I Want to Eat This
Back in my room after returning from the study.
I lay on the bed humming a little tune under my breath, watching Mari with a distinctly uneasy look as she sat reading.
For some reason, a lingering sense of unease just wouldn't leave me alone.
Do dragons... normally take an interest in that kind of thing...?
The three books Mari had brought back.
One of them was a perfectly wholesome volume about the love between parent and child.
But the remaining two were absolutely not the sort of material a young child like Mari ought to be interested in.
I had tried again and again to persuade her that she would be better off reading something else, but her will had been far too firm.
In the end I had crumbled before that almost unnerving determination of hers, and ever since then Mari had been spending her time completely absorbed in those books.
I... might just be a hopeless mother...
To actually give my daughter permission to read books like that.
A wave of self-reproach washed over me for some reason.
...Maybe it's because she's a dragon?
A race that existed on an entirely different plane from ordinary living beings.
Perhaps it wasn't that Mari was strange—perhaps the dragon race itself was simply special.
Beings that extraordinary would naturally have a different common sense.
It was a realm that an ordinary person like me could never hope to understand.
In that case, maybe the situation right now wasn't strange at all.
It wasn't me. Mari was special because she was of the dragon race.
Yeah. That was it.
I was absolutely not a hopeless mother.
I tried to win the argument with myself through sheer mental gymnastics, but the self-reproach still lingered. If anything, a faint thread of self-loathing had started to creep in as well.
Even so, I had at least managed to convince myself a little about Mari's abnormal hobby.
"Mom."
"Y-yeah...?"
Something must have caught her curiosity while she was reading, because she came running over and spread open the page she had been on for me to see.
"What's maternal love?"
So she had been curious about the meaning of the word.
When I looked at the part Mari showed me, it was a passage about the love between a mother and her young.
"Maternal love is, well... it's the heart a mother has when she loves her own child."
At my words, Mari's eyes went round as she stared up at me.
"Then does Mom love Mari too?"
I let out a soft laugh and stroked her hair.
"Of course I do. You're my precious little girl, aren't you?"
The moment my affirmative answer reached her, Mari's face lit up with a smile full of pure happiness.
"Hehe. Mari loves Mom too!"
Looking at that adorable face of hers, every last scrap of self-reproach and everything else simply melted away and vanished.
Yeah.
So what if I was hopeless.
As long as Mari looked this happy.
Having satisfied her curiosity, Mari was just diving back into her book when—
Knock-knock—
The sound of someone rapping on the door reached us.
Who is it...?
Athena had clearly said she would be back around evening or night, so it couldn't be her.
Then was it one of the servants of this mansion?
I didn't particularly want to run into anyone else.
But I also didn't want to leave some poor person waiting out in the hallway, so I left Mari to her reading and went to open the door.
And the person who came into view was—
"Young miss..."
Someone who had once been so very close to me.
Someone who had taught me all sorts of things and helped me.
Alina.
She looked at me with an expression that was somehow sorrowful.
— If possible, I think it would actually help more if you didn't do anything at all!
— Honestly... you're not very good at this kind of work, are you?
— If you weren't someone Lady Athena cherishes, I wouldn't even have pretended to know you!
The moment I came face to face with her, my body suddenly began to tremble.
My breathing grew gradually more obstructed, and my stomach churned violently.
"Ugh..."
"Young miss...! Are you all right?"
When I clamped a hand over my mouth and dry-heaved, Alina supported me with a worried look on her face.
But the instant her hand touched my body, I shoved her away.
"D-don't come near me..."
"Young miss....."
Her expression truly looked as though she were worried about me; her complexion was poor.
But I knew better.
It was a lie.
Inside, she was looking down on me with contempt.
Someone like me... she was only forcing herself to help...
The words she had once thrown at me had already driven themselves into my chest as scars far larger than they might have been—precisely because I had thought of her as a friend.
"Please... just... leave me alone..."
When I looked at her with a trembling voice full of desperate pleading, her eyes began to shake violently.
For a long moment Alina stared at me with a face that looked ready to cry.
Then, as though she had come to some kind of decision, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
"I... I am truly sorry, young miss..."
And with that, Alina turned around and walked away once more.
I could only stand there staring blankly after her retreating figure.
"...Alina..."
I remained frozen in place for some time, doing everything I could to hold back the tears that threatened to spill out little by little.
...If only I hadn't been such an incompetent person.
Wouldn't I have been able to keep smiling and spending time with you...?
.....It's already too late.
I brushed aside that empty wish inside my heart and stepped back into the room. Mari was there, watching me with a worried expression.
"Mom. Crying...?"
Even to her eyes my complexion must have looked bad; her face was full of anxiety.
I hurriedly pulled Mari into a hug.
"No... it's just that the sunlight made my eyes sting."
"....."
Mari looked at me with an expression that suggested she wasn't entirely satisfied.
"Lying again..."
She muttered it so quietly it was almost inaudible, then quickly put on a smile and took my hand, tugging me back into the room.
"Mom. There's something Mari wants to eat."
Her expression was full of expectation.
"Hm...? What is it...?"
At my question, Mari pattered over, fetched the book she had been reading, and brought it back.
She pointed to one side of a page with her finger and spoke to me.
"Give Mari this!"
"Mm... let's see..."
The part Mari was pointing to showed a picture of a mother holding a baby in her arms.
However.
"Hyaaah?!!"
The moment I saw the illustration, I let out a startled scream and stumbled backward.
Mari looked up at me with a puzzled expression.
"Mom?"
I did my best to calm my racing heart, then spoke to Mari in a shaking voice.
"M-Mari...? Th-that is..."
Apparently displeased that I had put distance between us, Mari scampered right up and pressed herself against me.
"It says a mom gives it to her child!"
She looked up at me with a face brimming with anticipation.
I had no choice but to avert my eyes from that burdensome gaze of hers.
Well. It wasn't as though she was wrong.
Even so, this was...
I... I don't produce any...
The picture Mari had shown me was, in the context of a mother-and-child relationship, an extremely natural and pure illustration.
And yet for some reason, right now it did not feel that way at all.
It was a picture of a child nursing at its mother's breast, drinking her milk.
This place was deep in the mountains.
"Hmm... so the Demon King really is..."
Sword Saint Carlos stroked his beard with a troubled expression.
"Yes. That bastard wants war again."
I drained the cup of liquor in front of me once, then set it back down on the table.
The Sword Saint promptly refilled it.
Several hours had already passed since I left the mansion.
At present I was sitting in a cabin, sharing drinks with the Sword Saint.
"And after we finally managed to find this era of peace."
"Demons enjoy slaughter, after all. Looks like they miss those days."
The age of the Great War, when every race had been locked in conflict.
In that period, it was said, there had never been a day when smiles left the faces of the demonkin.
"Looks like we'll need some kind of countermeasure."
"For now we just have to block the Demon King's plans one by one as they come."
"Got a good idea in mind, do you?"
"First of all..."
I began laying out the plan I had been turning over in my head.
And so we spent a long while discussing the demons and what to do about them.
Quite a bit of time slipped by.
Before I knew it, the sun was gradually sinking toward the horizon.
"Good. We'll do it that way."
The Sword Saint spoke as he emptied his cup.
I followed suit, drained my own, rose from my seat, brushed off my clothes a few times, and looked around.
"Come to think of it, didn't you say you were raising a disciple? There's no one here."
At my words the Sword Saint gave a hearty laugh and answered.
"Today is her older sister's birthday, apparently. She said she would spend the time together with her."
"Hmm... is that so?"
"A shame. I truly wanted to show her to you at least once."
The mention of an older sister brought one particular woman floating up in my mind.
Someone who had always left me with an unpleasant feeling whenever I saw her.
The woman Hera had relied on so heavily.
She was clearly nothing more than a worthless, insignificant human.
And yet for some reason, every time I looked at her I had felt as though I were somehow losing.
...It doesn't matter anymore. Hera is mine now.
Hera, who had already opened her heart to me.
I intended to train her body little by little, night after night.
Her heart was already conquered, so now it was time to lay hands on her body.
I planned to mold her until the mere sight of me would make her pant with arousal and come running.
Remembering Hera from last night—obediently licking my feet beneath me—sent several dangerous thoughts rising through my mind.
Once Hera's body has adapted... I'll try those later...
Lost in those pleasant fantasies, I was just about to head back to the mansion where she waited when—
"Come to think of it, how have you been spending your days lately?"
The Sword Saint's voice stopped me in my tracks.
"How have I been spending them?"
"With that child, I mean."
At his words, my mood sank in an instant.
What he had said last time still lingered with me.
"...You don't think that's unnecessary meddling?"
At my reply, the Sword Saint's expression turned somewhat complicated.
"I say it all for your sake, you know."
I strode quickly over to the Sword Saint, looked him straight in the eye, and spoke.
"Listen carefully, Carlos."
"....."
"You said you can see the principles of the world to some degree, didn't you?"
His endlessly calm eyes looked down at me.
"The path I walk is the correct answer and the principle itself."
I had lived that way until now.
A life in which I achieved whatever I wanted and obtained whatever I desired by any means necessary.
"Sin? Karma? Bring as much of that garbage as you like."
Nothing in existence would ever make me kneel. Not even that so-called Goddess herself.
"It doesn't bother me in the slightest."