Aya Ran Away - Chapter 4

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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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Chapter 4
‘I can’t do it right now…….’
She had poured all her strength into peeling the Malevolent Spirit away from the servant.
Yet still, Aya reached out with her fingertips to touch Nanny’s shoulder.
If the Priest Yesili were here, it would come loose more easily.
‘Where did she pick this one up from?’
Aya swallowed a breath of air inwardly.
Every time she saw Nanny like this, Aya found herself wondering the same thing.
Where did Nanny’s desires spring from?
On the surface, Nanny seemed to lack for nothing.
She was the Princess’s governess, and her daughter was the Chief Priest.
A few years ago, she had even remarried successfully, becoming a member of Ater, one of the Twelve Houses.
Her station had risen enough that she no longer needed to live in the palace.
There was a reason she had borrowed even the Priest Yesili’s hands for this.
Yet Nanny always wanted more.
Rather than content with what she held, she was a woman who hungered for what she did not yet possess.
“……So you said you wouldn’t eat any of it, yet here you are, finishing it all. How admirable you are.”
Nanny stroked Aya’s hair once.
Intoxicated by the tenderness at her fingertips, Aya looked up at Nanny.
To Aya, who had lost her mother at birth, Nanny was like a mother herself.
The warmth in Nanny’s eyes as she looked down at her made Aya’s heart swell with an aching tenderness.
“I’ll go visit Yesili. Rest well, won’t you?”
As she rose from her seat, Nanny tucked the blanket carefully around Aya.
Then, with practiced ease, she lit a candle and burned herbal incense.
Yesili would be in another room.
Likely reading through the documents Aya should have read herself, calculating the budget allotted to her.
Nanny left the room as she was.
Drained of all energy from taking her medicine, Aya could only watch her receding figure without moving a finger.
‘Just stay with me a little while when I’m ill.’
Nanny was always like this.
The painful truth was that the closest person to her could not be someone Aya could trust wholeheartedly.
She felt a deep, dark sleep descending upon her like sinking into a mire.
Even her exhaled breath felt heavy.
‘Would it be so much to ask you to stay beside me until I fall asleep?’
As Aya murmured this quiet resentment to herself, her consciousness slipped like water into sleep.
In the dream, Aya was watching herself.
She walked alone through the Old Villa in a long dress.
She limped more noticeably than now, and her face was younger still.
She had no memories before the age of fifteen.
So that version of herself must have been from about five years ago.
At fifteen she had been bedridden and distracted with illness the whole time, so perhaps it was around sixteen?
Aya had been walking through the garden alone.
There was no one following to protect her.
The servants of the Old Villa barely acknowledged her, let alone attended to her.
So she had grown accustomed to being left alone.
It was a source of private sorrow that she had adapted to something no highborn lady should become familiar with—to the perils of the palace and solitude.
Beyond the rows of planted trees, the corridors and garden of the Main Palace came into view.
As she watched her younger self walk toward the Pond on one side of the Old Villa, Aya finally understood which memory this was.
It was the day she first met Nahal.
* * *
Aya stretched her neck and peered down into the fairly large and deep Pond.
‘What lives in it?’
Fish, perhaps, or something else.
But in the deep, dark water, nothing seemed to move at all.
Aya turned over in her mind what the palace attendants had been whispering about.
‘Didn’t they say it was bewitching? Didn’t they say golden light rippled across it?’
There was none of that.
She had gathered her courage and come all this way after hearing talk of a pond so beautiful that seeing it once would make it unforgettable.
Everyone spoke so much about this place that she thought perhaps if she saw it herself, she too might have something to say about it.
But the Pond was nothing like what she had imagined.
The pond bloomed with lotus flowers as any pond should, overgrown with wild grasses, but nothing remarkable lay within.
‘Wasn’t this supposed to be the pond at the Old Villa?’
They’d said it would be crowded with people, yet not a soul was to be found.
Aya trailed her cane through the water plants with idle sweeps.
It seemed she’d caught wind of some rumor, misheard from the palace attendants.
She’d expected water glimmering like gold, and the disappointment settled over her like a weight.
The evening sky deepened to violet as the sun descended.
The oppressive heat dissipated quickly, and the wind that arose made her head covering flutter.
Once she realized no one was nearby, the covering felt nothing but cumbersome.
She pulled down the head covering that had tangled in her long hair, and a chill traced down her spine.
‘Hmm?’
Aya turned her head, struck by the strange sensation of a silent warning.
‘What is that?’
Something wavered along the edge of the corridor.
Whenever she sensed that peculiar cold or felt that ominous prickling at the back of her skull, it meant a Malevolent Spirit—or something like it—was present.
It was near the building entrance, the sort of convenient spot where something could cling to someone passing by in haste. Aya exhaled and moved closer to assess its size.
What confronted her was unlike ordinary Malevolent Spirits—its form was indistinct.
A faint shape, like mist clumped together.
‘I’ve never seen one like this before.’
She’d encountered Malevolent Spirits clinging to people often enough, but never anything like this.
‘It should be much the same, shouldn’t it?’
Thinking carelessly, she swept her cane through the air as if chasing smoke.
[Shrieeeeeeeek!]
The mist scattered as a shriek exploded like a firecracker.
It was a scream so loud she should have covered her ears first.
In the next instant, the smoke rushed down upon Aya’s face.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t open her eyes.
Aya staggered, and the cane slipped from her grip.
The wooden cane rolled across the corridor floor with a dull thud.
But Aya didn’t even hear it fall.
The shriek was truly that horrible.
Aya coughed violently.
Her breathing came in choking gasps.
Tears streamed from her burning eyes.
The smoke that had seized her wouldn’t release its hold.
She bent at the waist, gasping for air.
Every time she opened her mouth, smoke poured down her throat.
Tears streaming down her face, Aya squinted one eye open and searched for someone nearby who might help.
But no one stood beside her.
She wished someone would find her. She wished someone would come to her aid.
She couldn’t cry out for help with a raised voice; she couldn’t run. All that remained was to wait to be discovered.
She curled her body away from the smoke, but it did no good.
Over her crumpled, helpless form, laughter poured down—laughter of the Malevolent Spirits she had once destroyed.
[Cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle! Hehehehe-hehehehe! Cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle!]
She couldn’t tell if it was a hallucination or something real.
“Ugh…….”
A stench clung to the tip of her nose.
It resembled the smell of rotting, overripe fruit.
[Cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle! Hehehehe-hehehehe! Cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle-cackle!]
The sound spiraled around her.
Voices she couldn’t identify—whether male or female, young or old—rang out in endless repetition.
Voices only Aya could hear, following her as she shook her head from side to side.
When she reached the limit of endurance, Aya fled from it all.
She tried to run, but her wounded leg refused to obey.
‘Save me, save me.’
Though she raised her voice, her cry crumbled into something less than words.
She desperately needed help, yet it seemed impossibly far away.
[Hehehehe! Run! Run!]
At some point she thought she heard a cry from somewhere distant, but it was swallowed by the Malevolent Spirit’s voice.
As she staggered backward, her vision suddenly went dark.
Splash!
Aya didn’t realize she’d slipped into the Pond until her head was already submerged.
“Aaah!”
She screamed.
It was the first scream she’d uttered since her tongue was cut.
It sounded like the cry of someone choking for air.
After the scream came a wet, strangled coughing.
The force of her cry tore the soft tissue inside her mouth, and she tasted blood, coppery and thick.
Die. Just die.

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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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