****
Edited by Baset
***
Holding my shoulder painfully, Killian opened his mouth.
He looked desperate, as if he was about to collapse.
“Home… If you don’t want to go home, let’s run away together. Huh? Evelyn… This isn’t it. You don’t have to do this.”
Tears began to drop from his golden eyes.
His sad and beautiful appearance was captured in my eyes, while I watched with him coldly.
“Evelyn…”
It was clear that he was mistaken about something.
He seemed to think I was punishing him as a test.
Or maybe he thought I was trying to fool him.
“I’ll help you. I’ll…”
“There’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“…No.”
Suddenly, Killian’s eyes shone.
He looked blankly at the air as if he had thought of something.
“I.. I can help you. Yes, I can help you!”
Killian seemed really insane, he kept fumbling inside his own head.
With that creepy appearance, I barely twisted away from him.
Devan stood next to me, and winked at the butler.
I gave a small nod and walked out of the hall. Killian, who I thought would hold onto me, was just standing there. I wondered what he was possessed by.
“I can help you, I can help you.” he mumbled like that.
***
I woke up more refreshed than I thought I would.
Looking around, I’d only spent a few days in this room. I’d spent more than a year in Ellywoon, but I felt comfortable as if it had become my own home.
Well, I’d always lived in Ellywoon with a certain nervousness. I was afraid Count Diego, Killian, or the temple would come for me.
The temple.
My face hardened when I thought of that, and I quickly put that thought away.
In many ways, I was too busy to check into it, but I had to find out about any potential obstacles.
If the magic was really sent from the temple, I needed some countermeasures.
I needed to meet with Devan first to do that.
“…Hilda?”
I thought something was amiss, and I couldn’t find Hilda even when I looked around.
She usually stayed by my bed.
I got up from my seat and pulled the rope.
The bell jingled, but I still couldn’t feel her presence.
Hilda’s room was right next to mine. Usually, by this time she would have come out and attended to me.
Was she still sleeping?
I looked out the window with a confused look, the sun was already in the sky.
I thought she might have been called by the butler for something urgent.
A pretty big incident broke out yesterday, so it might be hard to deal with it.
I left the room with a light shawl over my negligee.
I knocked on the door to the room next door, but I couldn’t hear anything.
“Hilda?”
The unlocked door opened easily, and sunlight poured in through the window.
I looked around the room.
But there was nothing there.
I left and closed the door behind me.
After checking my room, I opened Hilda’s door again.
It wasn’t an illusion, there was nothing.
When I escaped, there was no closet from where I secretly took out my clothes to wear, nor did I have a mirror that showed my reflection.
“Ah!”
I slammed the door and quickly went down to the Great Hall.
It was clear that the room had changed.
It had been more than a year since I was away, and Hilda’s room must have changed.
I tried hard to press down on the inconsistencies and headed out alone.
“Butler!”
Just in time, the old butler was removing the decorations from the hall.
I ran towards him, while he rolled up some ridiculous tapestry.
“My lady, what’s wrong?”
He looked a little embarrassed when he saw me in my negligee.
“Where is Hilda?”
“What?”
“Where is Hilda?”
I was breathing heavily.
The butler frowned at my words.
My head was pounding, and fragments of memory that couldn’t be mine came to mind.
“My lady, are you okay? You don’t look well.”
“No, I’m fine, so I mean Hilda. This girl Hilda—”
Swallowing my dry saliva, I touched my forehead with my hands.
“I’m sorry, my lady. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“…What do you mean you don’t understand? What don’t you understand?”
“What? Well…”
The old butler said something very unlike him.
“Hilda… Who is Hilda?”
***
The memory slowly returned.
At first time it appeared to be a dream,
‘Oh? oh? or do you….. like this side of me?’
The first time I suspected Hilda was in front of the daisies.
‘Hilda is Hilda. Hilda was always Hilda from the beginning.’
Until last night.
Unlike me, who’s forgotten memories were returned, no one else remembered Hilda.
Only that part of everyone’s memories seemed to have a hole in it.
“Who could’ve helped me take a bath!”
“Well… Come to think of it, there must have been a maid a year ago.”
“She was here until yesterday!”
The old butler looked confused.
“When I was taking a walk in the garden, she was next to me! No, she welcomed me at the main gate yesterday, right? You really don’t remember?”
“That… I don’t know what you’re talking about. Lady Evelyn, are you making fun of me?”
The butler looked at me with a worried expression.
Devan was the only one who would believe me.
I recklessly stormed into his office.
I slammed his desk and explained everything so far.
“So you’re saying that there was a maid named Hilda? But none of us remember it, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And the maid was that transcendent being?”
“I think so… I thought Hilda came here by possessing a human being…”
I shook my head excitedly.
She said, ‘Hilda is Hilda’ from the beginning.
“I don’t think it borrowed a body, but I think it built a body.”
“….How far can it go?”
He frowned a lot and moved to the sofa.
Then he nodded for me to sit opposite him.
Even the sofa and office scenery remained the same as a year ago.
The old butler was not such a reckless person that he’d change his master’s furniture, even if they’d lost their minds for a year.
“I told you that I had a connection with that transcendent being.”
I suddenly raised my head.
He’d definitely said that. I didn’t know if he realized that the author was God. As he hurriedly shook his head, he lowered his eyes as if hesitating.
“…so, 5 years ago, no… 7 years ago, that thing first appeared around me.”
“What do you mean by ‘appeared around you’? Was it like Hilda?”
“No, it just existed around me. It didn’t even have a shape… It was just around.”
“How do you know it doesn’t have a shape? At that time… you couldn’t have seen.”
Devan nodded casually at my careful words.
“Yeah. I was blind, but when I focused, I could feel it’s shape for a moment.”
“Um…….”
It seemed difficult to explain.
“So to explain, it would be here, or there. It would be on this couch and table… I could tell its shape, but I couldn’t tell the pattern of its face or body.”
“How could you do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve been like that since 7 years ago. Yeah, that strange giggling sound gave me strength.”
“Giggling sound…?”
I chewed my lips.
“Does that mean that thing gave you strength, Your Highness? Thanks to that, you were able to understand the outline of things?”
Devan shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“Then… Did that thing give me strength when I was running away from here a year ago?”
“Are you talking about climbing the wall, opening the locked door, and breaking through the boundary?”
I glanced away.
“Yes, that one. Strangely, everything went the way I wanted it to. My whole body was full of energy…”
“Was it around you then?”
“No, it wasn’t. But…”
I remembered what happened that day.
To heal his right eye, I used all of my divine power and fought against something unknown. Eventually, I drove it out.
“Maybe it came to me during the treatment process… I think.”
“It went inside you?”
“Your right eye had a black shape inside it. Because of that, I think some kind of energy has entered me.”
“Haa…”
Devan sighed deeply, and leaned back into the sofa.
“Then what the hell was it? It existed next to me for years without form, and was your maid. It lived in my right eye and inside of you too?”
I didn’t understand either.
I thought carefully and opened my mouth cautiously.
“…..Divine strength is the power given by God. Mana is the power of nature.”
He nodded, as if to encourage me to keep going.
“It seemed to be fighting against my divine power. So… That’s a kind of power too. The person we talked about is the source of that power. God in terms of divinity, Nature in terms of mana.”
“In the end, it’s the same thing. Isn’t a transcendent being similar to God?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“You had to fight against a transcendent being…”
Fight… fight as in…
I frowned at the thought of brushing my mind.
“Should I…. do it?”
“What?”
Devan had a strange look on his face.
“Do we really…. have to fight against that existence?”