To Marlene, whom I love more than anyone in the world. It has been truly a long time since I picked up a pen. The sensation of something wrapped between my fingers and exerting effort to support it felt so unfamiliar. At first, I picked up the quill and waved it this way and that, you see. So please understand if my handwriting is not straight. Your sister is working hard at rehabilitation right now, you know.
Even now, having become somewhat healthier, I sometimes dream. A dream like this: regaining my health is all a delusion, and in reality, I am still just a patient lying on a sickbed waiting for the day I die. A dream like that. Quite funny, isn’t it?
Amidst all that, I thought of you countless times. You would visit me every single day, me who could not move even a fraction on the bed, and personally change the vase water, hold my hand, and chatter away endlessly.
I was so grateful for that. You must be the only sister in the world who could do this much for a sister without a single drop of shared blood. Isn’t that right, Marlene?
You always used to say: “Nobody will ever chase after my older sister as much as I do.” True to those words, you always followed me.
Whenever I learned a new instrument, picked up a foreign language, bought a dress, attended a ball, or made a friend, you chased after every single one of them. Back then, I just thought it was adorable. Since you were such a shy child, I naturally assumed it was only right for you to follow along behind me, who always walked ahead. But I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that you would even follow me all the way to my fiancé.
That is right. When did it start? When did you start kissing Richard? And when did you start trying to kill me? No, wait. Perhaps I was just foolishly ignoring it all this time. You hated me from the very beginning, did you not? Ever since you found out I was an adopted child, you despised me like a thorn in your eye. From that moment on, you tried to take everything away from me. You snatched away the instrument I played, the foreign language tutor who taught me, my dresses, my ball invitations, and my friends, taking every last one of them.
Yet, I refused to believe it. The you that I knew, the one who was just beginning to understand the world, blinking her small, adorable eyes and smiling so lovingly, I believed she was not the kind of child who would do such things. I believed that if I just tried hard enough, you could return to your old self.
“Your old self,” how ridiculous is that? The terrifying greed and hideous nature you displayed were your true self. I was truly living under a delusion. What must you have been thinking as you watched me like that? I am curious, Marlene. How were you feeling when I died?
You were smiling. You were smiling more happily than at any other moment I had ever seen. Right in front of me as I vomited blood and convulsed, you were kissing Richard, who used to be my fiancé.
So, how are you now? Are you satisfied that I am dead? Are you happy receiving the foolish affection of such a pathetic, half-witted man? Yes, I suppose you are. Because you are a shy child wrapped in timidity, yet harboring a monstrous greed deep inside your belly that no one could ever imitate.
You must be rejoicing. You must be happy. I am certain that my thought of you perhaps raising a toast in front of my corpse is far from wrong.
However, Marlene. You will not be able to be happy anymore. Because I am now going to cast aside my arrogance, my affection, and my irrational sense of morality. And I am going to tear down your immense greed.
I swear to God, not a single person in this world will be more miserable than you.
Well then, see you again. When would be a good time for the next letter?
From your older sister who always loved you, returned from death, Charlotte.
“It was a helplessly lonely life,” Charlotte Aubry muttered as she fumbled through her final breath.
In truth, lying there covered in a silk blanket and calling one’s life lonely might feel like sheer deception, but Charlotte truly, bitterly felt that loneliness, knowing that her solitude was something only she could understand.
What was it like back in the orphanage, where even the memories are now faint? Having never even been given a name and always being called things like “you” or “hey,” it would be a stretch to imagine that she had lived an affluent life. And yet, if one were to ask whether she was not lonely after being adopted into the Duke of Aubry’s household, that was not the case either.
Before the public sentiment, boiling with anger against the tyranny of the imperial family, finally exploded, the nobles rushed to provide relief to the poor, eager to be the first. They carved out just a tiny fraction of the mountains of wealth they had hoarded and tossed it into the streets.
The foolish common people, completely unaware of the fact that hundreds of their own minuscule storehouses had been plundered to fill the massive storehouses of the nobility, simply lost their minds over the tiny loaf of bread dropped right in front of them. Going even further, the household of the Duke of Aubry, holding responsibility for the finances of the Palomon Empire, even showed its face at the orphanage, saying to the starving commoners:
“Listen here, are there not even more pitiful children right here?”
These children do not know who the mother who gave birth to them is, nor do they know their father’s face. From the moment they began to take their first steps into this vast world, they had already lost everything! That was how passionately he appealed. Going even further, he said, “Are you more pitiful than these children? If you truly think so, take this food that I am giving to the orphanage. But bear in mind that your actions will be known by God, by you, and by these children.” He made such an appeal, or rather, he even misled them.
By nature, human beings feel a sense of superiority when looking at those below them, and awe when looking at those immensely high above them. In front of those below, they feel no shame no matter what they do, but in front of those above, they feel so ashamed that they cannot even hold a fork properly. Therefore, the common people dared not criticize the Duke of Aubry, nor did they even think of criticizing him, and instead began to consider themselves human beings who knew shame. As a result, they took a piece of bread from the bundle of bread they had been given and handed it to the children.
This method of casting the blame not onto the upper class, but onto themselves, was unexpectedly effective. Intoxicated by a strange sense of shame they had never felt once in their entire lives, the people angrily insisted that they must help their social inferiors, and furthermore, they began to watch one another, acting as if they were competing to see who was less shameless. However, such a phenomenon would be very brief. Thinking that verbal criticism and appeals devoid of any responsibility would not last long, the Duchess of Aubry reached out her hand to a child at the orphanage. “I will take this child with me.”
It was a rumor widely spread even down to the alleys of the slums that the Duke and Duchess had been childless for a long time and were therefore considering adoption. Yet, so suddenly? Not even the child of a local viscount, but adopting an orphan girl? People thought the Duchess was talking nonsense.
However, the Duchess completed the adoption procedures right on the spot, and when the Duke, who had been on a regional tour, returned, she rode in a carriage together with the child.
She had truly adopted a plebeian girl from the orphanage!
This fact spread rapidly throughout the entire capital and the entire empire, as if someone had intended it, and the Duke and Duchess of Aubry received the support of the people more than ever before. That was already a story from fifteen years ago. Charlotte, meaning Charlotte who had been led away by the hand of the Duchess of Aubry in a daze, granted the Duke’s family name, and given the name Charlotte, could not shake the thought that all of this was like a well-crafted play.
The Duchess, who had smiled gently in front of the people and held her hand, shook off Charlotte’s hand the moment she got into the carriage, pinching her nose while spraying perfume dozens of times. And what about the Duke? After examining Charlotte’s face closely as if to check whether her eyes, nose, and mouth were properly attached, he gave her the name Charlotte and thereafter treated her as if she did not exist at all, showing no interest.
Although she was a young child of five years old, Charlotte was quite clever and immediately realized that the Duke and Duchess had not adopted her out of genuine goodwill, and she also immediately recognized that her value of existence was merely that of a doll to be shown to the people.
If she had been a child with even the slightest bit of pride, she would have run away from that place or shown a rebellious attitude. However, Charlotte had been starving for too long and had been lonely for too long. She did not want to let go of that small, warm touch, even if it was a lie. So, Charlotte said, “I will do whatever you tell me to do.”