Delusion (21)
Delusion (21)
A brief argument with Estelle hadn't soured things between us—not on the surface, at least.
She clung to me now with a more suggestive edge than before, but it stopped there.
I can't know how Estelle felt when she heard I didn't want a child, but if one came anyway—
If I gave that child love, raised it beautifully, watched it grow, and then died only to loop back—
I didn't think I could endure that. Not that. Not ever.
Not long afterward, my father announced he was stepping down as Family Head and left the estate.
And I was elevated in his place.
Everything was rushed, absurdly swift, but not a single voice rose in objection.
Nobody wanted to get on the Saintess's bad side, apparently.
At the investiture ceremony, Estelle was there, along with some high-ranking archpriest whose origins I couldn't guess. Rituals were performed. The day itself is a blur in my memory.
Long, tedious speeches. The smell of incense. Expressionless faces all around.
I was exhausted, and it all felt like meaningless theater anyway.
After becoming Family Head, I tried to remember why I'd wanted the position in the first place.
Maybe I never needed it at all.
More precisely—did I really need to sit here, after shooting Levina, after saying those things to Serepina and Estelle?
Nobody condemned me now. Nobody looked at me with scorn. And yet the life felt hollow.
Something in my head had definitely gone wrong.
I was out walking, letting my feet carry me where they would, the revolver tucked at my waist. I ended up at the small church where Estelle stayed.
A familiar path.
The door opened, and Estelle spotted me. Her face lit up. She ran over and threw her arms around me without a word.
For a long while.
Ever since the day we'd gone to the main building together, she'd been clinging to me longer than before.
"I was waiting. You said you'd release them today, didn't you?"
I gave her back a light pat and took the basement key from her.
Estelle handed it over without protest, without a single question.
Her expression said she knew exactly what I meant to do.
The stairs groaned underfoot. I opened the firmly shut basement door.
The musty stench hit my nose—a smell I hadn't encountered in a long time.
This was the first time I'd seen Levina since the day I shot her.
She and the Duchess were both withered, unwashed, reeking, their eyes hollow.
They were huddled in the corner of the basement.
Levina didn't rage at me. She just stared up blankly.
"Why are you here? I doubt you came to let us out."
Her voice was parched. Brittle.
"I did come to let you out."
"Why the hell would you?"
Her eyes widened, just the faintest fraction.
"Because I'm Family Head now."
I answered evenly.
A thin smile tugged at Levina's lips.
It was a self-mocking smile.
"Ah. So Father stepped down. Well, he always did dote on you."
"Where's the Duchess?"
Levina pointed toward the corner, where her mother sat slumped and broken.
Disheveled hair. The hollow shell of a human being. None of that arrogant, terrifying presence from before remained.
Nothing but an empty husk.
"Mother, Ravin is here. The Family Head has come personally to see us. You should get up."
Levina pulled the Duchess to her feet and dragged her over to stand before me.
The Duchess offered no resistance. She moved wherever she was steered.
Her eyes wandered the empty air, unfocused.
"So you're really letting us go?"
Levina looked up at me and asked.
"Yeah."
"Why? If I were you, I'd have killed me."
"...Because I don't want to act like you."
"Don't let us go. What if I gather people somehow and overthrow you?"
"Then you'll have managed to topple the esteemed Saintess too, and I'll figure my luck ran out and accept it."
"...That's. I suppose that could happen."
Levina drew out the last syllable, then stood there staring at nothing for a long moment before speaking again.
"Still. You really did love me, didn't you."
"How is that where this conversation keeps going."
"Because you didn't kill me."
"And the Duchess?"
"She's my mother. If she died, I might be sad. So you spared her. For my sake. Right?"
Levina said it with that faint, unreadable smile.
"Once I'm out of here, I won't hang around making things awkward. For a while.
I'll stay quiet until people mostly forget about me, and then I'll just live with you at the estate.
It's the opposite of what I pictured, but... it doesn't seem so bad."
I was about to ask who said she could just decide to attach herself to me.
But what Levina did next stopped the words in my throat.
She straightened her tattered clothes and rummaged through her pockets.
"My dear little brother. I do love you, but you're far too soft."
As she spoke, she drew something from her hand—a faintly gleaming shard, like broken glass.
Without a flicker of hesitation, she drove it into her mother's throat.
A soft, wet thud.
She let go of the shard, seized her mother by the jaw and the back of the head, and twisted.
A grinding, sickening crunch.
Levina flung what had been her mother to the floor, then stamped down on the head with her knee.
She exhaled, just slightly, and spoke.
Her voice was eerily calm.
"I might be one thing, but Mother can't leave here. She might kill you."
Levina wiped the blood from her face with her sleeve, looking down at her mother's body, still twitching faintly where it lay.
Then she lifted her gaze back to me.
Tears were streaming from her eyes.
She was weeping, but no words came out.
I stared at the scene and let out a hollow laugh.
At the same time, my legs gave out.
I dropped to the floor.
The world swam before my eyes.
Footsteps pounded down the distant stairs.
Estelle.
She reached the basement, took in the sight, and stopped short.
A translucent window flickered into view in front of me.
Familiar. Sickeningly familiar.
[Collect the Endings. 4/?]
[Currently collected rewards: Lingering Fragrance, Afterimage, Lingering Trace]
[Rewards: ???, Redacted]
* * *
After becoming Family Head, I only showed my face at the Academy occasionally. Most of the time, I shut myself in the study and read.
I delegated official duties to the head butler and that vassal who once offered to find me a tutor, dumping the work on them wholesale. Then I opened magic texts—books I'd read several times before, back when they hadn't done me much good.
At least now I had money. I could stockpile magic stones I'd never been able to afford before, and with them, I managed to use something that passed for magic.
Kindling a small flame above my palm. Freezing the water in a cup.
Compared to what Serepina or Levina could do, it was pitiful. But the fact that I could produce something with my own power—that was a small comfort. And as the days passed, it even felt like I was improving, however slightly.
Levina, after I released her, left for a while and then returned with a story about not wanting to be Family Head and needing some time away.
Everyone knew it made no sense. But Levina, whom everyone had assumed dead, was not only alive but in decent condition, and she wasn't defying me or stirring up trouble. There was nothing to do but accept the narrative.
The world ran on convenient lies like that.
Levina visited me now and then, but she never said more than pleasantries—how are you these days, how are you feeling. Nothing beyond that.
Exactly as she'd said in the basement.
She behaved as naturally as if nothing had ever happened.
I didn't ask for anything more either.
In any case, muscle doesn't build overnight, and the only thing I knew how to do was read words on a page. So I read magic texts every day.
I studied spellbooks, tested spells using magic stones, and occasionally slipped into the Academy's Forbidden Archive or library to keep reading.
Buried in books, I could at least forget reality's problems for a little while.
Today I had another stack piled up when someone sat down across from me.
"You've gotten hard to find.
I heard you shut yourself in the library every weekend. Thought it was nonsense. Guess it was true."
It was Serepina.
Dark circles ringed her eyes. Small cuts and scrapes marked her cheeks.
Her clothes, once always immaculate, were slightly frayed.
She looked exhausted—and faintly angry.
"Rumors are going around that you'll marry the Saintess soon.
You becoming Family Head. Levina returning alive. It all feels like it was planned from the start."
Her voice was dry.
"Calling it a plan is a stretch."
"If it wasn't a plan, then what? Levina came back from the dead. Perfectly fine."
Serepina let out a humorless, stuttering laugh.
"What the hell have I been doing this whole time?
The engagement was never broken. I'm still your fiancée. So why is everyone trying to tie you to the Saintess?"
She knocked the book from my hands and spoke in a lowered voice.
The book hit the floor with a dull thud.
"We need to talk. You and I. Let's go outside."
The moment she saw my face, Serepina froze momentarily, just staring. Then she shook her head, tilted her chin to signal I should follow, and stood up.