Episode 313
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The next day I took Ron and my teacher to Dennis’ house.
Two little kids approach us.
And then.
“hello.”
Say hello to your belly button.
They are my uncle’s children, one is 10 years old and male. The other is 9 years old and female.
That is, siblings.
What happens if you treat this as a village?
I glance at Ron, and he whispers in my ear, “We’re fourth cousins, sir.”
4th cousin.
They say we’re distant relatives.
“Yes, nice to meet you.”
I lifted my head slightly, brushing the two guys’ heads back with both hands, and saw my uncle smiling happily.
Ron used to say he was a really bad guy, but the more I look at him, the less he seems like a bad guy.
“Follow me. I will show you the room where Noah stayed.”
I followed along obediently.
As soon as my uncle opened the door to a room on the third floor of a fairly large mansion, I gasped.
When was it?
Should I say it’s warm?
When I was staying at the Marquis’s, I spent most of my time in the rose garden.
It’s where my mother lived, it’s where I lived, it’s where my childhood was all about.
There are countless roses surrounding it.
The scent was the garden itself.
And now, the room before my eyes smelled of roses.
“It’s been a while. Nothing has really changed.”
I guess Ron has been in this room before.
Dennis’s eyes narrow.
I thought he wanted to ask me if I had a secret meeting that night, but I didn’t care.
I walked slowly and looked around my mother’s room.
There were various clothes hanging in the closet that a girl in her mid to late teens would wear, as well as various toys that she might have used when she was younger, including a doll.
And on the other side there were swords, and daggers, and bows.
It looked quite old due to the passage of time, but the handle and other parts were worn, so my mother must have trained in various weapons.
By the way, the weapon is really good.
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It was different from the swords sold in the market.
Luxury.
A sword of a similar level to the longsword my master gave me.
I just thought about it up to that point.
Then I walked around the room.
I opened the drawer and the closet.
I felt the weapon and imagined my mother’s childhood, a time I had no memory of.
It’s a strange feeling, I guess.
I didn’t know much about the person called Mother, but not anymore.
Vaguely.
Should I say that I am now vaguely able to take the next step?
I pushed the open drawer all the way forward.
But maybe I pushed a little too hard.
The drawer slammed shut and then…
Something fell under the desk with a thud.
I took a quick look and it was a notebook.
That’s a pretty old note too.
It was in pretty good condition, aside from some natural wear and tear over time.
When I show my notes, everyone gathers around me.
“I’ve never seen it before… … .”
“… … I think I’ve seen it somewhere.”
The uncle says he hasn’t seen it before, but Ron says he feels like he’s seen it somewhere.
For a moment, as his uncle looked at Ron, Ron exclaimed like a philosopher who had just realized something.
“Ah! This!”
“What is it?”
Ron responded to my question with a sentimental expression.
“Do you remember the swing we saw together yesterday?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Noah would sometimes sit on that swing and look out at the sea and write in his diary.”
“diary?”
“Yes, the diary. It was about a month before I left this island. I saw it a few times then.”
I sat down on the chair and opened up the notebook, which was presumed to be a diary.
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-March 5th, the island was peaceful today as well. Like the calm before a storm, the island was immersed in silence.
– March 8th, I always felt that Ron is a very interesting man. Is there anyone among the candidates for the position of the prospective great warrior of the Dojo as kind and gentle as Ron? If I had to get married, if I had to have Gunnar’s successor, if I had a choice, I would marry Ron. Ron, who is watching me from there, probably doesn’t know about these thoughts of mine. He is surprisingly dull.
As I was reading, I found myself laughing without realizing it.
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Oh, so this is what my mother was like.
I finished reading it with a smile.
-Friday, April 11th, today was a special day. It was the day my father became the new master of the Dojo. I wasn’t happy. Because I was losing my grandfather, who was the current master of the Dojo.
That was the end.
No kidding, the back of the page was completely blank, and it meant something very simple.
Friday, April 11th.
This date is the last date my mother wrote in her diary.
I put the diary down next to me and looked at my uncle.
This last sentence.
What does this mean?
It was clear that the father mentioned in this diary was the current fugitive, Frank Gunnar.
But what does the selection of a new master of the Taoist temple have to do with the death of the previous master?
When you think like that.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you this. When a new master is chosen for the Taoist temple, the previous master dies.”
I ended up frowning.
Dying?
Not in a metaphorical sense.
“Are you really going to die?”
“I don’t know the details, but the noble spirit of sacrifice… … is what is known.”
At that moment, my maternal uncle intervened.
“Let me explain this part in a little more detail.”
I turned my head and looked at my uncle.
“There is a place called the sanctuary in the Taoist temple. The current generation’s leader and the successor who will become the leader enter the sanctuary alone, and after a few days, only one successor comes down.”
“What about the other one?”
“Why is it called Seongso? It is a sacred ceremony where the bodies of the escapees are laid to rest and the new master of the Taoist temple is replaced. It is said that the bodies of the escapees from the past are laid to rest there.”
He tilted his head.
Did you say that?
“You speak as if you have never been there before.”
“That’s right. I’ve never been there. Not only me, but the only person who has entered and exited the sanctuary on this island is the current fugitive. My father. If you become a fugitive, you will go to the sanctuary with your father and come down alone from there.”
He shrugged.
“To sum it up, no one knows what happens inside… … but the escapees from the previous generation will definitely come down dead, and their bodies won’t be found, is that right?”
My uncle laughed.
As if there was nothing wrong with it.
As if they don’t even realize what the problem is.
Because it’s close, you can’t see it.
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My uncle laughed like a victim who is naturally fooled by gamblers in a casino.
“It’s a tradition that has been maintained for a long time, and only the master of the Taoist temple knows the secret. Isn’t that why it’s so great?”
“What is it?”
“The masters of a Taoist temple in one generation are those who inherited the Taoist temple from the sanctuary. And they do the same things to the next generation’s Taoist temple masters as their predecessors did. It’s not enough to say that it’s great. Isn’t that what we call a noble spirit of sacrifice?”
He chuckled and ended up laughing.
Well, that seems a bit over-the-top.
I stood up naturally from my seat.
Then I opened the drawer again and was about to pick up the diary and put it back in the drawer.
I stopped for a moment.
“master?”
Something is a bit strange.
Let me think about it.
This diary, why was it stuck ‘underneath’ this drawer?
The word ‘if’ comes to mind.
Really, why bother?
Looking at the contents, it wasn’t something so secret that it could be put in a drawer.
It looks like it was secured with something like tape to prevent it from falling off, and it was also finished separately to prevent it from being forcibly spread out. I really wonder why they went to the trouble of hiding it like this.
A diary that would never be discovered unless you looked at it very closely.
Hmm. I’m curious.
So I watched it again.
The last date in this diary is April 11th.
I heard from Ron that his mother and Ron escaped the island on April 16th.
5 days.
There’s exactly a 5 day difference.
The reason I say it’s strange is because, if you look at her diary, my mother consistently wrote in it once a day.
By the way, the last entry in this diary is April 11th.
For five days, your mother didn’t write a single diary entry?
Honestly, it’s weird.
Personally, really.
“That’s strange.”
I picked up the diary I was about to put away in the drawer.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Why are you suddenly doing that?”
Didn’t answer.
Let me emphasize this one more time.
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This diary. Is there really a need to hide this?
There’s no content?
[I guess you felt something.]
“Yes. Something is strange. Why would they hide this?”
I opened the diary again and read it all over again from the beginning.
“Umm… … .”
[There is nothing strange in the content.]
I wondered if it might be some kind of password.
Thanos’ name became Antos through an anagram.
I wondered if there might be some kind of anagram-like password in the diary.
Then, I ended up smiling faintly.
Could this be it?
The teacher who was sitting on my shoulder came down slightly as he saw that I was still looking through my notes and seemed to have lost track of the meaning.
Then he took his own notebook and opened it to the last page.
He slowly swept down that clean last page with a hand smaller than a bracken fern. His movements were very slow.
And then.
[… … Oh.]
He smiled with interest, as if he felt something.
[Here, there’s a slight trace of something being pressed.]
He smiled as if he didn’t know.
The teacher said to me like that.
[I guess it would be better to read this myself.]
For some reason, the teacher’s tone of voice seemed a little subdued.
It wasn’t that he was angry or anything, it was just the way the teacher usually behaved when he discovered a problem.
There was definitely something engraved on the back of this diary.
It could be said that he wrote with a constant force on a blank notebook with an inkless pen, leaving a very small, constant mark.
A child’s playful device that can’t even be called a password.
I don’t know the content.
But the Master knows.
Because you just interpreted it by hand and combined it in your head.
What is the content?
Then, like my teacher, I slowly swept the marks on the note with my other hand.
At the same time, I ended up frowning strongly.
The content was a little strange.
-April 14th. On that day, I saw the secret of the sanctuary that I should never have seen.
I never imagined that there would be such a secret, that it would be so ugly.
I thought it was a noble spirit of sacrifice.
Disgusting.
It’s so disgusting I feel like vomiting, and it’s so ugly that my head feels like it’s rotting away.
It makes me really sick.
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I have to leave this island.
I have to leave no matter what.
I proposed a deal to my grandfather and it worked out.
I will be leaving this island soon.
The reason I am leaving this diary is.
Because I want to give a chance to my only brother who tormented me so much.
If my brother sees this, I’ll give him some advice as his younger brother.
Run away without looking back.
Run away at any cost.
Otherwise.
Because you will become ‘that way’ too.
