Editing City Series:Volume5a Chapter10 (section)

===Rosetta’s Journal===

Today I will start by writing what I want to write.

I only just arrived back home after everyone escorted me here. But I have something I must write.

The closing ceremony was a gathering. I was in the rain as I heard a reading of a letter Lady Beretta wrote. It was about me. It was almost certainly about me.

My consciousness – something like the core of my being inside my chest – felt like it was going to collapse.

I tried to think about what that feeling was.

Then I heard the people around me speaking. Everyone looked to the courtyard entrance behind us.

I turned around as well. There were a lot of people and I could not move forward. But for just a moment I saw it clearly. Lady Beretta had ridden into the courtyard on her ''bicyclette''.

I heard her voice. The noise of the crowd was too great for me to entirely make out what she said. But I recognized what she was shouting.

Lady Beretta was shouting my name.

Or so it sounded to me.

I tried to part the crowd to reach her.

But then everything fell silent without warning. Everyone stopped speaking. Both around me and across the entire courtyard.

I knew what had happened.

The person who had read Lady Beretta’s letter spoke loudly:

“Clear a path!”

The people in front of me did as he said and moved to either side.

My field of vision opened up and Lady Beretta ran into the center of my view.

There were a few seconds of pause.

She stopped in front of me and lowered her shoulders as she gasped for breath.

She was soaking wet. So I opened the umbrella I held and held it over her head. Then she spoke to me.

“I went to the mansion and you weren’t there. The old man gave me an umbrella.”

She looked up and opened that umbrella. Only then did she notice mine.

“Where’d you get that one?”

“It is Lady Mallette’s.”

“I see.”

She nodded, opened her umbrella, and held it over my head.

For some reason my heart shook without warning. It was a different shaking from happiness. It was much stronger.

It was a lot like the feeling I felt after eating dinner with Lady Beretta for the first time. The same feeling I felt when I remembered what the master’s thanks meant.

That welled up in me here.

I found some raindrops had dripped from my cheeks to my throat.

I looked up when I felt them tickling from my throat to my chest.

But Lady Beretta was holding an umbrella above my head. I was not wet with rain.

I looked back down and saw Lady Beretta staring at my face.

“Is something the matter?” I asked her.

But the question oddly did not come out as words. My throat shook just like my heart.

I could not draw out my voice properly. But I did manage to speak one word that came to mind.

[[Image:City_v05a_335.jpg|thumb]]

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I crying when I do not want to die?”

Right here, I am Signe-ing that I was crying.

I raised my voice and wept.

She soothed me by using her empty hand to wipe the tears from my cheek.

And she spoke.

“That’s just how it is. Rosetta.”

I do not know what that means. But I felt like I did not want to hear any other answer.

I dropped my umbrella. I looked up into the sky and cried.

I shed tears.

Applause rose from somewhere and continued on and on.

There is nothing more I must write here.

There is nothing greater than that within me today.

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