Chapter 4: A Brief Moment of Peace

The next morning, the woman woke with a puzzled expression.
She had been confined to bed for a long time. It was only natural that the sudden recovery left her unsettled.

Perhaps because it was her first time standing in a while, she was a little unsteady, but she left the hospital room on her own feet. When she eventually returned, her complexion looked just a little better.

The curse that had been the cause had already been returned.
As she was now, she was the picture of health—setting aside her diminished physical strength.

She sat down on the bed, gently lifted Rin into her arms, and spoke to her with a smile.

“Maybe it’s thanks to this little one?”

Saying that, she happily stroked Rin and went on with one trivial story after another.
All of them were off-the-mark guesses, but there was a light, cheerful note in her voice, and there was no trace of the pain and strain she had shown up until yesterday.

The person there was the woman she once had been.

When the doctor and the nurse came to check on her as well, they widened their eyes in surprise.
The doctor laughed, half joking, and said, “Do old dolls have some kind of blessing, I wonder?”

After that, her friends came to visit her.
It seemed they had rushed over in a hurry after hearing that her condition had improved.

Holding Rin in her arms, she talked about the doll.
“Maybe it’s thanks to this little one,” —and things like that.

Rin watched the scene quietly, coldly.

Last night’s curse reversal had simply returned the caster’s own curse exactly as it was.
If it had been an amateur, that would have been the end of it.
But if it was someone versed in the cursecraft—then of course, they would already have dealt with that.

If they had cursed another without even being able to do that much, the matter would be simple.
If not… then persuasion would be the only option.

If we talked things through, they would understand—through curses.