City of Witches

1.

Both of them cast their lines over the sparkly water while holding each other close.

Although no racy events occurred and Lucy couldn’t see him squirm as she hadn’t made any dirty jokes…

She enjoyed the experience greatly.

What is the best word to describe this experience?

A tryst?

No, it isn’t that intense.

A date.

Yes. An innocent word that makes one’s heart race. Perfect.

The way he placed his jacket over her shoulders when he noticed them trembling…

The way he tried his best to avert his gaze despite the clear temptation in front of him…

Even the way he turned his head away, trying his best to breathe with his mouth—probably because he was too embarrassed to smell her body odor…

All of those gestures he made excited her, giving her the fluttering feeling that she hadn’t felt for so long.

The air that accompanied her throughout her way back to her private library was cold, but she strangely felt warm.

Her heart was still pounding excitedly, just like a kid who had just returned from an enjoyable trip.

“But… Is it really okay for me to indulge in this selfishness…?”

Countless years had passed ever since she turned a blind eye to these feelings.

For Diana’s sake… For protecting her honor as a countess… She turned away from those feelings, only occasionally unleashing it in her secret library.

Of course, she had no regrets.

“I don’t know anymore.”

The countess sat down in the library with a bitter smile on her face.

Relationships between people could change quickly and suddenly.

Just like how she had employed this ‘male witch’ without any particular thoughts at first, but he managed to catch her interest in just a few days.

Lucy Yesod could tell that she was the key.

The key to the turning point in their relationship.

Their relationship would definitely change depending on the way she acted.

“Because he is way too passive…”

If he were to suddenly embrace me from behind, or just sneak in a kiss or two while we were out there fishing, I would allow him to continue.

Seriously, he only does things that I explicitly allow him to do…

But that’s what makes him so likable.

“Maybe I should give him a little space instead?”

There was no need for her to rush.

While she was feeling a little anxious because of this at the moment, it wasn’t a big deal for her.

A hot black tea was the perfect black tea, but black tea that had been cooled down a little also had its own charm.

Especially if it was the same black tea one had been drinking for decades.

Sitting on the table was the third volume of the Devil’s Delivery Service.

It was Lucy’s choice of companion to ease her loneliness recently.

But today, rather than indulging in those explicit emotions, she wanted to immerse herself in this sentimental aftertaste.

She took out a new book.

A blank book without anything written on it.

This book would probably become a book that she wouldn’t allow anyone to see.

She then proceeded to write down today’s events, as if she was writing a diary entry while recalling all the moments that made her heartbeat quicken.

But she felt that if she only wrote those things down, it would turn out a little lacking.

Recounting the event that happened in reality without adding anything wouldn’t make a good novel.

So she added her personal twist and turn in her writing.

She wrote about a certain witch who went on a fishing trip with her apprentice witch’s tutor.

The tutor embraced her from behind, holding the fishing rod together with her.

After a period of teasing by the witch, the tutor became unable to resist her seduction and he made a bold move to kiss her.

At first, the witch tried to shake him off, but in the end, she gave up and accepted his tongue.

“Mhm…”

The countess continued to write at a rapid pace, her quill fluttered, moving without a rest.

If he did this…

This would happen…

She turned her experience into something fictional.

It was different compared to when she had to rely on her extremely old memories and imagination to write.

Her heart was pounding extremely quickly, as if everything that she wrote this time actually happened.

“Ahh…”

Before she knew it, her free hand, covered in a white glove, dug into the slit of her dress.

She leaned her body forward, flinching multiple times as she let her imagination run wild.

2.

It’s already late enough.

With that thought in her mind, Diana quickly walked through the hallway, heading toward the secret library.

This would be the first time she’d go there after a while, she could feel her heart pounding loudly.

To paraphrase her current feelings…

It was similar to how a child—who had pretended to fall asleep—roamed around the kitchen in the middle of the night, trying to find the candy jar that her mother had hidden. �

Since she felt like she was doing something bad, there was a tiny sense of guilt that she felt, but her excitement outweighed it by a lot.

In other words, she felt subtly tense, but it was enough to make other issues feel irrelevant to her.

-Creak!

Diana quietly opened the door.

On the table, the red cover of Devil’s Delivery Service instantly caught her eyes.

“Huu…”

She knew her mother had an incredibly good memory, so she couldn’t just let her guard down here.

There was a huge possibility that she would find out about what Diana had been doing just by noticing a single crease on the book’s page, or by noticing that the book was placed in a slightly different angle.

Diana leaned against the wall briefly, trying to confirm her surroundings before quietly opening the book.

She slowly turned the pages, skimming through part of the stories she had already read and went to the latest chapter.

“…Huh?”

But, she was met with a blank page.

Apparently during the time Diana stopped visiting this place, her mother hadn’t written anything.

She stared blankly at that white paper, making an expression similar to a raccoon watching its cotton candy dissolve in the water.

“Haa…”

After a long day of hiking and dragging herself out of water, she was completely exhausted.

She hyped herself up for this moment, but in the end, all that hype was completely in such an anticlimactic manner.

Diana leaned back in her chair in despair.

But then, one of the drawers in the table caught her eyes; it was slightly open, unlike usual where it was tightly shut.

She remembered the first time she scoured through the whole place. Back then, this particular drawer was empty, but today, there was a book inside.

“…”

Suddenly, she felt a shiver running down her spine.

All this time, she had been going back and forth to this secret library without giving much thought about it, but now she once again realized one thing.

Her mother also frequented this place.

Diana carefully took the book out from the drawer.

On its cover, there wasn’t any golden decoration unlike the other books, which meant her mother hadn’t come up with a title for this book yet.

-Rustle!

Apparently, her mother had written thirty pages worth of a story for the book.

But, for some reason, the story jumped straight to the third chapter instead of going through the first and second chapters first.

Her mother did leave some blank pages for those two chapters though.

“When did she write this?”

‘Under the Orion’ was the title for the third chapter.

Diana felt a little disappointed since she couldn’t read the story from the beginning, but she decided to read what was already there anyway.

Soon enough, her eyes widened.

Her heart rate soared to 200 in an instant.

The place written on the book was the exact same place that she and Siwoo went to earlier today.

“W-W-What…? W-What is this…?”

Diana mumbled to herself, her voice trembled greatly. She kept on reading word after word without blinking.

The more she read, the more shocked she became. Even her lips and eyelashes trembled at this point.

What was going on in the book was as follows.

There were two main characters; a witch and a man—the witch’s apprentice’s tutor. After the witch put her apprentice witch to sleep, she invited the tutor to a secret rendezvous.

Diana had an inkling as to who exactly the inspiration to those two characters were, but she didn’t stop even a moment to think about it deeply.

The man and the woman went to fish together, clinging to each other, indulging themselves in the romantic atmosphere.

As they did that, the witch constantly teased the man.

It was as if she was begging for his attention.

After vehemently rejecting her advances, the tutor eventually gave up and made his move.

He moved his hand, which was previously placed on top of the witch’s hand, to dig into the unexplored parts of her body.

Soon after, they were no longer able to hold back their hidden desires. They threw the fishing rod away and went to the nearby grassy fields, sharing kisses in between.

Then, they took off their clothes, sharing kisses until they were out of breaths, overlapping their naked bodies.

With the sound of the river’s stream, combined with the cricket’s singing as the background, they passionately explored each other’s bodies.

It was only after a strong release did their hot affair end.

After reading that far, Diana closed the book with trembling hands.

She didn’t know what kind of expression she was making, but she could tell that the corners of her mouth were twitching.

“…”

The witch’s apprentice’s tutor…

The description of the scenery that perfectly fit the Rabbit River…

The salmon and the man’s attitude…

Even a fool could tell what this book was based on.

“No way…”

Is this book really supposed to be a ‘novel’…?

The tutor’s personality, appearance…everything is similar to that man…

Also, the witch…ashen hair, violet eyes…exactly like mom’s…

In truth, she could easily just brush this matter off without thinking too deeply into it.

The problem here was that there were too many details that she noticed in the book that only further confirmed her speculations.

As a comparison, the witch in the Devil’s Delivery Service’s appearance also had semblance to her mother, but it was crystal clear that she had a completely different personality than her mother.

But it wasn’t the case at all with the witch in this book.

First, her mother’s writing style usually put less emphasis on dialogue and more into the psychological situation of the characters.

However, this book was different; it was mostly dialogue, making Diana think that it was some kind of script instead of a novel.

Furthermore, she could clearly see her mother in the witch’s part of dialogue. From her way of speaking, mannerisms, even the hard-to-understand jokes, all of them sounded like something her mother would say.

With that in mind, Diana reached a terrifying conclusion.

This book isn’t just a novel…

She knew that after their tutoring sessions Siwoo would visit her mother for his own tutoring sessions.

So, she surmised that the event on this book happened after they finished that tutoring session. Her mother did invite him to a secret date.

But she didn’t stop there, she even seduced him, laid down naked on the grassy patch and had a love affair there.

And…

Probably…

That happened just a few hours ago…

It was currently 2 in the morning.

Shin Siwoo’s tutoring session started at 9 pm, so they had plenty of time to do all that.

After doing it with him, her mother probably went back to this secret library to write the book.

In other words, this book wasn’t a novel or anything, but rather a diary that recounted what happened tonight.

“Ah…”

With that revelation, the gears finally clicked in her head.

She finally found all the missing puzzle pieces.

The reason why her mother, who had always shown her disdain to men, assigned a male tutor to her.

It’s because she’s fond of him and she wants to keep him by her side…

The reason why she held classes in her private study every single night with that man.

It’s because she wanted some time alone with him…

Finding out that two characters in a novel were having a sexual affair and finding out two real people were having a sexual affair brought two different feelings altogether.

In Diana’s case, the thought of two people that she knew having a sex like a pair of animals made her feel sick.

She felt betrayal and disappointment.

But at the same time, she wanted to understand her mother’s standpoint.

It was filthy.

And she knew that this kind of curiosity was dangerous.

But…

The vivid description of a certain man’s body refused to leave her mind.

Shin Siwoo…

With all those thoughts swirling in her head, Diana stumbled her way out of the room.