7
—Having finished her secret conversation with Al, Emilia had returned to the bedroom and disposed of the ice sculpture that she had used as a body double. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed, so it appeared her absence had gone unnoticed. Or else they had been thrown off by the finely crafted ice sculpture.
Emilia regretfully returned the sculpture to mana as she appreciated her handiwork.
“…I’m surprised. I did not expect you to return.”
“Eep!”
All of a sudden, a voice called out from behind her, causing Emilia to jolt in shock before turning around. When she did, she saw #184 standing at the entrance, looking right at her.
She had last seen her cleaning up the room Regulus had destroyed, but there she was, her eyes narrowing as she watched Emilia panic before letting out a small sigh.
“You went to such effort to leave a replacement behind. Did you have a change of heart?”
“What? A replacement? I’m not sure what you mean. I’ve been resting here the whole time since I was tired. Right here in bed… Ah, it’s cold! Ah, I mean it’s not cold at all!”
“ ”
The bed was absolutely freezing from having an ice sculpture lying on it the whole time she was gone, so it was practically rejecting her body warmth. But admitting that would only confirm her lie, so she resolutely endured the cold and went to lie down in the bed.
“See, I’ve been here all along. I would never have done something like run away.”
“…Yes, of course. My mistake. But that would truly be odd. Why did you not simply run away while you could?” #184 asked quietly.
“…If I did that, it would have been bad for you and the other wives and the people in the city,” Emilia responded, sticking her legs out of the covers and sitting on the edge of the bed.
#184’s eyes were cool and emotionless—but something about her felt off to Emilia. At first it was just a vague feeling of unease, but it gradually came into a fuzzy focus. The emotion hidden deep in her eyes looked almost like a desperate plea.
“Did you by chance want me to run away?”
“ ”
“But why? If I did that, then it would be bad for you and the others.”
Thinking back on their exchange, Emilia started to wonder if #184 had noticed the ice sculpture left on the bed but chosen not to report it to Regulus. By doing that, she would delay the realization that Emilia was gone, which would’ve given her more time to get away.
In reality, Emilia had had no intention of fleeing, so her effort had gone to waste, but—
“No, if you hadn’t hidden it for me, Regulus would have found out I was sneaking around investigating. So thank you anyway…”
“Please don’t thank me. In the end it did not amount to anything—I had intended to muster just a little bit of bravery at the end of my life, but even that was meaningless.”
“ ”
With that, #184 tightly clenched her arms. Her hands were visibly trembling. Emilia realized that her delaying the report she was supposed to give had taken every last bit of her courage.
Regulus had casually tried to kill #184 out of nothing more than a mild irritation. If that was an everyday sort of occurrence, then she and all the other wives were living day in and day out with death hanging right over their heads. How much courage had it taken to endure that level of terror that had become an everyday phenomenon?
“Why did you come back?”
“—Um.”
“It would have been better if I had just been consumed by his anger after you never returned. Whatever became of the city, whatever became of us. This just means it will go on and on. This unchanging, never-ending time will just continue until it all ends.”
#184 spoke fervently, half clinging to Emilia, half cursing her. Biting her lip, Emilia stood up.
“In that case, if you could stand up once, then let’s try again together. I haven’t given up yet.”
“I can’t. I gathered what little willpower I had left and got nothing in return. Just thinking about trying again makes everything inside me freeze… Anything more is impossible.”
#184 shook her head desperately as Emilia watched, unable to say anything. Her eyes locked on to Emilia as she continued, the light in her eyes frozen—no, dead.
“You are free to decide that you will not give up. However, I will never have that choice ever again. And I’m sure the other women in this hell are the same.”
“ ”
“I was just a normal girl living in a small village in a mountain valley with my family. In order to marry me, he eradicated my mother and father, my siblings, my neighbors, and all the villagers who merely knew my name and face. All his wives have experienced similar fates.”
Her eyes dead and dull the whole while, #184 spoke of what had happened when Regulus demanded her hand in marriage.
It was a horrific, almost unbelievable story, but the only ones who could laugh it off as a joke would be those fortunate enough not to know Regulus. He was more than capable of committing such heinous acts. That was unmistakably something he would do. He had created a paradise of his own making, served by the wives he had forcibly wedded.
“…Regulus said there were two hundred and ninety-one…”
“Yes. And two hundred and thirty-eight have already passed away, leaving only the fifty-three here in this city.”
“Those wives who passed away…”
“Do you really need me to spell it out?”
Her hoarse response scoffed at Emilia’s question. No, it was more self-deprecating than that.
#184 was exhausted with existing and with the curse that had consumed their lives. She had reached the present day at the cost of her very will to resist. And after trudging her way through those terror-filled days, she’d stumbled upon evidence of Emilia, the one whom Regulus had chosen to be his new wife, running away. What had #184 felt in that moment?
Her statement that she would never have the will to resist again had surely been true in a far deeper sense than Emilia realized.
Emilia had only just begun to scratch the surface of what it took to spend a life with Regulus, but for #184—for all the women here, it was something that had already shaved away pieces of their very souls.
“ ”
Though it had not been intentional, Emilia realized just how important a thing she had shattered, and realizing that, she lost sight of what she could possibly say to #184. Even if she said something baseless in the heat of the moment, it would never reach this woman. She frantically searched for the words, anything she could possibly say to reassure or bolster #184.
She was desperately, desperately searching, but she could not come up with anything. There didn’t seem to be a right answer. No ideal or essential wisdom.
No matter how she looked, she could not find the words to tell #184 the thing she most wanted to convey. Emilia was terrified from the depths of her heart, as if it would all slip away from the palm of her hand. A cold despair crept into her heart.
And at just that instant—
“—Um, can everyone actually hear me through this? Mic test, mic test. One, two. One, two.”
—the voice Emilia most wanted to hear rang out from above, as if extending a hand to her.
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