Resetting Lady - Chapter 32

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“How is… Karen doing these days?”

“Not well. Nancy keeps reading her strange fairy tales and feeding her incomprehensible things.”

“But at least she doesn’t self-harm or have seizures anymore, right?”

“…Yes.”

“Then that’s enough.”

Catherine looked at Deere with clouded eyes. Her two eyes, already having lost their sight, were barely open as a matter of courtesy.

“As long as she’s alive…”

Karen hadn’t recognized her own mother during their last meeting. She had recoiled in horror as if looking at something filthy, grabbing Nancy’s hand and backing away.

“Madam, these days Karen follows Nancy around almost as if she were her mother.”

“…Is that so?”

“We should throw her out immediately.”

“Deere.”

Catherine had become skeletal, her youthful beauty nowhere to be found. Her pure white undergarments looked like they were draped over tree branches, and her voice was no different from the creaking of wooden furniture.

“Deere. We’ve really… been together for such a long time.”

“…Mrs. Hyer.”

“Even when I die, Karen will be fine. Nancy will take good care of her.”

“Just… a maid.”

Deere’s voice choked up.

“A maid could never replace you.”

“Call me by my name.”

“Mrs. Hyer.”

“Not that.”

“…Enid.”

Catherine tried to make an expression. Whether she was trying to smile was unclear.

Catherine died.

Until her death, she had been touching her daughter’s portrait. Catherine missed her daughter terribly but didn’t meet with her. Her opinion was that it would be better for Karen to forget her entirely. The Lord accepted her view that there was no point in remembering someone who was going to die anyway. However, he didn’t come out of Catherine’s room for a month. And he also avoided seeing Karen.

“Karen?”

“…Oh, yes. Hello.”

“Catherine is dead.”

“Yes?”

Karen looked at Deere with a slightly dazed expression, then soon turned her head toward Nancy. And Deere would never forget Karen’s words that followed.

Karen asked Nancy.

“Who is Catherine?”

That nightmarish single sentence.

Making Karen docile was no different from making her an idiot. Deere was horrified. But even when she knocked on the Lord’s door, he wouldn’t come out. His child’s madness wasn’t anything new. Compared to his wife’s death, it was even trivial.

The last time Deere saw the Lord was when she received her exile order. She wasn’t dragged out, but if she wanted to receive even a small pension, she had to leave, so it was no different.

* * *

“You don’t remember.”

“…No. Mrs. Deere.”

The first emotion she felt was displeasure. Karen didn’t like anything about Mrs. Deere, from her face examining Karen’s expression to everything she said.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

She was terribly alright. What Deere had told her was something Karen had already anticipated. Even that her entire life was her own delusion. She had thought about it countless times.

“Why?”

Mrs. Deere asked Karen with a puzzled face.

“Why are you alright? You shouldn’t be alright.”

At that arrogant response, Karen’s mouth turned bitter.

“To summarize what you’re saying, the confusion I’m experiencing is due to some kind of sorcery.”

“It would be very unpleasant, but that’s the truth. Gypsies handle all sorts of magic.”

Karen snorted.

“If they’re that capable, why would they wander around? They’d conquer the world.”

Mrs. Deere’s face reddened slightly. But she soon opened her mouth.

“Well, your mind is weak.”

Even though she had somewhat expected it, hearing it from another person’s mouth wasn’t very pleasant. But Karen ended her emotional expression with a single shrug of her shoulders.

A hundred years is not something to be taken lightly. That everything was a delusion caused by her own madness was already something she had considered. Therefore, the truth she heard from Mrs. Deere wasn’t very surprising. Her first thought was an indifferent judgment of ‘that could be possible.’ She resolved to give appropriate punishment before keeping her promise to die for Nancy.

“Thanks to you, one thing has become certain. Father knows I’m not in my right mind.”

And also that the house helped hide the body. Karen looked at her brittle hair.

“You are not me.”

The countless memories in her head were too long and specific to dismiss as mere delusions. Karen didn’t know how much of Deere’s words to believe. No, even if she believed everything, wasn’t the information too scarce? In the end, this woman was an outsider. She knew little.

“Neither my father nor my mother. Let alone Nancy…”

I killed her for nothing.

“Since she’s away from my side now, you can’t prove your words.”

At those words, Deere visibly brightened.

“She left? What happened?”

“She quit her job.”

“That’s good. I see, so that’s how you were able to come here. If she had continued working, you wouldn’t have come this far.”

Yes. I killed her. I fed her medicine and strangled her. And I was going to use her to surprise Isella. Now even the body can’t be found.

“Then… couldn’t I return as your tutor again? Hm? Karen, tell the Lord. You followed me well. You won’t remember, but you did.”

She found it disgusting how she forced non-existent memories and familiarity. When a wealthy man becomes widowed, all sorts of women cling to him. Like Helen, the housekeeper. But Karen didn’t feel like throwing Mrs. Deere out, thinking she should know her place. The woman before her had already been thrown out. Besides, she had already seen several women who wanted to play the role of her mother.

“There are too many things you haven’t told me.”

“I haven’t lied about anything.”

“Then why were you kicked out?”

Karen asked Deere. Deere’s complexion changed.

“That’s because I opposed Nancy constantly putting false ideas into your head.”

“Mrs. Deere, you told me from the beginning that you opposed Nancy. And even though you’d long since become a tutor who didn’t teach, you stayed in the house for quite a long time. Then suddenly you came out to this kind of…”

Karen looked at her shabby house, shaking her head exaggeratedly.

“…place. I’m curious if there’s a reason you moved here. Why do you gloss over such details?”

Karen trusts no one. When she doesn’t even trust herself, who would she trust? The woman before her was the same. That she suffered from madness was something she had long recognized herself.

But to reject her hundred years of life? Karen couldn’t accept that. To acknowledge that her life could be dismissed with just an abstract mention of the past.

“Did you want to become my mother?”

“Everyone in that house is insane. I was doing it for you…!”

“Oh, you were so nobly protesting to take care of one crazy girl and got kicked out for it. I don’t believe it.”

Karen’s voice became cheerfully theatrical before cracking in an instant. At Karen’s voice, Deere started to approach but stopped. And fear gradually appeared on her face.

“Karen?”

“I said I don’t believe it. I dismembered a corpse and brought her son to verify my cognitive abilities, and suddenly you pop up saying I’m crazy so I shouldn’t believe anything? As the protagonist of my life, I reject that kind of plot twist.”

“Karen, what… what on earth are you talking about.”

“I’ve done things up until now! What is this! I fed medicine, dismembered, and burned with fire! Do you think I’d be satisfied with this? Just because of someone like you… who suddenly appeared?”

“I don’t understand… what you’re saying.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

Karen gritted her teeth. Karen found it hard to accept that she was confused. She had to organize. She had to handle it. Drive yourself. Act. The coin has already been thrown. There’s no reason to hesitate.

“And if you have the slightest bit of brains, you should understand that I currently.”

Click.

“Have no intention of letting you live, right?”

“Karen! Calm down…! Nancy tormented you, can’t you see just from the fact that you came all the way here? Can’t you tell just from the fact that you can’t remember me who coaxed you since you were a baby? Now that you’re here, it’s okay. Hm? Looking at how the Lord threw that woman out, the Lord knows too. That he was wrong. Now if you take me back, everything will be fine. Everything…”

Deere poured out words frantically.

Something was going wrong.

Bang!

“Ah!”

She aimed for the head but missed. Blood trickled down from Deere’s head. Her face was covered in blood. Karen reloaded as she approached her. The bullet had grazed the scalp and embedded in the floor.

“Raymond finished it in one shot, but I guess human skulls are more slippery than I thought.”

“Karen, snap out of it. Okay?”

Karen approached Deere. The sight of the middle-aged woman who had been triumphantly recounting the past and trying to dominate her just moments ago, now cowering and trembling in the corner, was quite a spectacle to behold.

“I already killed Nancy.”

Karen smiled.

Her teeth gleamed white in the afternoon sunlight. Deere backed away, but there was no more space. The smiling face, the teeth, drew closer and closer.

It’s okay. It’s okay.

All the sad things are just stories in books.

Miss, you’re dreaming.

This world is like a dream to you.

Soon you and the knight will fall in love

and all hardships will come to an end.

“Didn’t I tell you I would come to get you in a little while?”

“Bowen.”

“Please just stay put. I’m the one who’ll get scolded by Lord Dulan since I’m just a lowly servant.”

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