CH 74

Hestia put her bowl aside and fiddled with her fingers. She glanced at her surroundings, as if hesitating to speak.

Hestia buried her face into the blankets and whined into them for a while. Her long pink hair blocked me from trying to see her expression, and she just kept covering her face with her hands. Her hands moved to the blanket as she picked at the fabric. She seemed to have a lot of difficulty telling me that one wish of hers.

After hesitating for a while, Hestia covered her face and spoke, voice quiet.

“Even if you don’t like me anymore, even if you get sick of me, don’t ever leave me.”

Her voice sounded dry as if every droplet of water in her body had been squeezed out like a sponge. I could see Hestia’s teary green eyes hidden behind her fingers.

I looked at how Hestia was about to cry and hugged her tightly. I patted her back gently as she shook in fear.

“When you get out of the sick bay, let’s go get a pair of matching necklaces.”

“…….okay.”

I continued patting Hestia’s back until I felt a slight pang in my head. My nose began to bleed, and I fell unconscious right then and there.

The curse of 0.45 centimeters had finally taken place.

Hestia and I both ended up staying in the sick bay. We went necklace shopping as soon as we were let out.

Side Story 5: The Childhood Friend’s Circumstances

I decided to join the school journalism club after Shushu’s recommendations.

The journalism club was a big club, so I needed to write a two-page introduction of myself if I wanted to apply.

I put my chin on my hands and thought deeply for a while before I began writing. I remembered how I had lived until now.

When I was a child, my mother brushed my hair often.

Her brushes always hurt.

“Hestia. You must always be beautiful and well-behaved.”

“M, mother! It hurts!”

Who said that a mother’s touch was a gentle one? Her touch wasn’t gentle at all. Instead, it was rough and inconsiderate. It felt like every hair on my head would be ripped out so I yelped out in pain, but my mother didn’t hear me. Instead, she just continued to repeat the same thing, over and over again. “Hestia, you must be beautiful.” “Hestia, you must be well-behaved.”

My mother’s face was completely emotionless as she brushed my hair every single night.

She looked empty, as if she had no reason to live. She continued to repeat what she said over and over again.

“Women must be loved. And to do that, we must always lower ourselves first. We’re only worth anything when we’re beautiful and beloved. We must always be the pride of our husband, so……. So……”

Mother began to throw things onto the floor with an angry expression. I stayed still, both hands resting on my legs, as I watched my mother grow angrier.

Then, I took the brush from the vanity and slowly brushed my hair down.

I yelled at my mother that I’d be a well-behaved child, that I’d try my best to be loved as she continued to angrily repeat the same phrases over and over again. She eventually calmed down.

Then, once I calmed my mother down, she stared at me with tears quietly flowing down her cheeks.

From when I was young and until now, my father was the ultimate power in our household. He was prideful and wanted to control our family so that everything was the way he wanted us to be.

My father was born into a poor family, but he married my extremely beautiful mother. He had wanted my mother, who had basically been sold to him, to be obedient.

But my mother was a confident, prideful person, and that made my father deeply uncomfortable.

I don’t know too much about what happened between the two of them, but the maids chattered about how my mother had changed drastically from the beginning of her marriage and now.

Ever since I was little, I grew up listening to the words of my mother, over and over again.

My mother treated me how my father treated her. She deemed all the things I enjoyed as useless, and didn’t try to see me as anything other than a pretty doll.

I had no worth in my household. I was just a pretty child who was to be married off when I grew up. Because of that, the only goal I had in life was marriage and serving my husband well.

When I acted meek and obedient, my father praised me. My mother bitterly looked on, relieved.

I think I was happy back then, when I received love that was as fake as could be.

But on the other hand, I felt like I was being drowned under my possible future and how I was treated as an item to be married off.

I had thoughts. I could speak too. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be better than who I was the day before. I wanted to do the things I wanted to do as much as I wanted.

And in that frustrating, stifling life of mine, the only joy I had was Shuraina.

We apparently met when we were babies, but I think the first time I actually remember meeting Shuraina was when I was around four or five years old. She had short orange hair and bored, yet sharp looking sambaekan eyes.

From the moment we noticed each other, we were friends. I felt like we got closer because we always stuck together, and later on, we would play at each other’s houses.

I blurted out everything that my mother told me to Shuraina. I picked and pointed at Shuraina’s behavior and manners that were different from mine.

Honestly, I didn’t really like how free Shuraina was at the beginning. To be honest, I felt something that was a lot like jealousy more than anything else.

Women were meant to marry, and they were tools to bear successors. We didn’t need any other dreams.

Whenever I said that, Shuraina would frown and clean out her ears. She looked like she was saying, “What kind of nonsense is that supposed to mean?”

“Man or woman, we’re all gonna be corpses in the end. Why should I care about all of that complicated stuff? If there’s something you want to do, you just have to do it.”

And just like that, she put an end to all the things that my mother had said my whole life.

She continued speaking about how if we looked at ourselves from space we’re just specks of dust, that there was something amazing but insignificant about ourselves. When I heard Shuraina’s words, it really felt like all of my worries just became small and insignificant.

Why did gender matter in front of skills, why did I get caught up in my mother’s words and push aside all of my interests and think that marriage was the answer to it all?

My thoughts began to change when I became closer to Shuraina, and I soon began to admire her.

Shuraina carried her sword and studied magic and did everything that she wanted without a thought to her status. There must’ve been immense pressure for her as the child of a baron, but she didn’t care at all.

Instead, Shuraina showed them all how she had improved her skills in leaps and bounds and made all the people who opposed her accept her skills.

She was showing others that she was different by her actions. Shuraina was being accepted by others based on her skills, and that was what I dreamt of for myself. She was so amazing, and it made me jealous.

I wanted to be confident, just like that. I wanted people to accept my efforts and skills and accept me, just like Shuraina. But whenever I came back home, that fire within me turned to ash. I was scared.

If I started to do what I liked just like Shuraina, I would get kick out of my home. My parents liked my outward appearance and my obedience. It even felt like they loved me, sometimes. I hated, yet loved my family.

I used Shuraina as my escape. I watched as she accomplished all of the things that I couldn’t dare try and felt joy at her successes. I hoped she would keep growing. I hoped that she would grow bigger and smarter and more successful without any obstacles, and that everybody would respect her…….

And then, just like how she had changed my understanding and my perspective, I hoped she would change the empire’s view of women one day.

She was the only one who ever saw me for myself. Shuraina always asked me about my interests and hobbies, things that nobody had cared about before, and tried as hard as she could to help me when I needed it.

She got angry at me for how I treated myself as an object, and always told me what I wanted to hear. Even when she seemed annoyed, she always diligently told me what I wanted to hear.

Do what you want.

Stop bullshitting yourself.

I’m always cheering you on.

Whenever Shuraina, someone I looked up to, told me things that said that I had worth, there was a deep, lurching wave within my heart. So I always made sure to say things that Shuraina didn’t like to hear, just so I could hear those words again.

I liked the nervous, lurching feeling in my heart, and I liked the feeling of being respected.

Even though her words were harsh and sounded annoyed, she was, at the bottom of her heart, an incredibly warm, caring person.

Shuraina looked at me like I was her little sister, so I purposefully acted childish.

When I whined and threw tantrums, Shuraina became just a bit more understanding. Shuraina knew that I caused problems and distracted her because I didn’t want a boy to take her away, but she didn’t say anything. I was sorry to Shuraina, but I just told myself that it was okay because I’m young and tried to excuse my behavior.

I hated the idea of Shuraina dating a boy. I didn’t like the idea that she could start dating and slowly start caring less about me, and I worried that she might not be able to accomplish her goals and become like my mother because of her lover.

If I didn’t have Shuraina, who looked at me just as I was, I would turn back into a useless thing.

I didn’t want Shuraina taken away from me, so I snatched away all the boys she seemed interest in. I lived in my self-made misery and anxiety.

But because I kept doing just that, it seemed that Shuraina gave up on dating. I was sorry, but I was also kind of happy.

I was docile, just like I was told to be. That in itself was a chain that tied me down from doing the things I really wanted to do. So I stuck next to Shuraina for a long, long time, and hid behind her as I was comforted by her words. I secretly, quietly continued to dream.

When I went to the academy and began to talk to a lot of other students, I realized that society did place men on more of an advantage, but society had shifted to become more liberal. I thought the whole world was tight and stifling, but it was just that my household was more old-fashioned than most.

But still, I acted docile and sweet like I did at home. The habits that had formed at home didn’t go away so easily. Whenever I wanted to speak, my heart began to pound frantically. When I had to stand up for myself, I feared the eyes of those who looked at me. Just like my mother had told me, it felt like something big was going to happen.

I didn’t think too much about the girls who talked about my old-fashioned state. I was the one that allowed it to happen in the first place, so it didn’t matter.

The only thing I cared about was what Shuraina thought about me. Shuraina didn’t seem to care what I looked like, so I didn’t force myself to show who I really was.

But leaving my household and talking with Shuraina every day made me slowly shed my fake personality.

I knew that, and Shuraina seemed to have gotten wind of it as well. But I still wanted to be a child. I acted a bit more childish than I really felt in front of Shuraina. I still loved Shuraina’s soothing voice and her comforting worlds too much to stop.