A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 31

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 31.
The door swung open.
And in that same instant, papers cascaded down like a flood tide.
“Eek!”
Caroline cried out in alarm, but quickly realized what had fallen at her feet and relaxed.
It was nothing but stacks of paper.
‘What could this be?’
Caroline sank down onto the floor where she stood.
“Cough. Cough.”
Dust rose into the air, and she began to cough.
“Ugh! What is all this!”
Since the papers were so plentiful, even small insects crawled across them before fluttering away into nothing.
‘I really hate this room.’
Beautiful as it was, the more she looked at it, the more unsettling it became.
Caroline braced herself on her knees and crouched down on the floor, then began to examine the nearly identical paper envelopes scattered everywhere.
Most of them had been opened, though some remained sealed.
But each and every one bore the same paper envelope, the same stationery, and the same red seal affixed to it.
Caroline picked one up and unfolded the letter inside.
―I curse you. You’ll come to regret it. And so will that woman you married.
Then she closed it immediately.
“……What is this?”
The letter had neither a recipient nor a sender written on it.
‘Could these be Letters that Michelle received?’
That made no sense.
Going by Aiden’s surname, she had never married.
‘Then did Michelle send them?’
If all these Letters had been sent to the same person, it seemed he had been returning them continuously.
That would explain why Michelle might have kept the Letters she’d sent.
“But why would she keep something like this…….”
Caroline found herself unable to fathom what kind of person Michelle Belota Dearbel truly was.
“Let me look at another one.”
This time, a Letter that appeared to have never been opened.
Caroline carefully opened the envelope beneath the thick D-shaped seal.
―Die. Die. Die. Die. Die already!
And she closed it again.
‘I shouldn’t have opened that.’
The atmosphere was so ominous that it felt like watching a horror play.
Who could this woman resent so deeply?
‘It must be connected to whoever that face on the bed belongs to.’
Someone who had loved with obsessive intensity.
These Letters were surely connected to that love. It was clear that someone had stood in the way of their connection.
―Answer me! I’m telling you to answer! How could you do this to me, Martin?
“Martin?”
When she opened another Letter, its contents revealed the specific object of her resentment.
A man named Martin.
Had he been the one to obstruct Michelle and Aiden’s father’s love?
After that, she randomly opened more than a dozen Letters, but their contents were similar.
Michelle resented someone deeply.
When she compared the handwriting against her notebook, it was indeed hers, and the Letters had indeed been returned. There were even recriminations asking how much longer he would keep sending them back.
But that was all there was.
The Letters were nothing but a trash heap of emotions.
Rage, resentment, accusations, handwriting spiraling into madness.
‘Is there any point in looking at more of this?’
Caroline was beginning to grow tired.
It was within a Game, merely ink on paper, but seeing someone’s emotions laid bare like this exhausted her.
As she thought this and began pushing aside the stacked pile of Letters carelessly.
‘Hm?’
Her hand caught something different from the flat Letters.
When she picked it up, it was a ball of paper crumpled and creased like a wad. She carefully unfolded it, taking care not to tear the brittle, aged thing, and then she saw it.
“!”
What lay inside was a face.
A face beaten to a pulp.
A face crisscrossed countless times with scissors marks—drawn with a pen, a knife, the end of a hairpin, whatever was at hand.
By its texture, it looked like a photograph from a newspaper article. But because only the portion with the photo was ruined, she couldn’t tell for certain.
The man in the photograph wore ornate clothes, and judging by the parts untouched by scissors marks, he appeared to be smiling.
Caroline knew instinctively.
‘So this is Martin.’
Below the photograph, she could see his arm, and beside it, another arm bent across the body.
Billowing frills and a shoulder.
‘A wedding.’
The marriage of someone important enough to be reported in the press.
Presumably the man who appeared to be Martin.
Who Martin was, what his relationship to Michelle was, what kind of person Michelle Belota Dearble had been—Caroline rifled through the pile of letters searching for other materials that might tell her, but found nothing.
‘Should I ask Toby?’
In this Mansion, there was no one else who could give her answers.
As Caroline sighed and pushed the letters back into the Closet, something her hand touched toppled over with a soft thud.
“?”
At last, something that wasn’t a letter had appeared.
It was the moment Caroline lifted up a large Paper Envelope that had apparently been leaning against the Closet wall, her heart suddenly lifting.
Clink.
“!”
Her heart seemed to stop at the clear, bright sound.
It was small, but unmistakable.
The bell on Michelle’s desk. It meant the Servant was coming up to the Third Floor.
‘I have to go.’
This was a forbidden space.
Seeing the lock on this locked room hanging open, the Servant would walk right in.
Then what would happen to Caroline?
‘Would I lose a Heart?’
There was no time to think.
Caroline seized the Paper Envelope and rose from her spot.
She didn’t even close the Closet.
She grabbed the bell and hurried out of the Bedroom. She passed the display case full of Aiden. The moment she opened the door quickly……
Caroline’s eyes locked with the Servant’s, who was standing before her in front of the Second Floor East room.
“!”
Caroline felt her heart stop and froze.
But unlike her, the Servant……
smiled gently.
[▲]
And he began to approach her.
From that point on, her memory became unclear.
Caroline threw herself toward the stairs with nothing but instinctive reflex.
A sensation of blood freezing cold. A feeling as though her chest was turning to ice.
Her eyes widened until the pupils disappeared, her lips pressed so tightly her teeth were invisible, drawn back to her ears. And the Servant pursued Caroline at an inhuman speed.
‘What do I do, what do I do?’
A dark premonition told her this would be far more than merely losing a Heart.
Caroline felt her entire body trembling as she urged her legs faster.
Yet the sound of the Servant descending the stairs behind her was terrifyingly close.
[▲▲]
And the growing red triangle told her everything about her situation.
‘What do I do, what do I do……’
She felt the Servant’s hand reaching for her streaming hair, grasping and missing by inches.
Very little time remained.
‘Can I make it to a room?’
She knew somewhere deep inside she couldn’t, but she had to try with everything she had.
Gritting her teeth and turning on the middle landing, Caroline sensed defeat.
‘Caroline August, you fool……’
Despair washed over her mind.
This was not the direction where her room lay.
Second Floor West.
In her panic, she had rounded the corner in haste—which meant she was heading in precisely the opposite direction from the Second Floor East.
‘Nowhere to hide…….’
She felt the Servant’s hands reach her head and shoulders.
[▲▲▲]
‘It’s over.’
And then,
“Forgive me for the intrusion.”
With practiced grace, an arm wrapped around her waist. Caroline felt her body lifted weightlessly into the air before being set down again, and she opened her eyes one by one from their tightly squeezed state.
A sky-blue tailcoat came into view.
White gloves adorned the hand that held her waist.
They had been in the corridor just moments before, but the man had snatched her up and carried her into a room.
“I had some business with this lady, you see.”
It was Will—not the clown, but the ringmaster of the Circus.
And like clockwork, the Servant came to a halt at the threshold of the man’s room.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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