Chapter 82: Is It A Competition?
My cryptic words rang loud and clear across the gazebo.
Esme and Hilda wore neutral expressions, but the others-
"What truth?"
-the others stared at their speaker, at their leader, Nemora.
Shaking my head in response, "I cannot tell you. Not that I know the real truth either, I'm still searching for it."
Nemora's eyes squinted with a gleam, "And we should trust you because?"
I smiled lifelessly, "Who else can you trust in this Domain of Light?"
My treacherous words cut through the air, striking each teenager with an instinctive sense of rejection; their leader, however...
She stared at me.
Silently.
Curiously.
...But having heard my words, a curious smile eventually latched onto her lips.
"Oh? You?"
Pushing her hand into her pocket, Nemora pulled out a tiny vial and carelessly tossed it into the air and back down. "Trust you?"
My drugs.
"It's up to you; if you trust my sister, you can trust me." I decisively used my sister's status for my selfish needs.
But it's not a lie.
I would never disparage my sister with lies, because what I spoke was nothing but the truth. If you trust Esme, you can trust me, because this creature exists for her.
It will do anything and everything for her.
"Fine, I'll trust you." Nemora handily tossed the vial back into her pocket.
Esme's gaze had been glued to that vial throughout our conversation, but; sorry, Esme, I won't be telling you what that's about.
You, the most perfect girl of them all, don't need to witness the vile truth behind this creature.
At least, not yet.
The half-kids, half-adults shared their thoughts through glances at that moment; their eyes honed in on their leader, seemingly questioning her on what the hell was going on.
As for what is going on in this messy situation today-
It's simple.
Nemora believes I'm of no good after having figured out that I'd purchased drugs and hurt Yulei with my words while keeping Esme on edge for all these years.
Esme is now heavily questioning what is wrong with me, what secrets I'm holding, while seemingly having finally started to figure it out.
It's not that it's complicated. I'm a person riddled with Curses; Curses that I've taken from Esme. But no one has Curses like I do. I'm an anomaly; an anomaly with too many Curses, so, to the common sense of this world, it would be difficult to connect the dots.
However, Esme has been given the clue to connect these dots during her Ascension.
Not that it was intentional, I would rather not have had that happen.
But there was no way for me to know that this time around, Esme could see the descending Curses being taken away.
Though, in hindsight, I should have guessed that my perfect sister could pull something like that off.
As for Hilda...
Well, I can't really tell you what's going on in her half-empty brain.
That, however, is her first Curse. So pushing the blame on that dumb, adorable girl would be inappropriate.
"...Alora." Esme was the first to walk up to me. She stood far above me, almost 20cm taller. Arriving in front of me, her hands picked mine up, interlocking her fingers with mine.
"Where should we go?"
Her eyes;
Those blazing, ever-confident, ever-determined eyes;
Sorrow.
Pain.
Regret.
Those emotions clung to them; emotions brought forth by the understanding of what was truly happening to me.
But I will not admit it.
As long as I don't admit it, she can never confirm it.
Smiling succinctly beneath my mask, "The South-Western corner of the Domain of Light."
My words drew all eyes to a person: a quiet, downtrodden girl with black hair.
Vanessa.
She flinched with all gazes glued to her. Vanessa's lips curled up with an attempt to hold her pride up, but-
She's changed.
Her eyes were darker, her demeanour was quiet, and the aggression that had been ingrained in her bones, the aggression I was familiar with from our shopping trip over 4 years ago, the aggression from when I coerced her into helping me buy drugs-
It's gone.
What happened?
"What?" Vanessa pursed her lips.
"Don't 'What?' us, that's your land..." Yulei's exhausted, grainy voice swept into everyone's ears with the wind. Her body lay tired in her wheelchair, and the evidence of her gradual downfall could no longer be hidden.
Vanessa had changed, and Yulei was dying.
A lot had happened since the last time I saw this group.
Nemora has grown. Jill's face was stiffer than ever. Elden was relaxed on Jill's shoulder, and Hildekar stood to the side, seemingly a bystander to the group.
The cohort's dynamics...
Puberty, teenagers, and growth; it's inevitable.
Still.
It's sad.
The carefree children running around shopping while crying about Remmy and desserts; the smiles on their faces-
It was disappearing; all of it.
...This accursed Domain of Light.
Vanessa shrugged at Yulei, "It's not my land, it's my Father's. I've been there 10 times in the past 4 years, barely remember the place."
"And! Whose fault is it that I don't go back?" Vanessa shot Yulei a glance after her closing sentence. That questioning statement held a lot of hidden meaning within it.
Alas, I'm blind to what's going on.
I'd have to ask Esme, but I doubt Esme is in the mood to chat about other people's issues.
143,927,002Butifwedon'tclearthiscohort'sproblemswewillalldie144,164,092
"...Still-" Nemora tried to speak up, but-
"Nemora, it's fine."
Yulei shot down Nemora's attempts at salvaging the situation.
"Huh~ Aren't these two girls lookin' dumber than before?" Elden commented lightly with his chin slung over Jill's shoulder.
Thud.
In return, a fistful of discipline came from the green-haired boy as he smacked him on the forehead.
"Ouch."
The silver-haired teenager beside them sighed, rubbed his brows, and said, "Elden, when will your manners be fixed?"
"Hildekar, when will you learn to mind your own business?" But Elden struck right back, uncaring of the young man's worries.
"...Ugh, stop you two."
Jill had to speak up at this point to get the two rattled teenagers settled down.
I watched on from the front with Esme's warm fingers still tickling mine; seriously, what happened to this group while I wasn't watching?
But it only made sense.
Mother would have never let it be easy;
She would have never celebrated so hard, pushed me so hard to bring them to where the truth may lay-
If not for the fact that there's a problem for me to solve.
If not for the fact that there are numerous underlying issues within this cohort.
If not for the fact that without my intervention, we'd be doomed before we began...
Mother would have turned this into a hell of its own were it not already a hell of entangled relationships.
It means that mother believes it's already a difficult enough issue for me to fix on my own; thus, there's no reason for her to add any more problems to the mix.
"Okay, we'll go." Esme glanced back and shot each friend a piercing glance. She wasn't giving them a choice.
Turning back, her warm, melting, golden eyes dripped over me; she leaned down and close, tucking her lips by my ear, "I trust you. Always."
Gulping the rising swell of hot emotion down my throat, I briefly nodded. I worried that were I to open my mouth, only a jumbled mess of incoherent words laced with maddening love would escape.
This creature can't hold itself back in the face of the one it loves.
Step! Step!
While Esme and I had our little scene, a pair of feet approached us.
"Hmph~ Leaving me out?" Hilda adorably pouted her lips with her arms crossed beneath her ample chest, puffing them out.
"Yes. We are." Esme cruelly bit back with her tongue out.
...But, while Esme didn't notice it, I did.
What, you may ask?
I stared into Hilda's solemn ruby-red eyes.
The horror.
That look in her eyes, as though she were staring at an impossible reality; a reality she knew had to have come at a cost.
I'm walking.
With no inch of pain revealing in the depths of my eyes.
It's only natural that Hilda wouldn't be bothered over other minor matters; instead-
Hilda popped over to my left side. She emulated Esme's way of standing and leaned into my ear, then, with a touch of miraculous power, etched her words, hiding them from Esme's ears:
"What happened?"
I continued smiling at Esme's eyes, but the moment Esme looked towards Hilda in confusion over the reason why she had hidden her words from Esme's ears, my eyes briefly shot to the left; into Hilda's eyes.
And within them...
Curses.
An etching of over a dozen different forms of Curses, boiling, bubbling, and melting into one another, revealed itself to Hilda's eyes for a split second.
More Curses than ever before.
Hilda received my gaze and deflected Esme simultaneously.
I didn't want to worry Hilda too much, but it's inevitable for her to discover the consequences of my actions. I'd rather prepare her for the aftermath than throw her into shock once the side effects kick in.
Five hours left until then.
"Hmm..." Esme suspiciously eyed the two of us with an unmistakable hint of jealousy.
Cute, so fucking cute.
"Fine. If you want to stay quiet, stay quiet. But just you wait." Folding her arms below her chest, Esme emulated Hilda from moments ago.
The girls had switched positions.
It feels like a competition.
...I do like the feeling though.
I watched the scene with warmth bubbling forth endlessly from the depths of this creature's sticky, tarry heart.