Chapter 3

3. The Match Girl

“Sonya! Sonya!”

Sonya’s thin shoulders twitched at the faint voice behind her as she limped her way out of the factory.

“…Natalia?”

“It is you, Sonya. It really is you.”

The small girl, whose appearance would not have been out of place on a beggar, hurriedly covered her face with her rags as Sonya drew near.

“I-it’s better that you were thrown out now, Sonya. Otherwise, you might end up like me.”

“What do you mean? End up like you…?”

Only then did Sonya’s eyes, which had barely been able to open after the factory manager’s beating, go wide with shock.

“Natalia, y-your face…!”

Natalia, her face warped into something grotesque as though her jaw had been crushed, stammered out her words.

“It’s the matches, they say. Jeanne and Sister Polly changed like this too.”

…In truth, Sonya had known.

She had known that the white phosphorus used to make matches carried a deadly poison.

She had once read it in Jacob’s chemistry book.

Even so, Sonya had gone and knocked on the match factory’s door of her own accord.

…Of course, now even that had become impossible.

A host of feelings she could not name swirled bleakly, like a winter wind, through Sonya’s hollow chest.

Natalia, watching the tangle of emotions on Sonya’s face, added with a sad smile,

“You’re an Osterian, aren’t you?”

“…”

“Actually, I had half guessed. You were different somehow.”

“I’m sorry, Natalia. I didn’t mean to deceive you. No one would give me work, so, that’s why.”

As though Sonya’s origins hardly mattered, Natalia added with damp, glistening eyes,

“W-what use is any of that now? I may be Osanan, but my circumstances are no different from yours. You know I’m from Garen Sobre too.”

“…”

“E-even if you weren’t an Osterian, the truth is that anyone who falls ill gets thrown out. S-so maybe you’re actually better off. You were thrown out before you got sick.”

Trying to hide her hideously distorted face, Natalia spoke with difficulty.

“L-listen. You, you might even be able to find work in a brothel.”

Sonya’s eyes, deep with despair, suddenly burned.

“Natalia…”

“I-I’m sorry. But Sonya, I actually envy you. I-I mean it. At least you can sell your body. All that’s left for me is to die.”

A sudden, fierce, cold wind swept between the two pitiful girls.

It was a long while before Sonya came to herself at the bundle of matches Natalia was pressing into her hand.

“…What is this?”

“Take it. Sell them and keep what you earn. I still have plenty left. They gave them to me when they threw me out of the factory. T-they said it was in place of my unpaid wages.”

Sonya managed to speak in a voice thick with tears.

“No. I can’t take this, Natalia. This is as good as the price of your life.”

But Natalia shook her head, as though she no longer had the strength to argue.

“…I’m going. They say tonight will be even colder.”

Sonya silently looked down at the matches Natalia had received in place of her wages, then bit her dry lips and held the bundle to her chest.

Now even the potatoes from the last supply delivery were completely gone.

If she wanted to feed the children of Labri even the thin soup they got once a day, she had to earn a franc, even a single one, by any means.

The matches were the only thing she had, so she meant to go out into the streets and try to sell them.

Manon, the elegant city that Sonya could hardly believe shared a world with Garen Sobre, showed its true face only when the sun began to set.

Having failed to sell even a single match all day long, Sonya took in, with forlorn eyes, the dazzling view of the city as the electric lights came on one by one.

Manon, the great city, lit here and there by softly glowing electric lamps, was as grand and beautiful as another world.

…So much so that it was hard to believe it was the same world at all.

‘Jacob, can everything in this book really be true?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, it says they recently invented a machine that makes heat from electricity, so you don’t need to light a fireplace anymore. And electric lamps that turn on by themselves, making the night as bright as day. Isn’t that amazing?’

‘Sonya, are you stupid? Electricity was invented a year ago already. What can’t rich nobles do with money?’

‘Still. Look, it says that just installing a private generator costs thousands of francs.’

‘How naive. Do you think thousands of francs matter to people like that?’

A hollow look passed through Sonya’s dry eyes as she remembered that conversation with Jacob.

“Matches, please… Matches, please… *cough, cough*.”

Sonya’s pitiful voice, as she held up her matches in reddened, numb hands, was soon swallowed by the sound of the crowd laughing and chattering brightly.

Her hope of selling even one box and buying at least some dry bread had long since faded away along with the setting sun.

“That prince who’s come to be the next crown prince in place of the late Prince Frederick, you know.”

“You mean that bastard prince who was supposedly banished to Denburg the moment he was born?”

“They say the high nobles of the royalist faction have all begun preparing to emigrate. They claim they could never tolerate a prince of ignoble blood returning to Osana.”

The chatter of passersby on the street scattered, mingling with the cold wind.

“By the way, is it true that Prince Oscar took over ownership of Garen Sobre in exchange for being named crown prince candidate? I simply can’t understand why he would take over that worthless land.”

“Indeed. What on earth is he scheming, at a time when things are already so unsettled?”

Flutter.

That the man’s name should flutter mockingly once more at the feet of the wretched Sonya Leblanc must have been nothing less than a cruel prank of God.

Oscar de Dumarque.

Sonya swallowed her hot breath, thinking of the poor children of Labri, who were now about to starve to death thanks to that bastard prince, whom everyone, everywhere, was hotly discussing.

As she picked up the newspaper, the prince’s face printed on it sharp and clear once again, an inexplicable resentment rose in Sonya’s ashen eyes.

‘Sis, why does Osana hate us?’

On the way back this dawn, empty-handed from going to collect the supplies, Isaac, the youngest at Labri, had asked her that. Sonya bit her parched lips hard as she recalled it.

It had begun to snow again.

At God’s coldness, which showed not the slightest mercy even at the very end, Sonya couldn’t help but burst into hollow laughter.

More than from the severe hunger, Sonya’s eyes grew dim, seized by a deep despair.

Barely pulling herself together, her body having visibly weakened over the past few days, Sonya forced down her cough.

How much time had passed?

Staring blankly at the cold, arrogant face of the man in her hand, Sonya, her hands trembling without her meaning them to, took out a match.

And then she dropped the stinging, hot flame onto the prince’s face without hesitation.

Os, car, de, Du, marque.

Gazing vacantly at the prince’s name as the flame spread and burned it away, Sonya collapsed against the wall, lay down, and slowly closed her eyes.

The smell of sulfur burning drifted through the cold winter air.

The bittersweet smell of small wooden kindling burning.

And the smell of paper and dry leaves burning, tangled together.

Wrapped in the shabby, wretched smells that would adorn her death, Sonya Leblanc’s eyes fluttered faintly open, and it was because of a scent so out of place.

A fragrance she had never once smelled in Garen Sobre.

Deep, bitter, heavy, elegant, and somehow lethal, as though danger lay in wait within it.

Tread.

Soon, at the boot that limply stamped out the burning flame along with that fragrance, Sonya slowly lifted her head, and her pupils stopped as though frozen.

“…!”

Then the man, watching indifferently as the matches fell from the poor match girl’s hand in a limp shower, spoke.

“How cruel. Is it all right to set fire to another person’s face so carelessly?”

To Sonya, frozen like ice without being able to say a single word, the man from the newspaper whispered, his eyes curving like a devil’s.

“It’s been a long time, Sonya Leblanc.”