Laurel hurried to the kitchen and slipped into the group of people talking.
“The island of curses?”
The kitchen maids were greatly startled by the appearance of the mistress’s personal maid and all fell silent at once.
Laurel asked frantically, hoping to learn even one more thing about the island.
But no one was willing to answer, and they only glanced at one another.
“I am only asking out of curiosity. I will never report it to those above. So do not worry at all.”
Having worked under others for a long time, they did not easily believe Laurel’s words.
But Laurel, too, had been in the same position in the Hapen count family, so she knew the psychology of servants well.
So she persuaded them more actively, and only after exactly thirty minutes did they tell her the story about the island.
“That island has been rumored about since long ago.”
A kitchen maid named ‘Anna’ said she had been born and raised in Haven, and spoke in a voice full of conviction.
It had the romantic name ‘Island of Love,’ but in reality no one who went there fared well, and even if things seemed fine at the moment, the end was never good.
Thus, the fact that Marcus, Lucent’s father, was brutally murdered not long after going back and forth to the island was the most recent evidence.
“Why was that island cursed?”
At Laurel’s question, the others also seemed curious, for they stopped what they were doing and gathered in a circle around Anna.
“Long ago, when witch hunts were at their height, women fled to that island. Whenever the witch hunters who got wind of it approached the island, a storm would break out—bam!—and they all died. Anyway, that island was a base for women accused of being witches for a very long time. The women, in case outsiders came to the island and harmed them, planted things here and there to bewitch people.”
What that meant was that the fruit trees the witches had planted lured outsiders with their scent and color.
What was even more astonishing was that people did not realize at all that they had been seduced by the fruit’s fragrance.
If so, was the fruit a weapon to kill intruders?
“What kind of fruit is it?”
Laurel asked Anna with a tense face.
“They say it is a very ripe poisoned apple……. Whether eating it actually kills you, I do not know either. They say that if you eat that poisoned apple, you go mad, or fall ill with a disease of love, and some people gain mysterious abilities……. In any case, it is certain that there were many stories about it, one way or another.”
“Ah! I see.”
‘A disease of love, is it. Does that even make sense? Love is already madness by nature.’
Laurel concluded that Anna’s story lacked credibility.
Frankly, among old castles or regions with unusual terrain, was there any place without at least one legend like this?
Even her own hometown had a forest said to be inhabited by monsters to this day, yet when the season came, the village women rushed to gather mushrooms there.
And Lucent’s father had been such a dangerous figure that his death was likely for that reason.
Linking his death to the island was a bit of a stretch.
“Thank you for the story. Once the storm subsides, the master and mistress will return, so please prepare a warm soup.”
“Yes.”
‘There is no way someone as kind as our lady would be cursed. I got nervous for nothing over such a baseless story.’
Laurel hurried out of the kitchen.
It was to draw bathwater so that Aeplin could wash as soon as she returned.
* * *
The lingering sweet fragrance and taste of the wild apple was vivid on Aeplin’s tongue.
But her consciousness gradually dimmed, and she felt as though her body were floating in empty space, drifting somewhere.
Darkness and light repeated, and passing through a thick fog, she stopped in a very unfamiliar space.
‘Where is this.’
The moment Aeplin harbored the question, an unfamiliar sorrow swept over her like wildfire.
It was as if she had been swept into somewhere at the boundary between reality and dream.
But why did her heart feel so heavy and gloomy?
It was too hard to bear the strong sorrow that stirred her very soul.
Just then, the sound of a boy’s weeping came from afar and drew Aeplin.
In a room that was white on all sides, a hospital bed stood alone, and beside it stood a boy, crying.
The child with blond hair and blue eyes was certainly familiar.
It did not take Aeplin long to recognize who the boy was.
‘Lucent?’
The child, who looked about seven years old, trembled slightly and clutched his father’s hand tightly, as if afraid to lose it.
In that moment, Aeplin’s heart ached with a sharp pang.
The pain of young Lucent flowed into her body.
‘How did an intelligent and outstanding child like you come from a man like me.’
The man lying on the sickbed, dying, was his father.
With bandages wrapped around his chest and consumed by the shadow of death, the father was saying his final farewell to his son.
‘Papa…….’
Lucent, afraid of losing his father.
The father barely reached out and stroked his young son’s face.
‘Lucent, just because this father is a thug does not mean you are one too. You are very different from me. You are smart and kind-hearted. So study hard and live a life respected by others.’
‘Do not say things like that and get up quickly!’
The louder Lucent wept, the more Aeplin, watching from beside him, wept with him.
So this was what it felt like to have one’s heart torn apart.
The desperate fatherly love the dying father conveyed to his son was felt entirely.
It was clearly Lucent’s sorrow, yet as if it had been transmitted to her, Aeplin’s pain was so vivid.
Enough to make her limbs tremble.
‘I did not become a gangster because I wanted to either. Watching my family starve to death before my eyes……. I was so afraid. But Lucent, you are an outstanding child. Please, do not live in the shadows—live proudly in the light. Go to a good school, work at a job others envy, build a harmonious family, and live happier than anyone. That is this father’s wish.’
Before the dying father’s last words, all a seven-year-old boy could do was cry.
The boy simply hoped that his father’s life, hanging by a thread, would continue just a little longer.
‘If Papa is gone, I am too scared to live.’
‘You are strong. Believe in yourself. And the money this father earned is dirty, but you will be able to spend it cleanly. Never be discouraged. Do everything you want and live splendidly. You can do it. And……. When I die, you are the head of our family. Look after your mother and younger sister. Lucent.’
With those words, Lucent’s father breathed his last.
The young boy clutched his dead father’s face and wept bitterly.
Aeplin reached out many times to embrace him, but his form could not be grasped in her hands.
Perhaps because she was an incorporeal being.
She wanted to hold that small, frail Lucent in her arms and pat him…….
All she could do was weep more sorrowfully than he did.
Aeplin covered her face with both hands and cried her heart out.
Then young Lucent briefly turned his head and looked in puzzlement at Aeplin, weeping bitterly beside him.
Who was she, to weep together with him?
That there was someone who had seen his despair and pain raw made the corners of his eyes tremble.
Aeplin, exhausted from crying, lowered the hands that had covered her face.
But she was now in a completely different place, and the seven-year-old Lucent and his dying father were no longer there.
Instead, a man stood blankly on a street where white snow was falling.
Knowing that he was Lucent, Aeplin ran to him at once, and met Lucent as he looked to be about seventeen.
The sorrow from a moment ago flew away, and she was moved to meet him, grown so fine.
But soon several men surrounded Lucent and pointed at him all at once, each saying a word.
‘Lucent Blackakson, even if you place first in the theory exam, you cannot be admitted to our school.’
‘A gangster’s son applying to Croisen Imperial University? Absurd.’
‘If a student like you were admitted, our university’s honor would fall to the ground.’
‘People should live according to their station, and there would be no trouble. Tsk, tsk, tsk—’
Wretched men, speaking cruel words to a student with a promising future.
Aeplin ran toward them.
As she waved her hands wildly, the people who had been hurling insults at Lucent scattered like mist.
In their place, only Lucent remained, head bowed, shoulders trembling as he wept.
Aeplin knew it was futile, but she embraced him from behind as his shoulders shook with despair.
‘……?!’
Now he felt real to her.
Soon Lucent turned around, looked at Aeplin with tear-filled eyes, and repeatedly moved his lips.
