So, when her existence started making life harder for her mother, it was only natural that she would abandon her, wasn't it?
But...
Even if her skin was scarred, her joints riddled with illness, and every step brought her painshe was still a mother.
And when a mother sees her child suffering, doesn't she feel heartache? Doesn't she blame herself?
She must have hated the fact that such a young girl had to endure so much pain.
She must have resented herself for being powerlessunable to afford a doctor, unable to ease her daughter's suffering in any way other than through small, insignificant gestures.
But...
As a reader, Machida understood this.
The mother in the diary, however, had no way of knowing what terrifying thoughts were forming in her daughter's mind.
So when the girl suddenly stopped going outside, the mother simply assumed her daughter's condition had worsened
That she was in too much pain to play like before. And as a result, she only showered her daughter with even more love and attention.
But for the seven-year-old girl, this wasn't warmth.
It was a prison of her own making.
'My mother. My mother love.'
'I love my mother deeply, just as she loves me.'
'To me, being abandoned by her is no different from death.'
'Because she is the only one who loves me.'
'If my mother doesn't smile, I can't smile either.'
'If my mother doesn't love me, I can't breathe.'
'Like a drowning person desperately clinging to anything within reach, I held onto my mother with everything I had.'
Reading this passage, Machida's thoughts drifted back to the witch from the game.
There had been a particular scene where the words read:
"My parents didn't love me. So I killed them."
Comparing that moment to this diarythe connection was painfully clear.
The overwhelming desire for love, the desperate need for acceptance
It had all led to the tragedy that would unfold.
But when did things take a turn for the worse?
The answer soon surfaced in Machida Sonoko's mind.
The girl's father had his wages cut again.
And the frustration he never dared to express outside the home He took it out on the two people closest to him.
Ellen. And Ellen's mother.
His harsh words, his violent outbursts, his reckless destruction of household objects
All of it kept the two on edge.
Then came the night when he roughly grabbed his wife's hand, tearing her away from Ellen. Their fingers, once intertwined, were forcibly separated.
He dragged her into the only private room in the house and slammed the door shut.
The sound of the lock clicking into place echoed through the air, leaving Ellen alone outside.
From behind the wall, there were loud bangs.
The sounds gradually softened
And thenonly whispers.
A familiar scene.
Her parents always had their private conversations where she couldn't see.
'Bang!'
Machida slammed her palm against the table, her voice trembling with rage.
"That bastard!"
As if working tirelessly just to keep her daughter alive wasn't hard enough, as if enduring all this suffering wasn't enough
She still had to deal with that man's violence.
From the context, it was obvious what had happened in that room.
It was clear he had raised his hand against the very woman who bore everything for her child.
But what pained Machida the most Was that while this mother suffered for her daughter, that very daughter couldn't understand her pain.
Instead, the girl believed her mother was keeping secrets from her,
That she was an outsider in her own family, excluded and left in the dark.
Was it Ellen's fault for misunderstanding?
No.
And that was what made it so agonizing.
Machida was furious. She was heartbroken, but she was powerless to change anything.
She could only watch as the inevitable tragedy took shape before her eyes.
Misunderstanding after misunderstanding piled up, and Ellen's sadness and pain deepened.
She began to feel like a lifeless doll, While her mother remained real, warm, and alive.
And from this contrast, hatred was born.
It all seemed so natural, so inevitable, as described in the diary's words.
Then came another turning point The death of the black cat in the alley.
And with that, the story began moving inexorably toward tragedy.
Her mother never came home again.
Machida froze.
"...What...?"
The woman who was supposed to love and protect Ellen Was really gone?
So Ellen's fears weren't baseless.
She hadn't been paranoid.
The one who had been naive Was her.
She had never stood in Ellen's shoes.
She had never truly grasped the weight of her fear.
Biting her lip, Machida forced herself to keep reading.
A man she didn't recognize started visiting the house.
Her father would take something from him in exchange for money, and soon, a strange, sweet scent began lingering in the air.
This lined up perfectly with a certain scene from the game The one inside the prison cell.
That "something" was unmistakable.
Left alone with no one to care for her, The girl bandaged her wounds by herself, clinging to the hope that her mother would return and apologize one day.
But on a certain night, she finally received an answer.
"I'm sorry. You have to get along with your father."
That was all.
And with those words
The last thread holding the girl together snapped.
The scene from the game unfolded in even greater detail before Machida's eyes.
The suffocating sorrow.
The deep, inescapable despair.
She felt an unbearable weight in her chest.
But for whom did she grieve?
For Ellen, the child who so desperately longed for love?
For her mother, the woman who had suffered so much misfortune?
Or for her father, the man who had given up on himself?
Machida didn't know.
But there was one thing she was sure of
By the time the story reached this point, She could no longer see Ellen as just a villain.
[198] Despair, Hope, and the Terms in Between
Machida Sonoko let out a complicated sigh as she read through the tragic story laid out in words.
The Ellen depicted in the game's background was undeniably loathsomesomeone to be hated and despised.
Her actions had long since crossed the boundary of humanity.
But after reading this diary, Machida suddenly had a realization: Was it truly Ellen's fault that she had become the monster in the game?
The answer was clearno, it wasn't.
Born into misfortune, she had to shackled her true nature, suppressing herself in order to win her mother's love.
She tried to be obedient, matureeverything a "good" child should be.
Yet, even then, a small mistake was enough for her to lose her mother's affection entirely.
She was abandoned, discarded without a second thought.
And the man she called her father? Even when Ellen herself admitted to killing her own mother, he barely spared her a glance.
Not even for a second.
The one thing she longed for mosther mother's lovewas shattered, turning to dust before her very eyes.
All of thisthe pain, the neglect, the rejectionhad laid the foundation for the tragedy to come.
Machida didn't know how to feel.
"Why did they have to create such a complex character?"
No, that wasn't quite right.
"Why couldn't the story just end when the game ended? Why did they have to flesh out her background like this?!"
She felt overwhelmed, torn between conflicting emotions. She sympathized with Ellen's suffering, yet she couldn't forget the atrocities she had committed.
Two opposing emotions twisted together, creating something even more unbearable.
And as a professional editor with years of experience, felt this way, she could only imagine how other readers were reacting.
Taking a deep breath, she continued reading.
By all accounts, the story should have ended there.
But the sudden appearance of a demon changed everything.
With the enticing promise of a "home," Ellen agreed without hesitation, and the story moved into its next chapter.
In this new home, under the influence of magic, Ellen became... normal.
She had a beautiful face, a strong and healthy body.
The price? She could never leave the house.
What would happen if she did? The demon never said, and Ellen never asked.
At first, the house provided everything she could want. It was comfortable, warm, filled with beautiful things.
But one thing was missingpeople.
The house was maintained by creatures born from magic, but Ellen, as a human, felt a deep loneliness.
After all, humans are social beings.
Cut off from the world for too long, isolation had a way of driving people mad.
"I want a friend."
One day, Ellen went to the demon and made her wish known.
"That's easy," the demon said. "Just bring them here."
Ellen couldn't leave the housebut she could lure others in.
As a witch, her magic extended throughout the entire forest.
The house was her brain, the surrounding woods her limbs. If she tried hard enough, she could invite people inside.
So she did.
And soon, the house welcomed its first guesta young boy.
He eagerly accepted Ellen's invitation to tea, stepping inside without hesitation.
As they spent time together, Ellen, nervous but hopeful, finally asked, "Will you... be my friend?"
The boy started visiting regularly, playing with her, laughing with her.
He called her name. He waved at her, and she waved back.
For the first time, Ellen felt happiness.
Ever since she had made a friend, the black cat hadn't appeared again.
Time passed.
One day, the boy said something unexpected.
"Hey, Ellen. You should come outside sometimes."
His invitation made her hesitate.
She refused.
The black cat's warning echoed in her mindshe must never leave the house.
But why? She didn't know.
So, instinctively, she used an excuse.
"I... I'm sick."
"Sick? But you look fine," the boy replied. "It's just for a little bit. It should be okay, right?"
It was such a tempting offer.
The black cat's words faded from her memory.
'Just for a little bit. It should be okay, right?' That thought took hold.
So, Ellen took a step outside.
And then
'Thud.'
A searing pain slammed into her skull, as if she had been struck with a hammer.
She collapsed onto the dirt.
Her right eye burned. She clutched it instinctively, feeling a warm liquid seep through her fingers.
Blood.
The boy realized it before she did. He stumbled back in horror.
Desperate to reassure him, she forced a smileonly for the skin on her face to peel away, falling in jagged flakes.
There was no doubt.
Faced with such a horrific sight, the boy screamed and ran.
His expressionthe sheer terror in his eyeswas like looking at someone staring at a monster.
The look stabbed through Ellen like a knife.
There were no words to describe the pain in her heart.
The truth was clear.
Even a "friend" would abandon her in the face of such horror.
As the boy disappeared, the black cat reappeared.
"Doing nothing won't make you better."
Magic could maintain her body as long as she stayed inside.
She wouldn't healbut she wouldn't die either.
Even as her illness worsenedeven if her legs rotted away, even if her eyes lost all sight, even if her face became so ruined that no one could recognize hershe would still live.
Forever.
Because now, Ellen was a witch.
Despair swallowed her whole.
Then, that despair twisted into hatred. Hatred for the demon who had tricked her.
But demons, by nature, could see through the hearts of humans.
And before she even realized it, a knife had found its way into her clenched fist.
Ellen screamed, slashing at the black cat with all her might. She didn't care where the blade landedshe just wanted to silence its taunting voice.
Yet, even when the knife plunged into its heart, the demon did not die.
It spoke with the same calm tone, its cruel words stripping away the last of Ellen's defenses.
"No one ever loved you. Not a single person."
"Your father never even looked at you. Your mother was planning to abandon you. You wanted so desperately to be loved. To love someone in return."
"It's all because of this illness. That's why no one loved you."
"How strange. You deserve love, don't you?"
"That boy, toohe left you the moment you got sick."
"So cruel, isn't it? Everything is because of your illness."
"But you already know what you truly want, don't you?"
Yes.
Ellen knew the answer.
A healthy body.
And so, before the broken girl, the demon offered her one thinghope.
But hope always comes with a price.
And the demon was ready to name its terms.
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[199] The One Who's Wrong is This World!
Machida Sonoko closed the webpage in front of her with a complicated expression.
Lying back on her chair and staring at the ceiling, her mind drifted into emptiness.
She had thought that the lingering impact of the game "The Witch's House" was already intense enough.
But she hadn't expected that the prequel story would hit even harder.
Without a doubt, Ellen fell into the devil's trap the moment she spoke to him. From that point on, her fate was sealed.
The devil knew exactly what she longed for and how to make her obediently do his bidding.
As everything unfolded as planned, with her so-called friend abandoning her without hesitation and the devil striking at the depths of her soul, Ellen lost herself.
Step by step, she fell into the devil's sweet trap and became the twisted character in the story.
But was the devil really at fault?
No.
The devil was simply acting for his own purposes.
Moreover, it was the devil who gave Ellen, who desperately sought someone love, a glimmer of hope.
Even though that hope led her hands to be stained with blood, took her down to an absolutely wrong path, and caused her to lose herself over hundreds of years...
In the end, through such a twisted method, she fulfilled her wish to be loved by taking someone else place.
And for Ellen, that was enough.
So, who was truly at fault?
'This world, huh?'
As that thought crossed her mind, Machida let out a complicated sigh.
