<Raiden Ryoma's Side>
For me, Raiden Ryoma, that day was an unbearably painful memory.
Mei does not remember it because she was so young, but once, without thinking, I struck my precious daughter—the one my wife had left behind.
It happened not long after my wife passed away.
Still too young to understand what it meant that she had passed away, Mei would constantly ask me and those around her where her mother was.
Whenever she did, people would tell her that her mother had gone far away and could not be seen, but that was too much for a young child to fully accept.
But I had no room to pay attention to Mei.
Despite trying every possible method, I had been unable to cure my wife. My heart was dying beneath the self-reproach and guilt I felt toward myself.
"Papa, where's Mama?"
"Mei... Papa is having a hard time right now. Could we play later?"
"Mei doesn't want to play. Mei wants to see Mama. Where's Mama?"
"Mei, Papa is really having a hard time. Could you come back later?"
"...Sniff. Papa, where's Mama? Everyone only says Mama went far away. But Mama would never leave Mei behind. Everyone's lying."
My daughter spoke through her tears.
In a way, it was admirable that she was not crying aloud.
Most children would have been wailing and throwing a tantrum by then.
"Mei, please... leave Papa alone."
"Papa knows, right? Where's Mama? Huh? I want to see Mama!"
But I had spent days refusing food and drink, doing nothing but crying. Having reached my mental limit, I had no capacity left to accept my daughter's neediness—her grief.
As the little girl came up to me with a tearful face, asking for her mother, the stress I had endured until my very limit finally exploded.
"Quiet!"
"Eek?!"
By the time I came to my senses, my hand had already flown out.
Seeing the child clutch her injured cheek, I abruptly woke up to what I had done. With trembling eyes, I looked between my hand and Mei's cheek.
As I saw her cheek reddened from the blow, my mind went cold. Just as I tried to approach her, the child looked at me through wounded, tearful eyes and cried out.
"I hate you, Papa...!"
At the same time, she ran out. I reached for her, but I could not move any farther than that.
Gripping my head as yet another wave of self-reproach consumed me over what I had done, I turned around—and the instant my eyes met my wife's memorial portrait, I ran outside.
I could not stay there.
What... what had I done?
What had I done in front of my wife?
"Aaaaaaah!"
Rain poured down from the sky, and I could feel the people around me staring, but I ran without caring.
Because I could not endure it otherwise.
I could not endure the reality that my wife was gone, or the reality that I had struck my child in front of her.
'Please take good care of Mei, darling.'
I was an unfit father who could not even fulfill my wife's final request.
After that, whenever I saw Mei avoiding me, I simply could not apologize.
I was afraid that even if I apologized, I might someday do the same thing to Mei again. My heart had not regained its stability, either.
In the end, believing time would solve it, I left Mei in my mother's care. I threw myself desperately into work to make money, so that nothing like what happened to my wife would ever happen to Mei.
When I saw Mei again after several years, she hid behind my mother's back to avoid me.
That made me think she still hated me.
So I protected Mei from behind the scenes.
But that was not enough.
Children grow up in the blink of an eye.
And the more the grown Mei came to resemble my dead wife, the more memories of my wife surfaced. The vicious cycle repeated itself: I avoided my daughter even more, watching over her only from afar.
Whenever I dreamed, I would sometimes be on a date with my wife in her youth, only for her to suddenly turn into Mei and scream that she hated me with hatred-filled eyes. It was not rare for me to wake from such dreams.
That was why I could not approach Mei.
I could not stay by her side.
Though I believed my daughter hated me, I did not even have the courage to try and dispel that hatred.
I thought that watching from a distance was all I could do.
No. Perhaps even that had been nothing more than an excuse.
I was afraid.
Afraid that if I approached Mei again, I would hurt her once more.
Or that I would confirm for myself that it was already too late.
So I chose to believe that Mei hated me instead.
If I thought that way, then at least I could explain to myself why I did nothing.
But only after going through this incident did I realize it.
I was her father.
A trash father.
An incompetent father who had not even noticed that his child was suffering.
I had thought that, as long as she had money, she would grow up wanting for nothing even without me by her side. But if not for that boy, I would still never have known.
How lonely Mei had been.
How much she had endured.
And how much she had needed me.
I had been mistaken.
Give her money.
Create a good environment for her.
Let her have things other children would envy.
I had thought that would be enough.
Then, during the investigation, I received an unexpected report.
The true identity of the Homu Sword Saint.
At first, I could not believe it.
I thought it could not possibly be true.
But as I looked over the pieces of information that fit together one by one, a possibility gradually began taking root in my mind.
That was why I read the report again and again.
To see whether I had misread it.
Whether it might be someone else with the same name.
But no matter how many times I checked, there was only one conclusion.
That child was alive.
—Where had he been, and what had he been doing all that time?
—Why had he only revealed himself now?
—Why had he appeared before Mei now, of all times?
But there was something I had to consider before any of that.
In this situation, the only person who could be a source of strength for Mei was, regrettably, not me but that boy.
It was painful to acknowledge that fact.
I had already hurt Mei and turned my back on her for so long.
That was a fact I would have to carry with me for the rest of my life.
But that did not mean there was any reason to give up on the future as well.
The past cannot be changed.
I knew that better than anyone.
After all, I had no choice but to let my wife go.
But the future can be changed.
So I would do anything for my daughter.
Even if that meant making use of an old promise I had no desire to invoke.
Mei needed someone who would believe in her.
She needed somewhere to return to.
She needed someone who would not leave her.
And if I had not been able to give her those things until now, then I had to find another way to give them to her.
If that boy truly was the child I knew.
And if he still cared about Mei.
I would make use of that old promise.
With that thought, I headed to the visitation room.
Click.
After the guards led me to the visitation room, I waited a moment. Then the door on the other side opened, and a man—no, a boy—entered under the escort of an officer.
Once they saw us both seated, the guards gave me a slight bow and left the visitation room.
As I heard the door close, I looked at the boy sitting across from me.
It was a strange feeling.
I was certain I had never seen this face before.
Yet, somehow, it did not feel unfamiliar.
It felt as if I were meeting someone I had known long ago once again.
I forcibly suppressed that feeling.
What mattered now was not sentiment about the past.
It was confirming whether this boy truly was the child I thought he was.
And confirming how he felt about Mei.
"I never imagined we would meet again like this."
"I heard you asked to see me."
The boy's words seemed to say that we should get straight to the point, and I answered with a hollow laugh.
"Try to understand. Being in here, I have no one with whom I can speak freely."
"...All right."
As I said that, letting my shoulders slump and putting on a pitiful expression, the boy let out a long sigh and nodded as though he understood.
At that reaction, I smiled as if I had never made such a pitiful expression and spoke.
"Good. Then let us start with a simple greeting. It has been a long time, Homu Sword Saint. Or should I call you my daughter's fiancé?"
The boy flinched at those words.
"Fiancé... I believe you have the wrong person."
The instant I heard that, I felt something close to certainty.
'So he is pretending not to know.'
Either way, it did not matter.
There was a clear connection between the past I knew and the boy before me now.
"There is no need to hide it any longer. I did not know you were alive either."
"No, excuse me?"
The boy tried to say something.
But more than listening to him, I wanted to confirm the question that had been weighing on me all this time.
"Until I received that report, I did not understand why you helped my daughter. But now I understand why."
"I mean, that—"
"You could not forget my daughter."
"No, I—"
"Then again, even back then, you acted as if you could not live without each other whenever you were apart... So you had been watching over her, even while hiding yourself?"
"..."
At my words, the boy moved his lips as if trying to say something—anything—but soon lowered his head deeply.
'Just as I thought.'
This boy truly was him.
At that moment, the image of a boy I had buried in memories long ago overlapped with the boy before me.
'He really was alive.'
Because of the incident caused by Siegfried Kaslana, the Kaslana Family—one of the three great families that had stood at the foundation of Schicksal—was struck by Otto Apocalypse's hammer.
They suffered a devastating blow for failing to properly control one of their own, a man who wielded the family symbol, the Judgment of Shamash. As a result, the direct line of the family head and their faction were killed.
And so, the child whom no one had imagined could have survived had survived alone, appearing once more before me like this.
The next head of the Kaslana Family.
The Chaoslana of this generation, who should have been.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register