Chapter 115

Chapter 115

That evening, we left the office and made our way to the room with the pond. It was to go see the Madam who would be there. Walking down the long corridor, I stole a glance at the Duke. Even in this situation, he seemed remarkably calm. Calm enough to appear almost unbothered. But that didn’t necessarily reflect what was in his heart.

“Um, actually—I saw the Madam in Lady Vandark’s memories.”

I cautiously gauged the Duke’s reaction as I opened my mouth. I wasn’t sure if this was an appropriate topic right now, but the words about the Madam had already slipped out.

“If the lady was still alive back when Mother’s close friend was, then Mother must have been young too.”

The Duke replied. His words naturally brought back the face I’d seen in Lady Vandark’s memories. A clear image of the Madam when she was younger formed in my mind.

“Yes. Um… She looked a lot like you, Your Grace.”

“I heard that sometimes when I was a child. Though I could never really see it myself.”

He cast a glance my way and offered a faint smile. Then he turned his head back to face forward.

“I wonder if I’ll actually get to see her like that. She’s supposedly in the form of smoke… but every soul Mother brought to Cuvershaiden kept its original shape.”

Then he continued in a surprisingly composed tone. I was starting to feel uneasy about how calm he seemed. If it were me, going to see my dead mother would be utterly disorienting. Sad, yes, but also joyful at the same time. Maybe I’d even collapse and burst into tears first. Just imagining it felt this overwhelming—how could the Duke be any different? Perhaps he was just holding himself together. I couldn’t tell what had forged such a sturdy shield around his heart, but well. Anyway.

Naturally, I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to pat his arm and ask if he was alright. But no matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out how. And while I hesitated, we’d already arrived in front of the room with the pond.

“Laura. You should head back now. It’s late—time to clock out.”

The Duke said this with his hand already resting on the door handle.

“Ah… then I’ll… be going.”

I didn’t particularly want to intrude on a mother-son reunion either, so I bowed my head to him in greeting. But it was in that very moment, as I lifted my head again, that I noticed something and my whole body went rigid. Through the gap in the door the Duke was pulling open, a familiar silhouette was stepping into view. It was a woman with sleek black hair neatly arranged.

“Wh—what?”

Good heavens. She was the Madam I’d seen in Lady Vandark’s memories. For some reason, she wasn’t a hazy figure of smoke. Instead, she maintained a fully intact human form.

“Hello, my son. And Laura.”

She turned to look at us and waved her hand. I stared at her blankly for a moment before snapping back to my senses and glancing up at the Duke. I could see his expression subtly twisting. He seemed quite shaken by the sudden sight of his mother.

“You two want to come in? I don’t have much time right now.”

The Madam’s voice continued in my ears. By ‘you two,’ she surely meant me and the Duke. But I wasn’t sure if I had the right to step into their space.

“Come on in, I said.”

At the Madam’s urging, the Duke took a long stride into the room. I just stood there shifting my weight until I finally followed behind him. Then I quickly pressed myself close to his back.

“You’re like a bur stuck to a dead tree.”

She glanced at the two of us and gave a faint smile. The sight was so strikingly beautiful it bordered on unsettling.

“What’s going on?”

The duke asked her in a low, gravelly voice. His demeanor was polite—almost too measured for someone who’d just learned she’d met his mother. He couldn’t possibly be unaffected, I thought. And yet he carried himself as if he were.

“I showed myself so I could hear Karina out.”

She answered calmly. The “Karina” she spoke of must be Madam Bandark. But no matter how I looked around, Madam Bandark was nowhere to be seen. I stole a glance behind the lady, half-wondering if she’d sunk back into the lake.

“Karina… is right here.”

Catching my eye, the lady reached into the pond. She made a scooping gesture with her palm, and a wisp of black smoke, no bigger than my thumb, pooled in her hand.

Could that really be Madam Bandark?

The small smoke, now out of the water, rippled like a wave. But it looked far too unstable to be called a proper soul—on the verge of vanishing at any moment.

“Her soul was so scattered that only this much remains. She won’t even have consciousness anymore. If time goes on like this, Karina will disappear entirely.”

The lady said this as she dipped her hand back into the pond. The black smoke slipped silently back into the water. I just watched, still.

So if more time passes, she’ll vanish completely… Did she choose to give up reincarnation and disappear of her own will?

Suddenly, my chest tightened. Maybe this was my fault for showing her Luka. In the end, she saw Luka exorcised with her own eyes and broke down completely.

“Don’t worry too much. Not reincarnating is her choice too.”

Seeing me all sullen, the lady kept talking. Her voice was soothing, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Maybe that was why. Before I knew it, a gloomy confession slipped out.

“I’m sorry. You must’ve tried so hard to help your friend ascend… And I made her meet Luka…”

“No, don’t think that way. I knew this would happen to her someday. I knew it—that’s what scared me. So I kept putting it off, putting it off, until I died without resolving Karina’s affair. But you finally closed the chapter for me.”

“No, I…”

“It’s not a good thing for souls to linger too long in the land of the living. Whether they’re bound to a place or dwell inside an object. As you know, there’s always the risk of becoming an evil spirit while anchored here… But when I died suddenly in that accident, I left far too many souls behind in Cuvershaiden. That worried me so much that even in death, it’s kept me tethered here. Then one day, you appeared and started helping them ascend. I’ve been grateful for that. It was my duty, but you took on so much burden in my stead. You’ve suffered a lot because of it, haven’t you? I’m sorry.”

“Ah. No, not at all…”

At her words, I quickly waved both hands in front of me. Then I glanced sidelong at the Duke. I was quietly concerned about him, standing there with his mother’s soul before his very eyes. But the Duke’s face remained utterly expressionless. And yet, to me, that very stillness felt precarious—like a tower of sand on the verge of collapse.

“…Anyway, I think I’ll have to go soon. Keeping this form is taking too much out of me.”

As she spoke, the Madam rose from the pond’s edge and walked toward us.

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Well… the truth is, being smoke takes less effort than holding a human shape. So if I want to stay here a while longer before I go, becoming smoke is the only way.”

She answered. Something inside me ached, and I bit down on my lip. The Duke stepped forward, closing the space between them. Without a word, he looked down at his mother. Slowly, he reached out both hands to grasp her. But of course, his fingertips only passed through her.

He clenched his empty hands into tight fists. Then, this time, the Madam reached toward him. She mimed stroking her son’s cheek.

“Have you been well? My son.”

“…Have you been staying behind me all this time, because maintaining this form was too difficult? Invisible even to me?”

“I’m sorry. But I can’t stay here forever anyway. I was originally planning to slip away quietly.”

Soon, her hand—unable to touch him—began to dissipate into smoke. The Duke couldn’t hold onto her. He could only silently watch his mother’s face, knowing it might be for the last time.

“Disappear? You mean you’ll just leave like that later?”

The duke’s gaze shifted to the pond. I understood his worry. Most ghosts that turned to smoke just dissipated over time, like Lady Bandark. Sometimes they ascended without warning, but I doubted the Madam would manage that. She said she’d left souls in Kubersharden, binding herself to the land of the living. That was her lingering attachment—she couldn’t ascend until she sent every one of those souls on their way. So if she couldn’t resolve this, her end was as plain as day. She wouldn’t turn into an evil spirit, no… In the end, she’d just fade away like smoke.

“Every beginning has an end, doesn’t it?”

She said it in that calm voice of hers, and the word ‘end’ rang out so sorrowfully. The truth was, I had no rebuttal. But I wanted to hold onto her somehow. Waiting for the day she’d vanish like this felt too cruel. Not just because the Madam would miss her chance at reincarnation—what worried me more was the duke’s heart.