Chapter 23: Lost in the Rain

Time had faded the face of memory. Perhaps only touch could feel its outline again.

Floris had finally worked up the courage to chase him. It wasn’t graceful. She climbed over walls, fell, ignored the pain, and ran stumbling after him.

She knew she was being foolish. In what she was doing, and in the idea she couldn’t even explain to herself.

In the end, Floris, who had only his faint trail to follow, got lost somewhere unknown. She called out, but woke no one. Time blurred in her mind.

‘Where am I?’

Fear wrapped around her heart. She reached out frantically, grabbed everything she touched, and tried to tell herself through touch what each thing was, where she was.

‘Stupid, stupid me…’

“Foley, are you there?”

“Is anyone there?!”

“Anyone!”

“Where am I? Where am I…”

She kept calling out, hopelessly. It seemed someone was about to hear her. But then she felt a chill on her skin.

It was raining.

The cold rain fell on Floris’s body, closing the little window that had seemed about to open and dousing the flame of relief in her heart.

She had run out. But she hadn’t found the boy she liked.

The boy she liked hadn’t stopped for her.

This was what she deserved. The hesitant, cowardly her deserved it.

She drew her hand back.

Even if she wanted to make up for it, even if she had chased after him, it was no use now.

The rain had come. The cold was seeping into her body.

She didn’t want to call out anymore. The pain of emotion was the deadliest kind. It strangled her heart.

She coughed up fresh petals, streaked with bright, glaring blood.

The petals fell into the flowing rain and were carried away with it. Her vivid blood thinned in the rain until it was nearly transparent.

As if it had never existed.

The girl didn’t even know she had coughed up blood. The rain was playfully spinning in her palm.

No need to hold these petals anymore.

She let go.

The petals and the blood were carried off by the rain.

With them went the world the girl could hear and touch.

The rain would wash it all away.

“…”

Even now, she still hadn’t gotten a single thing right.

She sank into darkness. She didn’t want to struggle anymore.

But…

“Floris?”

She heard a voice. It might have been an illusion.

It was a woman’s voice, one she felt she had heard not long ago. Whose voice was it?

How she wanted to open her eyes and see who it was.

The rain muffled the voice. She couldn’t even tell whose it was.

“What are you doing out here? Get up.”

A hand grabbed hers and pulled her up from the ground.

She wanted to cry. Luckily, it was raining. No one could tell.

“I’m fine… Lady Saint.”

Floris recognized the voice. It was Corollis.

“I just got lost by accident…”

“That’s all…”

…

Corollis didn’t call out her lie. She glanced at Lane. His eyes seemed to say, the rest is up to you.

In his eyes, comforting people, or soothing them with words, was something Corollis, as the Saint, would do better.

In fact, both Corollis and Lane had noticed that something was wrong.

They had been following the Abyss’s trace, and it broke off at the city wall. This was an industrial district with few people around, which was why no one had heard Floris calling out along the way.

There were already few people here. On top of that, the shops nearby hadn’t opened for the day, and then there was the rain. Only this lonely girl remained.

The Abyss’s trace ended here, but they found Floris instead. They had no idea how she had held out in the rain all alone.

Blind as she was, in such an unfamiliar place, she must have been terrified.

Corollis held an umbrella over Floris, keeping the rain off her. It couldn’t drive away the cold, but at least she was no longer being pelted.

Corollis didn’t ask more. She didn’t ask how Floris had come here, whether she had sensed any Abyss monsters or traces, or anything else.

Lane and Floris were, of course, different in gender.

So it had to be Corollis who took Floris’s wrist. It gave the blind girl something to hold on to, let her know someone was beside her.

Floris couldn’t see, but she could tell the Lady Saint was a very gentle person.

Because she said, softly:

“We’ll take you back first.”

“We’ll ask about the rest once you’re home. Don’t hurt yourself anymore.”

So Corollis and Lane brought Floris back to her shop. She stumbled along the way, but when she touched her familiar counter, she finally felt her heart relax.

In her unseeing eyes, the shape of the world around her finally took form.

Here was the table. Over there, the cabinet. The money was kept there, the pruning shears over there.

Here was the lock.

‘Hmm?’

‘Where’s my lock?’

…

Corollis boiled hot water for Floris, then waited with Lane at the counter while Floris washed up, so she wouldn’t catch cold.

Sure, Lily had been male in her past life, but she didn’t need to go in and bathe with Floris. Floris could manage it herself. No need to take advantage.

Corollis really should thank that fellow transmigrant. That person had spread some concepts of hygiene in this world. Corollis hadn’t known at first whether this world even had things like sewers.

But now almost every city had them, and the word “cold” existed. There was no bloodletting, no demon curses, nothing of the sort.

She had originally thought the other world she’d transmigrated into would have sanitary conditions like the medieval stereotypes from her past life. Fortunately, there was magic. And there was that fellow transmigrant.

She had always been curious about what kind of person the Savior Saint Veino was. A fellow transmigrant, and yet a person of such noble character.

It felt unreal.

“Lady Saint, what are you thinking?”

Seeing Corollis looking distracted, Lane asked.

“Ah… Nameless Hero, you don’t have to be so formal. Just call me Corollis.”

“I have no surname. This is my name.”

Corollis looked at Lane and sank into a new kind of thought.

‘Does he even remember me? Me, as Fayrol?’

Corollis thought about it. She didn’t like putting things off. A casual glance landed on the cloth pouch of tools at Lane’s waist, and after a moment’s thought, she knew what she wanted to say.

“Nameless Hero, is that pouch on you the work of that genius craftsgirl, Fayrol?”

Corollis asked, though she already knew the answer. That pouch was from a batch she had mass-produced early on, and her memory of it had faded so much that she only remembered it now at the sight of it. But it was the perfect way to bring it up.

Lane looked at his waist and nodded.

“Then do you know her? That genius craftsman, Fayrol.”

Corollis waited eagerly for his reply.

Lane thought it over carefully, then replied:

“No. How would I ever know a craftsman that famous…”

What Lane didn’t see was how quickly Corollis’s eyes dimmed.

‘How could you… not know me?’

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