“Hehe! Found you, Bea! You’ve been hiding here today?”
At the sound of the voice, the girl who had now taken on the name Beatrice rose her body.
As she lifted her gaze from where it was lowered to hide her face, she saw Evangeline, smiling with a mischievous grin.
Beatrice chuckled, echoing the same laughter as Evangeline in front of her.
“Hehe, you caught me again. It’s amazing how you can find me no matter where I hide, Eva! So, what are we going to play today?”
Now, it had become a daily routine for Beatrice to hang out with Evangeline after finishing her daily tasks.
Evangeline had become an indispensable part of Beatrice’s life.
“Then let’s have a running race today!”
“A running race?”
“Yeah! The first one to arrive at this secret base wins! So, get ready, set, go!”
“Hey, you can’t just start out of nowhere like that!”
Whenever Beatrice met Evangeline, she learned new games from her.
From hide-and-seek to races, shadow stepping and stone throwing, etc.
Evangeline, who always introduced delightful activities to Beatrice, was both an idol and a mystery for her.
Despite having lived in a similar environment, how did Evangeline know so many games?
One day, curious about this, Beatrice casually asked, and Evangeline replied with a smile.
“Hehe, I learned it all from books.”
“Books?”
“Yep! This thing right here! It’s filled with tons of games and other information besides just names! I struggled a lot to learn the letters to read it, though.”
Upon hearing this, Beatrice looked at the book Evangeline had been holding earlier.
It was covered in something that looked like little black dots, so she wondered what it was, but it turned out to be quite a useful item.
While pondering this, another question suddenly popped into Beatrice’s mind.
“By the way, Eva. Where did you get that book?”
Seeing it wasn’t something that slaves living here would typically have, Beatrice asked, and Evangeline smiled, placing her finger on her lips to respond.
“Shh, I actually swiped it from Davis’s barracks.”
“…Huh?!”
Beatrice couldn’t help but be flustered at the answer she received.
She swiped it, not from just anyone else, but from Davis, the owner of the mine?
The old man had said that Davis was a scary person and advised caution…
“…Is that okay?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. There are dozens of similar books in the barracks besides this one. One of the men I work with told me that wizards like Davis keep books they don’t even read on display to show they’re smarter than others. And it seems it really was decorative. When I snatched the book, he didn’t even notice it was gone.”
Although Beatrice asked with concern, Evangeline replied in a nonchalant voice, as if to say not to worry.
Then she grinned and muttered.
“It’s too wasteful to use the book just as decoration. It’s like a treasure that tells me a lot. So reading it and sharing it is better for the book, right? If I ever get caught later, I can just apologize.”
Evangeline’s overly easygoing answer made Beatrice feel somewhat foolish for the worries she had just a moment ago.
Instead, she became increasingly curious about the book that Evangeline called a treasure.
If she could read it, could she become like Eva?
Could she learn more about Eva?
Thinking that way, Beatrice made a request to Evangeline.
“Hey, Eva. I want to read that book too. Can you teach me how to read the letters?”
“Of course I can! But learning letters is tough, so it might take a little time!”
“It’s okay, I’ll work hard.”
Thus, Beatrice began learning how to read letters from Evangeline.
“Wow… Bea. Are you a genius mentioned in the book or something?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“That’s amazing! It took me a long time to learn letters, but you’re catching on so quickly!”
Fortunately, whether it was from talent or effort, Beatrice mastered reading to the extent that she could read books fairly quickly.
Thanks to that, she was able to acquire various knowledge she hadn’t known until now.
However, what Beatrice truly valued wasn’t just gaining knowledge but the ability to understand a bit more about Evangeline through it, as she initially set out to do.
And definitely, the knowledge gained through the book helped Beatrice somewhat in understanding Evangeline.
“Bea! Look at this! They say this is a fire stone! If you hit it against the ground, it lights up! Let’s play with this fire today!”
“…If we get caught, I feel like we’re going to get in big trouble.”
“The secret base is hard to see from outside, so it’ll be fine! Okay, I’ll hit it like this… Ah, it lit up! Look, hehe! Isn’t the flame so pretty?”
“……It is pretty.”
Evangeline was a child with a strong curiosity.
Sometimes, her overly strong curiosity led to troublesome situations.
For example, there was a time when she peeked into the tents of adults during a night gathering because she was curious about their games and ended up getting chased away.
But Beatrice didn’t mind Evangeline’s curiosity.
If it weren’t for her curiosity, they wouldn’t have discovered the sparkling crystal cave during their exploration or get to see beautiful flames like now.
“……Hey, Eva. Are you drawing again?”
“Yep! I’m drawing the fire I just saw!”
“You really love drawing, don’t you, Eva?”
“I love it so much! Hehe! Bea, I’m going to become a painter one day!”
“A painter… someone whose job is to draw? But technically, our job is mining slaves.”
“Hm… even if we’re mining slaves, can’t I still be called a painter if I draw well? Anyway, to be a painter, I need to draw well, so I’ll practice hard!”
Again, Evangeline loved to draw.
She enjoyed playing, but she also loved drawing, so whenever something impressive happened, she would leave it in the form of a drawing.
Of course, they didn’t have paper or art supplies, so she drew with stones or sticks on the ground or walls.
Generally, she used monochrome, but if she really liked something, she would crush stones of various colors found here and there and color with that powder.
Today’s flame seemed so lovely that she painted it red.
From the outside, it looked like a shabby drawing, but nonetheless, Beatrice liked Evangeline’s art.
Watching Evangeline draw and seeing her enjoying it, Beatrice felt the joy of the emotions Evangeline was experiencing conveyed to her.
So, just watching Evangeline draw was as enjoyable as playing with her.
“So, is Eva’s dream to become a painter?”
“Um… no, I do want to be a painter, but I have another dream.”
“What is it?”
And also, Evangeline had a dream.
“The… sun. My dream is to see the sun.”
Evangeline said.
“I read it in a book. In the outside world, there’s a sky instead of a roof like this, and floating in that sky is a huge flame called the sun. The small flame, like the one we just saw, was so pretty, right? Then the sun, being a much larger flame, must be incredibly, incredibly beautiful too. I want to see it, then come back and draw it here, that’s my dream.”
Her dream was to go see the sun and then draw it.
Pointing to the last blank page of the book that was filled with encyclopedic words, she spoke of wanting to draw the sun on that one blank page.
From her words, Beatrice could feel just how much Evangeline longed for it.
But as far as Beatrice knew, that dream was one that could never come true.
“But Eva… the outside…”
“I know. Davis is not allowed to go out.”
They were slaves.
And their owner, the master of the mine, the wizard Davis, was a person who would never permit them to step outside this mine.
All the slaves knew.
They knew that Davis had cast a spell at the entrance of the mine that caused anyone who stepped in without permission to instantly die.
That spell, and with Davis’s presence, Evangeline was fated never to see the sun outside.
“But there is a way.”
However, regardless, Evangeline spoke as if there was still hope, her eyes sparkling.
“If stepping out without permission means death, then going out with permission would work.”
“Going out with permission…? How?”
“Bea, do you know what this is?”
Evangeline asked as she pulled something out from her bosom.
Seeing the black coin she took out, Beatrice nodded.
“I know, that’s a Davis coin.”
The Davis coin, it was a sort of reward given to slaves by Davis.
They were slaves, so they did not receive a salary for working.
However, for some reason, Davis gave Davis coins to slaves who did their jobs diligently or discovered valuable minerals.
And Davis exchanged those coins for luxury items that couldn’t be found in the cave or a day off from work, so the Davis coin served as quite a valuable currency within the mine.
But what did that have to do with her dream?
As Beatrice looked puzzled, Evangeline spoke up.
“A long time ago, when Davis first distributed these to the slaves, someone asked if collecting a lot of these would let them go outside. And then Davis said…”
“If you collect a hundred, I’ll think about it for about five minutes.”
Davis’s intention was obvious.
To say that if you had to collect a hundred of the coins he didn’t distribute readily, he was indicating that from the beginning, he didn’t want them to think about leaving the mine peacefully and instead to use it for something else.
But Davis probably didn’t know.
In this dark underground where not a single ray of light shone,
“I’m going to collect a hundred and go out!”
That a serious girl dreaming would rise.
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