Chapter 15
Before she could even call, Hannah appeared.
Rita was briefly startled, then raised her voice.
“Yes, come in.”
Hannah stepped into the room, her face pale and her body trembling.
‘There’s no bruise on her neck. Good, it looks like she was properly treated.’
Rita assumed Hannah was scared because of the incident where she had a seizure at the scent of patchouli.
‘If she remembered that night, there’s no way she’d still be working at Birchwood Castle. She probably remembers nothing. And clearly, my family didn’t find any evidence linking her to my disappearance.’
Any ordinary child would have been caught immediately. Whoever controlled her must have done a good job covering their tracks.
Rillietta studied the trembling girl standing by the door.
Reddish-brown hair, light freckles, a round and gentle face, and light brown eyes.
‘Now that I look closely, there’s definitely a resemblance. The expression is different, but still…’
Rita Pascal had reddish-brown hair, light freckles, sharp features, and reddish-brown eyes.
After living rough on the frontlines, she hadn’t often looked at her face in detail, so she didn’t realize it at first. She had just thought, “The hair color is similar, but the eyes and face are different.”
‘Feels like a distant relative. Hard to tell at a glance, but if you compare them consciously, you can see the resemblance.’
As Rita stared intently at her face without speaking, Hannah grew increasingly pale.
“Um, miss…”
“Ah.”
Snapping out of it, Rillietta gestured toward the sofa.
“Come sit here, Hannah. I actually wanted to talk to you too.”
But instead of following her instruction, Hannah dropped to her knees on the spot, pressed her forehead to the floor, and spoke.
“Miss, please kill me!”
“What? What are you—?”
Startled, Rita asked again, and Hannah burst into tears.
“Huuuh… it was me, miss. It was me…”
“…You don’t mean—”
Rita felt her expression harden on its own.
“You remember everything? What happened that night? And you kept quiet while working around my family all this time?”
Her sharp questioning made Hannah lift her head abruptly, her tear-streaked face shaking side to side.
“N-no! I’m not that shameless, I swear—I, I mean…”
Still sobbing, she reached into her clothes. Rita instinctively prepared for an attack, but what Hannah pulled out was not a weapon.
It was a charred piece of cloth and leather, so burned it was barely recognizable.
With trembling hands, she laid it on the floor, tears dripping down.
“Miss, do you… do you know what this is?”
“…I don’t.”
“This is… the slipper the young lady wore… that night.”
“…!”
Rita recalled a memory she had regained.
That night, while struggling as Hannah grabbed her, her nightgown had torn, and her slipper had fallen off.
She hadn’t noticed the torn nightgown caught in the bushes, but the dropped slipper had been picked up by Hannah—or rather, whoever had possessed her.
However, when Rita had been lying in the coffin, she’d been barefoot, and when she escaped the lake in her original body, she was still barefoot.
The ducal family had assumed she went missing wearing shoes, so no one questioned the whereabouts of the slippers. But clearly, one of the slippers had remained somewhere from that night.
Apparently, Hannah had kept it all this time.
“Last night… when the loud noise came from the lake, I-I heard you’d regained your memories. And right then, I also…”
Hannah began to pour out everything in tears. Though her explanation was disjointed, Rita pieced it together.
‘So when I broke the coffin with the magic circle last night, it affected Hannah too.’
Ten years ago, the morning after Rillietta went missing, Hannah didn’t wake up. She had fallen into a high fever and collapsed.
She suffered from intense pain, vomiting, skin rashes, and seizures. Even the duke’s physician couldn’t figure out the cause.
In the end, she was only given antipyretics to lower the fever—and mysteriously recovered within a few days.
‘Those symptoms… it sounds like a side effect of Od. Probably because the culprit used magic on Hannah’s body, which wasn’t compatible with Od. That would explain the sudden recovery too.’
After that, Hannah remembered nothing about that night.
Though the ducal family had questioned her during the panic over Rillietta’s disappearance, no one seriously suspected the sick, bedridden child. When she claimed to remember nothing, they let it go.
Even Hannah’s tiny room had been thoroughly searched during the castle sweep, but no slipper had been found.
There were no footprints or clues in the garden or the birchwood trail. No evidence or witnesses connecting Hannah to the crime. Only a torn, blood-stained piece of Rillietta’s nightgown had been found in the bushes.
Hannah herself had no suspicions. She simply grieved over the young lady’s disappearance like everyone else.
It wasn’t until last night that something came back to her.
“It suddenly came to me. Faintly… I—I went to the main house and… your room… I shouldn’t have even known where it was, but I—I went straight there and… asked you to do something together…”
She said it felt like something had entered her head and kept ordering her around. She couldn’t resist—or even think of resisting.
She moved as if hypnotized, following the endless whispers. When she stuttered or messed up, the voice would cluck its tongue in irritation… and from there, her memory went blank.
Rita thought to herself:
‘At some point, Hannah started speaking smoothly and even smiled. When she wasn’t doing well, the culprit must’ve taken full control then.’
After that, Hannah came to her senses soaking wet, standing blankly in her room.
Seeing her soaked clothes, she thought she had wet herself in her sleep. Afraid of being scolded, she secretly washed and dried her nightgown, changed clothes, and went back to bed.
Then came the severe illness—and memory loss. Just like Rillietta.
“But last night, there was this loud crash… and I woke up. And then… from under the bed, there was a glowing light. I—I—I peeked under, and there was, I know it sounds insane, but there was… a tiny slipper…”
She said she had cleaned under her bed countless times in ten years and had never seen that slipper.
It was surrounded by a strange golden glow, then suddenly caught fire.
Even when she pulled it out and threw water on it, the fire wouldn’t go out. It burned until only unrecognizable fragments were left, and then the flames vanished like magic.
“And then… you remembered that night?”
“Yes… it sounds like a lie, or an excuse, but it’s true. I—I really didn’t know anything until yesterday. I’m not lying. I just now… remembered. Oh God, I… I must have… kidnapped you. I…”
Still kneeling, Hannah clawed at the floor. Her tears soaked into the carpet, staining it dark.
“Please kill me, miss. I—I deserve it… After all the kindness you showed me, how could I… How could I repay it with such betrayal… How could I… ever do that to you…”
Rita let out a long sigh.
Just like the wooden coffin that had stolen and held Rillietta’s memories, it seemed that Hannah’s memory had been sealed inside the slipper.
Perhaps when Rita destroyed the coffin in the lake, something linked to it—like the slipper—was also broken.
‘We searched the lake so many times and found nothing. That slipper must’ve been hidden by Od too. Then no one in this world could’ve found it.’
She rose from the sofa and approached Hannah. Standing before the trembling girl, she picked up the burned slipper fragment.
Though it was hard to make out, there were clearly parts of a magic circle etched into it. The texture and remnants matched the slipper she had worn that night.
This meant Hannah was telling the truth.
‘The one behind all this really is…’
Archmage Pascal. There could be accomplices, but considering the level of magic involved, he was the most likely culprit.
He had possessed Hannah’s body and kidnapped Rillietta.
‘I need to investigate this further—along with the coffin shards.’
Rita picked up the slipper fragment. Then she looked down at the crying Hannah and finally spoke.
“Hannah.”
