Seolhwa looked around.

She could tell nothing of whose manor this was, or where.

Only that—unlike the previous Tests—it felt peaceful. Ordinary.

Fweee—

A cool, light breeze blew.

Turning her head with the wind, she saw a young boy crouched in one corner of the courtyard.

Seolhwa walked toward him.

The boy did not notice her approach.

He was sniffling.

Seolhwa looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing.

He was patting a small mound of earth.

It looked like a little grave.

“Yeon Hwi!”

At a call from somewhere, the boy whipped his head around.

Lest she startle him by standing right behind, Seolhwa quickly took a step back, but the boy was looking past her.

Seolhwa glanced down at herself.

She had substance, but it seemed the child could not see her.

“Yeon Hwi...!”

In that moment, the woman who had called came running.

She, too, passed right by Seolhwa as if Seolhwa were invisible and went to the boy.

Seolhwa unconsciously took one step back and watched the two.

“So here you were. I searched for you everywhere.”

Smiling in relief, the woman smoothed back the boy’s hair.

She looked to be his mother.

The boy sniffled and said,

“I buried a little bird. Maybe it fell from the nest. It was dead under the tree.”

The woman glanced at the small grave behind the boy, her brows drooping low as she soothed him.

“I see. The chicks you’ve been watching over all this time. You must be very sad.”

The boy called Yeon Hwi nodded.

“It looked cold.”

“You made it warm, so it won’t be cold now. My son is kind.”

The woman gathered her son into her arms and gently patted him.

The boy seemed tender-hearted, and his mother seemed warm-hearted as well.

Just then, a fierce gust of dust blew from somewhere—fwoooosh—

Seolhwa reflexively raised an arm to shield her face.

Presently—hahaha!—the hearty laughter of adults rang out.

Seolhwa opened her eyes.

The unfamiliar manor courtyard was as before.

But now the yard was packed with people and freight wagons, abuzz with noise.

“All right, all right! Present your chits first! Make a final check of your goods before departure! Caravan leaders going on ahead with the Escort Bureau, step forward!”

It seemed to be a caravan about to set out.

At each wagon, a few armed escorts and the merchants leading the caravan were making pre-departure checks; some groups, apparently traveling with an Escort Bureau, were forming up to receive wooden tokens.

“Then this place....”

A trading consortium?

Seolhwa walked slowly and looked them over.

Judging by the size of the departing caravan, it was a rather large trading consortium.

“Everyone’s attention!”

The man at the very front who had been directing the groups raised his voice again.

Clang, clang— With the dull ringing of hammered iron, the chatter died all at once and faces turned forward.

Presently, a man in the finest clothes among those gathered in the yard took the dais.

He seemed to be the Consortium Lord.

He spoke before all, cautioning them about the journey and urging safety.

Those gathered in the yard fixed shining eyes upon him, absorbed by the dependable Consortium Lord’s oratory.

When his words ended, the procession filed out of the manor in order.

He stood on the dais and sent them off as they went out one by one.

“Father—!”

At that moment, a young child’s voice sounded.

Seolhwa turned; there stood the boy just called Yeon Hwi and his mother.

Beaming, the boy ran to the Consortium Lord, and the Consortium Lord, smiling as brightly in return, swept him up in his arms.

“My son! Did you do well at the academy?”

“Mm! I have lots of friends, and studying was fun! They praised me for working hard at my letters!”

“Ahaha! As expected of my son! Splendid, splendid!”

Proud, the Consortium Lord hoisted his boy and burst out laughing.

The trusted head of a great consortium and his son.

And the Consortium Lord’s wife, watching with contentment.

The three were as harmonious as could be.

Just to watch them was to feel the warmth of a family.

Fwoooosh—

Dust rose again.

By now, Seolhwa was used to this.

When she opened her eyes once more, Yeon Hwi was laughing and running about with children.

Perhaps friends from the academy; they crouched and scrawled letters on the ground as they chattered.

With each whirl of dust, the phantasm showed the boy Yeon Hwi in happy scenes.

Yeon Hwi was bright and sociable.

There were always many friends around him, a harmonious family, and an environment that lacked for nothing.

Within that happy backdrop, Yeon Hwi grew apace.

Thanks to a father who did not fixate solely on profit and also looked to the poor, Yeon Hwi, too, grew into an upright character.

The Red Cloud Trading Consortium, which Yeon Hwi’s father ran, grew with the years until at last it became the great consortium that bestrode the district.

In Yeon Hwi’s twelfth year, he gained a lovely younger sister.

“Yeon Hwa!”

At Yeon Hwi’s call, a cute infant only just taking her first steps turned her head.

Her little mouth, round with baby fat, went “oh” when she spotted her big brother.

Yeon Hwa toddled toward him.

Fearing she might fall, Yeon Hwi hurried to her as well.

“Yeon Hwa, didn’t you miss your brother? Your brother missed you so much that he couldn’t focus on his letters!”

As her brother nuzzled her cheek in affection, Yeon Hwa burst into tinkling laughter.

In the midst of their reunion—as if after years rather than hours—something caught the little girl’s eye.

“Kyaa-oo—!”

Her [N O V E L I G H T] plump little finger pointed at the air.

Following that finger, a white butterfly was fluttering past.

With soft, fanning wings of white, it was a very beautiful butterfly.

Yeon Hwi and Yeon Hwa, clutching each other, stared blankly at the butterfly rising into the sky. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Fwoooosh—

Dust lifted.

Seolhwa still stood in the manor courtyard of Yeon Hwi’s home.

She felt an indefinable foreboding.

A chill air hung over a manor that had been only lively before.

“They say even the medicine the master fetched didn’t work. He had such trouble procuring it from the Outlands....”

“What are we to do, our young miss... hic...”

Hearing the maids wiping their tears, Seolhwa’s heart thudded down in tandem.

As if bewitched, Seolhwa moved toward the main quarters.

In that instant—

Whoosh—

Her view flipped; she was already inside a room.

“Yeon Hwa... our Yeon Hwa.... Hic...”

“Madam... forgive me.... Forgive me....”

The room was full of heavy air.

The little girl who had been laughing so brightly a short while ago lay on the bed with a face gone white.

Thin breaths, hwee-ek, hwee-ek, leaked from the child’s lips, and her mother sobbed against the bedding.

Perhaps because they had failed to bring back the medicine.

The Consortium Lord, gripping his wife’s hands, could only repeat “I’m sorry” over and over.

And in one corner of the room, tucked away—

Yeon Hwi knelt with his head bowed, swallowing his sobs.

For fear his beloved little sister might die; for fear his crying would make his parents suffer more.

Though he trembled, Yeon Hwi kept gulping down his sobs.

Fwoooosh—

Her sight shifted, and the jingle of bells sounded.

A procession in white climbed a mountain.

At the front, Yeon Hwa’s family broke into tears again each time the mother’s steps faltered and failed.

In the end, Yeon Hwa could not overcome the fever.

She was only three years old.

Watching the earth heap up over his beloved sister’s coffin, Yeon Hwi burst into tears.

From the still-young boy’s mouth came the cry of his sister’s name.

Fwoooosh—

Night.

Cold moonlight bathed the whole manor, a quiet, sharp-clear night.

Someone staggered out of the main quarters.

Standing in the middle of the courtyard, Seolhwa watched a woman in mourning white with her hair let down.

The Consortium Lord’s wife, and Yeon Hwi’s mother.

She tottered down the steps in perilously reeling steps and stood in the yard.

After staring up at the moonlight—bright as day—for a long while, she began to dance.

A dance neither beautiful nor graceful.

Only sorrow and desolation bled from that dance as she wept.

“Mother...!”

Not long after, a more grown Yeon Hwi ran out from the quarters.

Only then did Seolhwa realize much time had passed since Yeon Hwa’s death.

“Mother, the night air is cold. You will harm your health.”

Now an adult, Yeon Hwi wrapped her in a long coat he had brought as if by habit and led her back inside.

Step, step—the woman’s feet, treading the dirt, were already covered in countless cuts.

One could tell how long she had failed to emerge from her grief.

From about then, there were no friends around Yeon Hwi.

And from about then, the Red Cloud Trading Consortium his father ran began, little by little, to decline.