Chapter 146
Cheshire doubted her ears.
Sorry?
It was a word she had never even imagined.
She thought she must have heard wrong.
But the woman was repeating the same words over and over.
Repeating the apology to no one, like a broken music box.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Her chest felt tight.
As if pressed down by a heavy stone, she couldn’t breathe.
Cheshire stared blankly at the woman endlessly apologizing and whispered.
“It’s okay.”
What could she possibly have to be sorry to her for?
If anything, the one who truly should be sorry…
“I’m sorry.”
Was Cheshire.
If Cheshire hadn’t existed, she surely would have lived at least a better life than this.
The new life must have been heavy shackles for her mother.
Without those shackles, her mother might not have gone mad.
She might not have ended up wandering the empty field alone in loneliness.
She might have even found a happy ending.
With a heart as heavy as if weighted by a boulder, she silently vowed words the woman couldn’t hear.
‘The humans who made Mom like this, I’ll kill them all.’
She quietly promised to repay the misery she had endured many times over.
The woman, curled up clutching her belly, repeated meaningless apologies, then at some point moved her lips and began to sing.
The faint-voiced song was entirely different from the one sung in madness.
The only trace of her mother that Cheshire held.
It was a lullaby.
During the precious brief moment she returned to sanity, she sang a lullaby for the baby in her belly.
The tear-mixed song was close to sobbing, but she forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile.
As if hoping her own sadness wouldn’t reach the baby.
The song, thin as if it might break at any moment, continued.
Then, the wilted flowers began to bloom again little by little, starting from around her.
The sight of already dead flowers gaining life and reviving was wondrous.
Even a fairly strong fairy couldn’t imitate it clumsily; it was an extraordinary power.
She, Cheshire’s mother… might truly have been the queen.
But whether she was the queen or not, it didn’t matter at all.
None of that was important.
Cheshire slowly approached the woman.
She wanted to see her face.
The golden hair, still shimmering brilliantly despite being caked in mud and blood, was the same color as Cheshire’s.
She wondered if her pink eyes were also inherited from her mother.
Cautiously drawing near, she tried to peer through the cascading hair.
The world before her eyes began to melt away.
In the blink of an eye, Cheshire was back in the rabbit hole-like passage.
“…Ah.”
She let out a short sigh and bit her lips tightly.
In the end, she hadn’t confirmed her mother’s face.
It was regrettable, but it was okay.
She had a clear intuition that there would be a chance to see her again someday.
Feeling the slow descent downward, she checked her hand.
The pocket watch she had picked up before seeing her mother’s memory was nowhere to be found.
Instead, in Cheshire’s hand was some doll.
“A rabbit?”
It was a rabbit doll with button eyes, dressed in a black suit with a red ribbon around its neck.
The doll, made of pink fabric, was fluffy and squishy.
Pressing the doll with her palm, she thought.
‘This isn’t in my memories.’
The illusion realm reflects the fairy’s subconscious.
Thus, the objects in the illusion realm were things Cheshire had seen at least once.
They were items lodged somewhere in her memory.
‘But I wouldn’t forget such a noticeable doll.’
Perhaps…
It might be an object left by her mother’s memory that had seeped into Cheshire’s illusion realm.
Cheshire handled the illusion realm skillfully, but she didn’t know all of it.
She had just learned for the first time that the illusion realm became a passage to the fairy kingdom.
‘There must be many secrets yet to be revealed.’
Since she was heading to the fairy kingdom anyway, she thought she should ask the fairies there about this and that.
While lost in thought staring at the rabbit doll, Cheshire suddenly felt awkward.
The source of the dissonance was her changed body.
“…Huh?”
Her voice, now clearer in pronunciation, rang in her ears.
Her slightly longer limbs also came into view.
Cheshire murmured without realizing.
“I… became a child?”
Her body had grown to just the size to be called a child.
Not an adult, but no longer a baby.
For Cheshire, who had worried about staying a baby forever, it was a touching event.
One puzzling thing was that her outfit had changed along with it.
The clothes that changed abruptly as she became a child were peculiar.
A black top like a suit jacket, and the bottom a voluminous blue frilled skirt, strangely with butterfly wings attached.
It felt like the outfit matched the rabbit doll as a set.
Suddenly growing, clothes changing…
‘Is this the crown’s doing too?’
Cheshire extended her slightly longer arm and felt above her head.
The crown that had been stuck fast until before seeing the memory was gone somewhere.
The child Cheshire clenched her now larger hand into a fist.
“Yeah, let’s see how far this goes.”
She intended to go all the way and see what else the crown would do.
Not long after, the end of the rabbit hole, which had seemed endless, came into view.
Finally planting her feet on the ground, Cheshire let out a sigh of relief first.
“Phew.”
Looking up, she saw the floating objects from the illusion realm.
But unlike the other buoyant items, the rabbit doll remained in her hand, its large ears drooping limply.
It seemed she should carry it for now.
Holding the rabbit doll in one hand, she walked forward.
And let out an admiring “Oh.”
Before Cheshire stood a massive door.
The golden door was engraved with delicate green patterns.
It depicted a large tree, with curving lines showing branches blooming with flowers.
Observing the flower petals expressed with inlaid colorful gems, Cheshire realized the problem.
“…How do I open the door?”
The door, which seemed to open on both sides, had no handle or keyhole.
It probably pushed open, but one panel was so huge that even stacking ten child Cheshires wouldn’t reach its height.
Grunting, she pushed the door with her hands, but the massive golden door didn’t budge.
Cheshire burst out in frustration.
“If you’re going to drag me here against my will, at least open the door!”
The moment she yelled.
“Is it the soul that makes the body exist?”
The rabbit doll in her hand suddenly began to wriggle.
“Or is it the body that makes the soul exist?”
The rabbit doll hopped down and landed on the floor.
Then it swayed its body left and right as if dancing.
Flapping its long ears, the rabbit doll shouted.
“I became a baby because I wanted to be a baby!”
“I became a child because I wanted to be a child!”
“I became an adult because I wanted to be an adult!”
Cheshire blinked and asked.
“Then did you become a rabbit because you wanted to be a rabbit?”
The rabbit doll enthusiastically clapped its stubby hands—clap, clap, clap.
“Indeed!”
“……”
To be trapped here with a crazy rabbit doll.
Suddenly, she desperately wanted to escape.
“…Is that a hint for opening the door?”
The rabbit doll just flapped its ears vigorously, not answering as expected, but spouting nonsense.
“Fairies are not humans. Humans are not fairies. Humans must think as humans, fairies must think as fairies.”
Staring at the unpleasant rabbit doll, Cheshire hummed and looked up at the door again.
‘No choice, huh.’
She wanted to enter gracefully if possible.
Though she had been dragged here forcibly, it was her first time entering the fairy kingdom.
Since it had come to this, wouldn’t a good first impression benefit both sides?
But as the rabbit doll said, thinking as the ‘fairy Lichesia.’
To escape this place quickly, there was only one way.
Cheshire extended her hand to the side.
Brilliant flowers bloomed, and a large axe appeared.
Gripping the handle firmly, Cheshire drew the axe back with all her might…
Boom!
And slammed it into the door.
A deafening roar erupted, and an axe mark appeared on the golden door.
“What a mad fairy!”
The rabbit doll shouted noisily from the side, so she said a word.
“If you want to get axed too, keep talking.”
“……”
Cheshire was able to chop away comfortably in a very quiet environment.
