WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 145: Javert’s Iron and Justice (12)
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A long story.
About a tragedy, and something warped.
“...”
I simply listened in silence.
The teacup on the table had long since gone cold.
As I toyed with its lukewarm surface, my fingers lightly tapped the rim.
My breathing remained calm.
Tick-tock-.
The clock hands ticked busily.
The silence was briefly broken.
An old man with completely white hair sat before me.
His wrinkled brow was furrowed, making his haggard complexion look even worse.
“...It was all my fault.”
Valter Droit.
After a brief silence, the old man suddenly broke it with a confession.
“Because no one but me made Javert what she is.”
Valter’s eyes were full of regret.
An old man confessing sins he had carried for years.
I felt like a priest sitting on the other side of a confessional screen.
Until the old man finished unburdening his heart, I did nothing but wait calmly.
“After losing Serian... I was consumed by grief. At times, I was consumed by anger as well. Vengeance boiled within me, and hatred and murderous intent kept rising in my throat. I could think of nothing except killing those behind this incident and uprooting every member of the Cult in the world.”
A blind old man.
Having lost his reason, he pursued a single path, driven by emotion.
“So, I did not take care of Javert.”
The old man did not say that he had been unable to care for her.
He said that he had not cared for her.
A few words he pulled out as though reproaching his reflection in the tea.
Perhaps that choice of words came from self-loathing and guilt.
“She lost her mother before her very eyes. She must have thought it was all her fault. She must have cried, blamed herself, hated herself, and missed Serian.”
She had only been fourteen.
An age when childhood had just ended and adolescence had barely begun.
“While Javert suffered so terribly, I was not by her side.”
It was the old man’s sin.
No. I did not know whether it truly deserved to be called a sin, but Valter himself seemed to believe it did.
His voice sank even lower.
The marks time had carved into his aged neck stood out clearly.
His eyes were on the boy, but his gaze was directed somewhere farther and deeper.
“If only I had been a little more clear-headed...”
Humans live in three different times.
They remember today while reminiscing about yesterday, and imagine tomorrow while reminiscing about yesterday.
Humans are beings who live simultaneously in a past, present, and future that cannot coexist.
That is why balance matters so much in human life.
If you become buried in memories, you become blind.
If you cling to recollections, you become an antique.
If you drown in imagination, you become a soap bubble.
“I should not have left that child alone.”
In the old man’s case, he had become an antique.
His clouded eyes were looking back on the days that had passed.
“I wanted revenge.”
“...”
“So I did not stop Javert when she said she wanted to become an Investigator. I thought it was the right path. No, I knew it was the wrong path. I simply let my emotions carry me away and made that choice of my own accord. Instead of persuading my daughter not to walk the path of a murderer, I became someone who rushed ahead and covered myself in blood, as if setting an example for her.”
“That is a harsh way to blame yourself.”
“I have not said anything untrue.”
Valter Droit.
Javert Droit.
They said that father and daughter had worked as a pair and torn thousands of dark mages apart.
They had devastated Cult branches several times, and their standing among the active Investigators of the time had been unrivaled.
“This was when Javert was only seventeen.”
The girl became an Investigator at fifteen.
For the next four years, countless killings passed through her hands.
Javert grew cold.
“I do not know how she felt, or what was in her heart as she stained herself with blood...”
Was it revenge, or hatred?
Or was it an extension of the punishment she inflicted upon herself?
“We spent a long and terrible time together. We were human, yet we lived lives that were not human.”
Time piled up.
Four years.
The hatred and resentment that had once boiled over gradually settled.
Only then did the blind old man come to his senses.
Valter looked after his daughter, but it was already far too late.
“...By the time I recovered my reason, Javert was no longer the child I remembered.”
The girl had become a woman.
She no longer smiled much.
She no longer cried much either.
She acted like a machine with no emotions.
She was like a puppet that moved according to orders and the principles set before her.
“It was... the result of my neglecting her.”
The spirited, cheerful child was gone.
Only an empty shell remained.
Valter could not bring that girl back.
The more he tried to approach her, the worse Javert’s condition became.
“I thought she could not remain on the battlefield any longer. The revenge I had pursued for years no longer mattered. I had already lost my wife. I could not lose my remaining daughter as well.”
“So that was why you suddenly announced your retirement.”
“That is correct. As I stepped down, I had Javert suspended from her position, so she could no longer work as an Investigator. After that, the two of us came down to the academy. I hoped the peaceful air here would embrace her.”
“And the reason it had to be the academy was...?”
“She never had a proper adolescence. While other children were learning how to live, Javert learned how to kill. She lived a life where bloodstains were more familiar to her than ink stains. So I wanted to give her back, even in this way, the adolescence that had been left in ruins. I also hoped the innocence of children still in their adolescence would help heal her.”
“In other words, you took the position of headmaster solely for Professor Javert’s sake.”
“I know that is not the proper mindset for an educator.”
“You love her very much.”
“...”
The headmaster seemed to choke up for a moment.
A complicated expression and unsettled eyes showed plainly on his face.
“...I am the one who made Javert this way.”
“Well. Perhaps you are.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether I could have said something better that day, in the study...”
-Javert.
-This is why I told you not to break the rules.
-Otherwise, everything becomes a mess...
“I should not have said something so sharp. I should have embraced her more tenderly. I should have wiped away her tears and comforted her, telling her it was not her fault. If I had, perhaps many things would be different by now...”
“...”
Words filled with regret.
I kept silent.
I knew what it meant to lose someone precious.
Because I understood that pain, I did not carelessly blame or comfort the old man.
I only prayed that he would hurt enough, and that one day he might find an answer.
“Do not worry.”
Swish-.
I quietly rose from my seat.
As I straightened my clothes, I left the old man with a few words.
“I’ll take care of this matter myself.”
A confident declaration.
Questions, confusion, and faint hope flickered in Valter’s eyes.
“...What exactly are you planning?”
“Hehe, it’s a secret. For now.”
“Can you really change how she feels?”
“Of course. What I’m about to do is closer to a temporary measure, though. For the more distant future, I’ll continue to need your help, Headmaster.”
“My help...”
“I’ll tell you the details later.”
I turned my back on him.
My calm steps crossed the corridor outside the headmaster’s office.
‘Then... shall I go see her?’
My feet pointed toward the stairs leading underground.
* * *
Meanwhile.
Javert was trapped in deep darkness.
An underground prison.
A solitary cell on its lowest floor.
A one-pyeong iron-barred cell, barely large enough for her to lie down in.
“...”
The red-haired woman sat lost in thought.
Javert had not moved for three days.
She only sat ramrod straight in the same spot.
She neither ate nor slept.
She simply sat there blankly, staring straight ahead with dead eyes.
Because of that, the guards had to check from time to time whether she was still alive.
“...”
The woman had lost herself.
She only kept replaying a scene from one day.
-Kill him.
-If you do not kill him, he will run away again.
Black eyes.
A boy roughly subdued and thrown to the floor.
And herself, holding a fist over that boy.
-...I can’t.
-I. Cannot. Kill you.
But in the end, she let him go.
The sight, blurred by tears, had been so wretched.
Her emotions had devoured her reason.
-Say it is not true.
-Say this is all a misunderstanding.
Javert let out a breath.
It felt as though her breathing would stop.
-Say you have no connection to this place, that you are innocent.
-Say what you just said was a joke.
-Say you are only standing here because you got lost and wandered in.
Why had she wavered?
What had she wanted so desperately that she begged him like that?
No matter how many times she turned it over, only one answer remained: her wavering and pleas had been meaningless.
-I can’t.
The woman could not kill him.
She broke her principles of her own accord.
That was all.
The oath she had built her entire life around had shattered in a single night.
The stake she had driven firmly before an old woman’s memorial portrait had snapped.
-Javert... our beloved daughter.
She wanted to atone.
Her mother had died, and her father had become unhappy, all because of her.
She wanted to punish herself.
She wanted it to hurt as much as possible.
That was why she had always lived haunted by trauma.
She erased her emotions and survived within the strictest principles.
-It is not your fault.
-You were simply unlucky...
She did not want to repeat the same mistake.
She bound herself with strict rules.
She lived for that reason.
She lived only for that.
‘To uphold the principles.’
That was her only reason to keep living.
And now, she could not even uphold that.
‘Is this the end?’
Yes, it was over.
Javert no longer had any reason to keep living.
Even the atonement she had clung to had fallen apart, leaving her future empty and meaningless.
‘...Should I stop now?’
The woman foreshadowed the end.
Her green eyes were like withered leaves in September.
-Javert.
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
To Mother.
To Father.
To the life we had as a family that I ruined.
‘Because mine was a life that ruined everything, and could not even atone properly...’
Swoosh-.
Javert suddenly gathered light at her fingertips.
She wore neither handcuffs nor restraints.
It was the headmaster’s consideration.
Thanks to that, Javert could move freely.
The gathered light took shape and was soon honed into a dagger.
‘I will end it here.’
The woman’s suicide was matter-of-fact.
Without hesitation, she put the blade to her throat.
She intended to drive it straight through in one stroke.
This was the end.
The tragedy of a broken girl.
The woman was committing the final murder of her life.
Fwoooosh-.
Dazzling light filled the solitary cell and surged around it.
The blade descended, just before death could take her breath.
“...”
“Investigator.”
Thud-.
A hand blocked the execution.
A palm that had suddenly appeared gently snatched away the dagger.
Beyond her pitch-black vision, she saw equally dark eyes.
Then a voice reached her ears.
“What are you doing?”
“...Student Viktor?”
His bare face without the mask.
His black eyes, seeming somehow sorrowful, looked at the girl.
Footnotes:
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