Misunderstandings are born from the slightest tweak.
Whether they're big or small.
If you catch them early enough, you can laugh it off and fill in the gaps. But what happens when a small gap grows larger and larger until it becomes unbridgeable?
For example, you realize that what you thought was abandonment was actually saving your life.
You planned the revenge of a lifetime to inflict pain on someone who had already been tortured to death.
Biting my lip, clinging to a fading thread of sanity, trying to buy a little more time.
And what if it was a family member?
By then, that little chasm will be an abyss, and once you fall in, you'll never get out.
And you'll regret it.
I wish I hadn't known.
*** [p
"Ah... ah...."
Mirabelle's mouth twitched.
The slurred syllables come out in quick succession.
Hot tears roll down her cheeks.
"I don't have time for this right now. Please leave Fraxu with Mirabelle. I beg you."
Before her eyes, she sees Harold on his knees begging Karami.
Even though he's dead, horribly so.
In his timeline, he's just woken up from his torture.
Even though he hasn't had enough time to recognize reality.
Seeing Herold pushing them aside as 'trivial' and begging to get himself out of this place, Mirabelle couldn't say anything.
It was the furthest thing from a man without humanity, abandoning his daughter.
Quite the opposite.
It was a father who loved his daughter terribly, and it matched the Herold she'd tried so hard not to remember.
"Ugh."
Mirabelle's legs suddenly gave out on her, and she gagged uncontrollably. She was disgusted with herself for not knowing anything about the subject, for thinking of Herold as an object of vengeance.
"Mee, Mirabelle, what's wrong? Are you sick?"
Herold flies over and checks on Mirabelle. Mirabelle laid her head down, unable to meet his eyes.
Karami had done it.
The slave girl's soul had disappeared because of the passage of time, or perhaps because she had no regrets left in this world.
But the soul of Herold, who died the same day, is still intact. That must mean that he still has a regret. What is that regret?
....
Mirabelle wasn't stupid enough to know that.
"Mr. Herold, you don't have to be so solicitous. I have the best interests of my slave in mind, and Mirabelle is not as helpless as she once was."
"Not helpless, what do you mean?"
"She's become a great witch, one who could easily destroy a kingdom. A dozen knights could come at her and she wouldn't falter."
Herold stares at Mirabelle in amazement.
"Is that true?"
Mirabelle pauses, then slowly shakes her head.
"And you're not in any pain or distress?"
She nods.
Herold pats his chest.
"Well, that's a good thing, then, because when Naredi woke up, there were electric currents flying everywhere."
Mirabelle's head snapped up at her mother's words.
"Mom...you...too?"
"Yes. Witches lose control of their powers when they first awaken. I couldn't even hold her hand, and yet she kept trying to grab it, and when I wouldn't let her, she'd pout. It was a mess."
"Was it?"
Harold smiles and nods.
"So, Mirabelle, what happened to you when you became a witch?"
"I became a thunderbolt...."
"Haha, Thunderbolt, that's great. No, I'm guessing. I knew Mirabelle would be a great witch."
"Really...? You're not lying?"
"It's true, Mirabelle had a lot of magic in her from the time she was in her mother's womb. Sometimes it would leak out. A witch we knew said Mirabelle would be a great witch when she grew up, and that's when Dad told Mom."
Herold waxes nostalgic.
"She's going to make a world where we don't have to hide. This child is going to bring a miracle to our family. A miracle maker. Mirabelle, from Miracle. What do you think, Mirabelle, don't you think that's a great name?"
Mirabelle's eyes filled with tears.
When her vision is blurred by tears and she can't see.
"...Yes."
She nodded in a small voice.
Uncontrollable tears rolled down her cheeks.
For the rest of the night, Herold smiled and told the story in a soothing voice, and Mirabelle perked up her ears and took it all in.
It was like telling a baby a bedtime story.
Beneath a softly glowing starry sky.
But no meeting between the living and the dead can last forever, and Herold's spirit body began to fade. Only Mirabelle's magical skills kept him alive.
"Oh, dear, it's time for hair."
"Yes, eh?"
"I'm sorry we have to say goodbye, but seeing that Mirabelle is safe should be enough, and I don't think there will be any problems in the future, so I can leave in peace."
"Me, me...."
Mirabelle knew she should say something, but she didn't know what to say.
She was too distracted to have a normal conversation.
Herold smiled kindly and placed his hand on Mirabelle's head. Not touching, but as if he were. He strokes it with a gentle touch.
"I know you've been through a lot on your own, and I'm sorry you had to go through something so scary."
"I, I'm...."
"I'm sure being a witch has its challenges, but Mirabelle will get through it, and so will you, because she's our daughter."
Her tone is full of conviction.
Herold's eyes were so tender as he spoke, and Mirabelle recognized it as a memory she had buried in the back of her mind.
Herold's eyes that day, from the receding carriage.
"There is a cliff where no light can reach.
If you fall into it, you can't get out on your own, and no one will come to your rescue, because if you try to reach out to the edge, you'll fall yourself.
Therefore, the person who falls into the cliff gives up trying to escape.
What follows is endless despair.
But sometimes it does exist. There is a person who pushes himself to the edge of a cliff that even he has given up on climbing.
And then there is the one who reaches out and pulls you from the darkness into the light.
"I love you, my daughter. No matter what the world says, I'm always on your side, Mirabelle."
One man's name was Harold.
Another name is Mirabelle's dad.
We call that relationship family.
"Sweetheart, can you hold it together?"
"Mmm."
An enthusiastic answer.
Herold smiled with satisfaction.
He pushed himself up and turned to Karami.
"Please take care of my daughter."
"You are a peculiar sort, asking a slave trader for a child. I suppose that's why you married a witch."
Karami shrugged.
Herold's spirit body, which had begun to blur, had reached the point of invisibility. Mirabelle quickly reaches out to grab him, but he slips through her grasp, his spirit body turning to smoke and dispersing into the air.
-Her father is always watching over her.
With those words, Herold's spirit vanishes without a trace. When Mirabelle tries her magic once more, Herold does not appear.
As if there were no more regrets.
The square where Herold disappeared.
Mirabelle squatted, her back against a pillar. She clutched her father's skull in her arms, her eyes staring at the floor.
She was confused by the situation, and she didn't know what to do.
Revenge was the driving force of her life.
Her father was the object of her revenge.
But in reality, he loved her. He hadn't abandoned her, but had sacrificed himself to save her.
There was nothing to revenge.
What should I do now?
...I'm not sure.
"Why are you lying so still? You just told me your father was watching."
"My lord, my lord...."
Karami, who had been wandering around, approached, a skeleton in his hand as well, belonging to a slave girl.
"Is that...."
"You came for revenge, but it's not what you expected, are you embarrassed?"
"Yes... I don't know what to do now⋯."
Mirabelle answered obediently. Karami asked with a tone that said she didn't understand her attitude.
"Can't you just take revenge?"
"Ha, but my dad is...."
"Does it have to be your dad?"
"...What?"
Karama, who smiled like an incubus, spoke in a deceptive manner.
"You saw it in his memories, the people who tormented Mr. Herold, the people who made him this way."
I saw them.
The people who took him to prison and tortured him horribly.
The people who took him to prison and tortured him horribly, laughing as he writhed in pain.
"Don't you want to get revenge on them?"
I want to.
I want to make them suffer the same pain he did.
"Then do it, Miss Mirabelle, you deserve it, you have the power."
Karami's plausible words penetrate Mirabelle's mind. It interferes with her weakened thinking.
....
Mirabelle sits still.
Slowly, she rises to her feet.
She grips her cane and thinks.
Wooooooooooooooo.
The atmosphere sinks.
The skeleton rises into the air.
The atmosphere screams in terror.
The stars that once shone in the dawn sky disappear behind clouds.
Whirligig.
From out of nowhere, a black flurry of flames converges on Mirabelle's hand, and there, floating in the air, is her old teacher's honey-tipped magic book, which should have been incinerated.
When Mirabelle opens her eyes again, her pupils glow with the color. The same color of eye light emanates from the skeleton's sockets, filling the square with light.
Thud.
Mirabelle strikes the floor with her staff, and a gust of indigo wind swirls around the skeleton.Where the wind vanishes, a Reaper floats, clad in robes made of magic and wielding a giant scythe.
The Reaper's agent.
Mirabelle, the Witch of Judgment.
"Those who hurt my father. Those who do not know grace."
The witch pronounces judgment.
"Destroy them all."