The Citrine Family's Secret (6)
— Sis, what's that?
— That's a bee. It carries nectar and pollen from flower to flower, helping them reproduce.
As a child, whenever her sister came home, Ter would ask her about everything under the sun.
Her sister was a Guardian, a Royal — the very object of everyone's admiration. She had become a hero who sealed the dimensional rifts appearing across the world, conquered dungeons, and saved countless lives.
Her life. Her achievements. Ter affirmed everything about her sister, and admired her beyond all measure. She wanted her guidance. She wanted to become a Guardian herself.
— Sis, you're leaving already?
— I'm sorry. I'll come back again, so just wait a little longer for me.
Ter reached out her hand, trying to catch those footsteps retreating into the distance, but she never quite touched them.
— Really just a little. Just a tiny little bit.
— ...
Yupi's — her sister's — back looked so lonely that Ter couldn't bring herself to hold her back. So much so that it occurred to her, even then, that perhaps it wasn't her but her sister who was struggling harder to endure these partings.
Every moment left a void behind, and Ter could only promise tomorrow. Someday, when she was grown, she would guard that back. She would travel the world at her sister's side. She swore she would never leave her alone again.
That dream never came true.
— Sis, why are you doing this...?
— Because I didn't like it.
On a day when news of an ordinary homecoming arrived as it always did, Ter hurried out to greet her sister, clutching a gift she had prepared with painstaking care.
But the scene that spread before her was far too cruel for a child to bear.
— AAAAAAGH!
— It hurts! It hurts, it huuurts!
Servants crawling across the ground on stumps where their legs had been severed. Knights of the family clutching empty eye sockets, weeping tears of blood where their eyes had been torn out. They thrashed and flailed in a desperate bid to stay alive, but there was no hope left for any of them.
As she faced them — slowly drying out and dying like fish hauled up onto land — Ter felt terror flood her from the soles of her feet upward.
— I have to— I have to help them!
She needed to call a physician, staunch the bleeding, do something. But despite what her heart screamed, her legs had frozen to stone, rooted to the ground, utterly immovable.
— I'm sorry you had to see this, Ter. It wasn't meant for your eyes.
Ter swallowed back the tears that the surging fear forced up her throat.
Yupi, watching her, raised her hand.
KRA-KOOM!
CRA-CRACK!
Yellow light burst forth, and her vision strobed. Chaotic veins of lightning that shook the entire household crashed down upon the people, leaving behind nothing but formless ash.
— There. Feel a little calmer now?
— AAAAAH!
With a single gesture, the people of the house were erased. Everyone who had waited on her hand and foot, indulged her every whim, laughed and chattered with her like family — she disposed of them all.
— Sit still for me, won't you? You're a good girl. And being good means helping your big sister out.
Even after massacring her own retainers by her own hand, Yupi didn't so much as blink. Dry as a desert, her face a blend of irritation and exhaustion like a beast roused from its sleep, she went on.
Ter was struck by overwhelming shock at the first glimpse of her sister's hidden cruelty. She couldn't possibly understand why Yupi had done such a thing — but something far more terrible than that paralyzed her mind entirely.
— S-Sis, that thing in your hand...
— Oh, this?
— Uuurk! Uuurgh!
A flagpole hung in Yupi's grip. The banner that symbolized her sister — the one she always carried whenever she came to House Citrine.
At the tip of that proud pole, a mass of flesh mangled beyond recognition was skewered through, trembling and letting out a low moan.
— It's your father. The head of House Citrine. Don't you recognize him?
— Th-that's...
— Ah, right. Looking like that, I suppose even family wouldn't know him.
— Ghaaaauk!
CRA-CRACK!
— Save your screams. The place where Father dies isn't here.
The head of House Citrine — a great noble who had embodied the dignity of an entire nation — was denied even death, clinging to life in a shape too pitiful to be called human. Even those short, thin wails begging for mercy were forbidden. Every time he opened his mouth, Yupi sent just enough current through him to keep him from dying, and left him in agony.
— From now on, I'm going to wander the world carrying this. It won't take long, so wait for me here, Ter.
— ...
Is that really the sister I knew?
Ter closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her ears. She couldn't bear to face the carnage unfolding before her, so she turned away —
— S-save me.
Her father's voice. A desperate plea for help pierced through her and lodged itself in her mind.
Swish.
While Yupi's back was turned, Ter searched through the ashes that had been a knight and wrapped her hand around a sword's hilt. The blade was big and heavy, but she wrung out every drop of mana in her body and reinforced herself with it. She was the only one left who could save him here, so she steeled her heart and waited for an opening.
— NOW!
KAANG!
It was her best strike, and Yupi deflected it simply by wrapping herself in mana.
Watching her sister walk on without even turning her head, Ter felt her own helplessness crush down on her. The gap in their strength was absolute. The recoil threw her body backward and she collapsed in a heap.
— Wait!
But instead of lying there in shame, Ter chose to force strength back into her legs and rise. Swearing to herself that she would save her father — absolutely, no matter what — she charged again.
— My poor little sister.
WHAM!
— ...
But the world was cruel.
When she came to, it was not her father's warmth that her fingertips found against the ground.
Laying her head down on the cold, ash-dusted earth, she slowly pushed herself up.
Shaaaaa...
A torrential rain came pouring down. Water streamed along the wreckage of the collapsed estate and soaked Ter where she lay fallen among the ruins. Like a bath washing the grime from her skin, the last traces of her family were scoured away.
That day, Ter lost everything. Her precious family, the people of her house — all of it.
And in its place, a new weapon came to rest in her hands.
Shuuuu...
The Divine Relic, Wrathful Heavenly Thunder. The sacred armament of House Citrine, said to be granted only to those chosen by the heavens.
From that day forward, Ter's life chased nothing but revenge. She ground her teeth and swore that she would become the new head of the house and hurl her sister into the very pit of that abyss — that in the end, she would put her on a scaffold and make her answer for her crimes.
Why had her sister spared her? And had the Relic choosing her after she left really been coincidence?
Burying those unanswerable questions deep inside, Ter set out down the blood-soaked road toward her own destruction.
'Not anymore.'
But that was no longer who she was.
She had learned the truth of her family. She had learned why her sister had chosen to become a monster that day. She had resolved not to look away — to face the truth head-on, even against herself.
She couldn't know whether the visions her sister had seen were things that had truly happened in House Citrine. But it didn't matter.
Today, Ter would seek her confirmation from the one other person who knew the truth — her sister.
"That's the last of them."
CRUNCH!
Yupi mercilessly crushed the fish-shaped monster that wriggled and struggled in her grip. Blood spattered, and splattered gore stuck to her hand — so she reached it out into the torrential rain pouring from the sky and washed the traces away.
'I'd say the monster threat here is effectively gone now.'
A dungeon was a dungeon, even if it was a sealed, independent space cut off from the other world. Monsters had swarmed through it exactly as expected, and Yupi had thrown her full strength into exterminating them.
Her purpose in coming here was to find the Connector, but fighting these things had been a fine way to pass the time. The seat of family head meant nothing to her. What mattered was whether that girl had gotten the Connector or not.
Plip. Plop.
"There she is..."
The rhythmic crash of waves rolling in from far away. Yupi turned her head toward the sound.
Ter stood there. Sheltered beneath an umbrella sculpted from ice magic, drifting above the water's surface like a ghost — a serene figure without a single raindrop on her, gazing down at Yupi, who sat perched on the reef.
"Did you get the Connector?"
— ...
In answer to Yupi's question, Ter simply held up the glittering jewel clutched in her hand. It hadn't been a question asked in any real hope of an answer, but at Ter's way of replying, Yupi smiled.
"Congratulations. You're the head of the house now."
"Not yet. The condition the Elder set was only that I bring this back to him."
"That should be easy for you. You've got people helping you, too."
"I suppose I do."
The short reply — and the gravity in those words — carried the weight of deep, deep deliberation. Yupi was quietly astonished. Ter hadn't shown even a flicker of the fury she'd braced herself for.
— Sis!
That was a side of her she'd only seen in the far-distant past, back when Ter had still been a child.
But the truly astonishing thing came next.
"All that's left now is actually becoming the head."
With those words, Ter sat down beside Yupi. Tilting the umbrella in her hand subtly toward her, she gazed off into the distance, at some far, faraway point.
"I want to hear your — no, wait, that's not right. I want to hear my sister's opinion, if that's alright?"
Sister.
When had she last heard that word ring in her ears? Something in the corner of her chest tore open, and emotion climbed up her throat and choked her. It felt as though the tears would burst out of her at any moment, but she barely held onto her composure.
"...Go on. Tell me."
She couldn't let her sister see her fall apart like that, so she answered as evenly as she could manage.
"I'm going to become the head of the house. I'm going to bring this to the Elder. But, you see..."
Ter paused, hesitating. It took her a long time before her mouth finally opened, and Yupi waited silently, refusing to rush her.
After a while, Ter, having made up her mind, spoke.
"I don't know if I can do this well. Being a good head of the family... it looks a lot harder than I thought."
Ter turned her head and met her eyes. Those blue eyes were gleaming bright as sapphires.
"So that's why I'm asking. What do you think, Sis? Do you think I could be a good head of the house?"
Such a sudden change of heart. The snarling, bristling hostility had vanished somewhere entirely, and now her little sister was drawing close and calling her Sister again — bewilderment washed over Yupi.
But instead of blinking in surprise, she left her with a few short words, spoken with all her heart.
"Don't worry. You can do it."
Because it was a bond that had shattered so completely she had believed these buried words would never, ever be spoken aloud — she finally delivered the truth she had held inside, unable to say it, for so very long.
"Because you're my little sister."