Must We Stay Stuck Together?
Luna's first memory.
The birth mother who abandoned her whispered toward Luna in a voice with no feeling in it at all.
Don't die. And be happy. A person who could throw a child away without a shred of responsibility, and still calmly wish on her something so horribly difficult.
Even so, the woman was, in her own way, her birth mother. Luna did her very best to make the wish come true—in a place with nowhere to lay her body, nothing to eat, not even water.
Crunch!
…Crack. Grind.
She tore open the corpse of a demonic beast thick with baleful qi, drank its blood, and chewed the flesh down.
"Kh—!! I don't… I don't want to die…!!"
Luna strove without rest to grant her birth mother's first wish. Months passed that way. No—years. Only then did she understand.
Not dying, she could manage well enough. Becoming happy, though…
"…won't be possible."
It wasn't because she had nowhere to sleep. It wasn't because she had nothing to eat, or not even water to drink. Luna simply did not know.
"No matter how hard I think about it, I can't tell."
She did not know what happiness was—not the meaning held inside the word, and not the feeling itself. And so it happened.
"…Keuh."
Without even realizing it, she gave up on living, and tore into the carcass of a special demonic beast. Some unconscious part of her had noticed. Ah. That one is different from the other demonkind. So if she ate that beast's body, this sickening life would end as well.
She was right. The special beast's demonic energy vastly outstripped the tolerance she had built up over all that time, and Luna died the way a sun goes down—slowly, and with perfect certainty.
"Please, don't die. Be happy, Luna."
…No. She was tired now.
Around the time even the pain boiling up on a flood of adrenaline had begun to blur, Luna—freed, for the first time in her life, from cold and heat, from thirst and starvation and every other kind of hurt—smiled a loose, vacant smile and murmured without meaning to.
"…This is nice."
The other orphans who had drifted with her through the Ash-White Wasteland used to say it was better to keep breathing, even if you had to roll through the muck. But was it?
"…You all had hope, at least."
They had cried when their parents abandoned them. Someone had whispered that they would surely come back. They had known a way out of this place.
"…I don't have any of that."
No parent who would return. No promise that someone would surely come for her. No way out of here. She had been thrown into this dark ash-white fog at the very start of memory, and she had lived until now without so much as a handful of hope. So—
"…that's enough. I just want to rest."
Because that would be her salvation.
…Softly.
In the end, Luna closed her eyes. Other children, faced with death, had wept as if they meant to wring out every sorrow they owned. Strangely, Luna was not sad. There had never been any hope. No love, no hope, no light. She had never once held any of it in her hands, so she could accept this as simply the way things were.
"Khek…! Keuh……!"
Wicked demonic energy twisted her from the inside, and at last even her final breath was about to gutter out. Luna murmured without knowing why.
"…Mom."
She didn't know the reason. It was only a word, spilled the way the other dying orphans spilled it.
"……Ah."
Tears ran down. She still couldn't understand why, and still she kept growing sadder. She didn't want this. At least in the last moment, she had wanted to leave smiling brightly. But that was the end.
A flutter. The light went out of her emerald eyes, and her already fading sight thinned further still—and then she heard it.
Step.
Not a person. Something like an object with no emotion in it, setting a foot upon the ground.
Step. Step.
The footsteps drew nearer. With a consciousness already slipping away, Luna asked.
"…Mom?"
Step.
Only then did the footsteps stop. As if they had never been coming toward Luna at all, the thing answered with nothing but a turn of the head.
"……No. I am not your parent."
A bloodless voice. Of course. She should have known. This damned world was a thing that would not allow her even a handful of happiness.
Softly—just as Luna was about to let go of even the thread of hope she had clutched without realizing it—
Step. Step. Step.
Whatever had been looking at her turned, lifted her up, and whispered.
Even family bound by blood gave up on me. Why would you?
"……."
There was no answer. There had been no question, so of course there wasn't.
……A tight grip. A small hand webbed with scars, clutching a hem of cloth.
It was her first meeting with Mother.
Mother, who brought Luna to Troupe — Loss, tended her with extraordinary care. By some method Luna could not understand, she drew the special demonic energy out of the child's body and neutralized it. For the first time in Luna's life there was food, and clean water. Clothes made of cloth instead of demonic-beast hide. A warm place to sleep.
Of course, even that was a facility built for children destined for the auction block—wretched enough to horrify any ordinary person. To Luna, it felt like heaven. And so—
"Mom!"
"……Luna."
—it was inevitable that she would follow Mother blindly.
Even though Mother—
Hsssss.
"…!!"
"Don't move."
"……Okay, Mom!"
—turned Luna's face into a map of scars,
"Smile."
"Kh, khhk…!!"
"I told you to smile."
—hauled her up by the throat and forced the smile out of her,
"You'll die someday, too."
—and whispered that there was no hope in this place either.
"Okay! I'll listen to Mom!"
Luna loved her all the same. It was a life in which she did not even know that what Mother did to her was abuse. The one who had saved her from that terrible life was the Mother standing before her eyes.
"That monstrous bitch, Mother. She should've just stuck to mercenary work."
"Right? If that bitch hadn't been around, forget the auction and all that bullshit—we could've hauled the orphans off for free."
"Shh…! She's one of the Ten, you idiots…!! Keep that up and your heads'll come off…!!"
Most of the spectators who found their way here seemed to hate Mother. That was exactly why Luna refused to leave her side.
"Stupid annoying fatties. Hmph—don't listen, Mom. You've got Luna!"
Because Mother was her mom. Even if she had done wrong, Luna never wanted to be apart from her.
"……Why?"
"Hm? Why what?"
"Why do you keep sticking to my side?"
"Hm? Isn't it obvious?"
Luna tipped her head and answered.
"You're my mom."
They were family. So—Mom.
I love you, Mom.
The girl smiled. Not a forced smile, like all the ones that had come before. A smile drawn up from something true.
She was dead.
Mom was dead.
A moment ago she had still been at my side, and in the blink of an eye she was gone. I had expected it. Death in this place, the Ash-White Wasteland, never bothered to ask the time or the place before it arrived.
Parting is a friend. I had already forgotten the name of the friend who had just died, but I had not forgotten the name of parting.
No. I couldn't forget it. Whenever I came close to forgetting, it found me again and tormented me, the same as always.
"Please……."
Just like now.
"Aaaaah…!!!"
Luna, clutching Mother's severed upper body, threw her head back and howled.
The 4th member — Luna — is rampaging under the influence of Mask Zero — Mother (S-).
The Ash-White Mask resonates.
Tears spilled from inside the ash-white mask gone black, and the other members, staggering closer, shed tears as well.
The Luna of now was the Luna of the past. A child seized by Mother's influence, who had forgotten the day Black Wolf saved her.
"Don't fight it, Luna."
"Why? It hurts if I don't."
"Hurting is better than dying."
"Okay, Mom!"
She had swallowed countless pains down tight, and so she carried an enormous knot in her chest. That was why—now, believing Mother was dead, with no reason left to swallow the pain and no reason left to hold the knot—Luna turned her head toward the source of all of this with a creak.
Emerald eyes glinted, dreadful, through the gap in the ash-white mask. The other masks moved, following that gaze in which grief and rage lived side by side.
Crack. Pop. Hanryang, loosening his body out of habit.
Rustle! Luna, dragging her hand from her pocket and scattering a host of flesh dolls.
…Tap. Dalan, flicking the pommel of his sword with a thumb.
The constraints of Black Wolf kept them from drawing out their full strength, but Mother's lingering will clung to them, and their rank had climbed to something close. Three S-rank monsters. Four, if Luna was counted—though she did not look likely to step in herself.
Nahan took in the situation as the three members came staggering toward him.
Mother's mindscape collapsed, and the Black Curtain's effect ended. I can't keep holding maximum output the way I could inside the mindscape.
Then what was left?
The artifacts. Daylight Isle. The Golden Battlefield.
He had already used Daylight Isle, but he had used it while he was still absorbing power, so the exhaustion never came. He could probably use it once more. Thanks to the Ring of Iaso, the odds of his actually dying were slim, and thanks to the Ring of Vulcan he could unravel most magic.
Borrow strength through the Necklace of the Sword Ghost again, and put them down with the Black Curtain?
But how? The condition for the Necklace of the Sword Ghost was contact with whoever's power he meant to borrow. A moment ago, touching Mother's mindscape had counted, so he had been able to draw on it. With people, he had to touch them directly.
And if he touched those three now?
I'll hurt enough to die. Or, if I'm lucky, I'll just die.
The Luna of now believed, past any shaking, that he had killed Mother, and the other three shared that feeling. Daylight Isle would put the members in danger. The Golden Battlefield was useless—there were no allies nearby.
"…M-Miss."
"No……. I don't… want…"
"……Rose."
Before the murderous pressure of S-rank monsters drawing steadily closer, the anger that had flared at the sight of Mother's atrocities cooled all at once.
…Should I just run?
Flee far, far away, and live on while praying the members didn't die?
…Or maybe it would be all right to gather the rest and come back.
It lasted only an instant. The situation had turned hopeless so suddenly that he wrestled with it for no longer than a blink.
"……."
"……."
"……."
When he opened his eyes again, the other three had surrounded him, each of them already reaching for his throat. Hanryang's fist. Ruby's flesh dolls. Dalan's rough sword. All of it swung with everything they had, a breath away from tearing Nahan's neck apart.
Hyung, please—in my place, the dream—
Shut up, damn it. I don't feel like conveniently dying anymore either.
The Ring of Iaso will restore its master so long as a single grain of life remains.
Then everything except that one grain—into the Black Curtain.
Nahan reached for the best move he had only ever imagined and never once tried, and in the moment he meant to use it—
WHAM!!
The three who had been right on top of him were struck by something and hurled backward. From beside him came a voice, soft, and not the least bit shaken.
"I'm sorry I'm late, Captain."
Brilliant silver hair. Golden eyes. The faintest smile. Lactea Babylonia. A woman like a chill blade forged of platinum had kept Nahan safe.
"This, first."
She pressed something like a bracelet into his hand, turned at once, and added,
"This won't take long."
The next instant—
Crack!
Lactea closed on Luna in a single breath, seized her by the throat, hauled her up, and whispered.
She would kill every one of them, and then she would die as well.