Chapter 40
Chapter 40
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 40
Chapter Title: First Cry
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"Thank you."
Bianca parted her lips with great difficulty alongside her words of gratitude.
The three years since she had regained her emotions.
Thanks to those emotions, Bianca had come to know suffering and pain.
And only now did she realize that her entire past had been filled with nothing but agony.
A cursed child born from killing her own mother.
Because of that, she had been ostracized in the Hardenharts family and ultimately used as a tool for a political marriage.
Every experience she had endured at such a young age was stained with pain.
"I didn't know back when I had no emotions, but those things were truly agonizing. So honestly, I didn't care about the family at all. Even if that family—which only ever gave me pain—were to fall to ruin, it wouldn't have mattered to me."
In that moment, the corners of her mouth slowly curved upward.
"But the words my sister said that day, as she hid me away... those words held me back."
At that instant, blood gushed from Bianca's mouth.
Krash flinched, but even as the blood dripped steadily, she continued speaking.
As if he were the only person left in the world to hear this story.
"...That day, I couldn't understand what my sister said. 'I hate you, yet I don't hate you. What I hate is myself for hating you. You're not someone who deserves hatred.'"
An incomprehensible expression of emotion.
Just as a person cannot be defined by a single trait, emotions cannot be pinned down to one thing either.
Emotions are always riddled with contradictions.
You might despise someone endlessly, yet somewhere deep inside, you still embrace them.
That indefinable nature was what emotions truly were.
"I didn't understand the meaning of those words until I gained emotions myself. Nor did I grasp how agonizing it is to divide them into singular categories. My sister must have felt the same."
Jenica had hated Bianca.
But she hated herself even more for being unable to do otherwise.
Having lost her mother at such a young age, Jenica had no one else to direct her emotional turmoil toward except Bianca.
Even knowing Bianca was blameless, Jenica couldn't erase that vague hatred.
So she loathed herself terribly for it.
And in the end, she confessed that truth to Bianca.
I hate you, yet I don't hate you.
What I hate is myself for hating you.
You're not someone who deserves hatred.
And amid that contradiction, on that day, she hid Bianca away and died in her place.
"Emotions were certainly a source of pain for me."
A world overflowing with agony.
Yet it wasn't the ashen gray she had seen without emotions.
Pain-filled though it was, for the first time, those emotions became the driving force propelling her forward in life.
Perhaps it was the flame of revenge burning within her emotions.
"But even more vicious than that pain... was the curse."
Tears trailed down, following the curve of her lips.
"Krash."
Krash gazed at Bianca.
"I'm freer now than I ever was under that curse."
Krash couldn't fully comprehend Bianca's words.
He hadn't lived the same life as her.
Bianca's doll curse had long since been devoured by one of his own curses and vanished.
So he had no way of knowing what it meant to be devoid of emotions.
"That's why I wonder. If I'd known emotions just a little sooner, would I have talked more with my sister? Would I have mourned the death of my mother—whom I never even saw—with my brother and father, and tried to move past the grief together?"
Bianca hadn't known emotions.
So she had defined her sister's feelings toward her as nothing but hatred.
"It's unknowable. Truly, it's all unknowable. Back then, I was just a doll with my emotions suppressed. But having these 'what if' thoughts now... that's something I can only do because I have emotions."
Within her crumbling smile.
"But one thing, at least."
She slowly closed her eyes.
"As your fiancée, Krash... maybe... we could have... gotten along... even better..."
With those words, Bianca fell silent.
Her tears flowed as her eyes gradually shut.
Witnessing this, Krash spoke.
"...Bianca."
There was no response.
That was Bianca's end.
Tears trailed down her closed eyes and reached her frozen legs, where they froze solid.
Krash slowly stepped forward.
Then he drew a dagger from his pocket.
Crack, crunch—
Krash shattered the ice encasing her body with the dagger.
His hands suffered frostbite from the cold, sending waves of pain through him, but he ignored it.
After breaking away at the ice for a long while, Bianca collapsed into his arms.
Krash lifted her corpse and laid it gently on the bed in the room.
Silence filled the chamber.
Krash sank to the floor before it and quietly closed his eyes.
"...Fuck."
Realizing anew just how utterly shitty this damned world was.
The Bianca from his memories was gone now.
In her place stood the current Bianca before his eyes.
The one who had spoken of how she might have lived well in that past timeline—a possibility he could still make real.
That was why Krash kept her by his side.
He had owed her his life once.
So he gave her all the things he hadn't been able to before.
As her fiancée, just as she had wished in her final moments, Krash stayed with Bianca to live better together.
And their relationship now was undoubtedly different.
Just as she had said, Krash believed they had gotten along quite well.
"At home, emotions were always something I never needed."
Bianca's voice echoed softly.
It was still young and innocent compared to later.
"But being by your side changes that, Krash."
Staying by Krash's side had gradually changed Bianca.
She felt a profound peace there—one that sparked curiosity about emotions themselves.
A place where no one hated her, where someone treated her with genuine warmth.
That was what home meant.
A sanctuary where she didn't fear tomorrow and could sleep peacefully.
For Bianca, that home was right beside Krash.
"Being by you makes it so painful that my face and heart won't move."
She wanted to smile when he smiled.
Cry when he was sad.
Get angry when he was angry.
But she couldn't.
Her curse wouldn't allow her emotions.
"With anyone else, I thought having no emotions was fine."
Emotions would only bring pain anyway—better not to have them at all.
"But in front of you, Krash... I want to feel them."
Except for one person.
In his presence alone, it was different.
"I want to get angry, cry, and laugh for you, Krash."
Even as she said it, she shook her head desperately.
"But I don't want you to lose your emotions. I don't want to see you become like me. If you don't smile, I don't want to smile either."
A bundle of contradictions.
But it was the only way Bianca knew how to express it.
So she clasped Krash's hand tightly and slowly bowed her head.
She knew all too well that her contradictions were an unsolvable dilemma.
"Don't worry."
Bianca's shoulders twitched at the sound of Krash's voice.
"Curses rebound on those who aren't their intended targets. Even if I take on your curse, my emotions won't vanish. When it comes to curses, I'm an expert. You can trust me."
He wouldn't fall to something as trivial as an eye doll curse to begin with.
He had overcome and even mastered far worse ones countless times.
At his words, Bianca slowly raised her head.
Her expressionless face twisted in agony, desperate to burst with a torrent of emotions.
It's okay to be selfish.
You're the kind of person who accepts even my selfishness.
Then.
"Krash, please."
This moment.
At least in this moment.
She wanted her blank expression to vanish.
To smile at him in thanks for saving her.
To get angry that he'd hurt himself so badly for her sake.
To cry and apologize for putting him through this.
Eye Doll.
A curse that clearly stripped away emotions.
But in truth, the eye doll curse was closer to suppression than erasure.
It crushed emotions to the point where they could scarcely be felt.
That was why people thought Bianca had no emotions.
Yet in this moment, her feelings.
Were overflowing so fiercely that even the eye doll couldn't hold them back.
"Please restore my emotions."
Bianca's words came to an end.
Hearing them all, Krash lifted the hand she had clasped.
"You don't even need to ask."
Bianca reflected in Krash's eyes.
A girl with white hair, perpetually expressionless.
Even at her young age, her striking beauty only accentuated that blank face.
Memories of childhood surfaced.
The day he first met her—even the twisted Krash back then had thought she'd look pretty if she smiled.
Yet to the very end, he never saw Bianca smile.
He had only witnessed her meet her demise amid profound sorrow.
"Then how about this? If I gain emotions and experience them firsthand, won't I finally know what's truly more painful?"
Bianca, who had sought emotions to understand suffering, came to mind.
But she was no longer here.
Only.
Now, there was a Bianca who sought emotions to know happiness.
That was the future he had forged through regression.
The future he could give her, now that she understood the contradictions of emotions.
Become Bianca's 'most precious person'. Last Dial[Condition Target]
[ ‘Krash Valheim’ ]
Krash's Black Hood revealed Bianca's dial.
"I've planned to do that from the start."
Clunk—
The dial was already unlocked.
Drip... drop—
In that instant, tears began streaming from Bianca's round eyes.
Not from something in her eye, but from overwhelming emotion.
The tears flowed endlessly, like a burst faucet.
Her face gradually twisted into sobs.
Having lived her whole life expressionless, she fumbled awkwardly at it, but one truth shone through.
"Hic, sob... Krash, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry because of me. Sorry... What about your arm? What do we do? What do we do?"
So that far in the future, she wouldn't have to cry.
So she could shed all the tears she hadn't in her lifetime, right here today.
"Cry out every tear you couldn't shed your whole life."
Bianca buried her face in Krash's small embrace.
Krash quietly wrapped his arms around her head.
That warmth was the most comforting thing she had ever felt.
On that day, the girl cried out to the world for the first time upon being born.
The cry she should have uttered, blessed by all.
Echoed forth within the warmth of one person.