Into the Filthy Maw (2)
Rhea, Ceria, and Claudia alike.
They stared at the closed door with dazed, shattered expressions and sorrowful eyes.
It did not take long for them to realize that Riel was hurting because of them once again.
Instinctively, as they always did, they nearly turned on each other to cast blame—
Then came the soft sounds. Plip. Plip-plip. Plip.
Without meaning to, they wept, picturing Riel suffering beyond that door.
Maybe… maybe Riel is disappointed in us.
No. Of course he is.
Does he hate us now?
Countless thoughts raced through their minds, and yet…
"I'll be back."
The next day.
And the day after that.
Days passed, and Riel remained the same as ever.
He still went to the guild, trained hard, earned money, saved it, and sometimes spent time with the girls. He still devoted every hour to making everyone happy.
If anything had changed, it was only that his self-reproach had grown heavier during those hours—and that anxiety and fear drove him to push himself even harder.
On the night Riel had gone into the bedroom alone, saying he would sleep by himself, and for at least three months afterward, the girls stopped tearing into one another. They only told each other they loved each other, the way they used to.
But even if they tried to stitch the wounds closed now, those wounds would not heal. Every time Riel looked at them, the memory of that night tormented him like a trauma—and still he could not blame them. He only smiled.
Riel forced himself to laugh. He forced himself to joke around. He forced himself to be happy, clinging to memories of the days when they truly had been.
"Riel, I love you."
"…I love you too. I do, Rhea."
When Rhea—who had been with him since the slums—said she loved him, Riel answered the same way.
"…I'm so sorry to Sister Flora. Riel… I'm sorry. I'm really…"
"…Ceria, if you cry, Sister Flora will hurt too."
When Ceria wept, thinking of the past and apologizing to Sister Flora, Riel shared in her sorrow.
"…I can b-brush it myself now…"
"I want to brush it, Claudia. Can I do it?"
Even when Claudia hid her tail and insisted she would brush it herself, he brushed it for her, stroked her hair, held her tight, and told her she was not alone, that she need not worry. He forced a smile, as if nothing that night had ever happened, just to put them all at ease.
And so, through Riel's efforts, the girls' guilt began to fade—until jealousy slowly, insidiously began to bloom again.
Barely half a year after the day they had torn up the enrollment papers.
The girls started saying it again: I hate you.
The calluses on Riel's hands had long since stopped hardening; if anything, they had grown softer. But the scars on his heart only kept growing deeper.
Do you really hate me?
Can we really never care for each other the way we used to?
The questions rose as far as his throat, but he could never let them out. Before Sister Flora's grave, he had made a promise—to protect them all. Am I keeping that promise properly? He asked himself, and answered himself, and that was all.
"…Haa—."
Was he exhausted?
One day, Riel let out a sigh.
"…I'm sorry. It's too hard. Please stop."
Even the word hate no longer earned them the affection they craved, so the girls grew gradually worse.
They told him they truly hated him. They asked if he disliked them more than anyone else. They said only the things that made Riel sad. And yet, pitifully, even when he heard that they hated him, Riel still loved them all too much. He was exhausted—but he could not let go. He apologized again. He told them he loved them again.
It was a strange thing. He despised hearing that they hated him with every fiber of his being—and yet somehow, he was growing used to it.
At some point, the three girls realized that if they simply said they hated him without reason, Riel only suffered. So they told him they loved him. That they had only been scared. That he must know—they had no one else to lean on but him.
And so they stopped saying they hated him constantly, and only said it at the moments when it would hurt him most. That, too, was a kind of reason.
Riel would go to the girls who said they hated him, apologize, hold them close—and sometime later, receive their apology in return. He loved them, and he spent his days hearing that they hated him.
Time crawled by with cruel slowness.
Another few months passed.
The season in which they had said goodbye to Sister Flora came around again all too soon.
Riel, who had once slept a full six hours, now caught only two-hour catnaps. He would train with Laika until his nose bled, collect two gold pieces, and still head into the village to take on other work. Every nerve in Riel's body was fixed on one thing alone: making sure they were all happy together.
The Academy.
If they went to the Academy—if everyone could live and study there—surely things would ease. It was a place where they could chase their dreams, where they could meet friends their own age. They had been alone together for far too long; that was why they no longer understood how precious they were to one another.
He believed that.
To Riel, the Academy was the only way out of this hellish situation—the only path by which, just as Sister Flora had wished, they could all live happily.
So Riel did not rest for a single day. That was how precious they all were to him.
If Rhea, Ceria, and Claudia were not happy—then he was nothing more than the boy from the slums who had done nothing but bad things. Nothing more than the one who had gotten Sister Flora killed—the woman who had saved him and taught him happiness and love.
Time flowed on once more.
One year passed. Then two.
Riel and Rhea turned fifteen. Ceria and Claudia turned fourteen.
And when Riel reached the age of fifteen he had promised, somehow—miraculously—fifty gold pieces had been gathered. Just two gold short of enough for all of them to enroll in the Academy at once.
It was not only money he had accumulated. Riel, once a mere apprentice, had become a full recruit. Perhaps because of his past-life memories, his dagger technique had become one of the finest in the entire guild. Scars from monster subjugations marked his thighs and abdomen, and his frame had grown until he stood taller than all of them.
The girls had changed too. Rhea, though only fifteen, was already beginning to show a woman's beauty. Ceria and Claudia, a year younger, still looked a touch more childlike—but they were beautiful in their own right. Beyond that, they had learned to read from the books Laika had given them, and picked up simple arithmetic as well. Bit by bit, they were becoming adults.
And still, Rhea dreamed of marrying Riel. Ceria still spent time praying with him. Claudia still climbed into his lap and clung to him like a child. By now, when they said the word hate, they no longer even felt guilty.
They hated that Riel was strict when he taught them the writing Laika had taught him. They hated that he had started showing how tired he was. They hated that he no longer said I love you as often as he used to. Whatever lay in their hearts, that was how they all behaved on the surface.
Not long after turning fifteen, Riel began responding more to the word love than to hate. Those warm words he had always given freely, the ones he had loved so much—starting from the winter he turned fifteen, even those became just another kind of hate.
Clatter-rattle—.
In the pre-dawn dark, a metal bowl fell and rolled across the floor. At the noise, Rhea, Ceria, and Claudia all jolted awake. Their first emotion was worry—but foolishly, none of them started by asking if Riel was all right.
"…What are you doing, making all that noise…"
Rhea tied her red hair back as she stepped outside, wanting to look at least a little pretty—then froze in confusion when Riel did not immediately apologize.
"What is that smell…?"
Claudia, coming out next, suddenly pinched her nose and grimaced.
"…Riel?"
Ceria, last of all, searched for him—then lowered her gaze.
"R-Riel—! Ri-Riel—!"
There, collapsed in a heap before the sunken entryway, Riel lay unconscious, blood streaming from his nose. A dagger lay on the floor beside him.
They had never managed to hide that he had been going to the guild for two years, so all of them immediately understood: Riel had been about to leave on a subjugation.
Claudia, who even at fourteen still hated the idea of subjugations so much that she had tried saying she hated him, saying she loved him, coiling her tail around herself and whining.
"…W-what do we do… R-Riel looks s-so different from usual. H-he must be sick… H-he said he wouldn't go on this one…"
Ceria, who had invoked Sister Flora's name, who had sobbed that she had nightmares every night, that she was terrified Riel would abandon her.
"N-no. Absolutely not. Not today. Anyone else can go—just not today. We can't let Riel leave today."
And Rhea, who had told him that his future wife hated this so much, so why did he keep doing the things she hated, and that she really, truly hated him.
"…W-we have to tell Lady Laika. Or Lord Cronian."
Every face had gone deathly pale.
If it involved money, Riel would go even if it killed him. Even if they lied, even if they all screamed that they hated it, that they hated him—he would still go. And this time, after telling them he would stay home because he looked unwell, he had simply collapsed.
"…Ah—. M-must've dozed off. Sorry. There's an important subjugation today… Everyone, move aside."
Riel forced his half-lidded eyes open and pushed himself upright. He looked utterly unlike anything they had ever seen. His hands trembled violently. He could not even look at them straight. Whether from drowsiness or blurred vision, his gaze fixed not on Ceria—who had been the first to hold him up—but on empty air.
"Move."
When Riel pushed Ceria away, Rhea locked her arms around him so he could not move.
"…No. You promised. You said you'd rest for a few days."
"…I have to go."
"Then why?! We've told you until we were sick of it! That you—holding a dagger, killing things—we hate it!"
"…It's okay if you hate me today. So just let me go."
"…Ceria. Go lock the door."
As Ceria moved to lock it, Riel tried to pull free again. There was a strange, desperate obsession in his voice.
"…Claudia. Rhea. Please move. If I just go today, it'll be over."
"What do you mean, over…? If you walk out that door, our promise is over. Claudia will never see any of you again. I mean it!"
And so Riel murmured,
"…Four more."
He murmured it again.
"…If I just earn four more gold, we can go back to the way we were."
"What are you even talking about?!"
"Has money become more important to you than Claudia and Rhea and Ceria…?"
"No. Absolutely not. We told you—please, just listen to us!"
Rhea stopped shouting and simply held him tight so he could not move. Claudia did the same. Even Ceria, returning from locking the door, sat beside them and clung to Riel's hand with all her strength, pinning him in place.
Riel smiled faintly.
"…I knew it. You all… you don't hate me after all. You're worried about me… Lately I really thought you hated me… I was so, so scared…"
Things he would never normally say spilled out of him. The money he had set as his goal was so close now that he had been abusing the potions the guild provided, working himself raw.
"…A mage. A holy sister. A beautiful mother. You all have things you want to be. If you achieve them, we'll be happy, right?"
"…What?"
"…I tried so hard. Just four more, and then… like before… we can be a family again… We won't fight anymore, won't hate each other… We'll know that we're real family—more than anyone else—and we'll take care of each other… I'll be able to keep my promise to protect you…"
Riel moved his trembling hands and pulled them all into his arms.
"Let's all go to the Academy together. Just like Sister Flora wanted. Every last one of us. I'll make sure you're happy… I'll protect you for the rest of my life…"
The Academy.
At that word, silence fell.
The three of them had already forgotten it long ago—forgotten it because all they wanted was to stay by Riel's side. And now they understood: Riel was still living in that day. The day they had hurt each other so badly because none of them could bear to leave him.
"…Sleepy."
Thud.
In the silence, Riel paid the price of his abuse. He was the boy who had gone on subjugation after subjugation as an adventurer for months on end.
A potion was not a convenient recovery draught. It was a debt passed on to your future self.
Three days passed, and Riel still did not wake.
Terrified, they used the gold Riel had saved to summon a doctor from the village. The diagnosis, however, was simply that he had fallen into a deep sleep from accumulated exhaustion caused by overuse. He would wake within a day, the doctor said.
There was no medicine, no prescription—yet the village doctor took five gold pieces simply for having made a house call. They lacked any real sense of the world, and though they had learned a few things, they were still helpless enough not to realize they were being fleeced.
"…Riel will go earn money again the moment he wakes up. Let's tell him we don't want to go to the Academy."
Ceria sat beside Riel, changing the damp cloth on his forehead as she spoke. Claudia was still crying like a child, and was no help at all.
"…Then what about everything Riel did for the past two years? He wants us to go to the Academy."
Rhea snapped at Ceria before she could stop herself—a habit born of the countless times they had hated each other in Riel's absence over those two years. But even she knew there was no need to hate Ceria in a moment like this.
If we have money, Riel won't have to work. If we just have money, everything will be solved, she thought.
"…Claudia, stop crying and help Ceria."
Rhea thought of the coin pouch Riel had filled over two years—and of the five gold pieces the doctor had just taken. Riel's blood and sweat, gone like dust in a single night. At this rate, the moment he woke, he would go straight back to work. Rhea spoke as if she had made up her mind.
"I'll go earn the money."
Ceria grabbed Rhea's arm with a sudden sense of dread—but their relationship was no longer what it had been years ago. When Rhea gently pulled her hand free with a faint smile she had not worn in a long time, Ceria could not bring herself to hold on.
"…Don't worry. I won't do anything dangerous."
"Where are you going…?"
"…Riel will know."
Rhea answered briefly, took Riel's dagger, and stepped out of the church. Earning money in the village would take far too long—so she headed for the one place Riel had forbidden her from ever going, no matter what.
The slums.
Step by step, Rhea walked into the filthy maw.
Of course, she had no intention of selling her body. She was going to sell the most valuable thing she possessed.
Her hair.
A woman's hair fetched a high price. Rhea was heading into the slums to sell even that.
The deeper she walked, the thicker and fouler the air became. Prostitutes and thugs cast blatant stares her way, and she was terrified—but her mind was already full of everything Riel had done for two years, and the fear that he would push himself again. Rhea forced herself to ignore it all.
It's fine. Just sell the hair and get out.
She repeated it to herself like a spell, over and over, as she kept walking deeper in.
"I want to sell my hair."
Deep in the heart of the slums, at the place she had come to sell it, a tattooed man answered her at once.
"Need a lot of money, do you?"
"…Yes."
When Rhea answered shortly, the man smiled with false friendliness and began asking this and that. She needed to sell her hair, so she gave a few brief, distracted replies—and in that instant—
"Mmph—! Mm—! Mmph—!"
Someone clamped a hand over Rhea's mouth.
A woman who sold her hair was, even in the slums, the lowest of the low. A woman whose life was already hard enough that even prostitution would be a struggle. Which meant she was a woman who could be handled however they liked.
"Leave the hair. I'll pay you plenty. See, there's been some bastard lately who's been damaging our merchandise. Just do me this one favor, yeah?"
Rhea struggled—but she was only a girl. Deeper into the slums, just as Sister Flora once had been, Rhea was dragged away.
As she thrashed, Riel's dagger—never once used by her—tumbled to the ground and rolled across the dirt.