9
“Fulla.”
Waving her finger, Ram said just one word.
Chasing after the fleeing Gluttony, Ram sent just a single blade of wind.
She had easily tracked his location using her Clairvoyance. She had set a little trick to slow him and be sure her aim was true, but it had done well for rushed work.
And just before the final blade reached him, Gluttony had done something nonsensical.
Cutting his own arms off, he had written a message in blood on the wall.
It was a malicious harassment, repulsive, one-sided, and not worth even looking at, but…
“ ”
After watching him scrawl that bloody message until the moment his life was extinguished, Ram finally allowed herself to close her eyes.
She had watched because she couldn’t rest until she was sure he was dead. Not because she felt even the slightest obligation to watch over him in his final moments.
The defiler had bungled his last choice.
If he had been concerned about the lives of his siblings, Ram might have considered showing him a bit of mercy. Instead, he used them as bait to deceive her in a desperate bid to keep himself alive.
He probably didn’t know how to return what he had eaten. If he did, he would have offered it for a chance to save himself. But he had not. Of course he received his just deserts.
“Live by the blade, die by the blade. Those who cling to magic will fall to magic. Any who rely on fire will perish by the flames. And Oni always pay their debts.”
That was the logic of retribution that Ram followed.
She finally lowered her arm and took a long breath. Then she turned around and started heading back to the ravaged hallway. She couldn’t fight too close to that place, so she had intentionally put distance between it and Lye.
Bothered by that sense of distance, Ram naturally hurried her feet.
“—Tsss.”
When she emerged from the broken wall, Ram was greeted by a ground dragon’s high-pitched whinny.
The pitch-black dragon was deftly hiding Rem behind her body. She clearly intended to be a shield in the worst case, if Ram had not been the one to return.
Even as battered as she was, she still diligently followed Subaru’s orders.
She really is wasted on Subaru…
“Or is it that you wanted to protect Rem, too?”
“ ”
“I see… Good girl, Patrasche.”
She gently rubbed the ground dragon’s neck.
Given the severity of her wounds, Patrasche clearly needed to return to the green room. As loyal as she was, she was too badly hurt to force herself anymore.
Ram didn’t want to ask the impossible from the person—the dragon—who had protected her sister.
Praising Patrasche’s efforts, Ram moved to Rem, who was hidden behind her.
She had already ended the horn resonance that had connected them earlier. The horn on her forehead had receded. However, the effect of her bearing the load of Ram’s Oni god strength had surely been a heavy burden.
Thinking of the consequences that would hit her before long was already making her heavyhearted.
However…
“Now isn’t the time for such terrible thoughts.”
Slowly kneeling there, Ram touched her sleeping sister’s cheek.
Her bond with a sister that she couldn’t recognize had become more solid than ever before, and her heart swelled with love and adoration.
She had lived with her broken horn, losing the strength of the second coming of the Oni god, up until this day.
Ram had always believed that blazing night had been what made her who she was, and she didn’t think that was a bad thing.
But today it changed.
The reason Ram’s horn had been broken that day was…
“—So that I could know we are sisters today.”
Through their shared consciousness, she could tell when their souls touched that they were twins. No one in this world could possibly replace her sister.
“I want to talk to you even more than before. How did we spend our time together? What sort of past did we live? Let’s fill the gaps of our missing memories together.”
As long as time kept flowing, future memories would continue piling up. To make sure those wouldn’t disappear and to protect them from vanishing without warning, she would share her memories every night.
“Let’s talk of all our yesterdays.”
The sleeping princess didn’t respond.
But refusing to let it end on that silence, Ram smiled.
And then her lips moved, this time without any doubt about how she felt.
“—I love you, Rem.”
No matter what may come to pass, that feeling would never change.
By chance, it was the same sentiment the twisted Archbishop had spoken in his final moments, but even if it was the same words, the meaning simply was not comparable.
It sounded different coming from someone who lived for love, rather than from someone who didn’t understand the first thing about it.
It would never have the same ring to it.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login