden pattern and then caught fire on its own.

It is said that even though the surprised Hannah pulled it out and poured water on it and made a fuss, the fire did not go out, and only an unidentifiable piece remained, and the flames magically disappeared.

“And then you regained your memories of that night?”

“Yes…… I know it sounds like a lie, but, I know it sounds like an excuse, but it’s true, I really didn’t know anything until yesterday. Well, it’s not a lie, I just…… I just remembered now, and oh my god, I, I…… must have kidnapped the young lady. I…….”

Hannah knelt and scratched the floor, the carpet becoming dark with her tears.

“……Please kill me, Miss. I, I, still fight…… How can I, repay the kindness you gave me with, well, there must be a limit, uh, uh, how dare I…….”

Rita let out a long sigh.

Just like the wooden coffin that contained Lilietta’s memories, Hannah’s memories of that night seemed to have been sealed in her slippers.

Maybe there was some connection, that when she broke the coffin in the lake, it broke along with it.

‘Just like how I searched the lake several times without finding anything, those slippers must have been hidden in the odd. Then the people of this world would never find them.’

She got up from the sofa and walked over to Hannah. She picked up the piece of burnt slipper from in front of her as she trembled with her head on the floor.

Although it was difficult to see, there was clearly a line that was part of the magic circle. Judging from the color and texture of the remaining part, it was clear that it was the slippers she had worn that night.

That means there’s some basis to Hannah’s story.

‘The culprit who committed all this is… … .’

Archmage Pascal. He may have had an accomplice, but if he used that much magic, it’s more likely to be him.

He possessed Hannah’s body and kidnapped Lilietta.

‘I’ll have to investigate this trace further. Along with the coffin fragments.’

Rita gathered up the pieces of slippers and looked down at Hannah, who was crying, before opening her mouth.

“Hannah.”