I lived a life where I had received quite the amount of love. Although the majority of that love were aimless bullets of self-love, despite that, there was actual love mixed in as well.

It was a love that wasn’t imposed. Thus, it was a love which I could accept.

Similar to what Our Lord would give out to us, it was a true love which garnered respect and consideration.

My Lord.

My G.o.ddess.

My Minhee.

Similar to how roamers that wander the wilderness are enveloped by their lamps, I was enveloped by that love.  Even after the fire had gone out, the embers still remained within me.

I received love. Truly, I lived while fiercely receiving love.

Like so, once I had opened my eyes, that world, and even this other world, were places that were abundant with love, and I have been receiving quite the amount of undeserved love even now.

I wanted to repay that love.

That was most likely not going to be an easy task.

I didn’t have the same capabilities which Minhee had. No matter how much I tried to follow in her footsteps, I wasn’t as bright, hot, or beautiful as Minhee. If Minhee could control fire, then all I could leave behind were festered remains. In the end, I knew that I wasn’t too far apart from the type of people who shoved their own self-love forward and called it love.

Occasionally, that doubt would become a type of frost and a.s.sault me. At that time, in the hospital room, the cries of starlings, the experience I had of being buried underneath ashes made me cower. Am I doing things properly right now? Am I doing my utmost to, at the very least, be like Minhee, be similar to Minhee?

I placed my hand on my chest while feeling the coldness. While tasting the bitter and acrid taste of ash, I buried it in my chest. Minhee. My G.o.ddess. My love. My ember. Are you there? Is the love that I had poured for you here? Is your vestige over there in the place that I am heading?

For your sake.

The next day arrived.

“Uu, my head······ It’s morning and I’m already dying······. For a female knight, she snores so much······.”

The Earl made her way out of her bedroom while stumbling. She must have tossed and turned during her sleep as her already lion mane-like hair was now even more of a complete mess. It seems she had a severe headache as she was narrowing her eyes while holding her head.

Those eyes shot open the instant they adjusted to the sunlight.

“······What is this?”

Even for her, this was a situation where she could only ask that. Because the instant she had woken up and come out of her room, Sophna and I were kneeling side by side in front of her.

“Eh······ Uh. No, wait, this is normal for Yujin, but Sophna? What is this?”

The Earl was now opening her eyes in complete surprise.

Sophna shook her head respectfully.

“I apologize.”

“Uh······.”

“This old lady was wrong. Mii, this grandmother made a mistake······ I had become senile after having lived for so long. Something like this will not happen again. I will also do my best to get along with Yujin.”

The Earl kept opening and closing her mouth. She then turned to look at me.

I spoke up first.

“I made up with her.”

The Earl twitched.

“She said that she wanted to beg you for forgiveness. That’s why I brought her here. Sorry. This is something that I had done arbitrarily, so if you want to denounce someone, then I would appreciate it if you punished only me.”

“No, Mii. This old lady was obstinate. Because I felt bad, because I was sorry······ because I realized I was being narrow-mindedly stubborn······ I am sorry, Mii······.”

Sophna looked up at the Earl while shedding tears.

“Can you not forgive me this one time······?”

The Earl’s face lit up.

“Hmm.”

She grinned widely.

“Haaamng~! Of course!”

The Earl shot forward and rushed towards Sophna. Like a cat that had embraced a silvervine, she hugged Sophna and rolled around.

“Ah ha ha ha! Yes! Yeess! I shall forgive youuu! It’s Sophna, after all! It’s Sophna who had changed my diapers!”

“I am sorry.”

Sophna held the Earl tightly and said that.

“It’s all right~! Mhm mhm, it’s fine if you’ve repented! It’ll all be fine if you listen to me well from now on!”

“I am truly sorry.”

“I said it’s okay~! Ah hah hah hah ha! Sophna! Grandma! My Head Va.s.sal!”

“Truly, I am truly sorry······. Mii. I apologize to you······.”

Even before. Even now.

And even from now on.

“I am truly sorry······.”

Sophna apologized to the Earl over and over again while sobbing.

I adjusted my gla.s.ses, and watched them.

Like that, the incident ended on a good note. The Earl was satisfied, and as long as the Earl was satisfied, Zia was satisfied as well.

Despite that, I was busy trying to take care of the aftermath for a while. Through Sophna, while I was finally able to reach my hand out towards the places in the castle which I couldn’t before, I also had secret meetings with Borg. Eventually, similar to how I had done so in the previous month, once the end of February had arrived, I went on a trip back to Korea.

There will most likely be a day where I will be able to talk about this.

February, which was filled with ups and down, ended like that.

On the first day of March, Lady Dansoomyo arrived.

The girl was as red as the blood of a saint.

Her pupils were red, the frames of her gla.s.ses were red, her lips were red, and even the hat she was wearing and the attire she had on were all red as well. It wasn’t a fierce scarlet color like Sii’s eyes. A red glow that was completely calm, but would occasionally surge without a sound. Like a china doll with holes pierced into its eyes which also had a lit candle made from sperm oil inside of it, she possessed a red which had both elegance and dignity.

“The dilemmas which the people from my household face can be narrowed down to a single thing.”

She was tall. One head taller than me. Roughly between 180 and 190 centimeters. If you included the crown of her hat, then she easily reached over 2 meters. Her eyebrows were thick, the shape of her eyes was slightly slanted downwards so, along with her gentle appearance, the tattoo of an ember near her left eye left a lasting impression.

“What do you have to do in order to not die?”

While stretching out her fingers that had bright red nail polish on them, her 10 slender fingers which were long like the legs of a spider, she spoke.

“There is an answer to this question. And there also exists a process which must naturally be gone through in order to obtain that answer. The first step which you have to go through is the disambiguation of the question. In other words, you have to know with certainty what you’re pursuing and what obstacles are going to be in your path in the process of your pursuit. You have to accurately grasp the meaning behind those obstacles. Thus, if you wish to avoid death, then you must find out what exactly death is.”

She turned her head. The light s.h.i.+ning on her gla.s.ses hid her pupils which were underneath them.

“Will you die if you’re cut? Will you die if you’re stabbed? Will you die if you’re hit? How much can be cut? How do you have to be stabbed? If you’re hit by what? A sword? A spear? A hammer? Now then, there’s a single healthy, sound, and happy person here. They have a partner, a child, and friends. Let’s take everything away from them and make them into a natural individual. Let’s experiment on them by getting rid of every quant.i.tative variable they have and turning them into a completely bare person. Let’s harm them. It doesn’t matter what tools or means you use. If harm continues to pile up like that, then the person will one day reach their demise. Yup. People, die after being harmed for a while. Like so, we are able to understand the trigger for death once more.”

She turned her head back and fixed her gla.s.ses.

“And another question is formed. How much harm must a person experience before they die?”

She clasped her hands behind her back.

“Of course, its existence being obvious is an individual difference. However, if you increase the number of samples, then the chance of it being possible becomes standardized. Algebra. The strength of statistics. For that sake, I wound up defining several new concepts. First, refer to ‘harm’ as ‘damage’. First, in order to arithmetically express the degree to which a person nears death after being ‘damaged’, I introduced the concept of ‘HP’, which is another term for ‘life force’. First, death is basically the state of having received damage to the point of being no longer able to maintain yourself, in other words, you can say that they are in a state where their HP=0. Through this, I’m able to approach death from a completely arithmetical standpoint. Even I have to admit that my own idea is innovative.”

Uhihi, she chuckled while curling her lips like a cat.

“A girl in her 20s. Average HP is 10. Knife. Stabbing with one’s entire strength does 5 damage, followed by a continuous 1~2 damage from bleeding. A man in his 30s. Average HP is 15. Hammer and nail. Each nail does 1 damage and 1 continuous damage. Oh right, regardless of the weapon and the target, if their vital points are struck, then the critical hits are judged in their own separate way. Additional damage. There’s a graph and a rulebook here, so use them as a reference.”

She smiled shyly as she gave us a sidelong glance.

“I apologize for bringing this up the moment we meet, but I just wanted to tell you about this as soon as possible. Silver Lion, you’re smart so you should be able to understand immediately, right? Ehehe, Silver Lion. You know······.”

After pus.h.i.+ng forward two girls with leashes around their necks, she brought out a fret saw and a hammer.

“Let’s, play with this.”

Her sunset-colored eyes emitted a boundlessly cozy glint.

TL note: Thanks for reading the chapter. Only the short story and the afterword are left before I’ll be done with this volume. I’m looking forward to translating Handholding again since YaMA has been tiring me out. Maybe I’ll be able to return back to my old pace once I get this done.

On a side note, I have some plans that I want to carry out once I’m done with this volume, mainly having to do with my discord server and whatnot. It’s not something too major since I just want to organize it more. Furthermore, I give my thanks to everyone who watched my first and second streams. I honestly had no idea what I was doing during them, but I’ll probably stream like this every now and then. I did try to do a QnA, but there weren’t too many people asking questions, so I’ll maybe schedule one later on for people who actually want to ask me things. Who knows.

In any case, see you guys in the short story.