Chapter 87: Fat Hilda?
"Lady Alora, they're watching." Lily, standing by Esme's side and observing our interactions, reminded Esme of the multitude of prying eyes. Mainly, it was centred around Nemora's frigid pair of icicles glaring into me as though I were a homewrecker.
I should probably let her know that we're twins sometime soon.
While a twin could be just as threatening to the powers at play, providing Nemora with that information might lessen her burning anger toward me.
"I don't care."
Biting her lips, my adorable sister frowned. She stared down at me, "I want to figure out why my cute sister isn't feeling well after her Ascension."
The moment Esme stated the words 'figure out', her eyes sharpened with crackling intensity.
She stared into my eyes; into my soul.
She knows.
She had to know by this point that there was no way to hide it anymore. She witnessed the Curses flowing into the wall, and I just so happened to Descend at the same time. If she still couldn't figure it out, she wouldn't be worthy of being my sister.
But.
I won't admit to it.
I can't let her suffer the agony of knowing what her sister has gone through.
I also don't want her to witness this creature.
Not in its disgusting state.
"Hm... I'm unlucky." I gave her the truth.
It wasn't a lie.
It's true, I'm very unlucky.
I doubt anyone else is as unlucky as I am in this Domain of Light-
...Never mind.
A flash of the document of victims of Flamm's shot through my mind; the final cry of a dying boy and his broken mother rang clear in my brain.
"Unlucky? How so?" Esme pushed me.
"Uh..." I dragged it out as I tried to come up with something, "...The Curses that descended on me were quite severe. I got unlucky."
The truth.
I uttered the truth.
The truth that hid the fact that the Curses weren't only my own, but also Esme's.
"...But how could you get a Curse so severe at only the Second Step?"
I tried to shrug under Esme's piercing, interrogative gaze, "Like I said, unlucky."
My words seemed to pass through one ear and out the other. Esme pouted, shoved her head into my shoulder, then, with a muffled voice;
A voice embedded with Blessings;
A voice intended for my ears only;
"We will talk later. Me and you."
Her breath hissed gently into my ears, "No more secrets."
Ba-dump.
...No more secrets?
So...
Does she want to know?
Of mother's instructions?
Of consuming milk between mother's toes?
Of shredding into pieces?
Of exploding?
Of torture?
Of the endless voices?
Of the vile current of Curses?
No.
I can't tell her.
Esme can't handle it.
She was too young; a true 9-year-old girl. Not like me, an adult pretending to be a child, but a real child.
While she may be intelligent, and while she may be the Blessed One and the Gaze of Heaven, in the end, she's just a girl.
A hopelessly lovely girl with an attachment to me.
I can't hurt her.
And I don't want her to hate me; hate me for hiding so much, hate me for being this disgusting thing...
"Okay. No more secrets."
...yet, why?
Why did those words slip from my lips at the most crucial moment?
"Hehe... Perfect." Esme's voice crept through my ears, sending shivers down my spine with that one, specific word.
Perfect.
I'm Perfect.
A smile crept up beneath my mask, "Now give me back to Hilda, she's gonna throw a tantrum soon. She's my Sword Maid, it's her job to care for me."
"Alright." With a fresh wave of enthusiasm laced in her words, Esme stood up and pushed me back towards Hilda's arms, "Take care of my sister."
"I will!"
Hilda thumped her chest, allowing the mounds of flesh to wriggle; well, well, well...
My eyes glued to the scene for a split second, then shot back up to Hilda's stern and determined face.
Never mind, she probably doesn't even realise.
Being wrapped once more by Hilda's grown body, she placed me over her back and secured me tightly; she ensured minimum movement and the least amount of pain possible.
"Is it fine like that, little dummy?"
"It's fine."
I noticed Lily's gaze sharpening like the piercing tip of a spear the second she heard Hilda call me a 'little dummy', but I ignored it.
That was Hilda's problem to deal with in the future.
Anyways, now that was all said and done...
I looked towards the group that was surrounding us, eying us with curiosity, and, from the eyes of a certain member, scrutiny.
Yulei, Jill, and Vanessa were the only ones with not so much going on in their expressions; Yulei and Jill, I could understand, the former was dealing with late-stage Flamm's, and the latter just didn't care.
Vanessa, on the other hand...
What's wrong with her?
I stared at her, practically glared at her, yet I received no reaction; no response.
It's as though she were as inanimate as a statue; merely the only difference being that she was breathing, and a statue isn't.
Vanessa's silky black hair fell over her shoulders, her eyes broke their connection with mine and then shifted to the side. They honed in on the sole seated girl, Yulei.
Her dark eyes stared deeply at the wheelchair-ridden girl.
No, she's not just staring at her...
Her breathing, her demeanour, the emotions in her gaze-
They've changed.
Drastically.
I could see it, an obsession; an obsession eerily familiar to me.
She's obsessed with Yulei. Why?
I know that she used to listen to Yulei and follow her instructions whenever the girl spoke, but this level of obsession?
This lack of care for everything but Yulei?
Yulei isn't even noticing it.
She's just looking at me with bored eyes.
"Lady Alora, you said you had somewhere to take us, didn't you? Go on then, we're here now. Though all that lies out here is an endless hilly land of snow." Nemora's polite yet icy voice pointed backwards at the vast, hilly expanse cascading towards the massive black and white veil.
Snow covered every inch of the waves of hills, and, other than the semi-close veil of black and white, there was nothing else here.
No town, no village, no houses; no trees, no life.
Nothing.
Just a set of snowy, swaying hills billowing towards the black and white veil.
"Is there anything here in the first place?" Hildekar's sceptical voice pushed into the conversation from the side.
Elden and Jill still held a slight distance away from him, but Nemora didn't.
As expected of their leader.
"There is." I responded quite frankly to the scepticism.
Not that I was entirely sure what there is, nor where it is, but the white-crowned princess specifically informed me of the South-Western corner.
So, not just these hills, but the true corner; the corner of the black and white veil.
If there's something related to the Canaries here, related to the white haze and the secrets behind everything I've been striving towards, it has to be there.
Because, well, if it wasn't, I'd be fucked.
But it's fine.
Mother approved of this journey; she encouraged it, meaning;
It's there.
A portion of the secrets will finally be unveiled.
"Let's get moving then, if something is seriously there, we'll have to arrive and return before nightfall." Nemora motioned her maid towards her carriage, then, one by one, the others did the same.
Their maids and butlers walked back to the carriages that sat at the dead end of a poorly maintained road that was caked with snow.
What are they doing?
Staring at them with confusion, "You don't know?" Esme noticed my gaze and, with a puffed-up chest and her hands on her hips, she said, "Just watch!"
Esme nudged Lily with her elbow, and the lady bowed quietly, then promptly walked over to Esme's carriage and my carriage.
"What are they doing, Hilda?" I asked my Sword Maid, but, in return, she:
"I don't know."
What did I expect from her?
"That's what happens, Hilda~ When all you do all day long is lie on your Lady's lap and eat desserts, stuffing your growing, fat belly~" Lily's venom-laced words stung deep into Hilda's clueless little brain.
"That- That's not my fault..." Hilda shrank into herself with weak words.
That's partially true. It's half my fault, but the other half is certainly-
"The other half is your fault."
I slapped the cruel reality onto Hilda's face.
"Hng... Not you too, little dummy..." Pouting, the hands locked behind my bug sneakily dug into my waist, poking and prodding me playfully.
"And my belly isn't fat!" Seemingly just realising the second half of Lily's words, she quipped back with spite in her eyes.
My eyes carefully gazed down from this angle on her shoulder, alas...
They're too big, I can't see past them.
Therefore-
"They're quite fat, you know?"
-I could only painfully agree with Lily in this regard, Hilda is, in fact, quite fat...
In her breasts, that is.
"Hey! That's rude! I'm not fat!"
She doesn't even realise what I'm talking about, classic Hilda.