Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 282

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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 52.
Finding the Cat in the Hearth (1)
「Cats are naturally capable of swimming.」
Joshua furrowed his brow as he forced out a response.
“What I mean is, whether the cat knows how to swim or not, trying to teach it would be futile, or something like that…”
Kelsniti cut off Joshua’s weak excuse.
「Even if you can do something, you choose not to—in that regard, you’re just like him.」
In the end, there was only one retort left.
“…Tch, whether that blasted cat swims or not.”
The moment Joshua pulled even his toes out of the water, laughter echoed across the beach.
「At times like this, I find it utterly unbelievable that you’re his descendant.」
“You’re searching for the blood of an island village boy from hundreds of years ago in someone who’s spent over a decade of their life without ever seeing salt water. I’ve been buried under countless people’s absurd expectations throughout my life, but you truly take the prize.”
Even as he spoke, Joshua gazed out at the Sea. Like water trapped in a blue glass bottle, he watched the morning Sea grow increasingly radiant—from the shore beneath his feet all the way to the horizon.
「Yet you do seem to like the Sea.」
Joshua shook his head.
“There was a friend who once promised to come see the Sea with me. That’s all.”
「As for your friends, it seems like combining all your old and new ones, there was only one.」
“Was there really a need to point that out so bluntly?”
Only soft laughter could be heard. Joshua sucked on his lower lip and muttered.
“Everyone wants to be alone sometimes. But whenever I try to lose myself in thought, you appear out of nowhere and start talking to me… Don’t laugh! It’s not just you either. There are often creatures who arbitrarily chatter right into my ears, and it’s amazing I haven’t gone mad enduring this. When they all start babbling at once, I can’t even hear what the person right in front of me is saying. I can’t tell them to be quiet. I once shouted at them without thinking and got called crazy. These days I’m even being told I must have gone deaf. Ah, seriously, stop laughing and listen to me.”
Then the laughter ceased.
「You can’t see me like you see them, can you?」
“No, I can’t. Your voice is even distorted in a strange way, so I can’t tell you apart individually. They all sound the same to me, yet every time they demand I recognize them. To me, it’s all just noise.”
「At that level, you could easily solve it with your own power. Don’t get upset—try saying ‘be quiet’ seriously, within your heart.」
“I’ve already tried that more than a hundred times. It absolutely never works.”
「You have the power to silence them. But the truth is, this never ends because you’re actually curious about what they’re saying.」
Was that true? They did occasionally say things that piqued my interest. Whether they actually knew something or were simply spouting nonsense, I couldn’t tell.
Kelsniti had told me not to converse with them. Yet honestly, I’d responded to them several times. Most of those times I’d been angry. They seemed to say the most ridiculous things trying to capture my attention, and it didn’t matter whether my reaction was favorable or not.
They’d shriek that I’d dropped something I clearly still possessed on the road earlier, giggle that the dignified elderly woman before me had just fallen in love with me, speak ominously about some passerby dying tomorrow, give weather forecasts for the next ten days, and read off every price tag in a restaurant I was about to pay at—all of it wrong. Honestly, if I weren’t a demonic Joshua, it would have been impossible to maintain the pretense of living a normal life.
But because I was Joshua, even with their interference, I didn’t make such grave mistakes. Still, it was annoying. I closed my eyes, let out a short sigh, and spoke.
“Why can’t they just stay among themselves instead of making my life miserable?”
「Unfortunately, if they could enjoy each other’s company, they wouldn’t bother talking to you.」
The words trailed off. I closed my eyes and tried to venture into a world without sound. With my superior ability to materialize imagination, it wasn’t difficult.
Silent animals alone dwell at the head of a forest where the full moon rises. High above the mountains, leaves flow in winding curves like hair below. Three streams run and enter the valley. In autumn, it would become a River flowing with crimson leaves. A River flowing like a sweetfish without a single bend…
「Do you want to go to a place so devoid of conversation partners?」
Joshua opened his eyes. Kelsniti occasionally shared my feelings. Not always, but whenever I consciously painted such vivid landscapes, he never failed to notice. As if we were seeing the same scenery.
“No. Not now. I sent a letter to a friend. They’ll come soon.”
Even as I said it, I held no certainty.
The distance was simply too far, and my friend was far too lazy. Or rather, it had been so long since we’d met. I couldn’t be sure if they remembered me as much as I thought of them.
I wasn’t without hope, but even if things went awry, I had no right to blame them. After all, it was I who had failed to keep the promise to return back then.
“Dear me. Your confidence has wavered again.”
Had anyone else spoken such words, Joshua would have scoffed in return—and truthfully, there was no one else who would dare. But Kelsniti was different.
The Joshua that people saw overflowed with confidence to the point of excess, and he possessed every quality to justify it without the slightest oddity. Yet few knew that Arnim, the young duke renowned across Blue Coral Island—where the continent’s wealthiest gathered in their most exquisite villas, blessed with a beauty so striking that he remained the subject of endless gossip despite never attending social gatherings, and infamous as an unrestrained eccentric—began every meeting with the premise that ‘the other person would despise him.’
Joshua simply burst into laughter.
“Ahahaha….”
Sometimes his own defensiveness struck him as absurd. When had it begun? When he’d attended Mona Sid School, or even before that? He could still vividly recall the voices of the noble siblings, roughly his age, whom his Father had brought to Jade Ring Castle when he was five—their faces contorted as they said, “I hate kids like you the most.” He couldn’t tell whether such clarity of memory made him clever or merely timid.
Kelsniti spoke.
“There was once a time when Icabon disappeared without a word, but I knew he had gone to do something important.”
Joshua pretended not to listen, keeping his gaze fixed only on the ripples at his feet.
“In the end, we spent long years unable to see each other, but even so, I knew what Icabon thought of me. He knew too. The years of waiting would be nothing.”
Joshua raised both hands and shrugged before speaking.
“It would be fortunate if it’s not a misunderstanding. But it’s not something that can be proven either.”
“If you trust your friend, you don’t worry. Whether that fellow has forgotten me, or if he remembers but now sees it as nothing but a trivial old memory—if you’re caught up in such thoughts, you’ll only feel awkward when you meet again.”
Joshua listened in silence, then glanced toward the beach before rising from the rocky outcrop.
“Let’s go, Kelsniti. People are starting to arrive.”
The date of May 20th held no particular importance. Whether one called it the “Sword-la-Chapelle Festival” or shortened it to the “Chapelle Festival,” or whether its official name was “Festa della Musica” or something else entirely—none of it mattered. The fact that the festival opened on the 15th, with the eve celebration beginning on the night of the 14th, held no significance either.
People had begun flooding in from late April, quickly filling the few inns in the Capital and Blue Coral Island, then moving on to cramped rooms in private homes where one could barely stretch out, and finally exhausting every roofed barn with the philosophy that as long as one stayed dry, anything would do.
Thus, those who arrived leisurely just before the festival found themselves unable to secure anything resembling shelter except perhaps the inside of a wine barrel rolling about the streets. In such circumstances, unless one had traveled from very far away, spending the eve celebration awake through the night and returning home was not an unreasonable choice. Everyone knew that the Chapelle Festival’s highlights were the eve celebration and the final day, with the middle days filled with events that honored the festival’s long traditions—which is to say, unpopular affairs. If one forewent the final day’s events, one could enjoy a clean night of revelry without spending a fortune and head home.
Yet most people chose the wine barrels instead. Thus, conversations like this became commonplace.
“This barrel is clearly the one I claimed early this morning—why all the fuss? Don’t you see my mark?”
“If you emptied it and left, then that’s that! If you’re going to talk like that, then this is a barrel I came and drank from last year and left behind—what are you going to do about it?”
For those who had come to the island for reasons other than the festival, this situation was nothing short of catastrophic. And it was precisely because Maximian fell into such a category that his arrival on Blue Coral Island on the morning of the 17th was by no means due to dawdling. No matter how he hurried, he could not have come any faster.
Having to pass through multiple countries meant that the requirements for travel permits were endless, transportation was bewilderingly complicated, and border procedures refused to proceed without bribes. Amid all this, repeating the same questions over and over, and water that disagreed with him so thoroughly that it turned his stomach inside out, Maximian had been grinding his teeth ever since entering Hyacan.
If Joshua had done nothing wrong—though that was unlikely—or if he simply didn’t know what had happened, then Maximian would hang him upside down and bury him head-first into the ground, piece by piece. If he were a Demonic, he should have the instincts of someone who’d devoured three raccoons alive; what use was a Demonic who didn’t even sense the danger bearing down on him?
But at least it would be better if he were still in one piece when they met.
Children of the Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months of Books
The copyright to this book belongs to the author and 14 Months of Books.
To reuse all or part of the contents of this book, written consent from both parties is required.

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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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