NOMAMWTM Chapter 33

That name, probably a nickname.

After Charlotte stirred that precious memory, his breath caught as if a stone pressed down on it.

The thought that the monster now read even inside his head.

On the other hand, the burden of the fact that he couldn't believe what he saw straightforwardly.

Lotte.

That could also, though it absolutely couldn't be, be Charlotte's nickname.

The miracle with the faceless girl that had continued for a few months in his childhood before breaking off.

The girl who'd been his salvation miraculously came to his estate. Saved his dying mother, stopped the increasing deaths, even eliminated the voices of aberrations that had tormented him all his life.

How comfortable and nice it would be if he could think that way.

That would be what she intended.

[diediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediedie]

What existed before his eyes was a woman who handled aberrations, and also a woman who handled something other than magical power, not magical power—something he'd sensed momentarily when she broke the small barrier he'd created earlier.

The silver light that rippled from Charlotte's hand passed before his eyes.

Michael was more sensitive to magical power than anything.

Once when burning the corpse, twice when his magic shattered—that power felt strangely similar to magical power but was somehow more sinister.

Something he felt he'd sensed before, but couldn't remember.

A magician with such power.

He let out a bitter laugh.

He couldn't believe what was before his eyes, felt trapped in darkness where he couldn't see even one step ahead where he placed his feet.

It felt like sinking into a swamp.

The bit he'd recovered felt like a lie as things started becoming difficult again.

Michael had somehow reached Adeline's door.

Through the gap of the slightly open door, he saw the unrealistically beautiful woman crying sorrowfully in his mother's embrace.

Tears fell rolling down as if truly sad, truly terrible, or tormented.

A face where not a speck of falsehood could be found.

It wasn't strange for his mother, whose illness had healed, to be enchanted.

For an instant, the thought flashed by that people might think she deserved to be like that if they saw her, if he'd really misunderstood her.

[diediediediedie...]

As he stood where he might enter Charlotte's sight, the aberrations gradually closed their mouths.

He gazed at the breathtakingly beautiful woman.

From where to where was included in her plan?

From where to where would they sink into peace, and from where to where would they fall when everything flipped?

He felt wrapped tightly in sticky spider webs.

After one maid died crushed by the chandelier, the lumps stopped killing people again.

As if they'd become docile after venting their accumulated anger once.

Charlotte looked at the lumps rolling around somewhere in the room with sunken eyes.

As if instinctively knowing she wasn't thinking good thoughts about them, several lumps whose eyes met hers rolled their eyes around.

That day, after crying in Adeline's embrace and calming down somewhat, her head was complicated by the fact that while her telling them not to wasn't completely ineffective, if they released what they'd endured once, people would die again.

"...Nero."

[What?]

"They said they're enduring."

[Huh? Yeah. They love killing humans so much, they can't endure long. I told you? It's useless.]

Charlotte raised her knees and half-buried her face.

One lump bravely rolled over to her side.

Despite her telling them many times not to come on the bed in this terrible mood.

She snatched the lump approaching her.

The black thing was squeezed tight in her fist.

Squawk—she thought she might have heard such a sound.

...Could she eliminate it by squeezing like this?

But no matter how much strength she applied, the lump just compressed flat like the soft balls children play with, and didn't burst or disappear.

When she released her hand, it returned to its original round shape bouncing elastically—disappointingly so.

Though it didn't like being squeezed and quickly rolled off the bed, that was all.

Charlotte wiped her hands with a handkerchief on the side table, feeling worse, and buried her face in her knees again.

Was there no way to prevent them from ever killing people?

Could she not eliminate them entirely?

What exactly were these things, terribly gentle only to her?

Charlotte stroked Nero weakly.

She'd asked Michael, and asked Adeline too.

Of course, today too he was watching her from there, and when she talked with Nero the man's eyes grew colder—when she asked, he dismissed her immediately saying didn't she know better, and Adeline only told the story again about how they'd appeared suddenly overnight thirty-six years ago.

Meaning they didn't know.

"...Do you know what those are?"

Charlotte asked Nero weakly.

[I know.]

She lifted her sunken face sharply.

"You know?"

Nero made some indecipherable sound. Kik.

[Ah, if you're asking about their identity, I don't know. I can only guess. I know how they came to be.]

Charlotte's eyes widened. But soon the brief vitality that had returned faded again.

Because Nero stuck out his tiny tongue.

Prohibition.

"You'll die if you say it?"

Charlotte asked while holding onto her increasingly hazy, dizzy mind.

Was her head foggy, or did she think that since he was a demon, wouldn't it be fine if he didn't die?

That made sense because demons were the race that received incomparably more of Sornia's power than human magicians.

[Maybe if it were my true form, but if I speak in this state I'll die, Master. Don't say cruel things to your pet.]

The returning answer was disappointing.

[But I can tell you this much.]

Charlotte, who'd buried her head deeply in her knees, lifted her heavy head again.

[For them to hate humans, there's—]

Crackle-crackle-crackle-crack!

Though he hadn't said much, golden magical power sparked currents viciously around Nero's mouth.

[...F*ck, even this much won't work? There's, a reason, ugh—]

"...What's that."

Michael stood up after seeing the magical power.

The rabbit inhaled roughly. Huff, huff.

Charlotte's face hardened, not having expected it to be this severe just to say one word.

[...F*cking difficult.]

Nero coughed and coughed, then looked up at her when he improved a bit.

[By the way, that reason is here.]

Crackle! Crackle-crackle-crack!

Nero spoke quickly and coughed repeatedly at the currents that rose again.

[Ugh, I'm dying...]

The rabbit stretched out long after saying he'd die if he spoke once.

There's a reason they hate people, and that reason is here.

Charlotte answered Michael, who was interrogating her about what that magical power was just now, saying roughly that he's a demon but there's a prohibition against talking about this place, she doesn't know exactly what it is either, while thinking.

No matter how much they hate, is there a reason to kill this many people?

There must be, since Nero's prohibition reacted when he said the lumps hate people every single day, right?

Resentment worthy of hating humans. Resentment... vengeful spirits?

Charlotte could no longer overcome sleepiness and nodded off, then suddenly thought that.

[Are you okay, Master?]

Somehow having gone from sitting to lying on her side, Nero appeared right before her nose.

"I'm not okay..."

Her thoughts about the lumps broke off briefly.

Charlotte murmured, feeling her vision grow hazier than before.

Since the night she dreamed of Lena and Daisy, she'd suffered from terrible fatigue for days.

Every day when she closed her eyes, every time she fell asleep, she had nightmares of someone in Cardium Estate dying.

When she asked Adeline to investigate, the people who died in her dreams, like Lena, were all people who'd actually died in this estate.

Dreams were the space of the unconscious.

She could have bizarre nightmares in response to negative emotions coiled inside her, but she couldn't vividly see the deaths of people whose faces she didn't know, rewound as if they'd actually happened.

At first she suspected Michael was making her dream them, but she'd never heard of magic that created people's dreams, and when she woke up in cold sweat, Nero pretended to know what she'd seen, so it didn't seem like him.

Even when she interrogated the rabbit who seemed to know something, he only said incomprehensible things about how he'd tell her when the time came.

She'd said many times couldn't he stop, couldn't he convey to that existence that would tell her, but Nero only looked down at her pitifully saying it was something he couldn't help.

He said that one appears only when they want to appear, and when they appear he'll beat them up.

He only told her that probably right now you're being tested.

She'd let out a bitter laugh hearing that.

What was there to gain by continuing to show her death?

Whatever it was, it ultimately meant there was no way to stop it right now.

She felt like she'd go crazy from continuously seeing someone's death, so she tried not sleeping at all.

But keeping her eyes wide open and staying awake in a dark room where Michael slept beside her and lumps swarmed required more mental strength than she'd thought.

In the end she slept a little, and even during that short time she unfailingly had nightmares.

On top of the terrible situation of being mistaken for a monster by everyone, more terrible fatigue covered her.

And now, if she succumbed to this uncontrollably surging sleepiness, she'd see someone's death again.

"Please..."

She whispered to someone unknown, asking please don't let her dream just this once.

And she fell asleep immediately as if tumbling down.

"...Haha."

Unfailingly, she came to dream.