SALP Chapter 40

"Come to me, my beloved..."

Aunt Louise used to say that song was a joy everyone could share equally. People often forget long sentences or numbers even after memorizing them dozens of times, but they rarely forget the lyrics to songs they've sung dozens of times.

"In spring, brighten my world beautifully with pale pink blossoms."

When Lanthe began singing, the surroundings lowered their voice and grew still.

As if the whole world were listening to her.

The wind that had been whistling through the trees stopped, and the water's low rumble from deep within the Mediterranean—fwoooooo—ceased.

She felt something different from before.

Instead of singing like a quacking duck as she had in childhood, she sang softly and comfortably.

In summer, become deep green foliage

And add fresh fragrance to my breath.

In autumn, like ripening fruit,

Watch as my soul matures with deep flavor.

And when winter comes, when forest and river sleep,

Come now to me, my beloved.

Come as snow white as angel's wings.

Rejoice that we who love you

Warmly embrace each other And spend this coldest season as a festival.

The moment her song ended, the wind regained its voice.

The sounds of Lake Eründel and the forest also returned to their places.

The wind whistled and the water rumbled low from deep within—fwoooooommm—its force surging.

But that was all.

"......"

The snow angel didn't dance.

Nothing happened to the tiny little snow angel. Like any ordinary snowman made by children, it just stood round in place, having listened to the song she sang.

"Hey. Are you singing well, prisoner?"

'The snow angel isn't dancing.'

"Should I let go of your hands?"

'The snow angel isn't dancing...'

"...It's not dancing, Vigo."

Staring down at the snow angel standing motionless, taking all the snow falling from the sky without even a twitch, Lanthe murmured in stunned bewilderment.

"The snow angel isn't dancing."

Crunch, crunch—the footsteps approaching her hesitated, then continued.

"Really?"

Though his voice pretended indifference in asking, that moment of hesitation was vivid.

"Why, I wonder."

Lanthe posed the question thinking no one could answer it. She asked without even knowing whom she was asking.

"Why won't it dance?"

"Try singing again, Lanthe."

Vigo said gently, as if coaxing.

"No."

She shook her head.

"I can't do it anymore, it seems. Probably."

Somehow that's what she felt.

"That's not true. It might just be because it's been so long. Let's try just once more."

Vigo blew—fwooo—at the snow piled on the snow angel's head, sending it scattering.

"Looking at it again, what you made is really pretty. Right?"

He praised her snow angel while pointing to the large, half-finished snow angel he'd been making. He smiled faintly, spouting pointless remarks about how his resembled him and had an ugly temperament.

On a beautiful day when warm sunlight shone and tiny snowflakes flew like petals.

On a gentle day when everyone seemed to love her and listen attentively.

Only the snow angel wouldn't listen to her song.

Lanthe suddenly felt suffocated by a fear as if she alone had been thrown into the darkness of night.

Abandoned.

The angel has left me.

The unexpected loss was too bewildering.

"Let's try just once more. Okay?"

Vigo, who had come closer, looked into her face and said.

"Okay? Prisoner. No, Lady Lanthe."

"Come to me..."

She sang once more, hesitating.

She sang with all her heart. She sang with a trembling voice, not caring that he was listening beside her to her less-than-good singing.

But the snow angel didn't dance this time either.

It still stood firmly rooted to the ground like ice.

As if life had drained from it. As if some soul that should have resided within had departed forever.

Before the snow angel frozen and standing like an ordinary lump of ice, Lanthe's heart too grew cold and froze.

Abandoned.

'It was my only pride.'

In truth, the young girl she'd been had been afraid her special talent might be an evil power, while secretly taking pride in having a talent of her own.

And it was a snow angel, no less. A little snow angel modeled after the angel the Raphlish had loved, Raphlang's guardian angel.

Such an angel wouldn't respond to her.

An indescribable loneliness surged like the waves that had risen and flooded at Newbella's lake that day, inadvertently dragging her down into a swamp of despair.

"Lanthe."

'But then what was it that helped me?'

'Was that frightening water pillar not an angel after all?'

'Was it a demon? Do I have demonic power?'

"Lanthe."

'Yes, that's right. An angel wouldn't help me. I wasn't a good child. I was...'

"Your angel must be busy."

Firmly, he grasped both her shoulders and turned her body to face him.

"Vigo..."

She escaped the swamp-like sticky thoughts and looked into his eyes.

His voice, which had taken on a cold temperature upon becoming an adult, melted softly into the snow-mixed wind.

"It makes sense, actually. This place is crawling with hopeless humans everywhere. Getting to you probably isn't easy."

She couldn't say anything. She couldn't open her mouth pretentiously. As if the days when she'd strutted like the smartest, most accomplished child in the world had been a lie, she felt herself shrinking endlessly.

"Let's try again next time."

She couldn't give any answer to Vigo, who believed in her.

"You can do it whenever you feel like trying. Definitely."

Vigo lowered his head and looked into her face.

That gaze resembled the boy from so very long ago that she'd known.

"...It's not your fault, Lanthe."

He wrapped both arms around her back and gently pulled her close.

As she was embraced in the broad arms of the boy who had become an adult, she squeezed her eyes shut.

"It wasn't even your will. I'm the one who made you do it."

She silently groped through her memories.

'What was I like back then? When my tender-hearted, kind little friend cried, was I a child who knew how to comfort them this gently too?'

But suddenly she couldn't remember anything from the past. Even the old memories of being loved by neighbors seemed suspiciously like fabrications she'd made up arbitrarily.

'Everyone was a better person than me...'

Even adult Vigo, whom she'd accused of becoming allied with the demons of the outside world.

"It's my fault, Lanthe."

Though she was no longer a ten-year-old child, she couldn't control the tears that came pathetically in the arms of someone whose body had grown large enough to cover and embrace her diminished self.

"My regrets. I expected your angel wouldn't like me, but if they're supposed to be an angel, they're pretty petty."

At his gentle self-deprecation meant to comfort her, she felt even more hurt.

No.

That's not it, Vigo.

It's not because you made me. I wanted to try too. I wanted to show you too.

I wanted to show you the snow angel dancing.

If we made a snow angel together and made it dance, maybe it could create some tiny change in your heart, and maybe this could transform me into a slightly better person—I had such expectations.

Maybe I could return even one fragment of the soul you had long ago when you were a happy boy back into your heart.

I wanted to make the snow angel dance too, Vigo...

She became endlessly resentful. She hated herself for being unable to do anything and only relying on others, for failing to make the snow angel dance.

"Let's go home, it's cold."

Vigo held her hand, chattering alone as if nothing was wrong.

"Your hands are cold, aren't they?"

She only shook her head back and forth silently. Though she thought acting like a child was disgraceful, she couldn't open her mouth for fear her sobbing would leak out.

"Come here. We'll be home soon."

The reindeer pulling the sled that carried them both picked their way through the snowy path with more deliberate care than they'd shown on the journey out.

She couldn't even meet the eyes of the one who covered her lap with a blanket and patted her shoulder. She didn't want to show him her face that must have become ugly.

Because Vigo was being gentle in a way unlike himself, because no matter what she did, her tears wouldn't stop.

We set out into the snowstorm again today!

Climbing up the steep slopes

We'll gather armfuls of red, tart, sweet berries and return home.

Sometimes our vision suddenly darkens and forest demons leap out to startle us

But oh, we can hold each other's hands and sing with all our might!

We fear neither darkness nor demons!

The two troublemakers of Roas rode the reindeer sled and sang excitedly.

Vigo smiled, listening to Lanthe's quacking song that drowned out his own voice.

The song she sang was closer to a shriek of pure effort, but to him it was the most pleasant singing voice in the world.

In fact, all the adults loved Lanthe's singing too. There weren't many adults who disliked a child who made them laugh absurdly and entertained them.

Besides, children's voices buried in the whistling wind like now wouldn't become grating noise anyway.

The sky was endlessly blue and peaceful. Though snow from the previous night was piled white on the road, there was no blizzard, and no demons either... probably.

'Definitely. Please let there be no such scary things.'

"Ah, I'm hungry after singing so loudly!"

Lanthe complained of hunger in a resounding voice, as if it were a continuation of the quacking song she'd been singing.

"We ate not long ago, though? Want a cookie now?"

Vigo unwrapped the paper bundle cradled on his lap and picked up one of the cookies his mother had baked. The cookie made from kneaded corn flour, baked and spread with wild strawberry jam, made his mouth water.

It was Lanthe's favorite cookie, which she said was delicious even eating it every day.

"Wow! Delicious! Delicious today too!"

"Hehe."

Only after watching her eat did he bite into a piece himself.

Eating the delicious cookie quickly was nice, but watching her be happy eating the cookie he'd given her was even better.

Today, unusually, it had been Vigo who called Lanthe out first. He'd proposed the sled ride, and the two of them had bolted from the house while Aunt Louise's back was turned. The reindeer was Pin, wheedled and filched from the village's communal pen—a reindeer that followed children well. As the two scoundrels had always done.