Tears
It was long past the hour when everyone should have been asleep.
I still could not drift off. I stayed up through the night, staring out the window.
The beautiful full moon hanging in the sky washed the darkness in a soft glow — a sight that was rather pleasant to look at.
After stroking the head of Mari, who slept soundly beside me, I turned and spoke to her.
".....You want us to leave?"
At my words, Sepheer calmly nodded.
"It's painful, isn't it. Being here."
"...."
She wasn't wrong.
This place was hell to me.
The place where I had been broken apart.
Where nothing remained but miserable memories.
Until now, I had endured by clinging to the love I had shared with Athena within these walls.
But cruelly enough—
Believing in her love had only plunged me into an even deeper pit of hell.
Just as Sepheer said, being here was agony.
Leaving would clearly be better for me.
But I shook my head at her in refusal.
Sepheer looked at me with an expression of pure incomprehension.
"Hey! If this keeps up, you might actually die!!"
As she said, even I could feel my health deteriorating with every passing day.
It would not have been strange at all if I suddenly collapsed one of these days.
Of course, it wasn't that I stayed because I wanted to be here.
I wanted to escape too.
I wanted to flee this hellish mansion, go somewhere empty of people, set down every burden, and live in peace.
The reason I, who thought that way, refused Sepheer's proposal was simple.
"...Athena won't let me go."
I looked down at my body.
Hidden beneath my clothes, the vivid pink shackles were surely still locked there.
And that was not all.
I no longer even had the strength left to properly move my own body.
Could someone like me escape this place while avoiding Athena?
".....Ugh."
Unable to offer any rebuttal, Sepheer groaned and fretted for a long while before she started stomping on the floor as if taking out her frustration.
"This is all because of that monster of a woman!! That devil of a woman. How the hell—"
Knock knock—
"Hera. It's me."
"People can't just act like— Hiiiek?!!"
At the unexpected sound of her voice, Sepheer's eyes flew wide with terror.
Like a squirrel struck by lightning, her body began to tremble violently.
And I was no different.
Suppressing my increasingly ragged breathing as best I could, I spoke to the woman beyond the door in a cold voice.
"I have nothing to say to you, Athena."
"I won't come in. I just wanted to hear your voice."
"......"
"If it's too hard... you don't have to push yourself."
...What?
Athena's voice was different from usual.
Her voice, which had always carried strength no matter the situation, was now weak and deeply sunken.
I did not want to talk with her, but her changed demeanor kept nagging at me.
In the end, I squeezed my eyes shut once, forced my trembling body to settle, and spoke to her.
"..What do you want to say."
"I'd like that insolent little succubus next to you to step out for a bit."
"Hyaak?!"
At Athena's words, Sepheer hopped like a frog, then started trembling while biting her nails.
"It's okay, Sepheer. Could you step out for a moment?"
When I took her hand and said that, she huffed with both cheeks flushed red.
"Hmph... If... if you're asking me like that, I suppose I have no choice."
"Are you going to leave or not?"
"Eek?! I-I got it, I'm leaving now..!!"
At Athena's urging, Sepheer fled out through the window in a panicked rush.
Once she was gone, silence filled the room in an instant.
It was Athena who finally broke the quiet that had lingered for a while.
"....It's hard, isn't it?"
At Athena's words, anger surged up inside me.
For her of all people to say something like that.
In sheer disbelief, boiling words burst from my mouth.
"You're seriously saying that right now..?"
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
Hearing Athena apologize so readily made my body flinch and tremble.
Something had been off from the start. This way of speaking was nothing like Athena at all.
It was as if she had become an entirely different person.
Her completely transformed atmosphere made worry flicker through me for a moment.
Could something have happened to her..?
But only for a moment.
I slapped my own cheek and scolded myself.
Get a grip already, Hera.
What are you thinking, still giving your heart to her?
"....You deceived me."
"That's right."
"You thoroughly toyed with me."
"I did."
"You mocked me. Ridiculed me. Completely shattered me."
"Yes."
Athena calmly admitted to everything.
At that, my emotions burst, and tears came flooding out.
"Why...!! Why did you do it, why!! You said you loved me... So how could you do something like that?"
Once the dam of tears I had been holding back broke, no matter how much I wiped them away, more immediately streamed down and covered my face with heat.
"I hate you so much I could die, Athena...... But do you know what makes me the angriest...?"
"...What?"
"No matter how hard I try. The fact that I can't forget you is what makes me the angriest and most resentful of all."
"......."
"Hic... Really.... I hate you..... Hic.... Hic..."
Unable to hold it in any longer, I began to sob bitterly, and Athena said nothing.
In my overwhelming frustration and indignation, I shouted at her as if lashing out.
"Say something already..!!!"
"Leave the mansion, Hera."
What came back as an answer was something I never expected.
"....What?"
"Then good night."
"W-Wait.."
In my panic, I hurriedly scrambled out of bed and threw open the door.
But Athena had vanished without a trace, and in the empty hallway there was only myself standing there in a daze.
I could no longer suppress the emotion that threatened to spill from my throat.
So I fled from Hera. Because I did not want to show her what I looked like.
I dragged my deeply sunken, heavy body along and threw myself onto the bed.
When I covered my eyes with one hand, that thing I had been holding back all this time finally burst forth.
In all my life, I had never once shed a tear.
Not even when the man who had been my father abandoned me and left. Not even when the woman who had been my mother shed tears of blood and hurled her resentment at me. I had endured steadfastly through it all.
But now I did not think I could hold on any longer.
"Ha...."
A single clear droplet rolled down my cheek.
At this all-too-unfamiliar sensation, my brow furrowed.
I hated this feeling that pressed so heavily on my chest.
"Haa... Damn it... Hic..... Hic..."
But from deep in my heart, a sorrowful and intense emotion kept rising up.
Like a child crying for the first time, I simply could not stop weeping.
"I'm sorry... Hera...... I'm sorry.."
For someone who had been called invincible, it was a sight far too weak.
Looking at her face, I could not help but be shocked.
"....You.."
As if the sun were still far from rising, only pitch-black darkness covered the outside world.
It was a dawn far too early to be waking from sleep.
Athena had secretly woken me as I slept soundly beside Mom and called me out.
At first I was annoyed, but once I realized something was off about the atmosphere, I had no choice but to follow her.
"Tomorrow morning, take Hera and leave the mansion."
Saying that, she handed me a heavy pouch wrapped in brown cloth.
Looking dazed at the pouch that had landed in my hands, I saw it piled high with brilliantly gleaming gold coins.
"They're all platinum coins. Enough to buy a small kingdom, so you won't run short."
An amount so vast that an ordinary person's eyes would have popped out of their head — and it would not have been strange.
But I did not even glance at the glittering money pouch. I just stared blankly at her alone.
"Are you.... okay..?"
I had hated her from the start.
When Mom had been suffering so much because of her that she nearly died, I had even wanted to kill her.
But the reason I still offered her words of concern—
It certainly was not because of her deeply sunken voice.
It was not because of her reddened eyelids or her blue-tinged lips either.
It was because the color of her soul—
Had changed from black to a transparent, colorless hue.
And that meant only one thing.
"Pfft. Are you worried about me?"
She sent a sneer my way that was almost like mockery.
But that only pressed down on my heart even more heavily.
I could see it all too clearly.
The face of the woman sneering at me—
Was the look of someone desperately trying to force a smile to hide her own heart.
"......"
I shook my head side to side to cast off the thoughts.
It's all her own doing.
Everything was something she had brought upon herself.
How much had Mom suffered because of that woman.
How many tears had she shed, how much had she vomited and writhed in agony.
When I recalled the image of Mom dying, the concern I had felt for her cooled and vanished without a trace.
Right.
There was no reason anywhere for me to worry about her.
".....I won't say a separate goodbye."
"Fine."
As if that were all she had to say, she turned away coldly and walked off.
I too turned my back on her and headed toward Mom, who would still be sleeping.
With every step I took, my mood sank lower.
Just like this heavy money pouch in my hand.
My heart felt unbearably heavy.