Chapter Three Hundred and Forty: Price of Baptism (Mark’s POV)
“—Teresa!? You’re alive?”
When they entered a tavern filled with smoke that smelled even more bitter and unhealthy than medicinal incense, the intimidating-looking owner stared at Teresa as though he had seen a ghost.
“How awful! You thought I was dead?”
“What are you doing dragging around a bunch of well-bred-looking brats? You… no, never mind that. Just get out of here right now.”
Thinking that the man was being unbelievably rude, Mark remained silent behind Teresa.
The owner scrunched up his nose.
“He’s coming.”
“Really? I thought he’d be in a dungeon somewhere since it’s already afternoon.”
“He’s been drunk solid lately.”
“Missing me, maybe?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’d kill you if you met. Get out of here, fast.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Teresa answered lazily and turned around, walking back out of the tavern the way they’d come. Mark had no idea what was happening, but simply followed along.
“Doesn’t seem to be a good time here. Want to go grab something to eat?”
“Um, about being killed…?”
“Maybe some cranky adventurer is coming. Don’t know, don’t care!”
It was obviously more than that, but Mark couldn’t bring himself to push further with Teresa laughing it off so easily. They followed Teresa through a strangely narrow passage between buildings, until they ended up in a cramped alley. Teresa walked on with her usual confident stride and entered one of the run-down apartments.
Then she let herself straight into a room. Mark wasn’t sure whether he should follow, and hesitated—but a sharp cry erupted from inside, and they all rushed in.
“Why are you back here!? Get out of here! Get out!”
A red-haired woman was screaming. She looked like she’d just woken up, hair a tangled mess, clothes wrinkled beyond reason. She was clutching a cushion and beating Teresa with it.
“I’d rather have been barren than given birth to something like you!”
Even without hearing those words, the relationship between the woman and Teresa was obvious. The woman’s contorted face looked exactly like Teresa’s. Mark tried to let go of Lena’s hand to step forward and stop her from hitting Teresa, but Michael moved first.
“Beautiful lady! A frowning face doesn’t suit you at all, does it?!”
Mark seriously questioned Michael’s sanity. Teresa, still being hit, was staring up at Michael with an unbelievable expression. The woman froze, blinking at him in a daze.
Even if that had been his plan, Michael was still holding the same decisive expression, and Mark continued to seriously doubt his sanity.
Eventually the woman was the first to recover. She raised her hand and slapped Michael across the cheek. The sharp crack of it made Mark wince, and he rushed forward.
“We’re leaving! Come on, let’s go! Michael, quit sulking and get up!”
“Ow, that hurt… that actually really hurt…”
Mark helped the dejected-looking Michael to his feet. Teresa stood up on her own with a composed expression, brushing the dust from her clothes.
“I’m taking some money. You’re my mother, so you owe me at least a little allowance, right?”
“Get out—!”
The woman screamed and burst into tears. She was the one who’d said something terrible, and yet she cried with the face of a victim.
Teresa’s expression didn’t change. She picked up a coin purse that had fallen to the floor, then strolled out of the room.
Mark tried to follow after her, but something stopped him. Lena had stopped walking. She stood staring down at the red-haired woman crouched on the floor, crying wretchedly, with an intense gaze.
“That just now? My mother. She got treated as an inconvenience by her husband’s family to begin with after having someone like me, and when they finally threw her out, she blamed me.”
Teresa was eating a wild boar stew that was extravagant for something served in a town tavern, and answered Mark’s question with the air of someone discussing nothing in particular.
“She gets money every month as hush money, so I drop by sometimes to collect some of it. Free meal, basically.”
“Hush money? For what?”
“Because they don’t want anyone knowing I might be the child of a man from that family. If they were serious about burying the truth, they’d have paid to silence me as well.”
What Teresa meant by "someone like me" was people like Mark and the others. A hollow feeling settled in Mark’s stomach. The stew in front of him looked delicious, meat-filled and rich, but he couldn’t eat. Next to him, Michael was eating heartily.
“I envy how carefree you seem.”
“Mm?”
Michael looked up, blinking. Teresa gave him a dubious look too.
“Actually, are you stupid? Were you trying to flirt with her or something? Even if you were trying to help me, it made no sense.”
Normally Teresa would have said something like “mind your own business.” But Michael’s behavior was so genuinely baffling that she was simply at a loss.
“I thought I’d try to make your mother laugh, Little Teresa…”
Michael swallowed what was in his mouth and offered something resembling an explanation.
“Well, I guess it was the kind of situation where the options were either laugh or beat you to death. If I were in her shoes, I’d also have gone with beat.”
“That’s because she doesn’t think of us as human beings.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Normal people sometimes forget that we’re human just like they are, don’t they?”
Michael kept the same easygoing smile, the same tone throughout. But Mark felt a chill run down his spine and couldn’t stop staring at him. Teresa was watching Michael with a furrowed brow, looking almost the same way Mark felt.
Michael, paying no attention to their gazes, continued in exactly his usual manner:
“So to remind them that we feel pain, that we cry when things are hard—I make them laugh. Because when you can make someone laugh, they remember!”
He was the same Michael as always. Smiling that bright smile that made you think he’d been sheltered and carefree all his life, protected by his sister and his noble birth.
“That the person in front of them is still human, even without magical power!”
Mark had never been treated the way Teresa had. Because the village he grew up in was a small farming community on the outskirts of a dungeon’s sphere of influence, and no one had assessed his magical power until he was older.
And he had left the village almost entirely of his own will. Not wanting to be a burden—though, thinking back on it now, there had been a certain way that things had been arranged to make it feel like his own will.
He had always thought Michael had it better than him. That Michael had been pampered and sheltered all his life. Mark had never experienced anything that would have led him towards the kind of understanding Michael described.
“Noble society sounds terrifying. Oh, you don’t have to go into detail. I don’t want to ruin my meal.”
Teresa said it, then resumed eating as if she’d heard nothing at all. Michael tilted his head with a little "Oh?" and went back to his food.
The only ones whose hands had stopped moving were Mark and Lena.
Lena sat with her head bowed, staring into her stew, her face unreadable—impossible to tell whether she was listening or not. She didn’t move at all.
