Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 161

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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 161.
The Voice of the Sealed Land (7)

For some time now, the children’s attitude toward me had been peculiar.
When I first enrolled at Scoli, I was an object of contempt and ostracism, but after several incidents, I became merely isolated, and after bringing Silverskull from the Continent, I transformed into something feared.
I had anticipated that much. The boys certainly avoided me, and whenever they had to speak to me, they were extremely cautious.
What was strange was the girls’ attitude. Before, the girls at Scoli and I had ignored each other like shadows. Yet recently, their demeanor had noticeably softened.
If it were admiration or curiosity toward the boy who had obtained Silverskull, I might have understood, but it was something else entirely.
After several days passed, I discovered the true nature of that attitude. It was none other than the demeanor the servants at Belnor Estate had shown.
I found it difficult to comprehend. When I was at Belnor Estate, I appeared as a boy suddenly claimed to be the Count’s adopted son—someone the servants and maids could not neglect, yet too ambiguous to fawn over. But here, I was merely a student no different from them.
After lunch that day, having returned to the classroom a bit late by chance, I encountered a strange situation.
As I entered, all the children stood around the tables without sitting, as though standing in punishment.
Genesis happened to be running a little late as well. I looked at them with a bewildered expression, then decided there was no need for this and took my seat.
Then the children began to sit down gradually, yet they all left the seat beside me empty as they took their places.
Just as I was becoming somewhat displeased, wondering if they really needed to avoid me to this extent, I heard the sound of someone pulling the chair beside me. It was Liriope.
“You’re a bit late?”
Her voice was casual, yet in that moment, I realized that no one else in the classroom could have spoken before her.
The children began talking among themselves, and when Genesis entered, the lesson began.
My mood had grown strange. As my thoughts drifted elsewhere, the lesson’s content slipped past my ears like the distant chirping of insects.
Eventually, Genesis began teaching a poem called “Elvira the Seamstress,” said to have come down from the Old Kingdom. He unfolded the verses into a story, concerned the children would not understand.
It was a tale of a young man in love with a beautiful maiden.
The young man, who had wandered many places, happened to glance through an open window of a house at the edge of a rural village and became captivated by the sight of the maiden sewing.
Unable to leave the village, he came to the same place at the same time each day to watch her. The maiden always sat by the window at that hour and sewed, but she paid no attention to the watching young man.
At first, merely watching brought him happiness, but soon he could not bear the desire to speak to her. The young man gathered his courage and knocked on her door.
But the one who answered was an ugly man. Thinking him the maiden’s husband, the young man fled without uttering a word and left the village.
Yet three months later, unable to forget the maiden, he returned and sought out the house again.
“The young man took several deep breaths and gathered his courage to knock. He thought that if the maiden came out this time, he would confess his heart and then leave for a distant place without hesitation. But alas, it was the ugly man who emerged from the house once more.”
“How cruel… Was the maiden truly that man’s wife?”
“No, she was not.”
“Thank goodness! Then was she his younger sister?”
Genesis smiled at the girl’s question and continued the story.
“The young man, prepared to die by the man’s hand, revealed his feelings for the maiden and pleaded that if he could only hear one word of response from her, he would never appear again. Surprisingly, the ugly man did not drive him away but merely smiled sadly and invited him inside.”
I felt the scene crystallizing in my mind. The story I had been listening to half-heartedly overlapped with memory.
“The young man approached the maiden, who was still sewing. Upon seeing her up close, she was even more beautiful than from afar, and the young man was nearly breathless. So he knelt before her and spoke his heart in but a few words.”

Your white fingers with crimson thread
Stitching the outer seam to the inner seam
Did you know you have sewn my heart to you?

Did you know that while your delicate fingers pierced the silver needle
through seams and hems,
you cruelly pierced my heart as well?

“Ohhh….”
A child gasped in wonder, clasping both hands tightly together. Being born on The Island didn’t mean one was ignorant of poetry from birth.
But from beside me, I heard Liriope let out a soft, derisive snort.
“Yet the young lady gave no answer. She didn’t even lift her head, just continued sewing. No matter how many times the young man called out to her, it was all for naught. In the end, the young man’s eyes grew wet as he gazed upon the ugly man. But that man too could only sigh. Was she deaf, or perhaps mute? When the young man asked, the ugly man shook his head and spoke to the young lady thus: ‘Elvira, stop now.’ And wouldn’t you know it—the young lady’s hands simply ceased their sewing at once?”
Daphnen found himself opening his mouth without thinking.
“The young lady was a doll. A magical automaton designed to do nothing but sew for all eternity….”
Genesis looked up at Daphnen in surprise.
“How did you know? Did you read about it in a book?”
I had indeed read a book. It was one I’d read when I was at Count Belnoir’s manor.
The story of Ganapoli’s dolls that I’d read there—among them was precisely this tale of a young man who fell in love with a sewing doll.
Magical dolls that looked identical to humans but endlessly repeated only the task their creator had given them at birth, until they broke apart.
Daphnen nearly said he’d read about it on the Continent, but caught himself just in time.
For the Island’s people, the Ancient Kingdom existed not on the Continent but in some unknown land—it made no sense that books about it would exist on the Continent.
Yet even as I hesitated, I couldn’t suppress the discomfort I felt about my own deception.
“Yes, I… read it in the Library.”
Shortly after, the lesson ended. When I lifted my lowered head, Oizis, who had come from another class, was already sitting beside me.
“What are you thinking about? After Skoli ends, want to go to the Library with me?”
Daphnen looked at Oizis and thought that this friend alone didn’t fear him like the other children did.
Liriope had already left. Yet it was certain that she wielded the atmosphere of Skoli in her hand, just as Hector once had.
Though it was a different sort of authority. Where Hector had been the focal point of violent force centered around the boys who followed him, Liriope reigned like a small queen.
The children who had once eagerly joined in brawls whenever Hector beat someone like Oizis, now transformed into remarkably obedient children careful not to cross Liriope’s capricious moods.
The moment I wondered if even they were pairing me together with Liriope in their minds, my face flushed hot.
And I firmly resolved to ignore them all at once—both the children and Liriope. Was I really being asked to play the groom in this ridiculous puppet show?
As Daphnen, lost in complicated thoughts, didn’t answer readily, Oizis pressed him.
“Come on, it’s been so long since we’ve gone. Uncle will be happy to see you too. Yeah? Let’s go together. I need to return the books I borrowed.”
Then I remembered the promise I’d made with Zero yesterday. Daphnen nodded and spoke.
“Yeah, I’d like to go, but I have somewhere to stop by after Skoli ends. How about we meet in about an hour? You can go ahead and wait if you’d like.”
“If you go ahead…. Yeah, okay. I’ll go ahead and read while I wait, so just come when you can. I won’t get bored waiting an hour or two there. Don’t worry and just come back.”
More than a year had passed since Daphnen arrived on The Island.
In that time, Hector had become a small adult, and Liriope had learned to cunningly exploit her status as the Regent’s daughter, but Oizis seemed like a child who simply refused to grow with the passage of time.
Watching Oizis smile like that, Daphnen’s heart softened without his realizing it, and he spoke impulsively.
“Oizis, someday you’ll inherit Zero’s work, won’t you? When that time comes, I find myself oddly amused thinking that you might choose books for me.”
But Oizis didn’t seem pleased—rather, he looked flustered.
“No…. That’s not something that will be so easy…. Compared to Uncle Zero, I’ve read far too few books…. I just…. I like books, but that alone isn’t enough….”
“What are you talking about? Who else on The Island could do Uncle’s work besides you? He likes you best anyway.”
After a long moment, Oizis replied quietly.
“Of course, that would be ideal….”
That was all. Daphnen smiled.
Oizis simply lacked confidence. If that was his only shortcoming, it would improve gradually with age. And if I could help him, I would….
I had known Oizis for a long time, but this was the first time I felt such a sincere desire to care for him. No—Daphnen had never looked at anyone with such eyes before.
I could not even compose myself, and while I fell countless times in the battles that came upon me, I loved those who had held me first. Yet I had never reached out to embrace a stranger first. In my relationships with those I loved, I was always the younger one.
But the emotion that Yefnen, or Nauplion, might have felt when looking at me—I possessed that too. Now I had reached an age where such things could find me.
Where did such things begin? From the moment I resolved to forget Isolet, the tempering within my heart began. The sorrow for those who fell beside me and would continue to fall, the unbearable weight I could not shed, and amid all that crushing weight, another transformation awakening.
Having left Scoli and parted with Oizis, I climbed slowly up the hillside where the Cypress Forest stood.
A crisp, woody fragrance began to drift. The Cypress Forest grew sparsely in clusters from the ridge’s beginning, then filled a valley that bent northward.
Following that valley downward would reveal a sloping path leading up to the Upper Village.
But today there was no need to go that far. Before the valley’s contours were fully revealed, I saw Zero waiting ahead.
“You’ve come. This way.”
Since I always met him only at the Library, seeing Zero like this outside felt unfamiliar.
I followed him deeper into the valley. Rather than climbing the slope that led upward, I descended to the rocky bottom strewn with jagged stones.
In the shadowed recesses beneath the rocks, traces of snow still lingered. I pushed through the scrub and ventured deeper.
Beyond a clearing scattered with gray stones of various shapes, a granite cliff face that was part of the mountain emerged. Beneath it lay flat stones stacked like pages of a book.
Beside it stood two elongated rocks like doorposts, and further within lay a polished stone wall as if someone had shaped it, with a dark, narrow passage winding twice like a secret entrance stretching to the right….

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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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