Chapter 54
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Chapter 54
"Please, tell me. If a soul sought to free itself from the flesh... that means that soul, in other words, a soul that wished to depart from this world...?"
"..."
Charlotte remained standing, pressing Mrs. Smith for answers. Mrs. Smith sank into her seat with a shallow sigh before she began to speak.
"Miss Charlotte, the sorcery I mentioned earlier merely binds two souls together as if they were one, but only temporarily. However, since humans exist as both body and soul, a soul bound in such a manner will inevitably return to seek its own body."
Mrs. Smith continued in the most composed tone she could muster.
"It is only because beloved lovers retain the memory of the bound souls' traces, even briefly, that their affection for one another deepens. But a soul with no body to return to... would remain near the sorcery's target soul."
As Charlotte listened to the woman's words, she instinctively covered her mouth with both hands.
"...So that means...!"
Transparent tears began to stream from Charlotte's eyes as her words faltered. A soul with no body to return to—a soul that would remain beside the sorcery's target. According to Mrs. Smith's explanation, Leopold had already lost his flesh and ceased to exist in this world.
Charlotte shook her head vigorously as she spoke.
"I... there must be some misunderstanding. I believed his body had merely encountered some temporary affliction, that if I could only discover where his flesh had gone, everything would return to its rightful place. He too has now chosen to hold onto hope, so..."
Charlotte's words tumbled forth in disarray until she finally buried her face in her hands. Only yesterday, Leopold had confessed to her that he wished to live. He had decided to believe in the fact of his own existence, that he, having come to love her, could no longer remain indifferent to death.
Mrs. Smith's eyes widened at Charlotte's impassioned response as she asked.
"My goodness, Miss Charlotte... surely you haven't been conversing with that soul?"
"It's only conversation!"
Charlotte lifted her head sharply, her voice rising in a shrill cry.
"I have fallen in love, Mrs. Smith. He loves me, and I love him. Just as the moon cannot shine without darkness, we have come to love one another..."
Charlotte finally burst into tears, and only then did she understand why she had been able to persuade Leopold so confidently to live only in the present, not in the past or future.
'Your Majesty, I was never truly able to focus solely on the present, regardless of what the future held.'
Charlotte too had been terrified of facing an uncertain future. What sustained her instead was an inexplicable intuition that Leopold must still exist somewhere in this world, and the hope that one day she would stand upon the same earth as him.
'Even if Your Majesty didn't share my feelings, I was happy merely thinking that he could live a free life. That's why I desperately wished for him to return to this world in his true form....'
Now that they understood each other's hearts, Charlotte yearned more desperately than ever for him to find his way back to his true self.
'...I thought even if it ended, there was nothing I could do about it.'
'I thought perhaps the peace of death would be better than a freedom whose form I couldn't even comprehend.'
'But now... I want to live, Charlotte.'
Perhaps Leopold was right—perhaps Charlotte was foolish. As he had said at the Oslo Estate, falling in love at the boundary between death and life could bring nothing but sorrow. Now Charlotte feared she had plunged not only herself but Leopold too into profound grief through false hope.
"Miss Charlotte, you've fallen in love with a spirit, a s-soul?"
Mrs. Smith's voice, which had seemed composed, began to tremble.
"That can't be... Miss Charlotte, even if your souls are bound together, seeing and communicating with that soul is an entirely different matter! I thought perhaps you were simply sensing the shadow of the soul bit by bit, which would have been the problem!"
Mrs. Smith, clearly shaken, seized both of Charlotte's hands as she spoke. Her blue eyes churned like a tropical sea, burning with intensity.
"Even necromancers and Sorceresses who commune with spirits only receive or hear one-directional messages from them. But to have fallen in love with a spirit—it's a phenomenon I simply cannot comprehend."
Mrs. Smith spoke with a face drained of all color.
"Giving your heart like that can be extremely dangerous. Not only for the spirit, but especially for you, Miss Charlotte."
Despite Mrs. Smith's warning, Charlotte could not stop her flowing tears. Yet with trembling hands, she wiped them away earnestly. This was her chance to hear the most direct explanation regarding Leopold's disappearance and the reason she had come to see him.
"Mrs. Smith, please, p-please tell me what I must do now... *sob*, I don't care what happens to me. I'll bear any danger, just please tell me the way for him, for him to return to this world...."
Charlotte murmured through her endless tears. Mrs. Smith's firm assertion that Leopold no longer existed in this world also meant that the two of them had been able to stay together all this time thanks to the side effects of the sorcery.
"Please, Mrs. Smith. Please tell me how I can find his body!"
At Charlotte's earnest plea, tears welled up in Mrs. Smith's eyes.
"I'm afraid I don't know how to bring a soul back to life once it has departed from the body, Miss Charlotte."
She withdrew a handkerchief of mingled black and white from her pocket and dabbed her face.
"Ordinarily, even a bound soul should have departed eventually. Yet somehow, Miss Charlotte, you held onto that soul so persistently and so intensely that you fell in love with it."
Mrs. Smith shook her head as if bewildered and continued.
"But if you truly care for that soul... it would be kinder to release it to its proper place rather than let it wander in anguish, caught between life and death."
Charlotte gazed up at Mrs. Smith with an expression of utter devastation. Despite her pale, tear-streaked face, she remained hauntingly beautiful.
"Should you ever find the body that once housed that soul, Miss Charlotte... you must release it there. If that is impossible, then hold a funeral or a memorial service, even without the body..."
Mrs. Smith regarded the tears pooling on Charlotte's chin with profound sorrow.
"You must return everything to its rightful place, so that soul no longer suffers alone in darkness. You must. You absolutely must."
***
The carriage ride home was far quieter than before. Jane merely gazed cautiously at Charlotte's swollen face, no longer even fanning her, maintaining a respectful silence. Charlotte, too, remained silent.
She stared out the carriage window, recalling the final question she had asked Mrs. Smith just before leaving her house.
'Mrs. Smith, then... could it be that my love for that soul was also caused by sorcery?'
Charlotte had asked, her face hollow from crying.
'You said so yourself—that it was a love spell binding two souls together...'
'Ah, Miss Charlotte.'
Mrs. Smith had turned to her with a pitying expression.
'Did the love you shared with that soul feel like a mirage created by sorcery?'
Charlotte blinked her dry eyes.
'...No. My feelings for him are genuine.'
'Then it's not because of sorcery.'
Mrs. Smith offered a faint smile as she replied.
'Miss Charlotte, the truth is there exists no sorcery capable of making two souls fall into true love. Love's definition differs from person to person, as does the manner in which one falls in love. Since love has neither form nor fixed definition, and each person experiences it differently, there is no method in this world to manufacture it.'
Mrs. Smith wrapped Charlotte in a warm embrace as she prepared to board the carriage after Jane, adding her words softly.
'Yet nothing is as unchanging and eternal as love. Neither life nor death, nor anything else, can make love disappear. Instead, love takes on many different forms suited to circumstances. Whether you accept these different manifestations of love determines whether love exists or does not exist.'
Mrs. Smith's gentle voice lingered long in Charlotte's ears. Soon after, Charlotte called out to Jane in a hushed tone.
"Sister Jane, there's something I want to ask you."
Jane lifted her head with a start at her sister's call.
"When you were about to cast sorcery on Terrence and yourself but cancelled it... was it really because you were afraid?"
At Charlotte's question, Jane blinked her eyes in surprise, then soon offered a faint smile.
"That was part of it, but truthfully, I came to realize that making our love eternal through sorcery simply didn't make sense."
Jane lowered her gaze and began to answer, lost in contemplation.
"As the time Terrence and I spent together grew longer, it seemed the passion and excitement I felt when he first proposed to me began to fade. But then I realized that love isn't only what it looks like at the very beginning."
During the period when the wedding was repeatedly postponed due to family circumstances, the two spent half a year apart—Jane in London and Terrence at Aunt's House in the Countryside—unable to see one another. It was this anxiety that led Jane to take an interest in sorcery, and she even resolved to cast a love spell for herself and Terrence.
Jane continued slowly.
"Charlotte, when spring arrives, Terrence and I feel our spirits lift with excitement. But during those six months we didn't see each other, we shared a love like smoldering charcoal—steady and warm. Can either one alone be called true love?"
Jane's blue eyes and golden hair gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the carriage window.
"I came to believe our love wasn't a single, clearly visible form, but rather the moment-by-moment choice and promise to care for each other according to our hearts. So I realized there was no need to forcibly bind ourselves to just one of love's many faces through sorcery."
Charlotte's mind recalled Mrs. Smith's final words, which bore such striking resemblance to Jane's answer.
'Whether one accepts this different form of love or not determines whether love exists or does not exist.'
Love remains unchanging, yet its manifestations can be infinite. Just as Charlotte had loved Leopold while believing he still existed in this world, she now felt the depth of her love for him persisting even as he remained only as a spirit by her side.
After pouring out her tears, Charlotte leaned her throbbing head against the cold windowpane.
'Then even when His Majesty's spirit fades away, and he no longer appears beside me... I will still be able to love him.'
Moisture glistened once more in her brown eyes, which she had thought would run dry.
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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