Not only the townspeople, but also the rich who come from afar because of rumours, and even the lords.
”You’ve reached the end of your patience. Is that why you put a curse on the town?”
“‘Ha, come on. I didn’t do it. But I understand the feelings of the “sorcerer” who put a curse on …… this town. The man must have been thinking.”
–If you want me to curse others so badly, I’ll curse you all together.
I think it was painful. It must have been unbearable.
But that’s just venting.
If the people of the town had grown tired of him, he should have just closed his “sorcerer” business, hidden it, and gone to live far away from them. Since she had hidden her savings for many years, it would have been no problem until Nanalee was on her own.
”Why didn’t you take Nanalee and leave town? That would have solved some of the problem.”
The old lady glared at me.
Yes, I know.
I know everything.
I know that this old lady didn’t bend her convictions for some petty reason like “venting out”.
“I couldn’t, could I? Nanalee said she never wanted to leave the town where her father and mother were laid to rest.”
With a start, Nanalee shook herself.
The old lady’s doubts about me grew. She began to suspect that I had a limited mind-reading skill.
But I didn’t stop.
”If you make the town too rough to live in, Nanalee is bound to give up on it. Even if it would cause her a few years of hardship, you took a risk, believing that it would ultimately lead to her happiness.”
If there had been more proper communication between grandmother and granddaughter, this misfortune might not have happened.
I feel that if the grandmother had explained her reasons properly, she could have persuaded Nanalee.
But it is not unreasonable.
A granddaughter who did not even know about her birth.
The grandmother, who had heard her name so much that she was sick of it.
Although they cared for each other, they could not share their true feelings.
“Grandma ……”
The old lady relaxes and Nanalee lazily raises her upper body. She faced her grandmother squarely and squeezed her wrinkled hands.
The old woman became calm as if possessed, and her tone softened.
“This girl, you know, has a good sense of capacity. She is kind and attentive. Surprisingly, she can handle everything with ease. She’s a scaredy-cat and a crybaby, but no good man would leave her alone.”
With beads of tears in her eyes, she gently placed her hand on her granddaughter’s head.
“I wonder if I’ve become an old geezer. I swore I would never curse anyone,” se said, “but at the end of my life, I made a fool of myself. Well, that’s just as well. If you curse someone, it will come back to you. That’s exactly what happened to me…..”
The old lady looked resigned, but somewhat refreshed.
But there is one person who is not convinced.
“It’s not your fault, Grandma.”
“Mmmm, thank you. But a sin is a sin and punishment must be taken….”
“No, no, no, no. It’s really not your fault. Because, because ……, oooh, oooh…….”
Nanalee tried desperately to say something, but she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
So I took over.
“Yes, it’s not your fault, old lady. Because your curse didn’t work at all.”
Huh? Among all the people who were present, only Nanalee’s face was stiff.
“Grandma, curses can be covered up so that people don’t know they’ve been cast, right?”
“Ah?… ah ……. That’s what I did to the town.”
”Well, then maybe, though…”
I know the answer, but I’m going to formulate a question.
“Can you do it so that they don’t even know they’ve been un-cursed?”
A “Curse” is a kind of deception.
In order to avoid being noticed, they hide the fact that the curse has been lifted, and look to see how the other party is doing, or retaliate when they feel at ease.
It is said that this kind of deception is rampant.
It is true that the old woman did put a “curse of decay” on the town. But the curse was lifted immediately after that, and it was covered up so that no one would know about it.
“Don’t be stupid! A curse on the scale of an entire town? Right after, instantly? You’d have to be a better sorcerer than I am to do that.”
You’re starting to sound like your granddaughter, aren’t you? Or the other way around. So the grandmother originally had this tone of voice and Nanalee was copying her?
They are good friends.
“Who in the world would–?”
“I.. I did”
Silence fell for a moment.
“I’m the one who un-cursed it….”
“Nanalee? But you…..”
I was afraid of ” sorcery” and didn’t want to learn how to do it. No one believed that it was impossible to curse someone, to lift a curse, or to be involved in a “curse”. But….
–It’s not that I can’t do it. I just won’t do it.
She was afraid of “Sorcery”.
But she knew how to do it.
She had been watching for a long time. Everything about the “sorcerer” she admired so much, which was refined because she only did curse removal.
Her talent is indeed outstanding.
But what made her a “sorceress” was the fact that there was no better role model nearby.
“I didn’t know how to hide it well, so I wasn’t sure if I could do it right, but I worked hard at it and did it well,” she said. “If they knew that I had lifted the curse, my grandmother would be forced to work too hard again. I didn’t want her to harm herself.”
“Well, then, why? Why did the town decline?”
“That’s also what Nanalee has been saying all along,” he said.
The lord who rules the town is an outrageously selfish man and a fool who can’t even play good politics.
And not just in that town.
Other towns in the territory are also in decline, to varying degrees.
The lords are now living in fear of when an inspection from the central government will come and bring their many injustices to light.
I was finally relieved, even though I knew it was inappropriate.
I learned something I had never known until I heard the old lady’s story.
Based on her story, I read and learned about the suspicious events that took place in this area.
There is a definite “evil” in this case.
An entity that brought misfortune to an innocent old lady and her granddaughter.
“That person” heard the story of the famous “magician” from a young couple. Using the power of her “curse,” he planned to kick out his rivals and rise to the top. He persistently urged the couple to “call her over”.
However, the couple flatly refused.
The angry “person” framed the couple and killed them, making it look like an accidental death.
He sought out a wandering “sorcerer” and summoned him, saying, “My granddaughter is lonely and alone.”
The “sorcerer” who had arrived at the right time, however, did not take up the man’s offer to “curse his rivals and defiant ones.”
Misinterpreting the “Can’t curse” complaint as “losing the ability to curse,” “that guy” gave up for once and distanced himself from the “sorcerer.”
If you can’t curse, why don’t you just kill them? With such a simple idea, he killed his rivals one after another, making their deaths look like accidents.
They got a taste of success as a once good couple.
In this way, “that man” achieved the highest position in the land.
But after a few years, when his position is finally in jeopardy, he wants to pin all the blame on one old person.
He blames the old woman’s “curse” for all the bad things that have happened to him.
“All right, then, let’s get going.” Mel said.
“Mel, where are we going?”
I chuckled at everyone who tilted their heads.
“…to teach the bad guys a lesson.”
Now, let’s push for a happy ending.
Even if we can’t save many people, at least we can make two “sorcerers” happy.