#19
“W-Well, whose could it be? I received it directly from Mother….”
“Ah, ah….”
“I had given up looking for it since I lost it long ago, but here you are holding it. Like a petty thief….”
“Ah, that…. Well….”
“Close your mouth. How frivolous…. Is this really so surprising?”
Winfrid sighed several times, disregarding my scolding. Although I didn’t get a satisfactory answer, his unusual and peculiar attitude piqued my interest and greatly relieved my anxiety. I sluggishly stood up to throw the scabbard to Winfrid. My body, feeling twice as heavy as usual, slowly crawled through the air.
“Take this back.”
“…No need. I have no use for it anyway.”
“Alright then.”
I put the scabbard back on. Winfrid, as if not believing what he heard, fixed his half-closed eyes on me and turned his body towards the stone coffin, creaking like someone with dislocated joints.
“…Why are you looking at me like that?”
I frowned and tore away that disapproving gaze. Still, Winfrid, not easily deterred, shook his head and satisfied his anger by expressing his inner disappointment with various interjections like “well” and “oh my.”
I urged him to tell me what was going on, but Winfrid didn’t say a word. He only quickly returned to his initial interest, as if he no longer knew. That was the end of his inexplicable behavior. I was left feeling a bit dazed as I just stared at him.
It seemed Winfrid had taken out the dagger to poke at the contents of the coffin. He raised his half-bent forearm in the air several times but didn’t put his hand in, apparently disliking the touch of bare skin.
“Clearly, it wasn’t in its right mind.”
He suddenly said.
“Huh?”
I was momentarily dumbfounded by the abrupt harsh assessment, but I soon realized that he wasn’t targeting me. Winfrid called out to me while intently examining the inside of the coffin.
“Look at this.”
Look, he says.
“…I don’t want to.”
The unpleasant feeling I had momentarily forgotten suddenly surged back, and I stepped back. Last night, before Johannes… that nauseating… I shuddered a little, fearing it might come back to mind. My heart was pounding. Don’t recall it. I might have clenched my fist. My palm stung where my nails had dug in. And Winfrid still couldn’t take his eyes off the coffin.
“It’s not exactly pretty, but it’s worth seeing. Just look for yourself. It looks longer than most people’s height. If fully spread out, it would be enormous…. Is this the only one?”
A foul sensation sliced through the back of my head. Something that can be spread out, a single piece. Wrapped in shallow anxiety, I slightly parted my trembling lips. I seemed to want to confirm for myself and be reassured.
“…What’s the only one?”
Winfrid answered.
“The wing.”
I got goosebumps.
I barely managed to uproot my feet, which seemed to have suddenly taken root, and staggered forward. I stopped just close enough to barely see the contents of the coffin. I only let my gaze drift in, completely frozen. As if I had built a wall on the bridge of my nose. In the stone coffin, there…
There was a wing.
It was exactly like the enormous membranous wing that had even etched the sound of cutting wind into my eardrums. That very wing, the only one.
“They say all sorts of demons ran rampant in the past, but there’s no record of capturing one this large. No eyewitness accounts either. Even the biggest were only about the size of a full-grown wolf…. I knew it was big, but seeing it in person is different. How big must the body have been…?”
Winfrid spoke while peering at the massive, withered wing. His voice, gradually turning into a monologue, sounded like scraping metal.
I couldn’t bear to look anymore and turned my head away. I had known since long ago that I was beyond salvation, but I realized for the first time that day how much of a fool I was. Isn’t a coffin meant to hold a dead body? Yet until that day, I had been so fixated on the shell of the stone coffin that I hadn’t even thought about what might be inside. It was absurd. But then…
The rest is empty?
An uneasy question finally arose.
“Sister. I happened to discover an old copy of a collection of legends recently. There were many interesting contents.”
Crunch, crunch. The sound of soil crumbling. Winfrid stood up, dusting off his hands and gathering his robes.
“I can’t be certain since exact place names or personal names aren’t mentioned, but I can’t help thinking that some of them are about our maternal family, you know?”
“…You… Instead of studying as you said… You were digging up those things again?”
I said as I slowly backed away. I wanted to move away at least enough so that it wouldn’t be visible. My chest churned with the feeling that the wing might suddenly leap up from its place.
Has Johannes returned? Is he with the household? Or is he still in the women’s quarters? If I run there right now and open the chest, would he be there? Johannes. He flickered as if I could grasp him if I reached out. I desperately, desperately suppressed the urge to run to him right away.
“I don’t know about that. It’s not important. It’s none of your business.”
Winfrid retorted irritably. A brief silence settled in the dark inner palace. What on earth did he read? I wanted to hear. No, I didn’t want to hear. As I wavered, unable to decide, Winfrid suddenly asked me.
“Sister. Did you know?”
As if he would decide the path I should take in my stead.
“This, you see, we didn’t catch it.”
“…Huh?”
I stared blankly at Winfrid’s voice, that flagless sentence.
“It seems it came as a tribute from somewhere, and it doesn’t even seem to be native to the continent. Something that should be called a synthetic being, perhaps. Simply calling it a monster might suffice. Anyway, it’s different from other demons in origin.”
Then, a shade of night blue darker than Johannes was thrown at me. It was a gaze mixed with a dark hint of laughter.
“There were various nasty theories. In one chapter, it was said that a local lord with a collecting habit reconstructed it from demon corpses, and in another chapter, it was said to be a mutant created by a scholar obsessed with stele studies using his own child’s corpse. There was also talk of it being the result of crossbreeding, but I wonder if that’s chronologically possible….”
“……”
“Excluding ridiculous stories like some crazed apostate opening the gates of the underworld to drag out a devil, well. One of them might be close to the truth. Actually, when I was reading it, I thought it was nonsense that only ignorant commoners would believe, but now that I’ve seen it in person, my thoughts have completely changed.”
“It must be a lie.”
I refuted without realizing it. My knees trembled a little. I couldn’t accept Winfrid’s opinion that the demon corpse in the coffin or whatever had mixed with me was more sinister than the demons that had died according to God’s will as the mortal age dawned on this sinful land.
“Why?”
Winfrid frowned, seemingly annoyed at my argumentative stance. Worried that he might find me suspicious, I pressed down my voice.
“If any of that were true, there would be no reason to offer such an… ominous object as tribute.”
“My foolish sister, how naive you are.”
Winfrid clicked his tongue. One corner of his mouth curled up briefly.
“It’s a curse.”
He spat out something black between his sneering lips.
“…Even in those times, were the Yuricates really the only fools who couldn’t let go of demons? I doubt it. There must have been quite a few who kept a part as a charm to rely on. But why is it that only our maternal family has had so many accidents, to the point of being rumored as a demon-possessed family? There must be a reason.”
“……”
“It’s not an ordinary demon. Just looking at it, it doesn’t seem common, with that size. I don’t know what kind of grudge they held, but it’s clear that someone made this modeled after a demon and cursed it.”
Winfrid’s smile was like a well-honed sword. It pierced through my stomach. I clutched my belly slightly. It was overwhelming to exhale the breath I had taken in.
“…What kind of curse?”
I barely parted my lips.
“Well, I don’t know either….”
Whether aware of my anxiety or not, Winfrid answered nonchalantly.
I couldn’t hold back any longer and stepped backwards. I needed something to lean on. Anxiety like an ant colony was slowly growing and spreading on the floor. It felt like they would soon eat away at where I stood.
At some point, I felt the touch of the stone wall on my entire back. But I bit my molars at the damp and cold sensation of an inanimate object devoid of any warmth.
Winfrid came walking steadily under the gloomy torch. He stopped at a slight distance from me and boldly crossed his arms. Until then, I couldn’t take my eyes off Winfrid’s fishy smile. Winfrid slowly opened his mouth.
“But you know, now I think that our maternal uncles who were said to have died in the last war might have actually died because of that thing. Honestly, it’s ridiculous. How could an entire family of knights be annihilated in a single engagement? Has that ever happened in any other family?”
“Don’t say such frightening things…”
“Oh? Is this scary? That won’t do, Sister. There’s an even more terrifying story.”
I pressed my fists against my body. I don’t know how hard I tried to suppress the urge to cover his grinning mouth. Every word he uttered was burning my prayer, but Winfrid alone was so light-hearted.
“We three are the last.”
Winfrid said.
“……”
I only wanted to cover my own ears, but Winfrid misunderstood my silence and continued speaking as he pleased.
“Direct line of the Yuricates. Now it’s just me, you, and our elder brother. That’s it, just us three siblings. Since our maternal relatives are so scattered here and there with no news at all, there’s no need to worry about them. I inquired about it this time, and it turns out this generation has all passed away. The causes of death are all different. Not a single one overlaps. Isn’t it incredible? …I’m a second son destined for priesthood, and you’re to be married off to an old man, so now the only one we can rely on is our elder brother. At this rate, our lineage might really die out…”
Winfrid swallowed his words for a moment. Our father, the Grand Duke who never had illegitimate children. The man who, after dismissing his first wife and remarrying our mother, was said to have been ashamed for a long time for not having children. Even now, with Johannes already past twenty, there were no rumors of him having a child somewhere, and it was an open secret within the castle that the head butler’s concerns were no small matter.
“Anyway…”
Winfrid scratched the back of his head once.
“It’s quite strange, isn’t it? That thing is just a single wing lying in a coffin, yet it seems determined to devour all the Yuricates in this world. It’s as if it’s resolved to make us taste only the worst misfortunes… But what’s with this reaction? Are you that scared?”
At that moment, I think I must have slid down with my back against the wall. Winfrid’s gaze, which would normally have been at about the same height as mine, was now falling from far above.
Winfrid, having never directly witnessed a living demon, probably didn’t understand the magnitude of the fear I was feeling. With his own lips, he was stamping the seal on my death sentence. Yes. It felt like I had just discovered the noose around my neck without realizing it.
That noose must have started tightening around me from the moment I broke the stone coffin. I only begged to stop the marriage, but with that noose around my neck, I ended up on the gallows.
My wish. The earnest, not-so-grand hope I had made to the stone coffin.
Male lead is a Destined Young Husband (Female-dominant)
One-sentence summary: Wife-master, listen to my explanation!
Li Ruantang, a young lady from a prestigious family, stumbled and fell. When she woke up, she saw a noble and beautiful young man sitting by her bedside, wiping away tears.
The young master had slightly reddened eyes, and his every move exuded charm.
The sight made Li Ruantang’s eyes hot and her heart flutter. After all, she had made a bet with the young master Meng from the neighboring family. If she couldn’t marry a husband before the end of the year, she would have to admit defeat and give up the jade she had worked so hard to obtain.
Outside the window, the flowers were in full bloom.
Rather than losing the bet, the jade, and her face, Li Ruantang calculated that it would be better to seek marriage with the young master in front of her, killing three birds with one stone.
…
Meng Jun never thought that an accident during a spring outing would lead to them rolling down a cliff and into a river, yet still survive.
Now they were trapped in an unknown village, and Meng Jun had overheard that the family who had rescued them had their own intentions.
After all, it was Li Ruantang who had lost her mind and sought marriage first. He was only trying to protect himself!
Glancing at Li Ruantang, who was listing her own merits, the young husband’s voice softened, and he blushed as he lied, “W-wife-master, Wife-master, don’t you remember me?”
The young husband’s voice was clear and handsome, coaxing Li Ruantang’s heart to be soft and sweet, and she spared no effort to protect him.
It wasn’t until they returned to the capital that Li Ruantang suddenly remembered.
When they had fallen off the cliff, in order not to implicate Wei Yunruo, whom he secretly admired, the young husband had instead pulled her, who was slightly farther away, down the cliff with him…
Short summary by Yuushi L: Initially, the male lead (ML) liked another girl, while the female lead (FL) liked the ML. Both fell off a cliff. The FL temporarily lost her memory, and the ML, fearing others might take advantage of him, claimed FL was his wife while they were staying in a village. Later, when they returned home, the FL regained her memories and remembered that the ML liked someone else, so she kept her distance from him. However, during their time living together in the countryside, the ML’s view of the FL had completely changed. From this point, his pursuit of the FL begins.
Link to read
