The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 179

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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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Chapter 179

Without time to look further, that scenery melted into the fog and disappeared. Like cotton candy touched by water.

Rita, left alone again in the hazy fog, rubbed her pale face, then suddenly noticed there were more things flickering around her.

In front, behind, left and right, diagonally, no—in all directions.

She stood there blankly, then approached what was flickering on her right.

After a few steps, the fog cleared and a vivid scene appeared.

A corridor of the training facility similar to before. This time, 10-year-old Rita Pascal and 10-year-old Gid Pascal faced each other through iron bars.

Gid Pascal, trapped behind the bars, wore the familiar training uniform, but young Rita wore not training clothes but something like an ordinary dress. Clothes that weren’t in her memory.

“Dorothy.”

The boy Gid called the girl Rita by an unfamiliar name. Then he spoke in a calm tone.

“Being left-handed is ominous and bad. Using your left hand primarily doesn’t look good either. Right?”

The girl with Rita Pascal’s face, called Dorothy, answered.

“Mm, it does look a bit strange. Unfamiliar too… and they say it’s inconvenient to use things like scissors?”

The boy tilted his head slightly after hearing the answer. Only then did Lillieta notice that one of his eyes was a strange color.

The 10-year-old Gid she knew had clear amber eyes on both sides, but the boy before her now had one eye that rippled with different colors whenever it caught the light.

Like a pearl with iridescent luster. Or like that star wrapped in aurora.

Blinking that strange eye, the boy asked the girl back.

“Strange and inconvenient. So what should I do?”

“You can use your right hand well too, can’t you? Just practice and change which hand you use primarily. That would be more convenient for you too!”

“Ah.”

The boy smiled faintly and whispered.

“You’re not her after all.”

He slit his own throat again. Simultaneously, the scenery was swallowed by fog.

Lillieta stood frozen in place, then moved to the side again.

Similar scenes emerged through the fog.

10-year-old Gid Pascal with his right eye rippling in five colors, conversing with a girl called ‘Dorothy’.

Corridor, dining hall, under the wall, near the restroom, in front of the dormitory.

The locations were slightly different, and the words exchanged were slightly different, but the context was the same.

Similar scenes repeated. And gradually, there were things she came to understand.

She saw the girl hiding half her body behind a doorframe, peering at the ‘Pascal’s Children’ sprawled exhausted in the dormitory. Her attitude seemed curious, like she was watching something that had nothing to do with her.

That child doesn’t receive training.

Gid was watching such a girl from a little distance.

The child soon turned her head at Gid’s call of ‘Dorothy’. She approached him. Then it led to similar questions and the same conclusion.

Next scene, Pascal walked through the courtyard of the training facility with his hood pulled down. ‘Dorothy’ followed behind him with quick steps, chattering.

That child follows Pascal like a parent.

The boy Gid stood in the shadows under the wall, gazing at that intimate-looking scene, when his eyes met hers.

The child tugged at Pascal’s sleeve and said something, then after Pascal nodded, she approached Gid.

And similar questions and the same conclusion.

Lillieta finally realized.

That 10-year-old child with her former face, who kept encountering Gid, was not her.

The child had the exact same face as ‘Rita Pascal’ but was called ‘Dorothy Pascal’.

The child was not a trainee. When other children were sprawled in tattered training uniforms, that child wandered around the training facility in a clean dress, following behind Pascal.

Lillieta knew who that child was.

“You mustn’t become Dorothy. Even if your body belongs to the insignificant orphan Dorothy, your soul has special qualities…”

The words Pascal had said when possessing her.

That child was precisely that ‘Dorothy’.

The original orphan Dorothy, unpossessed by the soul of Lillieta del Nisa Raskail who had her memories stolen.

Probably a girl who was a distant descendant of Hanna. A child modified by Pascal to resemble Hanna as much as possible.

The girl Pascal had used as a means to observe the past just before the disaster erupted.

Through that child, he had possessed Hanna, Dorothy’s distant ancestor, watched the era they lived in, and kidnapped young Lillieta.

‘What, so this is… a future where Pascal didn’t kidnap me?’

In the case where he didn’t summon Lillieta’s soul to create ‘Rita Pascal’, would Pascal continue keeping Dorothy around without possessing anyone in her, like a tool for observation?

She continued walking while trying to understand this situation somehow. The same scenes kept unfolding.

This time, in front of the stairs leading down to the underground training facility.

Gid Pascal called out to Dorothy as she passed by, stopping her. He threw out a question as if testing her. Dorothy didn’t give him the answer he wanted.

Gid smiled and said.

“Not again.”

Lillieta thought blankly.

She didn’t quite understand how this had happened, but what she could know for certain was.

The Gid in this hallucination was searching for ‘Rita Pascal’.

Repeating countless times. Dying countless times.

The boy raised his training sword.

Lillieta felt an impulse to snatch the training sword the young boy was holding. She acted on that impulse.

She intruded into the scene in the vision and snatched the sword from the boy. Before he could slit his own throat.

Even though it couldn’t be real, the cool sensation of the blade felt vividly clear. It was chilling.

“…”

The boy who had his sword taken looked up at her expressionlessly. Amber eyes and multicolored eyes.

And fog swept in like a storm, sweeping everything away.

Even the sword she had been holding disappeared.

Lillieta straightened her body swaying in the foggy wind and forced her eyes open. To properly see what was glimpsed through the swirling fog.

She saw 10-year-old Gid Pascal waking up from bed, then looking around in confusion and feeling his own body.

Scenes of the boy running around asking his comrades something flashed through the fog.

Rita Pascal? There’s no one by that name among us.

At someone’s answer, the boy’s expression crumbled. Shaking his head, denying, despairing, screaming.

She saw the boy crouched in a corner under the bed. His wide eyes were unfocused. He clutched at his color-rippling eye as if he wanted to tear it out.

Suddenly discovering something, the boy rose from despair. He ran with a face full of joy. In the direction he ran was ‘Dorothy’ who often followed behind Pascal.

Finding her, he smiled with overwhelming emotion.

That scene was swept away and erased by fog.

A thick rose fragrance spread.

Where the wind had swept everything away, there was still only hazy white fog. Lillieta stood alone in it once again.

Her eyes, which she had been forcing open, stung. She felt dizzy.

‘What I just saw…’

As she rubbed her eyes and caught her breath, she could see something flickering from all directions again this time too.

She gripped Silvergrass a little tighter. Feeling the cold metal texture and the grip that stuck close, she took a deep breath, then chose the front among the countless presences and moved forward.

The scenery revealed as the fog cleared was a different scene from before.

She saw Gid Pascal who appeared to be over twenty.

With an eyepatch over his right eye, he opened the door of a dilapidated house in blood-stained clothes. A woman who had been nursing someone inside jumped up in surprise.

Long, flowing reddish-brown hair, a face scattered with freckles. Rita Pascal, or rather ‘Dorothy’, who seemed to be about twenty.

“Gid?”

“Hello.”

Gid, who greeted her lightly, slowly added a name.

“Dorothy.”

“H-h-how did you find this place?”

“Cleverly? You hid well.”

He replied indifferently and strode into the room. Bloodstains remained like footprints with each step. Dorothy blocked his way.

Gid stopped and looked down at her with sunken eyes. He asked in a hoarse voice.

“Why?”

Dorothy bit her lips tightly. Her eyes were trembling with fear. Staring intently into those pupils with his single eye, Gid asked again.

“Why are you blocking me, Dorothy? Do you think I’m going to harm Pascal?”

“F-Father is very sick right now. He’s not in a condition to meet anyone, so p-please come back later…”

Gid ignored her words and took another step forward.

Then Dorothy let out a small scream of “Hiiik!” before clutching her head and crouching down, sniffling and trembling violently. As if he had threatened her.

This was a reaction Rita Pascal had never shown. Even when crushed by trauma, she had never acted like this.

Gid watched her for a moment, then walked past her and approached Pascal who was lying on the bed.

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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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