Beast in the Woods, Deep in the Night - Chapter 4.1

Chapter 4.1

“Alright. I’ll go to Duff tomorrow and buy you as much time as I can. Just trust this old man.”

“Thank you so much, Uncle Allen.”

After speaking to Allen in secret, Christine left the restaurant and headed straight to the guild’s hideout. Finally, she was going to see the person she most wanted to see.

The hideout of the Golden Horseshoe Guild was a separate building behind Baron Goldman’s residence. Christine’s mother was using the attic as her private room. Duff suggested it would be more comfortable if she wanted to use his jewel daily.

‘Even if he said that, I’m sure he’s just trying to keep me close to him so he can keep an eye on me.’

After going up the stairs, Christine opened the door with a stiff expression.

Then, amidst the dizzyingly strong smell of medicine, Ariel Banes appeared, her pale and elegant figure like a plaster sculpture.

“Mother, I’m here.”

“Christine, I was worried. You’re not hurt, are you?”

Ariel, who was sitting in front of the desk, stood up with difficulty. Hugging her daughter after a week, her face was full of happiness.

Christine stayed in her mother’s arms for a long time like a baby animal, trying to hide the trembling coming from the depths of her throat as if she was about to cry.

She naturally remembered the moment in her previous life where her mother was given a terminal diagnosis, and the warmth that reached her felt infinitely precious.

While Christine was silent, holding back her tears, Ariel opened her mouth first.

“Happy birthday, my daughter.”

“…”

“It’s small, but I’ve prepared a gift. Would you like to open it?”

Christine unwrapped the birthday gift from her mother. Inside was a lace shawl made with ivory thread.

Her mother, who was not healthy enough to earn money by doing physical work, never stopped knitting, saying that she wanted to use her manual dexterity to help support her family.

The lace she had woven was so delicate and beautiful that it was incomparable to the things Christine could only look at in the store.

“It’s my first time weaving a shawl. I hope you like it.”

“Mother, it’s so pretty. But there is no man I would meet wearing this.”

“You don’t have to use it right away, but a lady needs a pretty shawl to drape over her shoulders. You know the fairy tale about a fairy who goes out wearing a lace shawl and falls in love with the first person she sees, right?”

“Of course. You said that you and Father also fell in love that way.”

Ariel laughed and told her about her first date thirty years ago.

Christine listened once again to the story she had heard more than a hundred times and lay in bed side by side with her mother, like she did in her childhood. Then, she held her thin hand tightly.

Even if she was not a pure-blooded mage, Christine also had a mage’s blood slightly mixed inside her. If she held her hand as tightly as she did now, she could feel some kind of power rampaging through her mother’s body.

It was a symptom of mana straining the heart and moving roughly as if it were going to burst out of the body.

Something similar was happening to her body too.

No, the curse that tormented her was destroying her body faster than her mother’s. Because she was constantly overworked, the internal injuries caused by the curse could not be healed and seemed to overlap.

‘Even if I use the Chimera’s Tear, the pain caused by the rampaging mana only subsides for a moment… But when I came into contact with that man, my heart felt completely free.’

Christine clearly remembered the man’s face. His appearance was so delicate and wild that he was easy to remember.

If she came into contact with him again by pretending to be a coincidence, she might not have to experience the miserable future where her mother would be given a terminal diagnosis and she would die first while preparing to travel with her.

‘It’s only three years before my mother can no longer walk freely.’

Hugging her haggard mother tightly, Christine was able to make a decision.

“Mother, I think I’ll be gone for about a month starting tomorrow to carry out a request.”

“A month?”

“Yes. It’s not a difficult request, but when I said I wanted to go to the sea, Uncle Allen said that he would give Duff a request that would last a month. He said he was sending me on a trip as a gift for my twenty-second birthday.”

Christine put her mother at ease by telling her the lie she had agreed with Allen beforehand.

It was a pity, but she felt like she wouldn’t be able to see her mother’s face for a while in order to change the future.

***

Later that same evening, Allen knocked on Duff’s office door.

Knowing that he usually looked after Christine and Ariel, Duff responded frivolously.

“Look who we have here. Isn’t it Mr. Allen, the richest businessman in town?”

But Allen was not the type of person who would be pushed around by someone. Especially if all the other person had was the title of a baron and was extorting his dead friend’s daughter and wife.

‘This bastard will never let Christine and Ariel go. Not as long as they need his jewel.’