Chapter 52 : The Witch’s Déjà Vu

Morning.

Lanafit entered the city early, just as promised.

Yawning as she waited, she let the daytime City Guards check her identity and grant her passage into the city.

There were only a handful of people walking on the street, and the shops were just starting their day’s business—some were even still tightly closed.

Lanafit realized she might have come a bit too early.

Dr. Sandrina might not even be awake yet.

But that was fine—she could wait at the clinic’s entrance.

She hadn’t slept all night, perhaps because the possibility of finally curing her soul-loss disorder left her too excited.

After all, this illness had troubled her for months, causing countless problems.

So, as soon as the sky began to lighten, Lanafit couldn’t wait to enter Padugel.

By coincidence, she ran into the same child she’d given alms to yesterday.

But compared to yesterday, he looked even worse today.

His hands and feet were caked with mud, and his hands seemed to be covered in fresh wounds—scratches from something sharp, only just starting to scab over.

His eyes were red and bloodshot—maybe from crying earlier, or maybe from not sleeping all night.

He simply huddled quietly by the wall, staring blankly at the empty street, not noticing Lanafit’s arrival.

This time, there was no battered begging bowl in front of him, so Lanafit took out a few copper coins and handed them to him.

The boy still didn’t react, as if lost in thought—or perhaps as if he no longer cared about anything in this world.

Lanafit could only crouch down and place the coins in front of him.

But as she bent down, she noticed that beside the boy were two filthy flatbreads—the very same ones he’d clutched so tightly yesterday afternoon.

Those two flatbreads, which had seemed like treasures yesterday, were now abandoned at his side.

Only because it was still early and the vagrants hadn’t woken yet did no one come to snatch them away.

But the boy himself didn’t seem to care about guarding them anymore.

What happened to this child?

That was the first thought that crossed Lanafit’s mind as she straightened up.

At that moment, the boy finally noticed Lanafit, recognizing her by her clothes.

He pressed his lips together, looked at the stack of copper coins on the ground, and then said something that surprised Lanafit.

“Kind Mage, thank you for helping me so many times, but I don’t need them anymore. Please don’t waste your money on me—please take them back.”

He seemed to want to pick up the coins and return them to Lanafit, but then, perhaps realizing how filthy he was, he figured this neatly dressed mage wouldn’t want money he’d touched, so he scooted back a little.

Lanafit didn’t take the coins back.

She just crouched down and looked at him, and that’s when she noticed the boy’s eyes were a clear shade of blue—though now, the bloodshot whites ruined their beauty.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Her gentle, warm voice reached the boy’s ears.

He looked up, meeting Lanafit’s eyes for the first time.

But he didn’t lose himself in her stunning beauty; it seemed nothing mattered to him now, except perhaps a lingering attachment to those gentle light green eyes.

Her words seemed to have a kind of magic, and her gaze seemed to reach the deepest pain in the boy’s heart.

In that moment, he could no longer hold back his grief and told her everything.

The boy had no name, and no parents.

He was raised by an Old Hunter, and those who knew him called him Worm.

Worm was a strange name—not a good one.

In fact, it was an insult, because in this world, it meant insect.

His foster father was an uneducated, solitary old man with no skills besides hunting and drinking.

Naturally, he never thought to give the boy a proper name, just called him what everyone else did.

Maybe in this world, people believed an ugly name helped a child survive.

The old man and the boy should have lived quietly in the northern borderlands of the Empire, but war forced them to flee, becoming refugees here.

The Old Hunter was injured along the way while protecting him.

Last night, his foster father died from fatal wounds and sickness.

The City Guards carried his foster father’s body out of the city, to be buried where the refugees had been laid to rest these past days, to prevent plague from spreading in the city.

But “buried” was just a word—it was really a mass grave, bodies of refugees abandoned in a pit, waiting to be covered once enough had gathered.

Little Worm secretly followed the City Guards.

When they left, he faced dozens of twisted, rotting corpses alone, dragged his foster father’s body out, and buried him outside the city.

He cried all night at that makeshift grave, until dawn, when a patrolling City Guard found him and brought him back to the city.

The City Guards meant well—after all, a child might stand a chance begging in the city, but outside, it was certain death.

Maybe the Orphanage could take him in, but these days, every Orphanage was already full.

The Baroness had ordered new Orphanage buildings to be constructed, but it was all kept secret.

After all, if word got out, refugees might try to leave their children at the new Orphanage, and it would fill up before it was even finished, impossible to keep up with demand.

Padugel was only a small town and couldn’t support so many refugees, especially since they’d arrived so suddenly and in such numbers.

The Baroness had done her best, but it was never enough.

Compared to other places, Padugel’s attitude toward refugees was already outstanding.

At least, on her journey, Lanafit had rarely seen any lord truly help refugees.

But even so, it couldn’t stop them from dying, one after another.

Worm was just one of countless pitiful refugees.

Seeing Worm, who’d already given up on life at such a young age after losing the person closest to him, made Lanafit’s heart ache.

In Worm, she saw her own past.

Her father had died, her mother had abandoned her as a child, and her relatives, driven by ugly greed, had cast her out of her own home.

She too had once been alone and suffered greatly.

But compared to Worm, hadn’t she been a hundred times luckier?

At least in her childhood, she had two Orphanage mothers who treated her as their own, and later, close friends.

Though that life was long gone, at least she had found hope after hardship, and hadn’t died in despair in some forgotten corner.

“…Worm, is it alright if I call you that?”

She gently placed her hand on his dirt-matted head, softly stroking it.

Worm nodded, stiff and wooden, just staring blankly at Lanafit’s light green eyes.

“Listen to me, Worm. You’re really amazing. You’re still so young, yet you managed to run around for your father.

You’re still so young, yet you gave your father a peaceful rest in the earth.

Compared to me at your age, you’re much braver.”

“I also lost my parents and my home as a child, with no one to rely on. But I wasn’t as strong as you—I could only let fate push me around, even wondering if it would’ve been better if I’d never been born.”

As she spoke, Lanafit hugged that thin, frail body—not just out of pity, but because of her own memories.

There was a sharp, unpleasant smell lingering at her nose, but Lanafit didn’t care.

She just let her feelings flow, trying to let this frail, cold body feel her warmth.

“But I still chose to live on, and I never regretted that choice.

In fact, I’m grateful for it.

I met people who were good to me, people who cherished me and whom I cherished in return.

They gave me a reason to be strong, gave me the courage to keep living.

I believe your future will be the same, Worm—you’ll meet even more people who are good to you.”

Lanafit didn’t know if Worm, who looked only about ten, could really understand these words.

But she wanted to pass this feeling to him, even just a little.

“Your father surely wanted you to live on, too, don’t you think?”

At her last words, Lanafit clearly felt the frail body in her arms tremble.

Sure enough, in this boy named Worm’s heart, his foster father, who’d raised him as his own, meant more than any “pretty words.”

“…Yes. Thank you. Thank you, kind Mage.”

After a long while, the boy finally answered, and his cries broke out—answering the dawn that should have meant hope, and responding to the wishes of those who had passed away.

Lanafit had already made up her mind.

When she went to the clinic later, she would definitely ask Sandrina to help arrange for the Orphanage to take this child in.

She’d heard Sandrina often volunteered medical care at the Orphanage, so they’d probably agree to do her this favor.

Besides, Lanafit could donate her own savings to the Orphanage—then they surely wouldn’t refuse to take Worm in.

She knew she couldn’t save everyone.

But this child before her—she had to save him.

Maybe it was selfish hypocrisy, but more than that, it was seeing her own past self in him.