The Cowardly Baby Saint Sees Ghosts - Chapter 32

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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 32.
Elena Basili was summoned to the Princess Palace the next day.
The pretext was simple enough.
Just an offer to serve tea — a trivial reason, and yet the difference in station was stark.
‘This actually works?’
Such was the power that could drag even someone locked away at home into the light.
“Your Highness, I am honored to see you.”
Elena Basili was a small, pale young lady. Her pale blonde hair and rose-pink dress only heightened her lovely air.
But deep shadows pooled beneath her eyes.
And her gloved hands trembled without ceasing.
She must have known it herself — that she had just murdered the Princess’s closest friend.
“Please, sit comfortably, Elena.”
Each time Gaizel spoke, Elena’s shoulders shrank a little smaller, almost pitiably.
Gaizel smiled, baring her teeth.
“There’s no need for nerves. I simply wanted to have a light conversation today.”
Light, indeed.
I grasped the teacup in both hands and drank it with a gulp.
I couldn’t help my tension — something dreadful was about to unfold.
Elena forced a smile.
“It is my honor, Your Highness.”
“How are you feeling these days?”
“Pardon?”
“Your complexion looks rather poor.”
Elena’s eyes wavered.
“I’ve simply been sleeping poorly, I’m afraid…….”
“Nightmares, perhaps.”
Gaizel murmured the words with a self-deprecating smile.
“I have them too.”
“……!”
At Gaizel’s whispered words, Elena’s breath caught — she’d been about to ask what that meant.
“……Ah, ah…….”
Gaizel brought the teacup to her lips with a knowing smile, as if nothing had happened.
But I could see it clearly.
Standing behind Gaizel, Erisha wore an expression far more terrifying than the first impression she’d given me.
“Why do you ask?”
“B-behind you…….”
Gaizel turned to look over her shoulder, then laughed lightly.
“There’s nothing there.”
“I-I must be imagining things.”
Elena’s lips quivered noticeably.
That was when I deliberately dropped the bundle of keys I’d prepared onto the floor.
“Oh, how clumsy of me.”
I heard myself speaking in an awkward, forced tone I didn’t recognize.
But Elena, already seized by fear, seemed not to notice.
“Young lady.”
Gaizel’s voice turned somewhat cold.
“Do you dislike the sound of keys?”
“I— yes?”
“Your expression suggests otherwise.”
“Why would you say such a thing…….”
Clink. As I jingled the keys again with deliberate clumsiness, Elena covered her ears.
“I’m s-sorry, so sorry!”
“……Sorry for what?”
“I…….”
Elena’s eyes grew wet with tears. She had surely been hearing this key sound again and again since Erisha’s death.
And in that moment, Erisha — who had not spoken to anyone — opened her mouth with a rasp.
“……!”
As ash spilled out, Elena’s face drained of all color.
Why,
did you lock the door?
Why?
Elena must have heard it too.
“I didn’t know… I didn’t know I’d kill her.”
Elena, already drenched in tears, trembled like an aspen leaf and began scrubbing her palms frantically.
“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry! I mean it! I didn’t know I’d kill her!”
Shrieeeeek!
When Erisha screamed, Elena let out a yelp and scrambled backward on the floor.
“He just said to lock it, to just— Father said to just scare the Princess, that was all I was supposed to do—!”
“Hmm.”
Gaizel tilted her head to one side.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Tell me.
Erisha leaned her face close.
Tell me what you did.
Erisha’s whole body shook.
“I, I locked the d-door, and then the P-Princess’s, her, her f-friend….”
“Ah. So that’s why she looked so troubled.”
Poor thing, consumed by guilt.
Gaizel, who had been stroking Elena’s cheek as she lay trembling on the ground, lifted her chin.
Seeing her own reflection in Elena’s already unfocused eyes, Gaizel’s jaw clenched as she spoke.
“The key.”
“…!”
“Where is the key you locked it with?”
“Y-Your Highness….”
“If you’re truly sorry, then confess directly—that you killed my friend.”
“…!”
The kind Gaizel I’d seen until now was nowhere to be found.
She was terrifying even to me—barely suppressing the urge to tear Elena apart.
Elena closed her eyes slowly, held her breath for a moment, then spilled out the words like vomit.
As if she’d been waiting for this moment all along.
“…It’s, it’s in the drawer, above my bed.”
It was over.
Gaizel raised her hand and the door flew open, Princess Palace knights pouring in.
They’d clearly been waiting there from the start.
“Secure the key from Elena Basili’s room.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“And arrest Count Basili and Duke Rowen. Bring them to the Imperial Palace.”
Elena remained crumpled on the floor, sobbing.
But no one paid her any mind.
Not even I did.
My attention was drawn instead to Erisha, looking down at her.
“Are you all right?”
Erisha nodded slightly instead of answering.
* * *
Erisha didn’t vanish immediately.
I’d thought that when a spirit’s resentment was resolved, she’d transform into light and whoosh away.
That’s what most of the spirits I’d seen did.
Camilla had too.
As for Cheese….
Well, Cheese never seemed to have any intention of attaining Ascension in the first place.
Anyway.
Erisha remained in the White Rose Greenhouse.
This time, she wasn’t hiding behind the Rose Vines as she had been at first.
She stood beside the Glass Wall.
Gaizel had said she would come here after the trial—if you could call last night’s affair a trial—was finished.
Honestly, I wanted to talk her out of it.
Your Highness, please rest.
You haven’t slept properly since yesterday, and now you’ve cried, burned with rage, sent nobles to prison, and come all the way to the greenhouse?
Aren’t you exhausted?
That’s what I wanted to say.
But I didn’t voice it aloud.
Because Gaizel seemed perfectly composed. So composed it was terrifying.
If she’d wept and collapsed, the Pope or Liam would have stopped her somehow, but instead Gaizel handed over documents methodically, extracted testimony, issued orders.
Even after it all ended, her voice never wavered once.
That frightened me a little.
‘Is this what royalty is?’
Not a survivor—more like someone crafted expressly to survive.
“Your Holiness,” Gaizel called to me.
I turned toward her voice.
“Yes?”
“Is Erisha still here?”
I looked to one corner of the greenhouse.
Erisha stood there.
She seemed less frightening today than at first.
Though her hair was still singed and her dress still dusted with ash.
“Yes, she is.”
Gaizel’s hand trembled slightly.
But she quickly hid it behind her back.
“Where exactly?”
I pointed with one finger toward where Erisha stood.
“Over there. Beside the Glass Wall.”
Gaizel turned her gaze slowly in that direction.
She wouldn’t be able to see.
Wouldn’t be able to hear.
And yet she looked directly at Erisha with perfect accuracy.
“Erisha.”
That name settled softly through the greenhouse.
The white roses trembled faintly, though there was no breeze.
Erisha smiled, her face full of tears.
Ah.
It was strange.
The spirit I’d feared so much—watching her smile, I wasn’t frightened at all.
I pulled Cheese close into my arms.
She remained perfectly still against me.
Normally she’d be chewing on Demian’s shoelaces or batting at rose petals with her little paws, but today, strangely, she was quiet.
As if sensing the moment on her own.
“Excuse me, Your Highness,” I asked carefully.
I had to know.
“Are you… all right?”
Gaizel didn’t answer.
Only after a long pause did she speak.
“If I said I was all right, would you believe me?”
“No.”
“I thought not.”
Gaizel smiled faintly.
The smile looked so exhausted that I closed my mouth.
“I’m not all right.”
She said it plainly.
“But I’ll endure it nonetheless.”
……
“Because I’ve found who killed Erisha, and now I can hold them accountable.”
It was true.
In the end, Rowen and Basili were locked in the Imperial Prison.
Elena Basili wept throughout.
She hadn’t known, she claimed.
She’d only been told to lock the door.
That the child would die—she hadn’t known that.
Gaizel listened to these words in silence for a long time.
“Your not knowing the child would die doesn’t bring the dead child back to life.”
In that moment Elena could weep no longer, and I found myself holding my breath at her side.
I mustn’t make an enemy of this person.
Really, I mustn’t.
“I’ve wanted Erisha’s forgiveness for so long.”
Gaizel said.
“But thinking about it now, that was remarkably selfish of me.”
“Why?”
“Because forgiveness would ease my own burden.”
She looked at the Glass Wall.
“I’ve been asking a dead friend for forgiveness all this time — not for her sake, but for my own peace of mind.”

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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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