Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 300
“I was never enough. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make her happy.”
She spoke with self-mockery.
“I couldn’t accomplish anything on my own……”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Gypsies can place a curse even on a newborn child. Just as a priestess lays hands in blessing… gypsies lay curses. The curse of absolute death.”
A fairy tale came to mind, the one about a girl who pricks her hand on a spinning wheel and falls into a deep sleep. But that was just a fictional story.
Even if it were true, who would ever let a gypsy’s hand touch their own child’s head?
That was when he remembered the woman’s origins.
“Are you saying Cecilia was cursed?”
Lilith weakly nodded her head. Then she handed him a small slip of paper and said,
“I heard there’s a Stone of Eternal Life in Gatpolla that purifies all magic. If you have that stone, maybe you could save her.”
“……”
Should he believe such a fantastical story? As he hesitated, she spoke again. Things that had not happened in reality spilled out of her mouth in a stream.
“Do you have the gift of foresight or something?”
He asked half-jokingly, but the woman didn’t laugh.
“I didn’t see the future. I went back to the past. That child kept dying… Even if I managed to extend her life by a few years, it was useless……”
She stood, as if her work was done, and turned away, weary.
“I’m sorry to burden you with this. But truly, I could do nothing by myself.”
A few days later, when the woman’s prophecy came true, Logan opened the slip of paper she had left behind.
Inside were research notes on various forms of magic, her contact information, and a desperate plea.
‘If everything fails, please come to me.’
Logan put the unsettling note deep inside a drawer and looked at Cecilia.
She was radiant. She was so full of vitality, like a flower bud on the verge of blooming. No one would ever imagine her as a woman overshadowed by death.
Though something in his heart felt like a stone had gotten stuck, he couldn’t just go to Gatpolla based on Lilith’s request alone.
He would have to risk his life repeatedly, but ironically, Cecilia was the one who got in the way during that process.
How could he leave her behind? For a man who had promised to build a family, to recklessly risk danger on his own would have been a dereliction of duty.
After marrying her, Logan returned to the merchant group. He stopped fighting monsters and devoted himself to his family.
And…… not even a year later, he stood before his wife’s coffin.
It was a loss far too heavy to bear in the midst of newlywed life.
Only then did he remember Cecilia’s birth mother. Like a madman, he overturned all the furniture to find the note. He ran straight to her.
“Cecilia is dead.”
To say those words aloud was no different from having his heart carved out with a knife.
But the woman who heard of her daughter’s death was calm. As if she had experienced such things countless times.
“You didn’t go to Gatpolla…… did you?”
With her soft reproach, Logan’s face twisted in anguish.
“……I didn’t go.”
“I thought so.”
Lilith opened a drawer and took out a small dagger for self-defense.
Was she telling him to pay for failing to protect her daughter with his own life? If so, he would gladly do so. Logan closed his eyes.
But the one who was cut was not him, but Lilith’s own hand.
“What are you doing……?”
“I’m preparing the ritual.”
She calmly swept the floor and sat down. Using the dripping blood, she wrote characters on the wooden floor. She was quick, as if copying out a book she had memorized.
“There is a spell to turn back time. I’ve always used this to rewind time, and every time, I would start again from the same point and fail at another.”
Failure… She repeated the word quietly.
“This time, I intend to leave everything to you. I was never able to let her live an ordinary life, no matter what I did.”
If time was turned back, Cecilia would come back to life. No, he would be sent back. She would be there, as she always had been.
“Can I use this spell too?”
“If you use me as the sacrifice.”
“……”
“Don’t worry about it. The spell was always meant to use the caster as the sacrifice. It’s just that the subject changes. If you repeat it enough, you sort of get the hang of it. Eventually, you can portion out your remaining life and live a little longer, like I’m doing now. But for you, I’ll stake everything.”
“Let me be the one instead……!”
“Unless you’re a gypsy with monster’s blood, you can’t use the spell. This is the best way, so you really don’t have to feel bad.”
With that, Lilith drew him into the completed magic circle. And at the end, she asked him,
“If you go back, do you think you’ll succeed this time?”
Logan answered resolutely,
“I will succeed. No matter what.”
