My wounds had healed.
Once they healed, I had to go to the housekeeper in charge of instruction to learn the rules.
I didn't want to, but my attendant said, "Every woman in the household must learn them. If you wish to be excused, Miss Kuang Wu, you would have to awaken an exceptionally powerful Cursed Technique..."
As he spoke, the attendant began to laugh, then looked at me with naked scorn. "...But how could that ever happen?"
His words showed me once again just how warped this clan was.
-Its sick worship of jujutsu sorcerers.
Whatever happened, I had to go back to the instructing housekeeper tomorrow.
I had been ill for far too long. About two months, probably.
The two lash wounds had only just about healed, carrying me straight from late autumn into winter.
My courtyard was freezing, and I hadn't been allotted even a scrap of charcoal.
Maybe my attendant had secretly taken it, or maybe Naoya Zenin had told him to.
-Oh, right. Speaking of Naoya Zenin, he hadn't come by in ages. Maybe it really was too cold here for that pampered young master, raised in the lap of luxury, to bear.
I was actually quite happy about that.
After all, he used to drop by every few days and put on the exact same performance. No matter how interested I had been at first, I was bound to get bored.
Without him coming around, I finally had some peace.
It had started snowing a couple of days earlier.
My courtyard wasn't big, and there were two stunted trees in it. Their leaves had withered now, leaving only bare branches with a light dusting of snow.
-Not a pretty sight.
There had actually been three stunted trees, but one was already dead when I first transmigrated here.
I had asked my attendant about it. He said it had died the previous winter, and there was nothing remarkable about that.
Curious, I asked, "Then why not replace it with a new sapling?"
The attendant merely looked at me with a sneer whose meaning was perfectly clear.
I understood at once.
Of course. Neither my status nor my strength warranted the Zenin Clan replacing a tree for me.
Just like this gray-white world, every bit of scenery in it would decay from its initial vitality into something utterly lifeless.
In winter, these two stunted trees had finally come to resemble the dead one. The three lifeless trees standing together looked fairly harmonious.
Though I knew that if those two trees managed to hold out through winter, they would sprout new buds next year, that didn't stop me from thinking-
If I stayed here any longer, maybe I would slowly turn into one of those completely dead, stunted trees myself.
If a stunted tree survived winter, it still had a chance to bud. But here in the Zenin Clan, there was no spring at all.
The longer I lived here, the more I discovered the Zenin Clan's endless pallor. It had no cycle like the four seasons, only a straight line leading deeper and deeper.
Only then did I suddenly realize that even the orphanage in my previous life had been far better than this wretched place.
...I had to leave this place. I had to leave the Zenin Clan.
Leave this place leave this place leave this place leave this place leave this place leave this place leave this place...
I seemed to have fallen into some strange train of thought.
My vision swam as I stared unfocused at the stunted trees before me. I seemed to be hallucinating again: once more, I actually saw the shadows stirring.
Sure enough, the Zenin Clan was no good. Though I did my best not to become like them, it had still affected me. I had actually begun hallucinating frequently.
Why?
Was I still someone who feared loneliness at heart? And during my time in this utterly fucked-up place, with its rigid rules and hidebound traditions-
I couldn't go out, had no electronics to entertain myself with, and had to endure mockery and barbed remarks every so often. Even though I didn't really take them to heart, had I still ended up a little twisted in the head?
Maybe this stunted tree of mine had already begun to wither.
...This wasn't looking good.
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