Chapter 163
Yoseph placed the bowl down. He crawled on his knees again. He got closer to Arzeletta very carefully. It was the demeanor of a timid puppy.
“Arzeletta.”
Arzeletta looked like a person from whom all the water had been dried out.
Yoseph used his blunt hands to move Arzeletta’s hair behind her ear. He thought that her ear, which was flushed pink, looked like a flower petal.
“Why do you hate yourself so much…”
Yoseph asked sincerely.
“Your entire being is like a m-miracle to me.”
“I am not that good of a person, Yoseph. I don’t deserve to receive this kind of kindness from you.”
Her eyes, with tears hanging like beads, looked up at him as if seeking an answer.
“Tell me, Yoseph. If you feel like you have committed an irreparable mistake… what should I do?”
Yoseph truly did not understand. The Arzeletta he knew was a woman who was polite even to the animals right before they were slaughtered. She was a woman who would lift her heels so as not to step on a crawling bug.
No, more than that, it seemed impossible for Arzeletta to ever do something wrong to someone in the first place.
Whether it was power or malice, you had to have something to be able to do something wrong.
Arzeletta was as weak as a flower petal. Not only her body, but also her soul and her emotions.
After the news of the Lord’s collapse had spread, Arzeletta had been constantly agonizing and blaming herself. Considering that circumstance, it seemed that the person Arzeletta had done something wrong to was Lord Ragnar.
That made no sense, no matter how he thought about it.
Even if Arzeletta wanted to do something wrong, she couldn’t. She was the lowest class of maid, staying here with him, and Ragnar was the most powerful person in this domain. He would kill Arzeletta by crushing her with his fingertip, but it was impossible for this flower petal-like Arzeletta to hurt the Lord.
Yoseph looked into Arzeletta’s sad eyes again.
Arzeletta was clearly in pain right now. Truly and sincerely.
To comfort her pain, he had to say something.
“If you really hate yourself so much because of some wrongdoing… what if you apologize honestly?”
Seeing Arzeletta’s eyes slowly widen as she looked at him, Yoseph continued speaking.
“Then your heart might become lighter, Arzeletta.”
“……”
“To do that, you’ll need a lot of courage.”
Yoseph’s words were as honest as they always were, without any pretense.
“I don’t think hating yourself will solve anything, Arzeletta…”
“……”
“That’s just hurting yourself.”
At the sincerity that came crashing towards her without any lies, Arzeletta let out a long sigh.
“Wise Yoseph.”
“Arzeletta…”
“Thank you.”
Arzeletta’s eyes curved gently. In the darkness, her eyes were still full of tears, but within them, there was a newfound will.
“You make me ashamed, Yoseph.”
“I, when you hate yourself, I’m in too much pain.”
In a place everyone hated, a corner of the slaughterhouse that everyone waved away and tried to get away from, Arzeletta felt a kindness she had never experienced anywhere else.
Arzeletta hid her face in her knees again.
Yoseph’s words were right.
In the silence, where everyone was asleep, the sound of walking on the stone path was cautious.
The domain was submerged in darkness in the middle of the night.
Arzeletta, with her face hidden in a veil, walked through the darkness of the night.
Tap-.
“……!”
She was startled by the sudden sound and stopped walking.
The thing with shining eyes in the darkness was a stray cat. Arzeletta let out a sigh of relief.
“Shh.”
She put a finger to her lips and spoke to the cat. Her eyes, as she looked at the animal, were gentle. As if it understood Arzeletta’s words, the tabby cat haughtily lifted its chin and went in a different direction.
The place Arzeletta was passing through was the main street.
In the middle of the night, when passage was forbidden, it could be a more dangerous place for her than a secluded back alley.
Because she could be misunderstood as doing something suspicious or trying to cause some curse.
When she spotted patrol guards, Arzeletta hid her body in the deep darkness. Her black hair, the black clothes that showed her low status, and the black veil that concealed her sin, hid her as if protecting her in the darkness.
“Since the Lord is like that, things are really unsettled.”
“If something really happens, what will become of us?”
“Don’t we have Del Rose? I thought it was strange that the Lord was so young that he had a successor, but now that I think about it, it’s a fortunate thing.”
“Can that young Del Rose really protect the domain?”
“He’s the one who received a divine message.”
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