207. Red tulip.
207. Red tulip.
At the center of the wedding stage.
I placed a nearby table on top and set my phone down on it.
[Groom Entrance]
I pressed the play button right on cue.
After a slight gap, the wedding march flowed out.
It felt well put-together, even considering we had nothing prepared.
"Not bad."
We had a bouquet,
a venue,
a wedding dress,
and even a Neotube teacher to officiate.
"Hoooh.... haaaaah."
Hestia, who was sitting in the chair opposite, let out a light, forced exhale.
She looked a little tense. There was really nothing to be tense about, but Hestia kept staring endlessly into the mirror and fidgeting with her collar, unable to keep still.
"What are you so anxious about?"
"Huh?! Uh, uhhh....."
Startled, Hestia placed both hands over her chest.
Hestia blinked several times and her lips twitched.
As if she wanted to speak, as if it was hard to speak.
She tried a few more times like that before finally giving up. Hestia shook her head.
"It's nothing... You wouldn't believe me if I said that, would you?"
"I'll believe you."
"............"
"It's your life, Hestia, not mine, right?"
"....Strictly speaking, wouldn't it be a god's life?"
That's too much, Chrono.
I thought you'd show a little sympathy.
Hestia smiled bitterly, grabbed the chair with her hand, and leaned on it as she stood up.
'Sympathy... is not happening.'
To be precise, I didn't even know what I was supposed to sympathize with.
There was no room for sympathetic feelings in the first place.
Because this was a mutual deal.
There was absolutely no reason for personal feelings to get involved in a deal like this.
"Am I... really that hated?"
"I don't particularly hate you."
I understood, and I accepted it.
If so, there was no reason to hate her anywhere.
Ultimately, it was just a difference of opinion. Talking about it any further would just be a headache.
"I see... is that so....."
"......?"
Hestia's complexion darkened a little more.
Her bright, light, giggling smile felt like it was wilting a bit.
How could saying 'I don't hate you' cause that kind of expression?
Hestia moved her steps and walked out of the stage area.
"If only you hated me, if only you disliked me, that would have been better."
Hating someone
disliking someone
Conversely, that means your feelings haven't completely left them.
Because your feelings haven't left,
because you can't send your feelings away,
so you dislike them, and so you hate them,
and therefore, there could be a 'relationship' where you can approach them again.
'Those eyes truly look like they don't care at all.'
What if, back when we first met, I had just continued the actions I took then?
Back then, Chrono had felt like he was pushing me away, but at least he wasn't completely emotionless.
If I had taken enough time, wouldn't we have been able to develop things a bit differently from how they are now?
".....Haaaaah."
No, that's not it.
All of this was just regret, an irreversible past.
A past that will disappear due to the regression, but it was a 'history' that could never be forgotten between Chrono and me.
His words were right.
I approached him simply to do it,
and he came to me to end the regression.
The relationship between the two of us was, ultimately, a relationship that began from a 'deal'.
But seeing me act like this now...
"I, too, am unmistakably a Main God of Greece."
"???"
As Chrono, I couldn't understand.
A sudden coming-out, and now calling herself a Main God.
I wondered what on earth she was trying to say, so I looked at Hestia. Hestia stuck her tongue out slightly.
'...She looks okay.'
Even if she wasn't okay, it didn't matter.
This was strictly a deal and a contract.
It wasn't exactly... repaying Hestia for the favor she did by helping me.
Anyway, if you receive something, it's only right to give something back.
*********************
"────"
Hestia silently looked up at the ceiling.
She couldn't exactly see the sky or anything.
Because it was a love hotel.
Because she was inside a hotel.
But beyond that, she stared at the 'sky' above.
'Is it... really okay to do this?'
Anxiety suddenly surfaced.
But she forcibly suppressed it.
This was an act that should not be done.
As a Main God, as a Virgin Goddess, it was an act that could never be forgiven.
But despite that, she did not stop.
She could not stop.
Because, she had already realized it.
[Groom Entrance.]
"!......Ah..."
Chrono, who had been sitting next to her, rose from his seat.
He slowly walked toward the center of the stage.
Since it was arranged inside a love hotel, he advanced as slowly and carefully as possible, yet with a sense of measured dignity.
Come to think of it, that was right.
Hermes had once said something like that.
'They say you can see a person's character by watching their gait.'
As expected of the God of Thieves, he was a child who said oddly convincing things.
Gait. Actions. The character revealed through them.
'Chrono is... right.'
That street we always took to the training grounds.
Judging by stride alone, Chrono should have been taller, but he always matched his pace to my footsteps.
Never going ahead first. Yet never lagging behind. A man who always matched his steps to mine.
'....But.'
Today was a little different.
He was always ahead of me now.
He no longer came close to my side.
Do it yourself.
Do it on your own.
He followed along behind, but I knew that was only the result of our deal, our promise.
I knew he didn't follow because he, Chrono himself, wanted to.
[Bride Entrance.]
"............."
She rose from her seat.
She advanced toward the wedding altar.
Holding the bouquet in both hands, she approached the altar, approached Chrono.
"............."
'Ah.....'
He was looking at her.
How did she look to him right now?
Did she look pretty?
Did she perhaps look ugly somewhere?
Was there something she made a mistake on or did wrong?
Anxiety and impatience. Emotions far removed from happiness and joy kept bubbling up.
And the thing drawing those emotions up was none other than...
"............."
"....Ugh...!"
Chrono's expressionless face.
His indifferent gaze, as if he had no interest whatsoever.
Right.
This made sense.
She had expected it would be like this.
That was only natural, since she had betrayed Chrono's expectations.
Because she had deceived him, just to shed her virginity, just to be held in his arms.
Still, if he had hated her, at least there might have been some opening left──but to think it was this kind of thorough indifference.
'...I hate this.'
She increasingly wanted to act unreasonable.
She felt the urge to use divine authority, to impose from above, to make Chrono hers by force.
But she couldn't do that. That would make her no different from her immature younger siblings.
"..............."
But
despite that
no
no
even so
...Stop.
"Chrono."
"....Hm?"
Hestia stopped thinking.
She cut off all the stray thoughts rising in her head.
She simply took all those thoughts and threw them into the burning flame of emotion in her chest, incinerating them.
She didn't need anything else.
The only thing that mattered was 'my true feelings'.
Hestia looked at Chrono and spoke.
"Cronus's eyes, use them on me."
"..........."
Chrono obediently accepted Hestia's words.
The Divine Authority gathering towards his eyes. The power of 'Time'.
His colorless irises slowly began to take on a deeper gray hue.
'With those eyes,'
Would it get through?
Those were the eyes that looked into her nature, her 'time'.
If so, then surely──he would be able to see her 'true feelings' as well.
"At first... when I first met Chrono."
Hestia opened her mouth.
"Like Chrono said, it's true I met you simply because I wanted to mate."
Aah, she had said it.
She had gone and said it.
Would he despise her?
Would he dislike her?
No, there was no way that would happen.
Because he had already 'understood'.
Because he had already 'accepted' the instinct, the nature, of the woman called Hestia.
That was why he didn't dislike her. He didn't shun her.
He just responded with thorough indifference.
"But now it's different."
And because she hated that,
because that hurt unbearably,
the old her might not know, but now it was something she couldn't turn back from.
Probably, no, definitely.
"I, I Hestia──"
She gripped the bouquet in her hands tightly.
It wasn't a question of whether she could say it.
It was a word she had to say, even now.
"──I love you, Chrono."
"............!"
Aah
She had said it.
She had gone and said it.
"I love you."
She spoke.
"I love you."
She spoke again.
"Love... I love you... Yes. I think this 'feeling' is undoubtedly 'love'."
Once she said it once, she felt at ease for some reason.
It felt like being freed from something.
A sense of freedom, of liberation, like a chick breaking out of its shell into the world.
"Huh...?"
In contrast, Chrono seemed flustered, but
Hestia had no intention of stopping.
"At first, I simply wanted to do it. That was all."
But
as time passed,
the more we were together.
"Probably... it's because of the 'regression'."
Hestia had, even if limitedly, obtained 'freedom'.
"Since I'm a Virgin Goddess giving my heart to someone could never be forgiven...."
A regressing world.
A past that disappears after a day.
Preserved memories. Continuing recollections.
And within these histories, the one uncertain, opaque, yet never erasable feeling that continued to connect was,
"Beyond just wanting to do it... I came to want to have Chrono's baby."
"........."
The full story of wanting a baby.
However, even up to that point, Hestia hadn't known.
"I thought it was simply because Chrono was by my side, and that it was my wish to become the mother of a child."
The envy she had felt her whole life watching other children.
She thought that feeling had simply risen up as it was, but.
"....If it's not Chrono's child, I think I would hate it."
A heart that was gradually taking concrete form.
Though it had been confusing at first, this was the feeling she could finally convey now that she had reached this point.
"So."
Hestia raised her head and looked at Chrono.
Without wavering. With eyes that were simply endlessly earnest.
"I love you."
A red tulip bouquet.
Its meaning in the language of flowers was, a confession of love.