[94] Don’t Call Me That!
Chapter 94: Don't Call Me That!
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[Third Person Point of View]
“You are… pretty cruel.”
“Sorry.”
Aqua and Ruby were sitting in a nearly empty metro, making it safe to talk. While she was relieved that those who wished to harm Ai were gone, she felt conflicted about the methods her brother used.
Did he have to go that far?
Was such extreme brutality really necessary?
She could understand not giving them a swift death as she had, but to outright torture them… Once again, what kind of life had he lived before, she wondered.
She knew he had been an Emperor, and today, she had witnessed him in his battle armor, exuding an unmistakable air of royalty. But still, she was curious about what kind of life he lived, and how old he was before his death for him to be this cruel.
“How many people did you kill when you were the Emperor, Onii-chan?” Ruby asked, prompting a curious glance from him.
“Why? I didn't count.”
“Can’t you give me an estimate?'”
“No? Why are you so curious, it's not a good thing to know.” He said, making her frown.
“Come on~! Fine, then tell me how old you were. That'd give a good idea.”
“Nope, can't tell you the specifics.”
“Ugh, you're so annoying!” She said and bit his arm, making him yelp and withdraw his arm.
“What are you doing?! Stupid girl,” he exclaimed, tapping her on the forehead as she grumbled.
“Just tell me?”
“No,” he shrugged. “But since you're so curious, I'll tell you something else. Treat it like a fun fact. Back in the day, I ruled over 15.7 quadrillion citizens. To give you an idea about my age, all of that number I have built on my own.”
“You're lying,” Ruby burst out laughing. “At least make better lies. The population on Earth today is 8.5 billion, how could it be quadrillions in the past? Isn't 1000 trillion equal to 1 quadrillion? Liar! Come on, tell me for real.”
Aqua just shrugged and avoided it, until she fell silent and stared at him.
“....” She hadn't thought this before but, “Wait, are you from the future…?”
“Dumbass, I’m from another world. How are you this slow?” Aqua said, facepalming.
“What?! Other worlds?! How?!” Ruby exclaimed, her mind swirling with even more questions.
Regardless of the circumstances, Ruby didn’t feel alienated from him. She knew he cared for Ai, perhaps more than herself. She also knew that he cared for her -Ruby- too. No matter how old he may be, or how cruel he was, she got the proof today that she and Ai were special to him.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have gone that far to beat up those crow bastards.
“Onii-chan, come on, tell me about these other worlds!” she pleaded, hanging from his neck.
* * *
[First Person Point of View]
‘How is she my sister? Twin, no less. So dumb… She's cute though.’
We reached home quickly, and it was only at the gate that I remembered Mem-Cho was supposed to come. I pulled out my phone to check my messages, and sure enough, she had notified me.
Strangely, her messages were concerning.
===
Unread Messages from [Memmy-♡-Cho]
[3:55 PM]
Hey! I am in your home~ I'll go meet Ai and wait for you.
[4:16 PM]
Memmy: Uh, Aqua…
Did something happen with Ai? I don't know, she's acting weird. Like she seems dazed and gloomy.
[4:22 PM]
Hey, where are you? Your cousin is here, where are you and Ruby? Ai told me to go wait in Tsubasa's house, I'll do that. Come meet me later, I'll wait. First, you should talk to your mom, she seems weird.
===
Huh…
Had something happened to her?
A sense of needless worry filled my heart. I could sense the Tiger Cubs playing around here, so she should have been fine. What could have happened?
Approaching the door, I opened it and announced, “We're home, Mom,” with Ruby following close behind.
I could sense where she was, so I didn't need to search. She was in the living room, so she must have heard my call clearly. Yet she didn't reply. Odd.
Ruby was oblivious to this, and I had a bad feeling about this. I think I should talk to Ai alone.
So I turned to her and ruffled her hair. “Go to Tsubasa's place; Mem is there. Say hi and spend some time there. Don't come back before I call you, okay?”
“Huh?”
“Go.”
“...Alright.” she tilted her head, shrugged, and nodded. “I’ll be off to meet one of my sisters-in-law!” she declared, turning around and skipping as she hummed.
I closed the door and frowned. I walked to the living room and paused outside it. Ai was sitting on the couch while staring at the empty air, as if in a daze.
“So,” She spoke without turning to me, her voice oddly cold. “You're here…”
I frowned while looking at her. Is she mad because I was late? No, this is too much.
“How does it feel to lie? To… deceive a person for so long?” she finally turned to me; her eyes sent chills down my spine.
‘Huh?’ I wondered what the hell this was talking about.
Considering her expression, this wasn't a joking matter. She was serious. But why? Did she not like Mem…? No, that'd be too silly for this. What's going on?
“I suppose Ruby knows, doesn't she? She was a lot more weird as a kid than you, but nowadays you're the more suspicious one. I suppose you have more experience in this field, and she's someone new…?” Her cold eyes suddenly sparkled with emotion, glossing over with unshed tears. “You… disgusting body thieves!”
Ah.
“....”
I see.
She found out.
* * *
Hoshino Ai had caught us. She had found out that I and Ruby were not her children.
I walked around the room and stopped in front of a couch. I grabbed my school bag and almost dropped it on the couch, but stopped. I deposited it in my Void Storage instead. I had a feeling how this talk would end, so that was for the better.
I sat down on the couch that faced hers and spoke clearly. “It's not body theft, it's reincarnation.”
“That's just semantics, just a fancy way to say it differently. Tell me, are you the 'soul' I gave birth to?” she demanded.
Amazing how she was talking about these terms that she shouldn't have much idea about. Which Character had she used…?
There was no point in lying now. If I lied today and she found out the truth later, it would be a lot messier. The Shinto Gods knew the truth anyway, it was not hard for her to learn it from them. So lying was out of the question.
“You didn't,” I replied, internally sighing while maintaining a placid expression. The air in the room grew tense and heavy. “You gave birth to two soulless babies. A fancy way to say it was a stillbirth. The Shinto Gods thought, for reasons unknown to me, to put my and Ruby's soul into the two babies. That was how we came to be. We didn't decide for this to happen.”
Ai’s eyes only darkened hearing that. As expected, she hadn't taken the news well. There was a bad feeling brewing in my heart at this point.
“So you are someone else, given birth to by another woman. You died and snatched the body of my children. The two babies I gave birth to are occupied by two strangers to whom I am not the mother. If that isn't body stealing, I don't know what is.” She was trembling while her eyes grew wetter.
The worst had happened.
Hoshino Ai’s reaction fell under the worst category, the one I feared. It was expected. She only saw the worst of this situation.
It made sense to a degree, though. If you gave birth to a son and raised him with all, and then one day you realize that your son was dead, and the one you have been raising was actually a ghost that's been possessing the dead body of your son while “pretending” to be your son, anyone would feel devastated.
Now imagine if it was not just one child, but both of them. Ai endured so much for Ruby and me, only to realize we weren't her children.
I began to wonder how she found this out. It didn't take me long to realize the reason, as my eyes caught the gramophone in the room. It should have been in Ai's room, but it was here for some reason…
There was also a subtle scent in the air that magic was used to change the look of the room earlier. That gave me a base to work with… and I didn't take a second to understand the situation.
“Holmes, huh?” I muttered as she stared at me. “Using that wasn't a good idea. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss, and this was one of those times. I would have told you about this someday regardless, you should have waited, Mom-”
Her growl interrupted me. “Shut up, you liar! Don't call me that!”
“…”
Hmm.
It's not that I wasn't prepared for those words, in fact, I specifically mentioned before that I wouldn't want Ai to treat me like this. But it still stung… a little, seeing her treat me like this.
Nothing showed on my face though.
I expected this possibility when I gave her this power. I knew she might get curious about things and dive into the character of some famous Detective. But no… I didn't have any contingency against this. I was just hoping for the best, hoping that things wouldn't come to this.
I knew why it had. It was the fault of my clashing identities last night that she got so curious that she became Holmes.
“Alright… Ai.” I nodded. I licked my lips and held back a sigh. Everything has gone downhill already, but I should at least minimize the damage for Ruby. “In Ruby's defense… She was just 12 years old when she died. And she was a massive fan of yours, the biggest I've seen.”
“Ruby had cancer and died in a hospital, where her family abandoned her. Each day she stared at the hallway in the hope that her mother would come to visit her even once, but months passed and nobody came. Do you know who was the only person to keep her company during her last month? It was you. Well, you were behind her TV screen, but still. Shinto Gods wanted her to suffer less in her next life, I think that's why she was reincarnated as your daughter. So it's my dearest request, please don't tell her to not call you mom.”
Her eyes shook at that story, and her mind went busy. Starting at the air for a second, she slowly nodded. That's good.
However, she asked a bothersome thing after that, “And what about you? How old were you? How did you die? Why do you think the Shinto Gods made you my son?”
“I am very old,” I said and watched her eyes stare at me blankly. She was sitting deep on the couch, leaning back while hopelessly staring at me. “I was an adult older than you before death, so don't worry about me. It's Ruby you need to worry about.”
A sneer formed on her lips, “You don't have to tell me that. And were you a fan of mine as well? In your ‘latest’ life?”
That was a question I knew would lead to an outbreak. But lying at this point would be worse because she'd find out someday anyway. “Yes,” I nodded. “I was.”
A peal of stupid laughter burst out of her lips and she almost fell to her back. She looked broken as she laughed, and I waited for her next words.
“Ah, I see, I see,” She composed herself and stopped laughing. Her gaze was stern as she looked at me with an expression that said ‘it all makes sense now’. “No wonder. That's why you are attracted to me, aren't you? Because you were attracted to me in your last life. You have never been my son to begin with, that's why you never saw me as your mother.”
Just because I said I saw her as a woman doesn't mean I didn't see her as a mother…
“And here I was worrying over nothing, I was worried about where things went wrong while raising you. But it turns out, the teacher was not at fault, but the student. I have never raised you to begin with, have I? You just pretended to be a kid all this time. Did it feel good?”
Since I had prepared myself for hearing exactly that, it didn't hurt. Well, I was used to hearing that too, so it wasn't supposed to hurt anyway.
I watched in silence as she continued. “How does it feel? To have good genetics in this life? It must feel great that you look better than most people. Is that the reason you're after so many girls…? Because you were a fat otaku in your last life who never even held a woman's hand?”
At least that was funny. I was curious to see what sort of image she had about my past life. Did she not know that I had lived multiple lives?
“I'm curious what you were in your last life. You are as natural as everything, so were you an actor? Or were you some old monk? No, you couldn't be a monk since you said you were a fan of mine. Just what were you?”
That question answered she didn't know I lived multiple lives.
In that case, she probably rationalized my multiple personalities as her 'real son's’ soul reacting to protect his mother from a creep. That might be why one side of myself punched the other—according to her. Probably, who knows? Fuck.
‘Ahh…’ How bothersome. Should I have left more trails in the past in anticipation of this situation? At least she wouldn't have thought of me as a fat otaku in my last life.
Sadly, it was too late. She was yelling and talking nonsense, insulting me, and calling me names right now.
Ai Hoshino was a strong woman, she was a genius and strong-willed person. It's hard to break her, but it could be achieved if it involved her children. And this time, she learned that her children were in fact not her children. It's natural that she was acting like this.
I couldn't even blame her, because half of the things she said were right. Indeed I had been acting like a kid, despite not being one. Is that not deceiving her?
Since she was in [Sherlock Holmes] mode when she figured this out, her 190+ IQ had allowed her to think of every possibility. I had nothing to say that would convince her that things were different from what she was thinking.
I could clarify that I wasn't a creep but rather someone who had lived multiple lives; however, what difference would that make? The only thing that would change was that she'd get a clearer view of why I didn't see her as my mother, and why I was so good at pretending to be a kid.
In the end, she'd only hate me more for being a “professional mother deceiver”.
Fuck.
“Ruby will be back soon,” I said as I got up from the couch. “You should return to your room and compose yourself there. I-”
“You have no right to tell me what to do, you imbecile! You're not even related to me!' she spat out.”
“-will pack my bags and leave.”
“....”
Her expression paused as I walked out of the room and headed to mine. It wasn't a provocation, I really should be leaving this place now. She needed some time to sort her thoughts herself. If she could, at all.
I had a few things I needed to pack, and I didn't exactly have to “pack” since I just put them in my Void Storage with a touch, but it still took a few minutes. While I was in my room, I sensed that Ruby returned and went to the living room. Ai was still there, sadly she didn't listen to my advice, and Ruby found her lying on the couch with an empty look.
I sighed when I sensed them begin to talk. ‘I told her to return to her room… haah.’
A few minutes later, I finished taking my things and walked outside. When I began to pass by the living room, a hand pulled me by my collar.
“Y-you! You told her!” Ruby confronted me, her eyes red and teary. “Why did you tell her?! She hates us now! Are you stupid?!”
Technically, I hadn't told her; she had discovered the truth herself, though I did provide additional information. Information that would at the very least trigger Ai’s motherly nature to not abandon Ruby.
A few slaps came to my chest while she yelled why I did this to her, as I stood still. When she was done exerting her strength, she fell to her knees and breathed heavily. Her body trembled and tears were dripping down her cheeks.
Leaning down, I ruffled her hair reassuringly. “It's alright, she won't hate you. You'll be okay, Sarina.”
She continued weeping before pausing and looking up. “W-what? How did you know that nam-”
With a gentle karate chop to her neck, she fell unconscious. I walked away from her and out of the door. Exiting the house, I stood at the gate, deep in thought.
“Hey, Tiger Cubs!” I called, and the cubs immediately gathered around me. They wore serious expressions, aware that things weren't going well right now. “Take care of them as you would take care of me, I’ll get mad if you slack around just because of what happened today. They’re still your main priority of protection, understood? If an enemy out of your league approaches, just reach out to me.”
““Understood,”” they nodded in unison.
“When… will you return?” Blue asked, her eyes filled with concern. All the cubs looked at me in concern, but since she took a human form, it was easier to tell hers.
I offered a faint smile. “I'm not sure,” I admitted.
Maybe never.
Should I have tried harder to change her mind…? No, it’d not have mattered.
With that, I launched myself into the air. The wind caressed my face and I wondered what to do from now on. As I soared upward, I also had to ponder where to spend the night.
‘A bench should suffice for today.’
People below wondered how the clear sky rumbled with violent lightning.
Only I knew the reason why. Controlling my heart proved far more challenging than faking my facial expressions, after all.
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