Deserving Acceptance (3)
“Miss, why is this professor… Ack. Let go of this for a moment!”
Disgustingly soft and squishy. She must be clinging to me to show off that she never exercises and only eats and researches. The only woman I’d tolerate clinging to me like this—aside from Mother—is Lady Karalin.
“Professor Casacos, what’s going on…?”
“Well, she says she’s Yohan’s mother. I don’t know the details.”
“Whoa, really?! That’s impossible. How old was she when she gave birth?!”
“I don’t know who the father is, but rumor has it he’s a real piece of work.”
They’re all talking loud enough for me to hear. With mouths that loose, it’s only right to put some distance between us as quickly as possible. But I couldn’t exactly punch a woman who introduced herself as my mother—especially not if she was a professor. So I politely but firmly pried her hands off me. The moment I did, a thin strand of snot and saliva stretched between her tofu-like body and mine before snapping.
“A-Agaaay—!”
“Agaaas…?”
“My baby came back to life—!! Hwaaaang—!!”
Rather than disgust, I felt only the crushing weight of the reason this woman had become like this. It wasn’t curiosity. It was burden.
“Miss? Miss!”
At my desperate plea for rescue, Lady Karalin merely scratched her cheek and answered.
“Mm. It’s a rather complicated story, Yohan…”
“Hwaaaang, baby. Baby—!! Can I check your mana core to see if you’re really alive? I just can’t believe it…!!”
“She’s your biological mother. Or rather, alchemical mother. Mm, both, I suppose.”
“Pardon?”
…Pardon?
“Pardon?”
The fact that she said it so casually made me ask twice out of sheer shock. After dealing with the Banhite, I’d thought I could live a little more comfortably until we reached Vitagarte. Apparently that was wishful thinking. I furrowed my brow at the headache wrapping around my skull.
“Oh, Mother bought some oranges too…”
“…First, please step back a little! If you’ve done this much, you’ve earned the right to hear the story. I’m not Cryan, you know!”
“O-Oranges… Sweet, delicious oranges, two bags…”
“Why did you even buy oranges, you woman.”
I kept trying to calm her down, but she looked at me and said,
“Hey, want to come to Mother’s house…? It’s nearby. If you’re okay with it, you can bring the young lady too…”
“Why would I…? You can just tell us here.”
“I prepared delicious things for when you woke up—! I practiced cooking a lot…”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, how embarrassing…!”
With every student here watching, I had no choice but to soothe Casacos as best I could while exchanging glances with Lady Karalin. She stroked her thigh. It was the signal we’d agreed on. It meant It’s fine, so don’t say anything and just come along. If Lady Karalin said so, I had no reason to refuse. Besides, it was pitiful to see Casacos, at her age, casting aside all dignity to cling to me.
“…Yes. Well, let’s go for now.”
“Thank you—!!”
“Let’s be quiet now, Professor.”
I had no choice but to accept. If I coldly refused in front of everyone, what would become of Casacos? Then again, maybe this clever woman had planned on exactly that. Smart people really are exhausting.
***
The faculty residences were arranged like a small village inside Sigmund’s castle town, and as she’d said, it was very close to the hospital. Moving there wasn’t particularly difficult. However…
The state of the house was something else.
“Miss, what is all this…?”
“Wow.”
“If your reaction is that strong, Miss, then I’m allowed to be shocked too, right?”
“She lives quite prettily.”
“Yes. I agree. But this is definitely not to my taste… How does anyone live in a house like this? This person.”
“True. The thought of you wearing frills makes me want to laugh. It really wouldn’t suit you.”
“…I’m aware.”
Casacos was the classic cold beauty, an urban woman. I’d expected her spacious home to be decorated in a modern, minimalist, brilliant style. It was not. The moment we stepped inside, we were greeted by a sea of pink, every surface covered in frills. It was like she lived in a giant dollhouse.
“W-Welcome home, son…! Think of this as your house. No, it is your house. I decorated the unused room with things you’d like. You can live here starting today!”
“No. I won’t. I have a dormitory.”
“Uweeeng—!!”
“…Haa.”
A menhera. If you took the image of a menhera from my previous world and smeared it across a house, it would look exactly like this. Lady Karalin also liked cute and beautiful things, so the existence of such a woman wasn’t that surprising. But Professor Casacos was on an entirely different level. Lady Karalin at least sought refined, high-class, restrained items even among cute things. Casacos just crammed every girly thing she could find into her house. The moment I stepped inside, I felt my energy being drained.
“P-Pfft—.”
Yet, to my betrayal, Lady Karalin looked quite pleased as she watched me flounder in confusion. No matter how hard she tried to hide her expression, after living together this long, how could I not notice? It was exactly the same look she gave me when she used to fiddle with the projection orb and get drained of energy. It seemed Lady Karalin enjoyed seeing me in difficult situations. After all, I always tried to present a flawless image to her. So I said,
“Miss, I’m being serious right now… I only just woke up from a sickbed, and now I’ve been dragged here by some mentally unstable person who thinks she’s my mother. Do you even know what kind of relationship I have with this person?”
“I wouldn’t know. Still, it’s not a bad thing, is it?”
“Ah. Well, that’s true, but…”
While we were chatting, Casacos finished showing us around the house and darted into the kitchen. She returned carrying so much food the table legs looked ready to snap. It wasn’t quite a feast, but the dishes were all home-cooked. Judging by the heavy emphasis on meat dishes that took a lot of effort, she must have researched day and night to prepare meals a man would like. She’d even made everything in the northern style. Even Lady Karalin would probably enjoy this.
Casacos fidgeted as she introduced the food.
“It’s nothing special. Just the usual home cooking we eat at our house… Your grandfather—my father—was from the north. So our family style is northern too.”
“Oh my. Professor, your cooking is wonderful.”
Lady Karalin praised her with obvious delight. She must have been quite hungry. Even though her expression remained stern, I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in a long time either. The fragrant smell and rich appearance made my stomach growl involuntarily.
“Thanks to you, I’ll finally have a decent meal. I’ll eat well.”
“………!!”
Casacos’s eyes widened into circles. She clasped her hands together in joy.
“Yes, yes!! It would be even better if you called me Mom. Not Mother—Mom. I like Mom!!”
“…By the way. You’ve been calling yourself Mom this whole time. What exactly is going on? I can’t follow the story at all.”
She sat right beside me, closer than Lady Karalin, and stared at me. Ah, please… What kind of absurd pressure was this? However, she seemed to think it was more appropriate for Lady Karalin to explain rather than an excited Casacos. Lady Karalin gracefully resolved my confusion—so accurately that it was almost suspicious how much she knew.
“…Anyway, that’s what happened.”
“So, to summarize, my body was created through Professor Casacos’s alchemy as a homunculus. Is that what you’re saying…?”
“Exactly.”
“And because the genetic information is completely identical, it’s no different from Casacos except for the sex chromosomes. Is that right?”
“That would be… correct?”
At that, Casacos shook her head very quickly, as if agreeing with Lady Karalin a thousand times over.
“…Then she really is my mother.”
“U-Uwaaaang—!! You called me Mom—!!”
“How do you know all this, Miss?”
“When you died, we talked about many things. If the professor is your mother, then she must be someone as close to you as I am…”
Casacos buried her face in my shoulder again and wailed shamelessly. There was nothing more undignified than this. How could a person’s pride fall this low?
“Mother is, Mother is so ashamed… I couldn’t protect you when you were young, so I worried my whole life about how much you must have suffered being tossed around everywhere.”
“I lived quite well. Until now.”
“That’s why I’m so proud of you. But just when I thought we’d finally met, you went and died so suddenly, and I didn’t know what to do…!”
“……….”
“Hweeeng—!!”
However, rather than accepting Casacos as my mother, I was instead being consumed by an even greater shock.
Whoa.
Things had gotten complicated. 001. The perfect homunculus Casacos had created—her first and last—and a pure human. In the original story, 001 had only appeared as a plot-device macguffin, used to demonstrate how exceptional Casacos’s alchemy skills were until the latter half. That 001 was… the body I had possessed.
Then that explains why I could just chew up and swallow the Six Swords, doesn’t it?
Right now, I was walking around perfectly fine, eating well, breaking the setting that said destroying a Six Sword would create a new vessel for it. In a way, this was an act that transcended the world’s paradigm. At the very least, if I were a human bound to this world, this was something I shouldn’t have been able to do. It broke the setting. But the reason I could do it was surprisingly simple. It was because of 001’s characteristics.