Crown of Thorns

CHAPTER 8

Translator & editor : Cuties

I couldn’t mend my broken body and mind even after I went back to the tower. In fact, they only collapsed more. The tower was filled with the young man’s traces; even the plant which stubbornly pushed up in the dark corner reminded me of him.

The man who brought you into this world is gone, yet why are you so desperately trying to blossom? This place has no sun to shine down on you, no wind to caress you, no clean water to flow through you, so why are you squeezing your everything into bloom?

It won’t be long before you also collapse anyway in this place deprived of warmth.

It was as if I was looking at the young man. It reminded me of his resilience when he, too, looked fragile enough to fall at any moment. There was not much water left, and it didn’t even suit me to take care of a plant. I’ll have no choice but to watch its flowers wither and die as I watched the young man’s life do.

It was the obvious thing. It couldn’t have lived long anyway.

Having spent so long a time, I thought that this would be no different from what I went through before, but that was just my illusion. I only belatedly realized that the hours I spent with the young man were like snow melting under the bright sun.

Like the seed that bloomed inside the tower, the warrior planted a small seed in the witch’s heart and it eventually blossomed.

I could no longer bear the darkness swallowing me and everything I loved, or the warriors that had come to kill me, and was engulfed in darkness. Please, I shouted, pleading for death to claim me, but no one listened.

I wanted to go back to the time from before the young man has shaken me, but I couldn’t. If I could really curse anyone, I wanted to pour all the curses I could on the deity who made me this way.

I thought it would be better to wait quietly for the world to collapse and my death alone in a place where there is nothing. But I lost the power to do that which made me resentful.

What on earth did I do wrong?

What do you want from me?

There was no future for me anymore. The young man who was the light to my darkness and key to my eternal rest disappeared along with my future. But what am I supposed to do when I just followed the fate the deity has set?

I pushed so hard to change the fate of the young man and tried not to be swallowed by the darkness, and eventually stabbed myself with the sword in his hand. Nevertheless, fate remained unchanged and the youth’s future remained the same, and eventually swallowed by darkness, and eternal rest returned to him.

If the light the divination referred to was really him, then I would have died by the sword he wielded. And he should have survived and driven out the darkness. If he was my light and he died, then how can I change the future and find eternal rest?

Did everything go wrong the moment the young warrior didn’t kill me at first sight and came to love me instead?

I felt like I was going crazy, but the deity didn’t even allow me to go crazy and time went on no matter what I was doing. Asleep or awake, my eyes opened or closed, I was always in the dark and only the occasional ringing of the bell would tell me that the world was still going well.

As I was just lying still and killing my thought, I heard a voice from somewhere.

“Witch! Where are you, witch!”

I had no power left to greet more visiting warrior, so I was lying still. The owner of the voice shouted loudly, as if he had finally arrived at his destination.

“Witch! I will kill you and release the curse!”

At the moment, a crazy idea occurred to me. I opened my eyes with difficulty and looked at the visitor. Then burst out laughing at the fact that the ridiculous idea had become a reality.

I guess I’m finally crazy.

The young warrior, with white hair and red eyes, was very nervous, pointing a short sword at me. I burst into endless laughter at the vivid hallucinations. Soon after, the imaginary warrior seemed to get offended and then angry.

“Are you ignoring me? Do you ignore me because I’m young, witch!”

“I’m just a little happy.”

“What?”

“I’m glad I was finally allowed to go crazy. I’m glad to see the young warrior again, even if it is only through imagination. Will you stay by my side without dying this time? Until I die, or until another warrior shows up to kill me.”

You won’t die until I do. So I’m glad.

Was I really that pitiful? I can’t believe I have been given such a gift. I raised myself up. My body was drained of any strength, but I moved it stubbornly. As I crawled slowly, the young warrior waved his sword this way and that frightened.

“S, stay away!”

I was a little disappointed and grumbled because I wasn’t meaning to send the boy away or hurt him. I was just really happy and excited to see him again.

“Why are you rejecting me? You said you loved me.”

“Are you crazy? You’ve been locked up for so long that I guess it’s made you go off your rocker!”

Yes I’ve gone crazy. It’s none other than you who drove me crazy, boy. I reached out my hand and cut myself with the sword wielded by the young warrior. Perhaps surprised, the boy stepped back and I too was mesmerized for a moment, looking at my bloodstained fingers.

“It hurts.”

The boy answered the mutter without realizing it. He looked clearly embarrassed.

“Yes, you’re too close! I told you not to come near me!”

I also couldn’t hide my bafflement. No matter how wild of an imagination I had, this is just so vivid. Is this also one of my hallucinations? Is pain only part of my imagination? Does your imagination come alive if you go crazy?

I couldn’t understand the situation now, so I looked up and stared at the boy. The bewildered eyes were like the big, twitching sun. They were the same eyes I regretted not having properly looked at before. They were so vivid that I felt like he came back to live.

Suddenly I felt something strange. I couldn’t see the things that were supposed to be where the boy stood. When I turned my eyes, all the water bottles, books, rotten food, and plants that the boy had brought were gone. Is this also imagination? The surroundings reminded me of the day when I first met the boy?

“Are you a phantom?”

“What are you talking about? I can’t believe my brother died because of this crazy witch. Give me my brother back! Bring him back!”

I managed grab a hold of my senses at the sight of the young warrior in tears. Then I reached out and grabbed the boy’s hand. Caught off guard, the boy, whose eyes were wide open, trembled. He seemed to be embarrassed by the situation that he couldn’t understand.

So was I. What is this warm body temperature that I feel in my hands? What is this softness? I made this up in my imagination. Really?

“W, witch. What’s wrong with you?”

Frightened, the boy asked with a voice close to tears. He did not radiate the image of the strong and angry boy from before. I held the boy in my arms in a hurry. At the moment, the boy who was distressed by the terrible stench came up and hurriedly took it off, but he still stood still with a scared and perplexed look on his face.

“Am I dreaming? Or…”

Maybe you had a dream. The boy then replied.

“I wish it was a dream, too. Witch, my brother’s dead. What am I gonna do now?”

The boy eventually burst into tears and something burst through my heart as his tears fell onto my hand.

There was no way to know whether I was dreaming, imagining, waking up from a dream, or returning to the past because I couldn’t know the flow of time. It was all mixed up, incomprehensible, and hard to believe.

And I didn’t know whether I should like the current situation or not.

Really, what do I do?

Tears streamed from my eyes as well.