The Secret of the Citrine Family (3)
Ter came to know many things by living through the family's bygone days.
The first was that the family forced its own daughter into sexual hospitality — and that they were nobles, illustrious and wealthy beyond measure.
"Here you are — the reward we agreed upon."
Once the deed was done, the noble guests presented an enormous fortune. Gold, silver, and jewels heaped high upon wagons — a sum so extravagant it bordered on absurd for the embrace of a single woman.
"Thank you for having us. Thanks to the grace the Citrine family has bestowed, our house shall enjoy prosperity for generations to come."
Every man who had held Tiss in his arms left the mansion wearing the same satisfied expression.
And the change in them was more than a mere lift in mood.
Their color has come back.
The men Tiss entertained ranged from elders etched with wrinkles to invalids who dragged their legs with every step.
Yet every one of them walked out of that room looking hale and hearty, as if nothing had ever ailed them. The shrunken man had recovered his vitality; the crippled man's body had improved beyond recognition.
Only then did Ter understand why men who could embrace dozens of women at will would pay such staggering sums to covet one girl.
"Ugh...!"
"Miss Tiss!"
"Haa... haa..."
Tiss, by contrast, grew visibly darker after seeing to her visitors. Again and again she coughed violently and crumpled to the floor, until at last the fainting spells began. Each time, it was Ter who carried her to bed and laid her down.
Her mana is unstable, and there isn't enough of it. And every time she has sex, even that dwindles further.
Ter didn't understand the mechanism, but Tiss was being drained of her mana by other people. Men who possessed mana at all were vanishingly rare — you could count them on one hand.
But that didn't mean ordinary people were utterly incapable of using mana. They lacked the source that generated it in their hearts, yet their bodies were still vessels built to hold it.
Granted, all of this was theory. Just as a transfusion of mismatched blood could kill, accepting another person's mana triggered a fatal rejection response.
And they were enacting a miracle bordering on the sublime through an act this vile.
This is the worst.
The purer and more powerful one's mana — the vaster its quantity — the longer and healthier a human life became. Yupi and the Sword Saint, hailed as the strongest of the current age, kept bodies far younger than their years; the Grand Magus and Pallad lived lives all but bordering on immortality.
For men with no mana, embracing Tiss was a kind of tasting — a brief sample of what those lives might feel like.
Which was exactly what made it so vicious. The improvement was temporary, nothing more; give it time and their bodies would revert to what they had been.
It's a drug they can never quit.
Hope as torture — could any phrase capture this situation better? If people so much as glimpse the hope of getting a little better, they will cling to anything.
If men overflowing with power and wealth could buy back their health by bedding a woman, they would call it a bargain well struck.
The Citrine family was running a business on exactly that. And the price was a single woman's life, gnawed away without mercy, the way a worm devours a leaf.
"Cough, cough!"
With every passing day, Tiss's health deteriorated. As the one charged with nursing her at her side, Ter felt that wretched reality sink into his bones.
The way her hand felt like ice the first time we touched — that was no coincidence either.
The water in her vessel was sinking toward the bottom. Unlike everyone else, whose mana naturally replenished itself with food and sleep, hers never seemed to fill.
The flame of life burning in her chest was guttering out by degrees. It meant the days she had left were few.
A fate of being exploited her entire life without ever setting foot beyond the mansion walls, then discarded — that was the tragedy awaiting the woman named Tiss. No one could blame her for hating her father, for hating the entire family.
Even Ter, who had once been proud to call himself a Citrine, felt the illusion shattering.
"I've brewed some tea. This should help a little."
"..."
Today, as always, she sipped the hot tea in silence. With lifeless eyes, she used the steam-curling surface of the water as a mirror.
...I'd rather you got angry. Even that would be something.
She barely spoke, shuffling about in a washed-out pallor like a zombie. At first, Ter had taken her behavior for a kind of protest against the family — a silent defiance, the refusal to waste words on people like them.
But the eyes of Ter, who had watched her day after day from close by, told a different story. She had reached her limit. She didn't even have the strength left to trade words. Simply receiving the visitors who arrived day after day already took everything she had.
And yet there were days when this Tiss became a chatterbox.
"Tiss, I'm here."
"Unni!"
The tightly sealed gates of the mansion swung open, and a platinum-blonde woman stepped inside — hair that recalled the flash of lightning. Yupi Citrine. She was the only one who breathed any life into Tiss's ruined existence.
"Have you been well while I was away?"
"Yes! Just like you said, I stayed out of trouble and behaved."
It was a lie. She was suffering abuse within these walls, living each day in misery. But Tiss hid that truth from her sister.
Why didn't you tell her?
If Tiss had spoken, Yupi would have flown into a rage on her sister's behalf as if it were her own suffering, and helped her. Why did she keep silent about it all, when Yupi was the only person in the family she could lean on?
Had their father schemed to make sure she never entertained thoughts of turning to anyone else?
A thousand thoughts tangled themselves together in Ter's mind.
"There, there — my precious little sister. I can't imagine where she learned to be this sweet."
"Hehe."
Even as Ter was lost in thought, the sisters' conversation carried on — words as gentle and warm as sunlight.
A reunion of sisters more beautiful than any other, a moment of happiness that seemed as though it would last forever.
"Unni, look at this! A shell bracelet I made all by myself!"
"Oh my goodness — look at that! It's beautiful, Terre!"
Unexpectedly, a memory of childhood surfaced in Ter's mind. The way that moment from the past overlapped with the scene before her couldn't have been mere coincidence.
"Oh, right — I brought news today that's going to knock your socks off. Look at this!"
What Yupi held out was a scrap of cloth embroidered with a finely detailed eagle crest. Curiosity bloomed across Tiss's face as she took it.
"Unni, what is this?"
"You remember when I told you I became a Guardian?"
"Yes — you said you became one to protect people from the monsters. Is this something to do with that?"
"That's right. This crest represents me. It's a symbol granted only to those who rise to Royal — the very summit of the Guardians."
Royal.
A title held by only two people in the current age: the Sword Saint and Yupi.
So she claimed it at this point in time.
Ter, borrowing Anna's eyes, watched the scene in silence.
"Congratulations, Unni. You always wanted it so badly."
With a short cheer and a round of applause, Tiss celebrated her sister's achievement with all her heart.
"Yes. I wanted it more than anything."
In answer to that congratulations, Yupi gently took Tiss's gaunt hand in both of hers.
"Uh... Unni?"
"Once you become Royal, you gain the authority to enter any dungeon you please. You can pass through the gates of Dilmun without permission."
Her grip tightened. It was a touch stronger than any time before — a hand laden with fierce, consuming longing.
"The other world we call the dungeon is full of marvels. Ruins of ancient mankind, miraculous elixirs — things like that."
"Unni, that's..."
"I will fix you. I swear I'll make it happen, no matter what..."
Yupi buried her face in the back of Tiss's hand. She had steeled her resolve with those resolute words, yet she couldn't hide the thin sob that finally bled through.
"So hold on just a little longer. Okay?"
"..."
To that single, desperate plea, Tiss held her tongue. After a long pause, she drew Yupi into her arms the way a mother comforts her child.
"Yes. I'll hold on."
And so the two of them shared each other's warmth for a long while — promising to meet again, carving this moment deep into their hearts.
Ter, wearing Anna's form, watched the sisters in silence. What she was seeing now was nothing more than a fragmentary slice of two other people's lives.
Yupi had supposedly left word that she would visit once every six months — yet she came nearly every day, which said everything. Ordinarily, fully understanding the bond between the two would have been all but impossible.
But for Ter alone, the emotions between them came through more vividly than for anyone.
"Unni, piggyback! Piggyback!"
"Heheh. All right, come here."
For Ter, this was a kind of review — turning over and over the memories of two sisters, once more.
Before she knew it, she was clutching at a chest that prickled with an ache she couldn't name.
The evening of the day Yupi departed, Ter accompanied Tiss when the head of the family summoned them.
Why, at this hour?
It was deep into the night, a time when they should have finished the day's work and been resting — and a nameless dread crept over her. All the more so because Tiss's frail body desperately needed rest before tomorrow's guests arrived.
Knock, knock.
"Head of the house, I've brought them."
"Enter."
At the word of permission, Ter opened the door without a sound and stepped inside. In the family head's bedchamber, he sat at his ease in a comfortable robe, planted in the chair beside the bed.
"Um... Daddy? Why did you call for us...?"
"..."
"I-It's just, I'm tired. I have to entertain guests tomorrow, and..."
Tiss fumbled over her words, groping for a way to say that it was late and she wanted to rest — but the fear of the family head, rooted deep in her chest, crushed her voice down to nothing.
"Tiss."
He called her name in a gentle voice. It was the warm tone Ter knew — and yet somehow, a chill crawled up her spine.
"If it's your condition, don't worry. From tomorrow on, you won't have to entertain anyone ever again."
"...I'm sorry? What do you mean, I don't have to...?"
"The fruit I've been waiting on has ripened. The time has come."
"Aah... Daddy!"
Before the words had even left her mouth, the family head seized Tiss's arm and flung her down onto the bed. Tiss, for whom simply standing upright had been an ordeal, crumpled limply against the sheets.
The man climbed onto the bed, over his utterly defenseless daughter.
"Now then — let us begin the final hospitality."
The devil's chuckle wormed into her eardrums, and a shadow steeped in the reek of death settled over her.