Episode 14: Lin’s Past

The girl walked relentlessly across the cold snow with an empty stomach.

There was no specific destination; she simply walked without a purpose.

She grew up in a poor family, and her parents passed away due to illness.

Naturally, with no money to buy medicine, all she could do was watch her parents gradually weaken.

“Oh, God, please help Mom and Dad.”

However, the girl’s prayers were in vain, and her parents passed away.

With that, the girl had no options left.

In a small thatched-roof shack, an adult man entered and took the girl away.

They were slave traders attempting to sell the girl to another country by sneaking her onto a trading ship.

She had no means to resist.

After days of exhausting herself on the ship, it eventually wrecked in a storm just a little distance from its destination.

“Guh!”

Struggling not to drown, the girl somehow washed ashore in a foreign land.

There, she was carried by a carriage while resting from exhaustion, only to find herself in a neighboring country.

“Where… is this?”

Getting off the carriage and asking the coachman, she was misunderstood as a beggar due to her ragged appearance and being faced with a drawn sword.

“Eek!”

Panicking, the girl ran towards the forest, her legs and hands turning red.

The cold froze her body, sapping her strength.

Finally, her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the snow.

“(Mom, Dad, soon… I’ll be with you too…)”

Closing her eyes and on the verge of losing consciousness, she was awakened by a light shining on her face.

Then someone picked her up, brushed off the snow covering her face, and checked her condition.

“Get a warm blanket!”

Those words reached Lin’s ears.

However, at that moment, Lin lost consciousness.

When she woke up, Lin found herself in a luxurious room in an unfamiliar foreign land.

What was this soft bed?

As she looked around, everything seemed unfamiliar.

“Are you awake?”

“…?”

A boy was staring at Lin.

What beautiful blue eyes, she thought.

But more importantly, she couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“You collapsed in the snow, remember?”

“…”

She still couldn’t understand his words.

Lin realized she had come to a foreign land, and he was also from another country.

“Can you wait a moment?”

“(Nod)”

Leaving the room for a while, he returned with something resembling a thick dictionary.

Flipping through the pages, he spoke hesitantly, searching for something.

“What… name…?”

Thinking he might be asking for her name, Rin responded.

“Lin.”

“Lin! You can rest here for a while, and then… um… it’s not coming across well like this.”

Flipping through the dictionary again, he conveyed his message with words.

“Live, you… here.”

Guessing from the words, Lin wondered if he was saying she could live here. Perplexed by the uncertainty in her expression, the boy gently patted her head.

“Lin, you can stay here.”

At that moment, Lin didn’t understand what was being said, but she somehow felt that she was welcome here.

The boy visited Lin’s room every day, gradually learning words and attempting to communicate.

Little by little, Lin began to establish a connection with the people in the house.

It would be a little while longer before she learned that the boy’s name was Oswald.

◇◆◇

“It’s not advisable, perhaps because the moon is out. I remembered that day.”

Lin murmured while looking out of her room’s window.

Oz and Lin continued studying, learning words to communicate, and by the time Lin could live comfortably, she expressed her desire to work as a maid.

And one day, Oz said something to Lin.

“Lin means dignified. I think your parents gave you that name in the hope that you’d live that way.”

“Oz-sama, Mom, Dad. Am I living a dignified life?”

Her whispered words faded into the darkness of the night, illuminated only by the moon.