Taming The Villainesses

Chapter 437: The One Who Halts (12)

I closed my eyes quietly.

Let’s recall memories from high school. If I do, countless memories will bubble up and decorate my mind.

Then what about memories from middle school?

And memories from elementary school?

No—let’s go even further back. Try to recall the memories from early childhood. Memories that could be called the very first memories of my life.

However, compared to the relatively vivid memories from my school days...

The memories up until about when I was around six years old remained blurry. Not only for me; most people, it was said, experienced the same.

Infantile amnesia.

Or, in another term, early childhood forgetting.

It was said that these two phrases described such phenomena. That most people shared a tendency to forget memories from around before the age of eight.

Yes.

It’s not that they’re lost, but that they’re forgotten. It looks as if they’ve been completely erased, but even childhood memories seem to be sleeping deep somewhere inside the mind.

If a certain event occurs later in life, triggering it like a switch, you never know when or where those childhood memories might suddenly rise to the surface.

Just like what was happening to me now.

“......”

I quietly tried recalling the very distant past. Most of my memories from before entering elementary school were concentrated around the time when I first entered the orphanage.

Around six years old.

Yes, because the next year and the year after that, I entered elementary school—six years old sounds about right.

Meaning, it was around the age of six that I first became aware of something called age in my life.

As for the period even further back, from five years old down to one year old, it was all jumbled together like a child mashing different colored clay into one lump, twisted and blended beyond recognition.

Though a few memories floated up now and then, if someone asked when exactly they happened or how old I was at the time, I wouldn’t be able to answer clearly. They were memories like these:

The memory of someone’s cool hand touching my forehead when I was burning up with a high fever.

Or the memory of playing hide-and-seek inside a cramped one-room house with a woman I presumed to be my mother.

“......”

Now that I thought about it, aside from those two, there wasn’t really anything else I could call a memory from my early childhood. Why were only those memories left?

Was it because they were too intense to be forgotten?

No, if that were the case, then being surrounded by unfamiliar older girls and having my cheeks pinched should also have remained a vivid memory. I was sure it must still exist somewhere deep in my mind.

But no matter how hard I tried, no such memories surfaced.

Was it that I simply couldn’t remember?

Or was it that the place itself was so special that it didn’t end up influencing the formation of my future personality?

...Or maybe it wasn’t even me in the first place.

At that moment, someone poked my side.

It °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° was Elga.

"Why aren’t you saying anything? I’m asking if you remember seeing us when you were little. Anything coming to mind or not?"

Seeing me stay silent without answering, Elga must have felt frustrated.

─Shaking my head.

When I shook my head, Elga looked slightly surprised and also a little disappointed. It was then that Stella proposed a theory.

"Most childhood memories get diluted over the long span of time. Only the ones that left a strong impression tend to remain. Maybe meeting us just wasn’t that impressive?"

Stella’s opinion was similar to the theory I had just been thinking about by myself. People’s thoughts really did end up running along the same lines, huh.

However, Ayra objected to Stella’s idea.

"If you met me, there's no way you’d forget. I am a beautiful and perfect queen. Once you see me, it’s utterly impossible to forget."

Ayra’s pride in herself was extraordinary. At this level, her narcissism could probably be considered a kind of religious conviction. Yet the frustrating thing was that Ayra wasn’t wrong.

I remembered almost every moment I had spent with Ayra. Her actions and appearance were so remarkable that even her smallest gestures left an intense impression.

In that case, the same should have applied when I was a young half-fairy.

At that moment, we saw a nymph carrying a child coming back from afar, parting through the colorful flowers.

Seeing that, all of us stopped what we were about to say and exchanged glances.

Though none of us said it out loud...

It felt like our gazes were conveying the same silent agreement: Let’s keep what we just talked about a secret from them.

***

"Hey, little one, want big sister to brush your hair? Hm?"

"Lady of Leones, you’re scaring the child...!"

"It’s not fear, it’s embarrassment. And you should stop that fanning already. Can’t you see the child’s coughing?"

"I-I’m fanning to cool them down because they have a fever!"

Elga and Mirna were quarreling with the small half-fairy between them. I couldn’t tell exactly why they were acting like that, but it seemed clear that both wanted to leave a deep impression on the little half-fairy.

Swoosh.

At that moment, Ayra extended a finger and brought it in front of the child's blue eyes. Then she began spinning it round and round—.

"Who is the most beautiful queen in the world? Who should you take as your rightful wife? That’s right—"

Seeing that, Narmee cried out.

"Queen Tarantella is using hypnosis!"

What a madhouse. If I had experienced something like this as a child, it would have definitely left a scar in my mind like a lightning strike—and yet, nothing was coming to me.

At that moment, the little half-fairy coughed, hacking. Seeing that, all the noble ladies who had been making a fuss fell silent, only staring at the child’s face, now red like a tomato.

"......."

Perhaps embarrassed, the little one ran over and buried their face into the stomach of the big nymph, Trish. It was exactly the kind of behavior I would have shown at that age.

Cough, cough.

Even in the midst of that, the coughing didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon. Somehow, it made my own throat feel ticklish. While the mood grew briefly solemn, Mirna asked,

"The child is trying to cross that door because they’re sick, right?"

The door.

It was only then that we recalled the existence of the massive door in this great temple. We had come to this strange fracture because of that door. No doubt, this bizarre hat was tied to it as well.

The nymph Trish, now cradling the sleeping child, nodded.

"Yeah. They say there’s a place beyond that door that you couldn’t even imagine. My husband told me... well, that’s not what’s important..."

Trish hesitated mid-sentence, fumbling awkwardly. As if there were words caught in her throat that she couldn’t either swallow or spit out.

Finally, she said in a small voice,

"But, if you open that door, you might gain what you want—but you might lose something precious in return. And for me, there’s nothing more precious than this child. If something were to go wrong..."

I see.

I could vaguely understand. Just as my wives and I had hesitated to set foot into the fractured sky beyond, the nymph Trish must also have been hesitating.

The fear that the action you took to save the child might end up causing you to lose them instead. As a parent, it would be an unbearable guilt to carry.

But.

I wanted to support her choice.

"Don’t stop..."

I wanted to tell her not to stop.

I wanted to say it, but the words wouldn’t come out. I started to wonder if I even had the right to say such a thing.

No—it was closer to guilt than doubt.

Because the child she held—and I—were the same person. But if you asked whether our souls were truly the same...

It wasn’t an easy question to answer.

Maybe, just maybe, I had stolen this half-fairy’s body. That thought, long suppressed, suddenly swelled up in my mind like seaweed—and I couldn’t open my mouth.

In front of the child’s mother.

What could someone like me, who might have stolen her child's body, possibly say?

━Hi-oong...

The spider Bael inside me diligently devoured my negative emotions, but my lips still refused to move. A brief moment of hesitation. Yet in this place where time does not flow, a "brief moment" and "eternity" are one and the same.

In that eternal instant of hesitation, a desire grew in my heart.

It was the urge to just give up on opening the door—to turn my back on all of this and live out the rest of my life peacefully, ignoring everything.

The urge was so strong that if I didn’t clench my fists, I felt I might actually turn around and flee.

It grew and grew, like someone had planted a seed of cowardice deep inside me, and soon enough, I couldn’t hold back the nausea rising from deep in my gut.

"Uweeegh—!"

In the end, I doubled over and vomited up something that boiled from inside me. About a liter of red liquid came spilling out.

Blood...?

Did I just vomit blood...!?

Shock and fear surged within me. If Bael hadn’t been tirelessly eating away at my negative emotions, I might have collapsed on the spot.

"Sir Teo, what’s wrong...!? Are you all right!?"

"Hey, what the hell’s going on all of a sudden!?"

I could hear the young ladies’ worried voices, but those sounds just floated around in the air, like marbles slipping across ice, failing to reach my heart.

My eyes were fixed on the blood I had vomited.

The blood was wriggling strangely, swelling up, and I couldn’t tell if this was reality or a hallucination caused by my iron-deficient mind.

Gurgle, gurgle.

The mass of blood greedily devoured the surrounding dirt and flowers, quickly bulking up—and soon enough, it sprouted arms, legs, a face, and hair like a human being.

"New wine must be put into new wineskins. It finally activated. I thought for sure it had failed."

The figure was dressed in a white nun’s habit. The pink hair peeking from beneath the headdress, the eyepatch covering her face—these were all things very familiar to me.

Seeing her, Mirna cried out.

"S-Saint Priga...!? What is going on here...!?"

Apparently, it wasn’t just me seeing things.

Elga, Mirna, Narmee, and Stella all lowered their stances warily toward the newly appeared Saint Priga. Strangely enough, that sight gave me a little relief.

However.

It was also true that I couldn't understand what was happening at all, and confusion grew inside me. What the hell was this? Why had something like that come from my stomach?

Horrifying!

As I trembled violently, Saint Priga dusted off her clothes.

"I simply borrowed some nearby blood, soil, and flowers to create a body. Of course, I’m the only one in the world—or in the Church—who can do this."

So the real Saint wasn’t here, but rather a manifestation of her? Even in a world overflowing with magic and sorcery, I had never heard of such a thing.

I felt my imagination being forcefully expanded. And with that open imagination, one thing became clear: Saint Priga appearing before me couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

Swoosh.

Saint Priga extended her hand toward me.

"Now then, Sir Teo. Let’s go back."

"...Go back?"

"You made a promise with me, remember? That you wouldn’t approach the door. You hesitated just now, didn’t you? You wished to turn back with all your heart. That’s the trigger for this incantation."

An incantation.

It must have been a spell used by the Church to bind people through words. When I met the Saint before, she had insisted I promise—blank check, anything—that I would not approach the door. It had been for this.

The moment I strongly wished to turn back, the spell would activate, and she would appear before me like this.

"I thought for sure it had failed. But in the end—"

Though Saint Priga could not see, she moved her head as if scanning the surroundings.

Then her hidden eyes turned toward the big nymph Trish and the child in her arms.

"This is truly astonishing. That something like this could exist. The laws of the world are far beyond even my understanding. That Teo Gospel could be, in one place—"

No.

I had to shut the Saint’s mouth.

That was the only thought pounding through my head as I tried to scream.

"Saint Priga."

The one who spoke first was Queen Ayra.

"If you wag your tongue any further—I’ll rip it out."

"Queen Ayra."

Saint Priga and Ayra stood so close their chests could nearly touch.

Two villains so strong that they divided the story into a before and after—facing each other like this—it was enough to make my stomach churn from the pressure.

If those two clashed, this flower garden might be completely obliterated.

But taking advantage of the brief gap created by their standoff, I spoke to the nymph Trish.

"Take the child and get away. Quickly."

"Why should I listen to you? Who even are you?"

"There’s no time to explain, Beatrice. If you want to save the child, go."

The nymph Trish—or rather, Beatrice—narrowed her eyes sharply.

"...That name—"