Chapter 221 : Chapter 221
Chapter : 221
“Ha!”
Iris let out an incredulous breath.
“Just how highly do you think of yourself?”
Iris’s cold gaze struck Mordin sharply.
“There is no possibility that your existence could hold any meaning for me, Mordegar. You foolish thing.”
“It is Mordin.”
“No matter how much you insist on calling yourself ‘Mordin,’ you cannot return to the past.”
He was not calling himself Mordin because he wanted to return to the past.
Nor was he denying the mistakes he had committed as Mordegar.
Only, Mordin—
“I am declaring that I will no longer live as Mordegar.”
Mordin was dead.
He had died long ago beneath the name Mordegar.
He had stubbornly insisted and forced others to call him Mordin, but he was already thinking as Mordegar.
If one had to name something that had changed from the past, it was only his view of death.
After all, he was no longer the Mordegar who had blindly served Golden and Iris without fearing even death.
That was why he had picked up once more the name of the boy who had suffocated to death in the arms of the older sister he had trusted and followed.
“Nuna.”
“Do not call me Nuna.”
Iris glared at Mordin with a sharp gaze.
“It disgusts me.”
Iris, who had always hidden her emotions skillfully, revealed them without restraint.
She swept back her hair as if irritated, let out rough breaths, and even stamped on the floor before finally bursting into laughter.
“You think that because this is a story we began, everything should end with us?”
Hahahaha!!! Mad laughter burst out.
“Do not speak such nonsense.”
“You are exhausted.”
“Yes, I am.”
It felt as though she had walked far too deeply down the wrong path.
But even if it was the wrong path, it still surely continued ahead. The road had not yet been cut off.
She could go farther. She would not stop here.
When the path to fulfilling her desire lay so clearly before her eyes, she could not stop for a mere reason like exhaustion.
“After all, this is the path I began by scattering Father’s blood.”
Even now, the warmth of that blood in her hands and the sickening smell of blood that had pierced her nose remained horribly vivid.
She could not stop here.
She still wanted to walk just a little farther.
It was an earnest wish.
It was also a twisted wish that should never be fulfilled.
“Would you say that to Lerwon as well?”
At Mordin’s question, Iris’s body froze for an instant.
“I asked whether you intend to tell him that since his beginning, too, stained his hands with a parent’s blood, he must never stop and should be guided straight off a cliff.”
No answer came back.
Why, after all this time, was she shaken by such words?
If there was to be an end for her, she had wanted it to come by Lerwon’s hand. Hoping for that, she had taken Lerwon in and raised him.
So much so that if someone had to name the one emotion Iris held toward Lerwon, they could call it ‘expectation’ without hesitation.
The moment Lerwon murdered Iris with his own hands, Iris believed the ‘Lerwon Viden’ she wanted would finally be complete.
Had all of that been wrong?
Her twisted obsession, the heart that had only ever gone endlessly awry, seemed to take shape for the first time.
Breathing hard, Iris slowly looked back.
“Ah.”
It was a cliff.
I thought I was walking a road, but that was not true.
It was not that she regretted, this late, having set foot on a path whose end had been foretold.
Only, a sudden, maddening emptiness swept over her.
「You too will surely meet a terrible end, just like me.」
Her father’s curse suddenly came to mind. Those eyes flashing with murderous intent.
---
That day, the rain was unusually heavy.
If she could use movement magic, would the walk to the back alleys have felt a little lighter?
Iris looked up at the gloomy sky and clenched her fist. At times, everything surrounding her felt too heavy to bear.
So much so that even the little brat noticed.
「Nuna.」
「What?」
「Nuna, do not come here anymore.」
Why did people think children knew nothing?
In truth, children were the ones who had no choice but to see, feel, and understand so much.
Mordin, especially perceptive as he was, felt in his very skin the way the gazes of the back-alley people—who had once simply pitied Iris—were crumbling.
How long could their sympathy truly last?
What would happen to me when it ended?
What would happen to Father…?
Everything was as suspicious as a shadow cast beneath a pitch-black curtain.
“…Father.”
Still, it is all right.
With the money she had earned today, she could finally afford a proper house, not one in the back alleys.
Though they could not return to that old house, she would ask Father to endure just a little longer.
Working at the Academy was a little dangerous, but it paid well. If Father only drank less and stayed away from gambling, they should soon be able to return to the house where they had lived with Mother.
More important than that was the fact that they could escape the back alleys.
‘Mordin. Someday, I will take that child with me too.’
She could see talent in him that would be wasted rotting in the back alleys.
He would surely become an excellent mage; perhaps he might become something even greater.
Once he grew a little more, she would take him in under the pretext of having him care for Father.
By then, she should be able to establish the planned ‘Viden’ Merchant Group. She would pretend to hire Mordin there and then enroll him in the Academy as she pleased.
People usually enrolled at fifteen, but some occasionally entered three or four years late, so it would not be terribly late.
It was an inflated dream. It was also a life she could not endure without dreaming of at least that.
“Huh?”
The money was gone.
The money she had saved to sign for the house had vanished without a trace.
“What? What?”
Where on earth is it?
At least among the people of the back alleys, there was an unwritten rule that they did not touch the money inside the shacks where people lived.
If even that sliver of order were broken, the back alleys would cease to be a place where humans could live.
Thus, if Iris’s money had disappeared, there was only one possibility.
“Dad!!!”
Iris’s shrill scream rang out.
The only person who would touch her money was Gerhard Viden.
At the shrill scream, Gerhard, who had been sprawled carelessly on the floor, staggered to his feet.
“Did you call me?”
“Dad, you took the money, didn’t you?”
Iris asked, eyes wide, almost shouting.
But instead of an answer, a fist flew out.
THWACK!
For an instant, her vision flipped.
It hurt. The burning pain made her mind go hazy before it returned to sharp clarity again.
“Do you know what that money is?!”
“Why is this X-damned bitch making such a X-damned fuss?!”
After the fist came a kick.
As the pain drove straight into her abdomen, tears sprang into Iris’s eyes.
It hurts. It hurts so much. But what settled in her even more heavily than pain was despair.
“I risked my life to earn that money.”
Academy professors did their utmost to ensure their students’ safety, but that did not guarantee perfect safety.
Not long ago, one friend had died in battle. It had been a dungeon Iris had nearly gone to, only for the subjugation schedule to be set on a weekend, preventing her from going.
“Dad, that money… I, your family—”
“Family? My only family is Solea.”
The instant she heard those words, which seemed always to have lingered on the tip of his tongue, she felt something snip cleanly away.
“If only it weren’t for you, if only it weren’t for you, you X-bitch!!!”
Gerhard lunged like a beast and began strangling Iris.
His fingers dug in, and in an instant, her breath grew tight.
As her airway constricted, her body instinctively sought air. She tried to inhale, but nothing came in.
Only a stifled scream barely leaked from her throat.
‘Ah⋯ I am going to die like this.’
It felt as though death flashed pale before her eyes.
Her vision narrowed. The sounds around her grew distant, her fingertips tingled, and her mind washed white.
I want to live. I still do not want to die like this.
Tears gathered in her eyes as she clawed at the hands around her throat, pinched them, struck them, and tried everything she could, but the grip only grew stronger.
“Die, just die!!!”
There was not enough breath. As air ran out, her thoughts scattered.
Calculation, intent, even the awareness that the one strangling her before her eyes was her father—all of it vanished, leaving only instinct.
The simple impulse that she had to live, that she still wanted to live, that she did not want to die like this.
At that moment, something burst from deep within her heart. It was uncontrolled mana.
It was neither an intricately woven magic circle nor ordinary magic she could use as easily as breathing.
It was merely the desire to breathe, the desire not to die yet, granting her wish in its simplest form.
By nature, magic always began from the simplest origin.
WHUMP!!!
She heard a sound like something bursting.
For reasons she did not know, the hands loosened; as the pressure lifted, air rushed in all at once, and she inhaled raggedly.
At the same time, she heard something fall to the floor.
“Ah.”
As her narrowed vision returned, Iris looked straight at the scene before her.
“Urgh.”
She was covered in blood. What soaked her body was not rain, but bright-red, hot blood⋯.
“Heh, heh, heh.”
Even as he was dying, Gerhard burst into laughter.
With a mad smile, Gerhard glared at Iris through bloodshot eyes.
“Iris, Iris Viden!!!”
“Haaah, haah.”
Each breath scraped wildly at her throat like a sharpened blade.
“If I had killed you from the very beginning, Solea would not have had to die, and I would not have been ruined like this!!!”
His hand, gradually losing its warmth, gripped Iris’s shoulder tightly.
He cackled mockingly.
Gerhard’s body slowly lost strength and collapsed.
“You too will surely meet a terrible end, just like me.”
Even as her ears rang and she could barely hear, why did that final curse sound so clear?
Gerhard, addicted to alcohol and gambling, had finally touched something dangerous he should never have laid hands on; his end was bound to be horrific.
This was an accidental incident. It was not intentional murder.
“Or was it?”
Was it really not? Was it true that I could not control my mana until the very end?
In truth, had the desire to kill Father not been greater than the desire to live?
At that moment, her cold, brilliant mind became poison.
Deep down, she hated her father. She disliked him. She despised him. She had thought it would be better if he simply did not exist.
“BLEEERGH!!!”
She tried desperately to vomit up what was inside her, but only thin stomach acid came out.
She had eaten nothing, having hurried back to the shack.
“Hah⋯.”
Today should surely have been a happy day.
She had finally gathered all the money needed to move into a new house, and she had meant to tell him that although she could not fill Mother’s place, she would do her best.
“It was impossible from the beginning.”
Why did I not know that?
Was I being punished now because I had not known something so obvious? No, because I had kept looking away from it, again and again?
“Ahahahaha!!!!!!”
Iris, drenched head to toe in Gerhard’s blood, burst into laughter.
Holding her stomach, she rolled over the stomach acid and broke into a mad smile.
“Ah, aah.”
Stupid Iris Viden.
Stupid, foolish Iris Viden, who had harbored meaningless expectations for something impossible from the start.
“Ah.”
So the place I will fall into is hell.
Iris stared at the ceiling with dazed eyes.
If I am destined for hell anyway, I will do everything.
Iris took the first step onto the path spread out before her.