The Secret of House Citrine (2)
Ter's time with her father lasted only until she was eight years old.
It was but an instant compared to the long span of a human life, yet in those days she had been happier than anyone else in the world.
Born into a prestigious noble house, she had grown up showered with attention and love. The servants fussed over her every gesture while pouring their whole hearts into making sure she wanted for nothing.
"This way, my lady, Anna is here. Slowly now, this way."
"Magnificent, magnificent! Our young lady will grow up to accomplish great things someday."
Her father, the head of the house, and the family's warriors alike lavished affection on her without reserve, and Ter felt a quiet fullness in that tender warmth.
That was why she had hated the sister who shattered that peace. She had always believed that someone so vile—a monster who slaughtered innocents without cause and committed unspeakable crimes against her own blood—could never be forgiven.
But when the hidden truth came to light, when the face of House Citrine she had never known was laid bare before her, she had no choice but to reconsider everything she thought she believed.
Slap slap!
"Nngh! So good!"
A fat man shook his hips with everything he had. A lazy, slothful body that had never known a day of exercise moved on pure instinct alone, twisting its rolls of flab with every heaving motion.
"Hnng! I'm dying! You're really killing me! I've never felt anything like this in my life!"
Thick but no longer than a finger, his member sawed back and forth as he drowned himself in pleasure. The sight of him grinning with drool stringing from his lips made a stray beast rummaging through roadside trash look dignified by comparison.
"Hahh..."
Beneath him, a woman with indigo hair let out a faint moan, receiving his lust with her whole body.
It was a sight one would hardly believe was sex at all. As if feeling nothing whatsoever, she stared down at him with a look of pure revulsion, as though watching something rotten. Not even the flush of arousal touched her skin—she simply, mechanically wished for this dreadful time to be over as quickly as possible.
Anna—or rather, Ter wearing the shell of Anna—stood at a distance from the bed, watching the scene.
"Tis, guests are coming again tomorrow, so prepare yourself. Just remember—if you screw up like last time, what awaits you will make today look merciful."
Only the evening before, Ter had watched Tis beaten by that man—her father. Struck without pause until bruises blackened her entire body, she had been released only when she was on the verge of drawing her last breath.
And the very next day, she had obeyed her father's orders and entertained his guests. She had stripped on the bed and presented herself to every man who entered the room.
"This is heaven! I'm melting! Hey, what was your name again?"
"...Tis."
"Tis, huh. I can't hold back anymore. Can I finish inside you?"
"...Yes. Please, finish inside me."
Throb!
With each passing day, the woman's body and soul grew more defiled. The smooth, well-kept hair the servants had combed every morning became a bird's nest each time another man came and went through the room. The refreshing scent of mint that had once lingered in the air curdled into a reeking stench of filth.
"Lady Tis, your schedule for today is finished."
Ter approached the bed with a basin of water and a towel, where the woman lay sprawled and limp.
Hss...
So cold.
The hand she gently lifted was icy as a sheet of frost. Ter hurriedly soaked the towel in warm water and began to wash her body.
"If you're cold, please tell me. I'll finish quickly and get you under the blankets."
As a servant, Ter poured all her strength into caring for Tis as best she could. She nursed her with devoted tenderness, tried again and again to coax her back to her feet—but the woman simply remained there, hollow-eyed, as if her soul had left her body long ago.
"Ah..."
Tis murmured in a low voice, staring into empty air with vacant eyes.
"I miss you, big sister..."
"Sister, I missed you so much!"
The moment those words reached her ears, Ter's diligently moving hands froze solid. Though the circumstances were nothing alike, she had glimpsed in the woman before her a reflection of herself from long, long ago.
This is the family's secret?
Ter's hands, still mid-motion as she washed Tis, trembled like aspen leaves. She prayed it wasn't true, but even with her eyes shut and her ears covered, the past of House Citrine seeped through, and she felt nausea climbing up her throat. A father who turned his own child into a sexual slave. Family members who cooperated with it willingly. She could not, by any stretch, believe this was the behavior of a normal household. It clashed so violently with the warm, loving family she remembered from childhood that a terrible dissonance opened up inside her.
This is a lie.
She turned away, denying a reality she could not accept. She would sooner believe it all some illusion born of her own delusions.
But she did not yet know—that she had seen only the barest sliver of House Citrine's depravity.
I opened my eyes and closed them, again and again. My vision swam, and the illusion that had unfolded against the backdrop of the abandoned building dissolved away. Ter, who had been beside me, vanished like a mirage, and in her place a different scenery filled my sight.
So this is the creation space from the novel.
Cool air hung thick in the dim theater. Rows of empty seats stretched out without a single soul among them, and through that silent space a single slender thread of light filtered down. On the screen where the memory played, the face of Ter—in her guise as a servant—glowed faintly, and I rested my chin on my hand and watched.
Can she pull this off?
In the scene just beginning, she was coming face to face with her father's leering, sordid grin. At this rate she would unearth the secret of House Citrine in no time—but I couldn't rule out the possibility that the weight of the truth would crush her, that she would turn her head away before the end.
Her spirit can't be allowed to break.
The Mirror of the Moon, reflecting the past of House Citrine. Within it, she would come face to face with her family's ugly truth. The key was to melt naturally into the flow of events by playing the role of one of the people at the center of that era's atrocities. Failure carried no real risk—but if she failed, she would never again be able to uncover her family's secret by her own hand.
I hoped, sincerely, that she would see the play through to its end.
"Is standing not uncomfortable for you?"
"Not at all. Honestly, I can see much better standing than I would sitting down."
A voice drifted over from behind me without a hint of presence, but I paid it no mind. Shrugging at the arrival of exactly the person I'd expected, I agreed readily with the question.
"...You don't seem the least bit rattled. Did you foresee this?"
"If I'm being honest? I'd have to say no. I never dreamed you'd actually use Mirror of the Moon back there."
"..."
Silence settled over the theater. She hadn't imagined I would know the technique by name either—her chattering mouth faltered.
"So? With all those techniques at your disposal, why on earth did you insist on drawing the single most disadvantageous card for yourself, Yuri?"
"It was my own desperate gambit. A variable, chosen deliberately to slip past a fate that had already been decided."
Rising from a seat at the back, she came to stand beside me, her shimmering silver hair stirring in the wind.
"Are you familiar with the Celestial Clan?"
"Familiar enough. The lunatics who rage about becoming the next God King. They fancy themselves the one true descendants of the divine and treat everyone else like insects."
"...Not all of them are like that, though it's not entirely wrong either, so I'll let it pass."
Yuri coughed awkwardly and waved it off—because she herself belonged to the Hardliner faction that treated humans like insects. All while pointedly stressing that she was different from the rest of them, drawing a line between herself and her own clan.
"If it isn't too rude to ask, how much do you know about my clan?"
"Assume that anything Palad knows, I know too. That'll be easier for both of us."
"I hadn't expected you to know that much. Far more of the truth than I anticipated."
Yuri dropped her gaze and swallowed hard. After a moment's deliberation, she opened her silent mouth and looked straight at me.
"If I'm confessing here, then let me say it plainly: I created this space assuming you would know nothing about the Celestial Clan."
"Ah, right—because House Citrine's past is closely entangled with them. And it lets you show me fragments of the crimes your clan committed against humanity, too."
For someone who had read the setting guides and the novel dozens, hundreds of times over, committing the entire worldbuilding to memory, it was impossible—no matter how I tried—not to know these things. The justification she'd offered, that she'd used the technique to pass information about the Celestial Clan to me, was actually fairly plausible.
It was by no means a forced argument, either.
"But why would you want to tell me any of that?"
I asked again, because I still couldn't see what ultimate purpose she hoped to achieve by leaking that information at all.
"If you know that much, then surely you've already surmised that those who stand in my position—my clan's heirs, to be precise—are fated to meet a miserable end."
The sins of House Citrine. The heirs. And the message Yuri wanted to deliver. Clues that had looked unrelated in isolation came together, and the puzzle that revealed the truth clicked into place.
"I see. You pulled all this off because you wanted to ask me for help."
"Yes. That is exactly right."
The moment I struck the heart of the matter, Yuri knelt before me as though she'd been waiting for precisely this. With perfect formality she bowed her head, pressing her forehead lightly to the ground. For a member of a clan so arrogant it believed the world revolved around itself, it was an act utterly beyond belief.
"Will you help me—help us heirs?"