Subjugation

"...Was it, now."

Face to face with my father, I recounted everything that had happened that day.

Aria had not woken since losing consciousness. The shock carved into her was no small thing—at the very earliest, she wouldn't open her eyes until tomorrow.

"Erasing Aria's memories—is that truly impossible?"

Hmm.

「Not entirely impossible. But wiping my sister's memory alone wouldn't end anything, would it?」

Memory Deletion and Memory Removal were, after all, compound words. Vital Point Designation had also been a compound word I could assemble, so as long as the consonants and vowels held up, mastering them wouldn't be difficult.

But as I'd already noted, even if I erased Aria's memory of this incident, the moment the public execution was carried out, everyone would know she was the daughter of the Empress who had committed treason.

So even if the memory were erased, how long could that effect possibly last? If she lived on in blissful ignorance, only to hear the whole truth from a third party someday—that revelation would cut far deeper than anything else.

"Then there is nothing to do but watch, is there."

My father dragged a hand down his face and let out a long, heavy sigh.

"That child bears no guilt whatsoever..."

Just as Father said—if Aria bore any sin at all, it was only the sin of being born to the wrong mother.

The origin of every crime traced back to the Empress. The question was whether Aria could ever bring herself to accept that.

With the conversation between father and son concluded, I left my father's chambers and headed straight back to my own room. Mentally exhausted as I was, the moment I lay down on the bed my eyelids began to slide shut of their own accord, and before long I felt Mary's gentle hands pulling the blanket up to my chin as I drifted into sleep.

The next morning, word reached me around noon that Aria had awoken, and I went to her at once.

The first place she had gone was the imperial dungeon, where Mary was being held. But the guards stationed there were not the sort to let her through, and Aria could only turn away with a face full of despair.

Then, the moment her eyes met mine as I watched her from a distance, she came sprinting up and seized my arm.

"Save Mary... please!"

I had already loaded the power of Kotodama into the Conversation before she even reached me, so I opened my mouth.

"You know I can't do that."

"It's my mother who did wrong! So... at the very least, save Mary, I'm begging you!"

"There are twenty-four of them."

"What...?"

"That's the number of maids imprisoned right now, not counting Mary."

"......"

"Sparing Mary means sparing every single one of them—all of them guilty."

"Mary is different from the other maids! She's—she's special to me!"

It was an answer fitting for a girl whose mental age was still so young.

"But not to me. She's nothing more than a criminal who contributed to my mother's execution."

Besides, those twenty-four maids were special to their own families, if they had them. Such a reason would never constitute grounds for pardon under the law that had already been decreed.

At my cold words, tears spilled down Aria's cheeks as she grabbed me by the collar and shook me.

"You said your mother didn't die! That it was faked! That she's living well right now!"

"......"

"So please, just don't take Mary from me...!"

To Aria's sobbing fury, I offered no particular reply. Nothing I said in this moment would ever satisfy her rationally.

"That's it! Right! If it was faked—if it was faked, then Mary's death could be faked too, couldn't it!"

Aria grinned like someone who had lost her mind.

"H-her identity! We could just make her a new identity!"

Believing she had found a way out, she looked up at me. In response, I peeled her fingers off my collar.

When I channeled the power of Kotodama into Mirror Flower, Water Moon and showed Aria the figure of Mary, she ran toward it, stretching out her small hands. But unable to touch her, she passed straight through the apparition—and as she felt her own body meet nothing but air, she began to realize that something was terribly wrong.

"An illusion like this can be seen through the moment someone makes contact—that's its fatal flaw. So... faking it is, in practice, impossible."

"B-but...!"

"That day, I did not fake my mother's death. That day, my mother truly had her head cut off."

It was a memory I wished I could forget.

"If my mother really hadn't died, like you say, then saving Mary would have been no trouble at all. But even the legendary Dragon Tongue grants a mortal only a single heaven-defying chance to defy what nature permits. And even if... even if that chance had existed, I would not have spent it on Mary. Whatever the bond the two of you shared, I remember how my mother was unjustly executed. I remember it to the very end."

"Ah... aah..."

"I'll say it one more time. The person who took everything from you is the Empress. Redirect your hatred to the one who deserves it."

Whether a girl so young could accept that truth with an honest heart, I couldn't say.

Four days later, the traitors who had raised the banner of rebellion were executed publicly in the plaza of Veronica, the imperial capital. By ordinary custom, their heads would have been cut down and their corpses displayed for days, but my father chose not to go that far—the full truth of the affair, traced to its roots, was in its own way a stain upon the imperial house.

After ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that came, quite naturally, the executions of all the others who had joined in the treason, and Mary, Aria's wet nurse, could not escape them either.

When every last step of it was finished, I looked up at the sunset-streaked sky and made my way to Aria's room.

Just as with Resurrection, a cascade of notifications declaring every near-synonym's combination now impossible. Which meant that the word Subjugation, too, would vanish the moment it was used once.

Knock, knock.

No answer came to my knock. So I carefully opened the door and stepped inside to find Aria curled up on her bed, showing not the slightest intention of moving.

"......"

"......"

I tried to speak first—but before I could, she lifted her head and turned her gaze on me. And the instant our eyes met, a chill crawled up my spine.

It was killing intent, unmistakably condensed—the single-minded resolve to take a human life.

'What the—!'

A casting speed impossible to follow even with the naked eye. All I could do, confronted with it, was marvel at the sheer absurdity of her talent.

'AAAAGH!!!'

A heartbeat later, my hastily outstretched hands burst into flame and the skin began to melt away, and I crumpled to the floor, wheezing out ragged, wretched groans beneath the enormous pain that devoured my mind.

"...Heal."

The only mercy was that my mouth still had the presence of mind to load a word with the power of Kotodama.

'Ha.'

Pain that should have torn my consciousness apart vanished as if it had all been a lie. It was almost uncanny, the way my body was gradually adapting to this impossible dissonance.

"Conversation."

Refocusing my blurred vision on Aria, I saw fear written across her face—the memory of my hands melting moments ago, the acrid stench of scorched flesh hanging in the room. But the killing intent within those eyes remained utterly unchanged.

"You're planning to kill someone who has done nothing wrong?"

"Y-you took everything from me! So how can you say you're innocent!"

"I told you. The one you should resent isn't me—it's your own mother, the Empress."

"No—!"

Shaking her head violently with a voice steeped in hatred, Aria wept openly, her vicious expression fixing me wholly within those distinctive crimson eyes. She looked so much like the Empress had in life that I was reminded, all over again, that she was that woman's daughter.

"If only you and your mother had never existed! Everything—everything would have been normal!"

It was sophistry, but not an outright lie. If my mother and I had never existed, the Empress would never have done what she did.

But if we turn that sophistry around, the opposite argument stands just as well.

"And from my side, if only the Empress had never existed... my mother would never have died. None of this ever would have happened."

Each of us carried an equal wound, yet our interests ran on parallel lines that would never meet.

"Why do I alone have to lose everything? Why do you get to have it all? It was like this from the start. Because of you and your mother, I—! I was unhappy from the very moment I was born!"

"...Do you know what we call that, when someone's watching it happen? Childish whining."

"Shut up! I'll make you lose everything just like I did! Everything you hold precious—every last bit of it, I'll wipe from this world!"

Just as the executed Empress, Cestia, had said—she was an ember still glowing in the ashes. Having lost everything that once held her up, she was nothing now but a mad dog that had lost its way.

And so I felt the need to fasten a leash around her neck. At least until she could think clearly with reason instead of drowning in her emotions.

"S-stay back!"

Reacting to the high-speed cast that tumbled from Aria's disheveled lips, I loaded Freeze with the power of Kotodama and locked her spell solid mid-air. Then I closed the distance and caught the arm she was reaching for me with.

Granted, I was a boy—but my body was still that of a young child, and overpowering her by strength alone was no easy feat.

"Overwhelm."

Crack!

Borrowing the power of Overwhelm, I brought Aria down with ease, and that bright platinum hair so like the Empress's spread neatly across the bed. Crimson eyes trembling with fear. She convulsively strained both arms, trying to throw me off, but I pinned those slender wrists down firmly and spoke.

"Subjugation."

I nodded.

And then—

Chains of translucent light took shape and began to coil around both Aria's body and mine. At the bizarre sight, she shuddered from head to toe and shook her head frantically, but soon the translucent chain that had passed through my body once burrowed onward, sinking deep past her chest and into her heart.

'Is it... finished?'

With that, the translucent chains faded from sight. As I gradually released my grip and shifted my weight off her, the girl who had been sobbing beneath me shot upright and slapped me across the face.

Smack!

How was she already this good at slapping a man's cheek, young as she was?

"I forbid all actions that bring harm to me, my mother, or my father."

"Why... why? Why won't my magic cast!"

"When time passes and you're grown, you'll understand just how absurdly unreasonable you were being today. And just how vile were the crimes your mother committed."

What ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she needed was the capacity to grasp everything that had happened with a cool, rational mind—and time. Of course, I had my doubts that even then this childish thirst for vengeance would simply fade...

But what sin did this child carry? All she had ever done was love the wrong mother, and strive to be loved.

"Furthermore, I forbid you to take your own life. Suicide, and self-harm alike."

At her spell's refusal to cast, Aria raised her hand once more—but it stopped dead in the lifted air, frozen in place.

Proof that the command laid through Subjugation ruled her body completely.

"Ngh!"

No matter how hard she strained, her hand, suspended in empty air, showed not the slightest sign of striking my cheek. And at that pitiless absurdity—her brain's command being flatly refused by her own flesh—Aria bit her lip until it nearly split and spat out a single line through tears and a venomous glare.

"You... really are the worst."

If this worst was the best choice available—

then worst was exactly what I would be, as many times as it took.

I smiled, crooked and cold.