Chapter 77

Chapter 77

Curse

There were various curses in this world.

From light curses that made one inevitably trip at least twice a day.

To heavy curses that naturally threatened life directly.

Among all these countless curses, what kind of curse would one need to feel negative energy from the heart?

“To begin with, can such energy lurk inside the body without showing the slightest trace...?”

Could a curse be that stealthy?

Generally, such curses belonged to the black magic system, but no matter how many books I searched, nothing plausible appeared.

“If it is not a simple curse...”

I closed the book containing information about black magic and curses and fell into thought.

The sudden death of “Krectar.”

Now that there was a very high possibility Zeto was connected to this, I had to add one more possibility.

I quietly rose from my chair, returned the book to its original place, and slowly moved deeper into the library.

Each step felt as though I were walking across a thorny floor, making me ache.

Now the titles of every book around me contained the word “demon.”

That was right.

...Demons could also cast curses.

If the curse on Zeto was a demon’s curse, then it had to be seen as a far more serious problem than one from a black mage.

Most of their curses were life-threatening.

Honestly, a demon’s curse had come to mind first, but I had searched black magic first while hoping it would rather be a light curse.

As I struggled through the books, I picked up one titled “Demon Curses and Demonic Energy.”

The book was quite thick.

Fortunately, it did not seem to have security magic cast on it.

There were many books in this wide library that would have had security magic, after all.

When had it been?

An old memory rose of coming to this library in order to find information about the Ludwig clan.

I had been able to find related books, but they had been high-grade and protected by security magic, so I remembered accomplishing nothing.

“Though after that, I found information about the clan by another method.”

I carried the book back to my seat and set it down heavily on the desk.

I immediately began scanning through it.

As expected of curses from those demons, they were all terribly serious.

Even turning a single page was painful.

Perhaps this curse...

Perhaps if it was such a curse...

Those thoughts kept making my head dizzy.

Did Zeto even know?

That such a curse existed inside his body.

No, if it was Zeto, he certainly knew.

Zeto, who was skilled at detecting things, could not possibly fail to know the energy felt inside his own body.

Even so...

He had smiled.

He had smiled brightly at me.

He had held me gently.

He had supported me.

Was the reason such a thing happened to Zeto, in the end, because of me?

—Slide...

It was while I was reading the book with such difficulty.

Someone quietly spoke to me in a familiar voice.

“Eisel, seeing you here?”

It was Yuri Clementine.

“Mm...”

Since I was in a state that could absolutely not be called good, I answered in a somewhat weak voice.

Yuri was uncomfortable in many ways.

She was a woman who had changed greatly before and after Zeto appeared.

Even now, I think we did not see each other as friends... but it was also strange to say we were not close, an extremely subtle relationship.

Neither she nor I really had anyone one could call a friend, so perhaps we simply did not know how to treat each other.

Moreover, she showed interest in Zeto.

That had been quite irritating in the previous round, and it was still irritating now.

Soon, Yuri glanced at the book I was reading and opened her mouth.

“A curse...?”

“Ah, this is...”

“Are you looking for a particular curse?”

“...No, I was just bored. What about you?”

I asked Yuri, who was holding one book.

The book in her arms was a little thick, and its title was one I had not seen before.

“The Saint and... the Princess...”

Without thinking much, I read the title of the book Yuri was holding.

At that, Yuri’s face reddened slightly, and she hugged the book even tighter.

Soon, she opened her mouth.

“Th-this is just something I read as a child that has been coming to mind lately... so...”

“As a child?”

“...Eisel, have you not read this book? It is an extremely famous fairy tale, so everyone reads it at least once when they are young.”

“A fairy tale? Who knows. I do not think I was very interested in fairy tales.”

“Ahh...”

At my following answer, she nodded with a reluctant expression.

In truth, rather than not being interested, there had been no such thing as a “fairy-tale book” in the place where I lived as a child.

In the place where I was experimented on by those demons, the only things to read were words of despair embroidered onto the walls by people.

Among them, many words were written in blood.

I remembered one day biting my finger and writing one word in blood, wanting to imitate them.

“But what does ‘escape’ mean?”

After writing the word, I asked the demon watching me from beside me.

“Something you must never do.”

The demon glanced indifferently at the letters and answered.

Then Krectar entered the room, saw the blood on my finger, and scolded the demon beside me, saying doing such a thing was unnatural.

“...Isn’t it fascinating?”

“...Sorry, I did not hear what you said.”

Because memories from my childhood had come to mind after quite some time, I had not heard Yuri’s words.

Yuri immediately let out a deep sigh.

“Huu... Do you have to show you are not interested that obviously? I was explaining so hard, honestly...”

This was information I had only learned now, but it seemed Yuri Clementine, unexpectedly, still liked fairy tales.

But was there anything to explain hard about a fairy tale?

A little curious, I asked Yuri.

“...Could you tell me again?”

“...You mentioned curses, and this fairy tale happens to have a curse in it, so...”

Perhaps embarrassed, Yuri trailed off.

However, I became genuinely curious.

“What kind of curse?”

I wondered whether a curse or the like could appear in a book read by children, though I had never read a fairy tale.

“A curse that shaved away lifespan, I think...? Originally, it was a curse meant to fall on the princess... but the Saint received the curse in her place.”

Yuri raised her eyes upward, searched her memories, and answered that way.

“He received the curse in her place...?”

“Yes, it is a heart-rending story...”

Yuri answered my question quietly, then finally opened the book she had been holding.

“Here, this scene.”

Yuri said that and opened to a specific page to show me.

I slowly read it.

While reading through the book, something I wanted to ask Yuri came to mind.

“This curse... is it a curse that ‘exists’?”

“...Who knows? Why?”

“No... It is a little similar...”

“Similar how?”

Yuri asked that back, but I, who had become as serious as could be, barely hid my expression as I fixed my eyes on the sentences in the book.

The curse was engraved upon the Saint’s heart.

From now on, this curse would begin gnawing little by little at his heart.

Even so, the Saint was quietly smiling.

Because he could smile in relief that the curse had fallen not upon the princess, but upon himself.

Those were the sentences.

If I was not imagining too much, it seemed fairly similar. The fact that the curse had been engraved on the heart bothered me especially.

Whether that energy truly was a curse, and whether the curse in the fairy tale actually existed.

Because I had no precise information at all, my head grew complicated.

“...Could I read this book first?”

I closed the fairy-tale book and asked Yuri that.

After all, Yuri had been the one holding the book first.

At my question, Yuri stroked her braided hair.

She seemed to be deliberating.

How much had Yuri wanted to read this book?

“It seems interesting. I have never read it even once.”

“Hmm... Since you have never read it, I suppose there is no helping it. Then you read it first, Eisel. I can read it later.”

“Mm, thank you. But did you not say it was a fairy-tale book? It is thick, and it does not seem like a book a young child would read...”

“Ah, that is... how should I put it? It was remade to be enjoyable for adults too. For example, something like an expanded edition...? I heard it was hard to find, but it just happened to be in the library...”

“I will read it quickly and give it to you. One day is enough.”

After ending the conversation with Yuri like that, I left the library carrying two books.

One was a fairy-tale book, and one was a book containing information on demon curses.

Perhaps because I had spent a long time in the library, the sun had already set, and the surroundings were dark.

A curse engraved on the heart.

A curse gnawing away at lifespan.

The Saint smiled because he had received the curse in place of the princess.

I had no experience being cursed by demons.

If anything, the “regression” born from their experiments was a curse to me, if it had to be called one.

Even so, a bitter taste spread in my mouth.

...Zeto.

Why were you able to smile?

***

“Haha...”

I smiled awkwardly and scratched my head.

Before me, Yuri could be seen.

It would have been fine if only Yuri had been visible, but beside Yuri was one man with red hair the same color as hers.

Even his neatly trimmed beard was red.

This man, who had a handsome impression and seemed somewhat older, was...

“So, I heard my daughter was introducing me to a friend, of all things... but I did not expect that friend to be a man.”

...Yuri’s father.

The current head of the Clementine family of flame.

Zeras Clementine.

“...Wh-what is wrong with him being a man...?!”

Yuri, who had her hands politely gathered, stammered and flared up at Zeras.

“Now, then, could you tell me what you liked about my daughter? As Yuri’s father, I very much want to hear it.”

Zeras let Yuri’s words go in one ear and out the other, then turned his head away from her and stared at me as he spoke.

With his arms crossed, he was certainly smiling, but pressure poured from his voice.

The first day of the open class period.

How did things end up like this?