The Cowardly Baby Saint Sees Ghosts - Chapter 29

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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 29.
Young Gaitelle drew a breath and coughed.
Her eyes stung.
Screech.
Screech.
Creak.
From inside came the sound of fingernails scraping against glass.
Small handprints appeared on the inner side of the glass wall.
Dirty hands. Erisha’s hands.
“Erisha! Are you in there?”
Someone knocked on the door from the other side.
Then Erisha’s voice came through.
“Gaitelle?”
Her voice was raw, as if smoke had scraped it raw.
“It’s me. Open the door!”
“It won’t open.”
Erisha coughed again.
“It’s locked from outside.”
Gaitelle’s mind went white.
Locked from outside.
There was no time to dwell on what that meant.
Erisha was inside.
In the fire.
In the smoke.
Alone.
Gaitelle grabbed the door handle.
The sickening sound of her palm burning against hot metal struck her ears.
She didn’t let go.
“Wait. I’ll get it open.”
“Call someone.”
“There’s no one here.”
“What?”
“There’s no one here!”
Gaitelle spun around.
The Garden lay empty.
No attendants, no knights, no servants anywhere.
It was too quiet to believe they were inside the Imperial Palace.
As if someone had deliberately cleared everyone away.
From inside, she heard Erisha pressing against the door.
“Gaitelle, something smells wrong.”
“What?”
“It’s not just smoke. My throat hurts when I breathe. My head too—it feels strange.”
“That’s why you need to get out. Now.”
Gaitelle felt around her.
A garden ornament came into view.
It was a heavy iron decoration, too heavy for a child to lift.
But in that moment, she didn’t feel the weight.
She hoisted the ornament and brought it crashing down on the lock.
Once.
The lock shuddered.
Twice.
The door cracked open just slightly.
Yellow smoke billowed through the gap.
Gaitelle coughed.
It felt as though her throat was tearing, but she couldn’t stop.
“Gaitelle, don’t.”
Erisha’s voice trembled.
“Something’s wrong. I don’t think you should open it.”
“Am I supposed to leave you there?”
There was no answer.
The firelight flickered behind the glass walls.
Erisha’s shadow appeared in silhouette.
Her small frame swayed.
The moment Gaitelle saw it, every other thought vanished from her mind.
She had to open the door.
She had to get Erisha out.
Nothing else mattered.
“Get back.”
“Gaitelle.”
“Get back, I said!”
Gaitelle wrenched the latch down one final time.
The metal twisted and fell free.
The door opened.
Just barely.
Wide enough for a single hand.
In that instant, the light within the Greenhouse dimmed in a strange, sudden way.
As though someone were drawing in a breath.
Air from outside was sucked in through the gap.
Gaitelle didn’t know what it meant.
Couldn’t have known.
She simply reached through the opening.
“Erisha, grab my hand!”
Erisha’s hand appeared.
Covered in ash.
Trembling at the fingertips.
Almost touching hers.
So close, so very close.
Then it happened.
Red light swelled within the Greenhouse all at once.
The light came before the sound.
Gaitelle’s vision filled with crimson, and in the next breath, her body was hurled backward.
The floor struck her spine.
The wind knocked from her lungs.
Her ears rang with a dull, heavy ache.
She heard nothing.
Nothing at all.
Except one thing.
Erisha’s scream.
Whether she actually heard it or whether her mind had conjured it from nightmare, she couldn’t tell.
Gaitelle reached out.
Her palm was soaked in blood.
The hand that had been within her grasp just moments before was gone.
Flames poured from the shattered door.
Erisha was inside.
……!
Fire clung to her white dress.
The ends of her hair were curling black.
Gaitelle tried to crawl forward.
“Erisha…….”
Then someone seized her from behind.
“Your Highness, you cannot!”
A knight’s voice.
A voice that came far too late.
Gaitelle thrashed against the grip.
“Let go.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Release me!”
“Your Highness!”
“I opened it.”
The words spilled from her lips.
Gaitelle finally understood what she had said.
I opened it.
I opened the door.
After that, no words came.
Erisha lifted her head one last time from within the flames.
Their eyes met.
In that brief moment, Erisha’s face bore no resentment—strangely, not a trace of it.
That made it worse.
Her lips moved.
No sound reached Gaitelle’s ears.
But Gaitelle read the words from her lips.
Live.
And the flames consumed her.
“Uh… ah….”
Gaitelle tried to scream, but no voice came.
If only I weren’t the Imperial Daughter.
That thought strangled her.
If only I weren’t the Imperial Daughter, Erisha wouldn’t have died.
If we hadn’t been friends, if she hadn’t been entangled with me from the start.
She would have lived. She would have lived on, beautiful and whole.
If only I had come sooner.
If only I had been stronger.
If only I—
If only I—
If only I had been the Emperor.
The Erisha in her dreams should have said this.
You killed me.
She should have resented her. But Erisha always said instead:
‘Survive. Gaitelle.’
That was crueler still.
“I wish you’d hated me instead.”
Gaitelle crumbled.
“I wish you’d blamed me.”
* * *
When she opened her eyes, the pale light of dawn seeped through the open window.
So she hadn’t slept much after all.
Gaitelle pressed her throbbing eyes and exhaled as her breath trembled.
“You’re awake?”
That familiar voice made Gaitelle’s heart plummet.
Gaitelle turned her head slowly.
Diane was sitting in a chair beside the bed.
White priestess robes.
Small hands.
Eyes that looked frightened yet refused to flee.
Behind her, Liam stood at the doorway, and Demian was by the window.
Demian was silent.
He stood motionless, his face ashen, saying nothing.
One hand rested against the chair’s back, the other clasped in Diane’s grip.
And those eyes.
Gaitelle knew instinctively the moment she saw them.
This child was no longer wholly Demian.
Gaitelle’s gaze shifted back to Diane.
“Just now.”
Her voice fractured.
It was the voice of someone who had swallowed screams in nightmares for far too long.
“What did you say?”
Diane pressed her lips together tightly.
Gaitelle laughed slowly.
It looked like laughter, but it wasn’t.
“That the priestess is here, in this place….”
She repeated those words to herself.
“You’re saying you know who I really am.”
The room fell silent.
The candle flame flickered softly.
Diane fidgeted with her fingers.
“……Yes.”
“Since when did you know?”
“From the beginning.”
Gaitelle’s eyes narrowed.
“From the beginning?”
“More precisely, since I first saw you. I knew that the name Gaitelle was false.”
“So you’ve been pretending not to know all this time.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
It was an interrogation.
But Diane couldn’t answer at once.
Gaitelle suspected even that silence.
The young priestess of the Temple.
The child far too close to Demian.
The one who spoke in that eerie way, as if seeing spirits, and who dared to lay hands on the Imperial Palace’s forbidden things.
There was more than enough reason to suspect.
In truth, not to suspect would have been foolish.
But after a long silence, Diane spoke very softly.
“Because you seemed to want to hide it.”
Gaitelle’s eyes flickered, the subtlest tremor of light.
“What did you say?”
“You did, Your Highness.”
Diane continued carefully.
“I mean, back then—when you were Gaitelle. You seemed to want to hide it.”
“…….”
“So I pretended not to know.”
That answer was strange.
Too simple, and thus stranger still.
In truth, Gaitelle had expected the priestess to leverage this as a threat.
Or to say something meant to exploit the bond between Demian and herself.
But what came back was merely that she had kept the secret because Gaitelle seemed to want it kept.
Gaitelle studied Diane for a moment.
Small.
Smaller even than her peers should be.
Yet this small child had a peculiar gift for saying things far stranger than the adults of the Imperial Palace, things that took people aback.
“You really are peculiar, priestess.”
“I hear that often.”
“I’m not in a mood for jokes.”
“I’m sorry.”
The way she bowed her head so quickly was like that of a frightened child.
But Gaitelle understood.
This child, even when afraid, does not run.
Gaitelle turned her gaze to Demian.
“You knew too, didn’t you?”
Demian did not answer.
Instead, he slowly opened his eyes.
Crimson irises.
Yet within them flickered a light that was subtly different.
Gaitelle instinctively drew back.
“Demian?”
Demian’s lips parted.
“Gaitelle.”
At that single word, Gaitelle’s breath caught.
That was not Demian’s voice.
A voice like smoke scraping against stone—fractured, faded as if from weeping too long.
Gaitelle knew the owner of that voice well.
She couldn’t have helped but know it.
She heard it every night in her dreams.

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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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