Chapter 13: Rapunzel
“Alright.”
Leon stepped forward, extending both hands to grasp the other’s shoulders and arms.
Through the clothing, his palms imdiately felt the rough, granular hardness beneath.
But he did not pay it any mind.
He rely applied his strength with great care, helping Sally turn over.
“Mm…” Sally let out a pained groan as she rolled over on the bed, struggling with Leon’s assistance to turn her body, shifting from facing the window to facing the interior of the room.
“Are you okay?” Leon asked softly, observing Sally’s condition as he spoke.
Sally Hesh had once been the star actress of a small theatre troupe.
In a small town like this, she had been a rare beauty.
Now, however, she lay on her side on the bed, haggard and emaciated, like a withered rose trembling on the verge of collapse.
At the corners of her eyes and along her cheeks were crystal-like formations, as though fragnts of crushed diamonds were stuck to her skin.
In truth, these crystals covered her entire body, with large crystal masses even forming at her joints.
Saltification Disease, also known as Crystal Syndro—an extrely rare illness Leon had only ever seen in this world.
Patients would begin to precipitate clear crystals starting from their legs, while their joints and muscles gradually stiffened.
The condition would then spread upward, leaving the patient effectively paralyzed.
The crystals fused with the skin caused persistent pain, and with her back already covered in crystals, Sally had long since lost the ability to lie flat on her back.
In the final stages, even breathing and chewing would beco difficult, until death followed.
After death, the body would not rot; instead, the flesh would continue transforming, ultimately becoming a sculpture composed entirely of crystalline granules, before slowly turning to dust.
The cause of this bizarre disease was completely unknown.
There were only rumors that patients appeared exclusively in regions where labyrinths had erged, leading so to attribute it to the curse of the Primordial Witch Moira.
“I’m fine. It only hurts for a little while. Compared to the discomfort of lying in one position all the ti, this is nothing,” Sally replied after adjusting her breathing.
“Is that so?” Leon said, then fell silent.
He had said he wanted to chat a bit, yet for a mont he did not know where to begin.
He should have politely asked whether Sally had been feeling any better lately, but seeing her like this, he already knew the answer.
Asking would only be inappropriate.
He still rembered that two years ago, when he had first moved in as a tenant, Sally had only needed a cane to walk.
She still had so strength in her upper body, could take care of most daily tasks herself, sit on a chair to work, and even comb lissa’s hair.
Back then, lissa had not been as worn down and gloomy as she was now.
She had dressed with a bit more care.
Her naturally smooth, beautiful hair inherited from her mother would be styled into various hairstyles by Sally’s deft hands.
Sotis, when lissa smiled and leaned out from the attic window to greet Leon standing by the door, her long, lovely golden hair would spill down, always reminding Leon of Rapunzel from fairy tales.
But as the illness progressed, Leon watched with his own eyes as Sally gradually lost the ability to walk, then as her hands grew stiffer by the day, until she could only lie paralyzed in bed, cared for by lissa.
As Sally’s condition worsened, lissa’s life grew increasingly difficult.
She had to work to repay debts while also caring for her mother, and the smiles and hope on her face dwindled with each passing day.
In the end, it was Sally who spoke first.
“Mr. Leon… tell , what is the point of living, really?”
Leon’s heart jolted, but he still spoke to comfort her.
“Please don’t say things like that.”
It seed that Mrs. Hesh was in a low emotional state today—sothing that could already be considered normal for her.
“My biggest regret… is that I didn’t kill myself the mont I fell ill… In the end, I caused my husband’s death, and dragged lissa down with … I…” As Sally spoke, tears rolled from the corners of her eyes.
“You being alive is very important to that child. Being able to live together with you again is her hope. Carrying that hope together with her is sothing only you can do,” Leon said, offering hollow comfort as he took a towel from the side and wiped away Sally’s tears.
In this era, Saltification Disease was a clearly incurable illness.
The Holy Healing Monastery’s current research progress amounted to nothing more than discovering that dicines made by mixing certain holy waters could slightly slow the disease’s progression.
Most patient families chose to give up treatnt altogether.
Yet there were also people like lissa, who clung to the hope that perhaps one day the Church would develop a miracle cure, and so continued borrowing money to buy dicine to prolong her mother’s life.
But Leon had always known that this hope was exceedingly slim.
Especially after his last conversation with Bishop Weiss, he had beco even more certain of it.
In this country and this era, the Saint Rosalia Research Institute and the Holy Healing Monastery were essentially like pharmaceutical companies and hospitals—both operated with profit motives.
Even for relatively common magical beast toxins such as Cockatrice venom, the Church had no direction toward developing a miracle cure.
Saltification Disease was an extrely rare illness.
Developing a specific cure to sell would make it difficult to recoup research costs through sales volu alone, making the likelihood of investnt even lower—unless so highly powerful and influential figure suddenly contracted this strange disease.
But lissa was stubbornly persistent about this matter, and Leon, as an outsider, was not really in a position to say much.
“I’m already like this. There’s no possibility anymore. I’m begging you—please help
persuade lissa…” Sally looked at him with pleading eyes.
This was not the first ti Sally had begged Leon to convince lissa to give up on treatnt for her, or even to let her starve to death.
Sally had once refused to take dicine and even gone on hunger strikes, but in the end she could never withstand lissa kneeling by the bedside, crying and begging her.
Leon lowered his gaze, thought for a mont, then looked at Sally seriously.
“But even if you die, lissa’s situation won’t improve. Do you really think that if you leave without leaving her even a shred of hope, she’ll be able to go on living?”
“…”
Sally could not answer, and only began crying again.
“Don’t overthink it. Get so good rest,” Leon said, wiping away her tears once more and offering a few simple words of comfort.
In truth, the greatest predicant facing the Hesh family was not Sally’s illness, but their enormous debt.
lissa’s father, Mr. Hesh, had once brought his wife and child from the countryside to the city to make a living by forming a theatre troupe.
Sally had been the troupe’s lead actress.
It was said that in the beginning, the troupe operated fairly well.
Mr. Hesh bought this single-story house in the city, and later even took out a loan to purchase an old theatre to run.
But a suspicious fire burned down the theatre, and everything took a sudden turn for the worse.
Mr. Hesh fell into debt, and the troupe’s situation deteriorated.
To make matters worse, it was around that ti that Sally contracted Saltification Disease.
Walking beca difficult, she could no longer perform, and she required large sums for dical expenses.
Later, rumors spread that gold had been discovered in a mountain range in the north.
Mr. Hesh, staking everything on one desperate gamble, joined the ranks of gold prospectors.
Not long after, however, that mountain range experienced a large-scale labyrinthization disaster, resulting in many deaths.
Mr. Hesh was among them.
In addition to owing the Church over a hundred thousand Fenni, the Hesh family also owed substantial sums in private loans.
Leon did not know the exact total, but he could roughly estimate that it was no less than five hundred thousand.
The interest alone each year was staggering, and the debt was likely increasing year by year.
Now that Mr. Hesh was dead and Sally had lost the ability to care for herself, under Imperial law—where a father’s debts passed to his children—all debts had effectively fallen upon lissa.
The Church’s annually updated IOUs now bore lissa’s na as the debtor, since Sally could no longer even sign her own na.
Even if Sally died, lissa’s desperate situation would not change.
In fact, Sally herself knew this.
Leaving everything behind would solve nothing.
If lissa could not accept it, she might even be driven by despair to follow her.
Leon suddenly heard the sound of the door opening downstairs and said to Sally, “lissa’s back. I’ll go take a look.”
After bidding farewell to Sally, he got up and went downstairs, secretly feeling relieved that he could finally leave this oppressive place.
The mont he reached the first floor, he saw lissa with her head wrapped in a scarf, and froze on the spot.
“Brother Leon, I scraped together the money!” lissa said, holding a small pouch of coins and forcing a sowhat strained smile at him.
“lissa…” Leon suddenly felt his throat tighten.
“Your hair?”
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