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“What? Why not?”
I couldn’t help but grab Lucius’s arm when he said something that shattered the hope I’d been holding onto.
“If the flower garden is restored quickly, wouldn’t it be possible? Lina has recovered now, so she should be able to go with the children too.”
“That is…”
His face darkened at my words. He hesitated, then gently held my hand and carefully continued.
“Lina… that child… she doesn’t want to see you.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
What was he talking about? Until she woke up, Lina had been by my side all along—and now she doesn’t want to see me? Startled by something I couldn’t understand, I looked at Lucius. He sighed and explained.
“She’s definitely recovered, the aftereffects are gone. But she said she couldn’t face you, Tiana. Even while watching over you and anxiously waiting for you to wake, she was restless and uneasy.”
“But why…?”
I had thought that when I gave her the glass bottle and spoke to her then, my feelings had reached her. She had waited for me out of worry, so I thought it had been conveyed. But now she says she can’t meet me. A strange, unsettling feeling stirred in my chest.
Frowning in frustration, I glanced at Lucius and the three people standing behind him. All of them wore heavy, complicated expressions, as if lost in thought. I cautiously asked,
“Is there… another reason? Beyond her recovery, is there a different reason why she refuses to see me?”
“…”
“Lucius, before we came here, you mentioned something. You said that Lina was connected to the fire accident. Is that the reason?”
“…Yes.”
“What kind of connection?”
The question had haunted me ever since that day—when I searched for the runaway Lina, when I comforted the crying child. She had only repeated that it was her and her sister’s fault, as if possessed. If she really was tied to that accident, there must be a reason why she had desperately said so. Now, more than ever, I needed to hear the truth.
When I pressed him with my eyes, Lucius finally opened his mouth after a long pause.
“On the surface, the fire accident was treated as an unfortunate mishap. That was the official statement. But the real cause—the culprit—was someone else entirely.”
“The… culprit?”
“Yes. During a detailed investigation, it was revealed that the fire wasn’t accidental—it was set by someone.”
“By… someone? Don’t tell me…”
“…The culprit was Lina Hendel’s younger sister—Rena Hendel.”
“…!”
My body jolted violently at the shocking revelation. My breath caught as if my chest had been crushed. That fire I had thought a simple accident—was in fact caused by Lina’s dead sister?
‘So that’s why… she wept so desperately, calling her sister’s name while apologizing…’
She hadn’t stopped crying, apologizing over and over. Now I finally understood why she had kept saying it was her and Rena’s fault.
But why would Rena do such a thing? That fire killed her friends, killed herself, and nearly took Lina as well. Why would a child commit something so horrifying?
Reeling, my breath came short and ragged. Lucius stepped closer and soothed my chest with his hand.
“Tiana, are you all right? Should I call a priest?”
“No… I’m fine. Just—tell me more. Why would Lina’s sister Rena do something like that?”
“From what we’ve learned, the girl was always shy and withdrawn. She wasn’t particularly close nor hostile with the other children at the orphanage. But with her sister Lina, she was very attached, always depending on her.”
“Then she had no reason to do something like that. Was it an impulsive act?”
“Not exactly impulsive… more like a voluntary act disguised as an accident.”
I frowned deeply and turned his words over in my mind. An act disguised as an accident… which meant—
“…Are you saying it was a planned suicide?”
The words chilled me. A child, not even ten years old, doing such a thing… how could I comprehend it?
“It wasn’t meticulously planned,” Lucius continued. “But when they found her body at the scene, there were dried straws and matches on her. Burnt matches were scattered around too.”
“So she used them to start the fire?”
“That seems to be the case. We consider it voluntary because, when her room was searched, they found many sharp objects and dangerous items. She had hidden them for some time. The cuts found on her body show she had been harming herself.”
“So she had been suppressing it… and that day, it finally broke?”
“There were also bundles of dried straw and matches in her room. It seems she chose one method from the ones she had prepared.”
Lucius’s face hardened more and more. He was trying to comfort me, yet his expression carried a trace of anger. In a low voice, he added,
“The reason we call it impulsive is that the location happened to be the flower garden.”
“Why is that strange? If it was out of despair, maybe she didn’t think about the place at all.”
“No… it wasn’t that. It seems something happened right before that triggered her, and the garden became her target because of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The fire burned all the flowers in the garden. Those were the flowers she had been growing herself. And in the botanical greenhouse, the plants she had nurtured there were also found dead, all ruined.”
“…! She destroyed all the flowers she had grown?”
To burn the flowers in the garden, to destroy those in the greenhouse too—what kind of torment had driven her to that? Those flowers were a precious livelihood. To erase them and take her own life… what despair had eaten away at her?
I couldn’t make sense of it, no matter how I turned it over. Thanks to Lucius’s hand soothing my chest, I managed to calm down, but the frustration remained.
“Lina told me she cherished those flowers with her sister. She even boasted about how hard her little sister worked… Why would she destroy them and choose to die? I don’t understand.”
“The flowers she raised were of excellent quality. They were enough to support a livelihood. But we discovered a problem—she refused to sell them to nobles.”
“To… nobles?”
She deliberately avoided selling only to nobles? The flowers were her means of survival, and yet… Why? It felt like there must have been a reason, so I waited for him to continue.
“Sinadelli is a tourist town, so people of all classes come there. Half of them are nobles on vacation. Most children selling flowers rely on nobles as their main buyers. Though they don’t always buy from unaffiliated children, nobles still purchase from time to time.”
“And since Lina and her sister’s flowers were higher quality, surely nobles would have wanted them.”
“Yes, they became known as sisters who sold fine flowers. Many bought from them. But whenever nobles approached, it was said Rena would stop the sales. She often ran away if a noble came near.”
“Did she suffer something at the hands of a noble?”
“That’s unclear. According to Lina, she was extremely shy and struggled to interact with people—but this wasn’t limited to nobles. She had sold flowers before, but one day she suddenly began avoiding nobles, refusing to speak to them or running away.”
“…Hmm.”
Why only nobles? Even if she was shy, she still sold to others. What reason could there be to refuse nobles alone, to the point of reducing their livelihood?
As a headache throbbed, a thought struck me.
“Wait. You said she never sold to nobles, avoided them altogether. But that day, she sold flowers to me.”
It was Lina who first approached me, but Rena had been with her. And not just one flower—she had even included a rare blue rose in the bouquet. Lucius and the knights had been with me then—surely she knew I was a noble.
“Why would she do that? Even if Lina asked her, wouldn’t she normally have avoided me altogether?”
“That’s the mystery. She kept her head down, but she didn’t stop Lina from selling to you. Even the single blue rose she gave—she let it be sold to you, Tiana. As for why… only she would know.”
He let out a small sigh, his face clouded with sorrow. I smoothed the deep furrow between his brows with my hand, and though he smiled faintly, the heaviness on his face didn’t ease.
A child who had always avoided nobles, refusing to sell her flowers to them. And yet, for her sister’s sake, she had reluctantly sold them to me. If, afterward, she regretted it deeply, thinking it was wrong, then perhaps she had been tormented by the fact she had sold to a noble at all.
“Lucius… Do you think maybe she did it because of that? Because she sold flowers to me that day?”
“…Tiana.”
“If she was already unstable, hurting herself, then that day might have pushed her over the edge. In a situation she didn’t want, she sold her flowers—her most precious thing—to a noble. It could have thrown her into unbearable anxiety.”
Lucius fell silent in thought before quietly replying.
“I did see them that day, in the garden. Both sisters. Lina waved at you happily. Rena met your eyes… but immediately looked away. I imagine she remembered selling the flowers then. In her fragile state, meeting you must have triggered that memory, and she spiraled into danger. And then… it happened, impulsively.”
Perhaps that was why she hadn’t stopped her sister, even though she normally would have resisted. Selling a flower to a noble—something she couldn’t forgive herself for. And so she burned the rest, and then took her own life.
The extremity of it, for such a young child, chilled my very bones. My chest tightened unbearably. Lucius, watching me closely, quickly spoke.
“Tiana, don’t think too much of it. That day was coincidence. Meeting those children, buying those flowers—it was all coincidence.”
“I know. I know… but it still hurts so much.”
Why did it have to be me who bought those flowers that day? For me, it became a sweet memory. For her, it was her last moment—a memory soaked in despair.
