Practically Confinement
"Practically a level of confinement, I'd call it."
Three days had passed since the incident.
Delphine locked the door of my hospital room.
"Today, no one gets in. Not a single soul."
The child dragged a chair to the bedside, turned the backrest forward, and straddled it, arms crossed, looking down at me.
"Mother, can you speak?"
"......"
"You're truly strong, Mother. Your recovery is remarkable as well. I've watched you at close range for years—there's no way I wouldn't know that."
"......"
"Will you answer me now?"
"......"
"Who were you with that day?"
I stared at the ceiling. There was a crack running through the plaster. I wondered how many cracks there were in total.
Delphine waited. She counted—one, two, three. All the way to ten.
When I showed no sign of speaking, the child unfolded her arms.
"Ah, at first I thought it was just the shock."
"......"
"Your throat was strangled, after all. It would be hard to talk about right after coming back from the dead. I told myself the same thing—that in a little while, you'd bring it up first."
Delphine gripped the bed rail.
"Well, three days have passed, and you still haven't named the culprit."
"......"
"So I thought it over again. Why exactly is Mother keeping her mouth shut?"
The child leaned her body forward.
"With your personality, you would never hide out of fear. You're tougher and colder than anyone alive. If someone had put their hands around your throat, you'd have gotten out of this bed already and started planning your revenge."
I was struck speechless.
She wasn't wrong. If this were the old me, I'd have kicked the bed aside in one day, not three. I simply didn't feel like it now.
"What's the reason? Why won't you say anything, why won't you do anything?"
The injustice finally pried my mouth open.
"...I didn't see them. That's the plain truth."
The voice came out as a rasp.
I had been saying it from the very start. I never saw the face. I don't know the name. Caught off guard, seized from behind—and when I came to, there was an unfamiliar ceiling overhead.
One of Delphine's eyebrows rose.
"Isn't that a rather obvious lie?"
She crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly.
"Ambushed? Our mother?"
"...Even I can't predict every variable. An ambush works precisely because you don't see it coming."
"Haha, hahaha......"
Delphine finally burst into a hollow laugh. Her shoulders shook with it—and then, abruptly, the smile wiped clean off her face as she leaned in close to my ear.
"That makes no sense at all."
I said I was ambushed. She didn't believe it.
Delphine didn't get angry. Her eyes only grew calmer.
We faced each other across the narrowed distance. She opened her mouth, stopped, studied my eyes once. Then, with effort, she forced the words out.
"If Mother could be caught in an ambush, then the opponent must be at least your equal—or above you. Does such a monster really exist?"
"Delphine, the world is wide. Plenty of people have never shown their true faces."
"They knocked you unconscious successfully, but then only half-strangled you and walked away? None of it adds up. You really didn't see the culprit?"
"I told you. I lost consciousness."
"You—the woman who fought a dragon alone and won?"
Once it went there, there was nothing left to say.
Delphine sighed and pressed a hand to her forehead. It meant she had no intention of listening to any more pitiful excuses.
"Mother, at least give me a better excuse than that. A lie with a little more sincerity would go over far better."
I slowly parted my lips.
A sincere lie. No decent excuse came to mind, so all I could do was brazenly push through.
"Delphine. I know it's hard for you to accept. But the truth doesn't change."
"Hah?"
"...I saw nothing. That's all there is."
Lying to my daughter's face didn't feel wonderful. Though it was something I'd have to keep doing from here on.
Delphine searched my eyes.
The one to look away first was the child. She swept her hair back with an irritated hand.
"...Fine."
Delphine leaned back from the chair and let out a long breath.
"If you're fighting this hard to hide it from your own daughter, there must be a reason. Either it's someone I'm not meant to know, or someone you want to protect no matter what it costs you."
I showed nothing and waited for what came next.
Delphine's hands tightened on the rail until the blood sank blue beneath the skin of her knuckles.
"Honestly, I want to press you right now. Corner you until you can't even breathe, until that person's name comes out of your mouth."
"I already told you. I didn't see them. I was unconscious."
"Then why didn't you resist?"
"I told you—I was unconscious. There was never a chance to resist at all."
Why there had been no signs of struggle. I had decided to push the line that I'd passed out before I could lift a finger. It was the most plausible story.
The words themselves had no flaw. The problem was that the me Delphine knew was stronger than that.
"...In any case, you are a victim who nearly died. I have no wish to become an unfilial daughter who corners a sick woman in her bed."
Delphine rose slowly. The heat drained from her eyes—the face of someone who had chosen to cool down rather than rage.
"Keep your mouth shut, then, Mother. Someday I'll find the answer, and I'll make you open it yourself."
I opened my mouth with feigned resignation.
"...So. What's the plan from here?"
Delphine smiled faintly.
The child bent down and pressed her lips to my forehead.
"Everything is going to be fine, Mother."
What is?
The voice was soft. What lay beneath it was the problem.
"From now on, wherever you go, Mother, I go too."
"...Delphine. There's no need to go that far."
"I will stick to you like a shadow."
The child cut off my words with a smiling face.
"To the bathroom. To the training grounds. When you go out to fight for your life, and when you lie down to sleep. From now on, all of it is with me."
I frowned.
"Only until your wounds heal. Beyond that, it's too much."
"Do you have options, Mother?"
Delphine tilted her head to one side, wearing the look of someone who had just heard the world's dumbest question.
"What are you even saying. It's forever."
Forever. Did she just say forever?
I wanted to believe it was a bluff, an empty threat meant to intimidate me.
Whether she read my expression or not, Delphine narrowed her eyes.
"You think it's just words, don't you?"
The child opened the drawer beside the bed and spread several documents before my eyes.
"Look. The room consolidation request form. Submitted yesterday, approved this morning. We sleep together from now on."
A page turned over.
"This is the training schedule adjustment. I've matched my entire movement route to your rehabilitation schedule, down to the minute."
Another page.
"And this is the permit to bring a folding cot into your hospital room. It's being installed there tonight."
Delphine gathered the papers and slid them back into the drawer.
"Did you think I spent the last three days just playing around?"
She had filed the request on the second day.
The realization that she had finished every preparation for my confinement before she even began her interrogation sent a faint chill down my spine.
I should have expected some of it. This child would never quietly let go of a mother who came back from the dead. And did I really look like an innocent victim? Well. Too much of me was hidden, that was all.
"...Delphine."
"Yes."
"I nearly died. I'm the victim here."
Every word scraped the inside of my throat. When I swallowed, I tasted iron.
"...Someone strangled me. I haven't been able to drink water properly in three days, and even now, every breath feels like a blade being drawn across my throat."
"I know."
"Then why do I have to be interrogated by you, watched by you, told that you'll follow me for the rest of my life? I told nothing but the truth."
Believe it or not, I had said everything.
Even if all of it was a fabrication.
At least the immediate suspicion could be buried—
as long as sharp-eyed Delphine didn't see straight through the fact that every word of it was a lie.
"This isn't something that can be brushed off as concern. This is..."
I faltered. The word I was about to say fit the situation far too precisely.
"Practically a level of confinement, I'd call it."
The child nodded.
"Correct."
No hesitation at all.
"Then why on earth—"
"......"
"Why go this far..."
"Mother, you should have died."
If not for my constitution, I would have.
Delphine laid her hand on the bed rail again. She looked down for a moment, then lifted her eyes back to me.
"Because I love you, Mother."
"...Right. My daughter loves me."
Nothing particularly surprising about that.
Delphine's expression didn't change one bit.
"Mother, do you remember where you picked me up?"
Of course I remembered.
It was a rainy alley. Beneath a collapsed wall, the skeletal Delphine had sat hugging a dead dog. She'd said it was still warm—that she couldn't bring herself to let go.
"You reached out your hand that day. Holding your hand was the best thing I have ever done in my life."
"...I see."
"So we were fated to be together from the very beginning. You're the one who made it that way, Mother."
There was no logic in it, but I understood the feeling.
"Delphine."
"Yes, Mother."
"I'm your guardian. That much is true."
"It is."
"But that's simply what the role is. A guardian can't stay by your side forever."
Delphine tilted her head.
"...What do you mean by that?"
She bent forward until her face was inches from mine.
"Lying there with those marks around your throat, barely finding your voice after three days—and you're the one saying this to me?"
"......"
"Do you want to die, Mother......?"
Delphine's eyes didn't waver. A question thrown straight at me with every escape route already sealed shut.
"...Could I?"
I denied it.
"It was just an explanation of how the world works. I wasn't saying I'd leave you behind."
Delphine said nothing at all.
"I chose my words badly. I didn't expect you to take it that way."
The child closed her eyes, then opened them.
"...Understood."
She pulled back. Her hand slid from the rail.
"You're in pain, Mother, so we'll stop here for today."
Delphine drew the blanket up over me to my throat. Carefully, so that the marks on my neck wouldn't show.
"But those words of yours just now—I'll remember them."