I was working on this fan translation but work came in and I had to take a break. But there are probably fans who look forward to it, so here is a sneak peek of what I have done so far. I will work on the rest when I have time, and eventually remove this note when it is done.
This is an unofficial translation of the chapter ローラと自動手記人形 (Laura and the Auto-Memories Doll) found in the compendium
Violet Evergarden The Anniversary -Flower- (the compendium brings together all four volumes of the light novel series, together with two new chapters). I am sharing my translation so that fans who do not understand Japanese can read it.
Note:
The rights to the original work belong to the author Akatsuki Kana and
Kyoto Animation. While this unofficial translation is being shared under
fair use, I will remove it if it comes to my knowledge that this
translation is being misused or if there is any infringement of the
copyright owners' rights.
(You can find all my posts related to
Violet Evergarden here, including my
review of
Violet Evergarden the Movie that debut in 2020 after watching it 14 times, my translation of the
messages from author Akatsuki Kana and illustrator Takase Akiko found in this new compendium, my Tellsis language translator in
Flutter and
Python, my
thoughts about the portrayal of guilt in
Violet Evergarden, summary of production crew events, etc.)
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Laura and the Auto-Memories Doll
by Akatsuki Kana
ローラと自動手記人形
暁 佳奈
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“Get off at Zufall, okay? Remember, Zufall.”
I will always remember that day at the station. “After you get off at Zufall, Aunt Agatha will be waiting. She’s my older sister.” Why must I be the only one to go live with a relative in another land? Why isn’t my father coming along with me? I was too young to understand.
“Dad, when will you come?” My father just gave his usual grumpy face without replying. “Dad, do you find me a nuisance?” He shook his head in response. When my older sister was alive, he spoke a bit more.
“You don’t need to think too much. Just don’t be rude to your aunt.” My mother passed away early, so we are a family of three: my father, sister, and me. Much older than me, my sister was kind of like a mother to me. Our conversations revolved around my sister, so without her, there was not much to say. With only my father and I, we were a dysfunctional family, with my silent father and me, afraid of him because he felt old-fashioned and overbearing.
“Will you be okay? You’ll be all by yourself in Ruhig…” I overcame my fear to ask this question. If I recall, the war was intensifying back then. “That’s not for a child to worry. I’ll be fine. Get going.” It felt like he was pushing me away. I looked down and thought, if only my sister was here. She would have rebuked, “Dad, why are you talking like this when you really love your daughters?” She was someone who could have said this to him.
If only she was here.
She would pester him to hug us, and my father would eventually give in and hug us, saying, “I love you.” That was about all the intimacy our family had.
I said, “I want to stay too. I won’t be in the way.” She would have said this, but she was no longer around. There was only me, the less cute of the two sisters. I myself felt sorry for being alive. It is my sister that the world truly needs. Maybe God made a mistake.
“You won’t be of any use here. Hurry up and get on the train. Go now.” My pleas did not get through to him. If my sister was there, things would probably had been different.
Sad and anguished, tears filled my eyes. Being brushed away like a puppy, I felt like my father truly hated me. If I had to feel like this, I wouldn’t want to have lived till now. If you didn’t want me, why did you bring me into this world?
With such thoughts of self-reproach, I got onto the train. I just wanted to quickly disappear. From this world. No, from my father’s sight.
But our farewell did not end like that.
“Laura…” He started to say something that he would never usually say. “Sorry for everything so far.” I held my breath in surprise and turned around to look at him.
“I was a bad father. But I will change. I am going to work hard for you. So…”
I understood what he was apologizing for. After my sister passed away, my father cared even less for me. In his own way, he recognized his sin for ignoring his young child, not even ten years old. Still, I had thought my father was someone who would rather die than say sorry. He was such an old-fashioned person. I thought we would never be able to understand each other.
“Behave well. Be a good child, and I will definitely go and look for you again.”
Why? Why now?
“Dad!” I rushed to get off the train, but he pushed me back onto it. “No, Laura. Listen to me.” “No, Dad! I want to be with you.”
“No, Laura. Take care of yourself. Be good. Take care.”
Why now?
“Dad! No!”
Why did he have to be nice to me in the end?
“DAD!!”
If only he had given even a small piece of that kindness to me when my sister passed away.
When the train departed, I just kept shouting “Dad” while waving at him. He waved back too, but he soon disappeared from view.
“Dad…”
I hugged my small luggage and sobbed. It was only when my voice became coarse that I realized… I did not say anything back to him. No, it was not in retaliation for how he had treated me. It was because I felt I was the unwanted child. I never thought he would see me off in this way. And so, I didn’t prepare anything to say.
I could hear my sister say, “Why are you doing like this when you really love Dad?” No, Sis, it is not like this. After you died, things started to fall apart.
“Give us a hug and say you love us. Come on Dad, Laura, don’t be shy.” I could not say what she said. Even if I did, my father would not feel happy. Please don’t blame me. I am not good at handling things like you, Sis.
A daughter who cannot even be thankful for being raised. I was not a good daughter to Dad. I wish I wasn’t the one who survived. If only I could reset everything back to the start.
If I could have stopped my father and sister that day. If I had hug him that day and said, “I forgive you.” That day. That day. That day.
God would have granted a special person a miracle at such a time. But God was not looking at me.
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It was just after winter when letters started arriving at the small plunge basin.
It was a time when flowers started to bloom across the land where the snow was melting, after being wrapped in cold and hugged by snowflakes. Someone sent letters imbued with their hopes. No, it was not like paper letters floating on the spring river and falling into the plunge basin. They came in the form of messages in bottles. A message in a bottle—it is like a prayer, going with the flow, hopefully picked up by someone who may write a reply. It may dirty the water, but it can feel romantic to people.
And right now, someone threw a message bottle, sending it on a voyage across the water. Bobbing up and down, it kept floating, going with the flow. You can see the shape of the land by looking at the path taken by a message bottle. Zufall is in a mountainous region blessed with natural resources, so much so that it is called a forest kingdom. There are waterheads near the mountain ridges, forming small streams over time and spreading water all over the place. The message bottle dropped into this plunge basin in spring because, during winter, the waters were frozen and people were huddled up at home to withstand the cold. There was no one to pick up the bottle. That was why the sender chose to put out this prayer in spring.
“Found it!”
Bluebells were just starting to bloom around the plunge basin. A girl picked up the message in a bottle. She was around ten to twelve years old. She was extremely petite. A scarf adorned her thick, black hair, and she wore an apron dress. She was holding a basket full of wild vegetables, the bounty from a forest in spring.
“Stop! Stay there.” Amid beautiful blue flowers swaying in the spring breeze, this girl stood at the water’s edge. It was like a scene from a fairy tale.
Placing the basket on the ground, the girl looked around for a stick. With a face overflowing with curiosity, her round cheeks were red with excitement. Resembling a small animal, like a squirrel, she squealed with joy when she found a stick that was just right. “Yes!” She was so excited she started talking to herself.
Holding the stick like a warrior with a famous sword, she went back to the water’s edge. Then, she used the stick to draw the message bottle toward her. “Ah!” She lost her balance and almost fell into the water. Stretching to reach the bottle, she managed to pull it toward her, falling on her behind with the momentum.
She was speechless for a few seconds, unable to believe that she fell, but soon started to giggle. She wiped her fingers, wet from the still cold spring water, on her apron, and started to open the bottle. She took out a corkscrew from the pocket of her apron dress. The cork of the glass bottle was really hard to remove. She used all the strength in her small body. “Pop!” Out sprang the cork. The girl fell backward. She almost flipped over.
Somehow, she managed to get up, almost falling forward in the process. Birds and small animals looked as the girl weaved her story.
“Ha, ha,” panted the girl as she took out the letter from the bottle. It was not a long letter, and it would be pushing it to say the handwriting was good. The girl stared at the letter, in a trance, as if charmed. There was a serious look in her eyes, like a detective searching for the truth behind a major case. However, she was not a detective.
“I wonder what it says…”
Coincidentally, this was a few years after the Continental War, which split the world. Literacy was low due to the many years of war. Simply put, the Continental War was a war where countries all over the large continent fought each other over different things, including religious differences, natural resources, and territory. There were a multitude of reasons and no single overarching cause. If anything can be said about this war, it was that this war was started by certain hot-headed people, causing many years of suffering on innocent people. There was a universal shortage of manpower for postwar recovery, and the younger generation was made to deal with the aftermath.
Laura, the girl who picked up the message bottle, was from this generation dealing with the postwar aftermath. Just as she was entering the village, she heard, “Laura! Where did you go, neglecting the housework?” Startled, she looked to see who called her.
“Aunt Agatha.” It was a well-built farm lady who looked like she was in her forties. She was carrying a baby, around several months old, on her back. Seeing someone who continued to work by carrying a baby on her back, Laura felt like she was struck by lightning. “I wasn’t neglecting… I had already made breakfast,” she nervously replied. She was afraid she got caught. She was also feeling sorry for neglecting the housework. These two emotions controlled her body.
“What were you doing then?” Agatha wouldn’t let Laura change the topic. “I was going to prepare lunch next, so I went into the forest to get these.” She lifted the cloth covering the basket to show the wild vegetables. The message bottle was deep inside the basket. Fortunately, Agatha did not notice the bottle and looked happy at the amount of wild vegetables. “Oh, the ones that I like. That’s quite a lot. Isn’t it too much?” “You like them so I thought they would make lunch more colorful. But I only picked a little. I wanted to get berries too, but they will still small.” “It’s still too early. Maybe in a month or so. Even so, don’t run off on your own. Let me know if you are going anywhere. Do what I say.” “Yes.” Agatha was a bit controlling, or rather, overly protective.
“How many times have I said this? It’s dangerous over there. Strange people have been appearing there since the war ended. Oh, have you fed the chickens?” “Erm…” Agatha immediately understood from the reaction, and with a fed-up look on her face, said, “You forgot again?” “Well…” Agatha looked like she was having a headache. “That’s the third time this week.” “I’m sorry. I’ll do it right now.”
Just as Laura started to leave, Agatha grabbed her shoulder. “Wait. I want you to listen properly here. Why do you keep forgetting?” Laura was at a loss for words. She herself wanted to know why she kept forgetting. She thought, “This is like asking a person, ‘Why are you a person?’”
Why am I a failure?
Laura had never been a very sharp girl. She worked hard, but it didn’t always lead to results. And now, she was being labeled as forgetful. She might have picked up a message bottle, but her true motive was to find wild vegetables. She wanted to make Agatha happy, so she went looking for wild vegetables. She wanted to be praised.
But she forgot her main motive when she saw the floating bottle in the plunge basin. Thinking about the sender, engrossed in trying to decipher words that she could not read, time slipped by. And now, Agatha was mad at her.
Why am I like this?
Agatha was waiting for a reply, so Laura reluctantly said, “Because I am an idiot.” She felt sad saying this. Tears started welling in her eyes. If this was a time a bit further in the future, she might have been diagnosed as emotionally unstable, resulting in attention deficiency and receiving care for her condition. But this was not such a time.
Agatha glared at Laura, saying, “An idiot… I don’t think you’re an idiot, though.” However, her kind words were followed by a heavy blow. “You’re just slow and clumsy. Even so, you can remember the order of work, right?”
“I’m not as clever as you, Aunt Agatha.” “That can’t be. We’re aunt and niece, related by blood. Like your father Finn, you bear the name of Forsyth.” “But I can’t do everything right away like you.” If Laura Forsyth was poor at doing things, Agatha Forsyth was the exact opposite. A true workaholic, doing everything correctly without any lapses. She also had aptitude as a manager, with strong crisis management skills that understood the actions of everyone. That was why she immediately started looking for her niece the moment she noticed she was missing. To Laura, Agatha was from a different world.
As such, they did not get along. “I’m not saying you can’t do things. I’m telling you to work hard.” “I’m trying to do my best.” “But you still don’t get them done. How will you be able to live in the future if you are like this?” “Well…” “You’re the one who’ll be in trouble when you grow up. Do better. You can’t survive if you aren’t useful.” It was difficult for the blessed to understand those less fortunate.
Spoken to firmly, Laura naturally turned her gaze to the ground. I want to do better too. That was how she felt. Maybe even more strongly than others. Because of that magic spell cast on her by her only family.
“Be a good child, and I will definitely go and look for you again.”
She recalled her father’s words. I want to be a good child. If she was a good child, her father would come to Zufall to look for her. In other words, if she was not a good child, he might not come for her.
