I loaded the Mysticism panel.

He didn't know why he started thinking about it.

Perhaps it was because I had been alone in this little house for too long that the thread connecting my mind to the past had loosened on its own.

Rosemary, his wife's name.

I first met her at the Countess's garden tea party, when I had just started working in the industry.

That day he wore a newly made dark suit, with a silver badge on his lapel pin that his father had given him.

He thought he looked quite respectable standing in the crowd.

Rosemary came from the other end of the garden carrying a glass of lemonade.

He held the cup steadily and walked at a leisurely pace.

As she passed Gerald, she glanced at his shoulder.

"Sir, your collar is askew."

She put down the lemonade and reached out to straighten his collar.

After tidying it up, he patted it twice, turned around, and left.

Gerald stood there, almost frozen in place from being patted by that lady's little hand.

When he approached her a second time at the tea party, she was discussing the proportions of ingredients for roast goose with a countess's niece.

"...Don't use too much butter, or the crust will become soft."

"But what I see on the recipe is..."

"The recipes were written by the dead, but the stoves were lit by the living."

Gerrard couldn't get a word in edgewise.

He stood there listening for ten minutes to the debate about whether roast goose should be served with thyme or rosemary, without uttering a single word related to his own expertise.

Later he asked her to dance.

Gerrard didn't dance well. The hunter's steps were light, but the rhythm of his dance steps was completely different from that on the battlefield.

During the third song, he stepped on the other person's skirt.

She looked down at her skirt, then looked up at him.

"Sir, are you this accurate when you step on your prey?"

On the day of the proposal, Gerald prepared a long and formal speech, which he practiced twenty times in front of the mirror.

In the end, he still said with a stiff face, "Marry me."

Rosemary tilted her head and looked at him: "Is this a proposal, or an order to arrest someone?"

Gerrard was stumped by the question and couldn't utter a single word for a long time.

Rosemary laughed so hard she couldn't stand up straight.

In the first year of their marriage, Gerald discovered something.

His wife was a better cook than any professional chef he had ever met.

Everyone around him thought he had married a rich and powerful woman.

Only he knew that this young lady would go into the kitchen at 5:30 every morning, put on an apron, knead dough, and get flour all over her nose.

"I told you, thyme should be added last."

"The last thing to put in isn't waiting until the stove goes out."

She pointed at the pot with a spoon, lecturing him, this hunter who had killed dozens of evil creatures behind the curtain.

He didn't dare to reply to a single word.

At Ashford Manor, the butler, the maids, and even his hunter brothers had to bow down to him.

Only Rosemary dared to reprimand him in front of everyone.

On one occasion, several guests from the mystical side came to the capital.

Gerald spent the entire afternoon in his study discussing serious business, without uttering a single superfluous word.

After seeing the guests off, he returned to his bedroom, where Rosemary was sitting at her dressing table doing needlework.

Gerald sat down opposite her and watched her work.

As I looked at her, I inexplicably pulled out paper and pen and started drawing her.

His painting skills were very rough; his hands, which had been wielding knives all his life, held a brush as if it were a stick of firewood.

The stroke for the bridge of the nose was still crooked even after two attempts.

Rosemary finished her needlework and looked up to see it.

"Did you draw me?" She leaned closer to look. "Why is your nose so big?"

She snatched the paper away.

"It doesn't look like it at all," she said disdainfully, but she couldn't bear to tear it up, so she folded it and stuffed it into the sewing box.

Gerrard's perpetually tense face relaxed at that moment.

Gerald was not home the night Rosemary was followed by the black dog.

When he returned from his fieldwork and heard what the housekeeper had said, he locked himself in that small room that very night without saying a word.

He pulled out the Ashford family's book of the wildest rituals and found the Reverse Hunt Ritual.

That's something only a madman would do, and the price is so high that no one in the family is willing to let him do it.

He did it; he got Rosemary back.

Taking her back wouldn't change her fate; she left Isabella behind and departed.

Before she left, she lay on the bed, her breathing very shallow.

Gerrard sat on the edge of the bed, still with that stern face.

Rosemary reached out and touched his face.

"It's the very end," she said softly, "and you still won't loosen your brow."

Gerrard opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything.

"Children..." Rosemary's hand slowly slid down: "Don't scare them with that boss's face."

"Your smile... is actually quite beautiful."

The recollection ends here.

Gerald discovered that the knife on the whetstone had been so sharpened that it reflected a person's image.

He raised the knife and examined it in the lamplight.

A face was reflected on the blade.

Getting old, cheekbones sagging, eye sockets sunken...

Gerald stared at the face on the blade, then suddenly grinned and tried to smile.

His smile looked worse than his tears.

He put down the knife and took out a sewing kit from the locked tin cabinet on the table.

Rosemary kept that sewing box for most of her life.

Gerald paused for a moment before realizing that the painting was no longer there.

I spoke very confidently back then.

Now that the sewing box was empty, he realized that he didn't seem to remember it that clearly.

Is Rosemary's nose slightly crooked to the left or to the right?

When she smiles, is the wrinkle at the corner of her eye deep or shallow?

I stared at her for an entire afternoon while I was painting this picture, but that was decades ago.

Decades of wind have blown away the words on the tombstone, and the image of that face in his mind has faded year by year.

Gerald sat behind the table, the oil lamp illuminating the empty sewing box.

The wick popped a small spark with a crackling sound.

The old man's eyes welled up with tears, though he didn't know when.

He himself was unaware that he had never shed a tear in front of others in his entire life, not even on the day his wife passed away.

He just felt that the flame of the lamp in front of him suddenly became a little shaky, so much so that he could no longer see the silver thimble in the sewing box.

Just then, the door to the cabin was kicked open from the outside.

"Grandpa!"

Richard stood panting at the door, his face red from the cold, with unmelted snow still clinging to his coat collar.

As soon as he entered the room, his gaze fell on the table.

That hunting knife was so sharpened that it could reflect a person's image.

Next to the knife was a complete set of field equipment, each piece polished to a shine and neatly arranged.

The old man sitting under the lamp had relaxed cheekbones, sunken eye sockets, and red eyes.

This is not a knife sharpening exercise.

This is clearly a person preparing for their own funeral.

Richard's heart sank.

The joy I felt running upstairs was completely extinguished by this scene.

"You..." His throat tightened slightly, "What are you doing!"

Gerrard was startled by the loud banging on the door.

He quickly raised his hand and wiped his eyes haphazardly, the movement as fast as if he were shooing away some fly.

After applying the ointment, the face that had been expressionless all his life tightened up again.

"Why are you banging on me?" The old man slammed the lid of his sewing box shut. "Is this how you open the door?"

"I knocked, but you didn't answer." Richard composed himself.

"I was sharpening my knife, didn't you hear me?" Gerald pushed the knife aside, his tone curt.

"The hunter's going on a long trip, so he's packing up his gear. What's up?"

"Grandpa," Richard said, walking to the table, "aren't you going on a long trip?"

Gerrard didn't respond to that.

He looked up and sized up his grandson, and the more he looked, the angrier he became.

"I'd like to ask you that," the old man said, slamming the whetstone onto the corner of the table.

"Where have you been all these days?"

"Your grandfather is so old, don't you know how to come back and spend more time with me?"

After holding back for several days, I poured out all the things I had to say.

Richard stood there, listening to his grandfather's anger without rushing to defend himself.

These days I've been going to Professor McFee's, Professor Mortimer's, the pamphlet, the mask, the shadow...

He used every minute and second to the fullest, all for that one thing he couldn't say out loud yet.

He can't talk about these things now.

"Grandpa, it's not that I'm not coming back." Richard took out what he had hidden behind his back.

"I've been taking care of something these past few days."

It was a flat package carefully wrapped in kraft paper, with all four corners tied with rope, making it perfectly square.

Gerald's gaze fell on the package.

"What is that?"

Richard didn't answer directly; instead, he placed the package on the table and began untying the ropes layer by layer.

The kraft paper was peeled off, revealing a layer of soft cloth underneath.

The soft cloth was lifted, revealing several photos mounted on stiff cardboard.

Gerrard's breath caught in his throat the moment he saw the photos.

It's Rosemary's charcoal sketch.

"I took it to a photo studio to have it photographed and copied," Richard said, his voice softening.

"I asked the craftsman to take a picture of your painting and make several copies."

"Like this..." Richard laid out the photos one by one on the table.

"That way, everyone in the family can have one."

"One for Mom, one for Aunt, one for Evelyn, one for me, one for my cousin, one for my uncle..."

"You still have this original document."

Gerald slowly reached out his hand.

He picked up the top one, his fingers trembling slightly.

The photo was developed very clearly, much clearer than that charcoal original that had been worn and faded by time.

Even the few stray hairs at Rosemary's temples were clearly visible, one by one.

"You..." The old man opened his mouth, but couldn't utter the next sentence for a long time.

The anger I felt earlier has somehow dissipated.

"The photographer at the studio was initially reluctant to take the job." Richard quickly tried to lighten the mood when he saw the somber atmosphere.

He looked at the painting over and over for a long time, asking me if it depicted a person or something else.

Gerrard's eyebrows immediately shot up.

"He dares!"

"I said it was my maternal grandmother," Richard said, suppressing a laugh.

"The master's face turned pale immediately, and he apologized repeatedly, saying that his eyesight was bad."

"Then he stared at the painting for a long time, and asked me very tactfully..."

"What do you want to ask?"

"We asked if we wanted to 'fix' the lady's nose when we were making the print."

There was a moment of silence in the cabin.

Gerrard held the photo, and a twitch appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"He said he specializes in this." Richard couldn't hold back any longer.

"During the remake, they made some minor adjustments, like making the nose area smaller, saying it would look more symmetrical that way."

"I didn't give it up."

Gerald looked up at his grandson.

"Why won't you allow it?" The old man's voice was a little muffled.

Richard looked at him.

"If this nose is made smaller, then it won't be the painting of you that your grandmother scolded you for."

"It's...not that kind."

Gerald lowered his head and looked again at the woman in the photo with the slightly large nose.

As I watched, his face, which had been stern his whole life, slowly relaxed.

The old man extended a finger and touched Rosemary's nose very lightly in the photograph.

"It's a bit too big," he murmured.

"Back then, she would scold me every time I drew something, and she would beat me if I drew something again."

She said that my hands, which have held knives all my life, feel like I'm holding a stick of firewood when I hold a pen.

Richard listened quietly from the side.

This was the first time he had heard his grandfather speak in such a tone, and the old man laughed as he spoke.

Gerrard placed the photo on the table and quickly wiped his eyes.

"The wick needs trimming; it's making my eyes sting."

Richard didn't expose him.