“……Erased?”
Quinie unfolded her fan.
It was a defensive posture. This man was not friendly at a glance. Above all, the memory was ‘erased’. As if this man had deliberately erased the memory.
Whether Quinie herself really lost her memory or not, if someone tries to erase someone’s memory, what else could be their intention other than evil?
“What are you talking about? I have no problem with my memory at all.”
“Ahahahaha. That’s what’s amazing about humans. They are programmed to think that there is no problem rather than solving the problem. You would have known if you were the old you. There is a serious contradiction in your appearance now.”
“……The old me?”
As Quinie asked back, the man nodded.
Quinie couldn’t tell what kind of face he was making inside the mask.
The voice definitely got lower.
Quinie felt a chill and shut her mouth for a moment. Her opened lips quivered slightly.
“……At that time.”
“Yeah. The day your ‘corpse phobia’ began.”
This man knows Quinie’s past and weakness. In other words, there is a high probability that this man wrote Constel’s magic bulletin board.
But now, more than that, she couldn’t let the man’s words pass by.
“It’s strange. How can you carry that beast with you when you are afraid of it after the ‘incident’ that day?”
“……A beast? Don’t tell me you mean.”
“Yeah. Kora.”
Kora, why Kora? Why is that child’s name coming up now?
What does the incident that day have to do with Kora?
“It’s strange, Quinie.”
The man said.
“You saw her massacring right before your eyes. When you were 6 years old.”
“……!”
“You were scared of corpses after seeing her tearing people apart indiscriminately, seeing bodies scattered all over the floor, seeing the ridiculous sight of the upper body here and the lower body there.”
“……Stop talking nonsense. I got a phobia because of the wolf that attacked the mansion.”
The man laughed, “Kukukuk,” at Quinie’s objection.
“Yes. That’s how you remembered it.”
What do you mean, ‘that’s how’? What else could it be?
Killed people? Massacred?
Nonsense like that, I,
Tatatat-!
At that moment, footsteps running towards Quinie’s room were heard.
The footsteps were too frequent for a person to be running. This is.
“Oh, perfect timing.”
The man said, and Quinie turned around and shouted.
“Don’t come! Kora!”
Bam!
The door opened, and Quinie looked back towards the window. She thought the masked bastard was after Kora.
However, he was not there.
“Huh?”
Whether the man ran away, there was no one outside the window.
“Quinie, are you okay? Who was it?”
Kora approached and asked.
Kora frowned as she looked around. “I smell something strange near the vicinity of Quinie’s room. Something unpleasant. It was created to mask a rather foul odor. Almost impossible to detect at first whiff, but absolutely nauseating once you do.”
Kora extended her head out of the window and inspected the surroundings. However, even with her impressive vision, she couldn’t seem to locate the man.
Quinie quietly observed her.
‘Kora committed genocide?’
And I developed a phobia because of it?
Unbelievable. That must be a lie.
…Though, my memories of that incident are hazy, to be sure. I vividly remember being attacked by wolves.
White furred, four-legged, red-eyed beasts…
“Quinie?”
“…!”
Quinie blinked her eyes, startled by Kora’s voice. Kora was looking at her with concern.
“Quinie, are you hurt somewhere?”
“Ah, no, it’s nothing.”
Quinie averted her gaze from Kora.
The incident 13 years ago. My memories are vague. Are they hazy, or were they really erased as the man said?
…It couldn’t be Kora. It’s impossible.
Quinie’s head was throbbing.
* * *
“Hmm, as expected, she doesn’t remember me.”
The masked man stood on the edge of a branch atop a towering tree. He balanced himself on one foot atop the sharp branch as if it were the most comfortable position for him.
“I erased Quinie’s memories of me, but it seems the incident itself was also altered in the process. How fascinating.”
The man muttered to himself as if he were conducting research.
He came today to reconfirm if Quinie remembered him from the incident 13 years ago. Even though he had erased the memories, he thought they might not have been completely erased yet since they must have been a significant shock for Quinie.
But instead, he found out something else interesting.
After meticulously removing all traces of his memory from the incident, Quinie’s memories automatically rearranged themselves to conceal the resulting contradiction.
“Of course, the fact that Kora was also removed from those memories was unexpected.”
For some reason, he felt something was off about her being by Kora’s side. This could complicate his plans.
“I need to get rid of Kora first.”
It shouldn’t be too difficult.
He simply had to repeat what happened 13 years ago.
“It’s time, Quinie. Time to step down as the head of the household.”
The man had been waiting for this moment.
The moment when Quinie would revive the family and stabilize relationships with the surrounding families.
“I’m tired of living in oblivion.”
Muttering to himself, the man gracefully leaped from the end of the branch to another one below him.
Now, if only he eliminates Kora and if everything goes according to plan, the Viet family will be his.
“Hmm?”
Suddenly feeling a gaze, the man looked to his left.
Caw-
There was a crow.
The crow tilted its head left and right as it looked at him before suddenly flapping its wings and flying away.
Watching for a moment, the man then smiled faintly as he looked back at the Viet family mansion.
“Then, see you again at Constel, Quinie.”