Chapter 67
Confession.
What is a confession?
By definition, it is ‘honestly and openly telling someone what you’re thinking or what you’ve kept hidden.’ In other words, it’s the courageous act of laying everything bare before someone else. It means overcoming even the human instinct for self-preservation and revealing your weaknesses.
That is, it’s an utterly irrational act of exposing your shameful side.
Even so, everyone confesses at least once in their life.
Whatever kind of confession it may be, people confess lies, admit their wrongdoings, or, like me, confess their love.
Why on earth?
Why do humans go against the laws of nature to do something like this? Is it because humans are imperfect? Or is it the arrogant choice of people who want to defy nature? Hmm, perhaps so, but the answer I came up with is clear.
We confess because there’s something we want so desperately that, even if the present is painful, we want to change the future with our own hands; because we want to twist the relationship between ourselves and the other person into something closer.
A confession isn’t a suicidal act of rebellion against the instinct to survive. Rather, it’s a kind of struggle we wage because we can’t bear our current circumstances. So perhaps it’s actually an act of staying true to our instinct to survive.
I confessed to Yubel because I wanted to live.
Before the knot inside me could turn poisonous and eat away at me, I had to spit it out.
And so.
And so I confessed.
It was an impulsive confession, but one I didn’t regret.
I’d given my first confession—the first one of my life—to my first love.
But why only now?
Why do I regret it so much?
“D-Do you hate me……?”
“Y-Yeah! I really hate someone like you!!”
Thud.
I heard something fall.
Was it because Yubel turned her head away from me?
That didn’t seem to be it.
This was.
This was a tremor rising from my heart, from deep within me.
An echo reverberating from somewhere deep inside me, unable to withstand the sudden drop in love.
I realized that this was what people meant when they said their heart had dropped. I realized that something inside me had just thrown itself off a building.
“H-Hahaha……”
Sss…… The heat that had burned so brightly began to cool.
A body that had lost its heart couldn’t possibly retain any warmth.
The trembling of my fingertips and toes made it clear.
Having lost that warmth, I could only huddle against the bitter cold. I wasn’t literally huddling. That’s just how I felt inside.
“U-Uuugh……”
Then something changed.
Only after I’d curled up inside, my mind had cooled, and the dizziness had passed did I notice it.
The flush on Yubel’s face, her tail curled into a heart shape, her wings and hands wrapped around herself as if she were embarrassed, the way she seemed aroused as she rubbed her thighs against me, and her hot, breathless sighs!
Was that really the reaction of someone being attacked by a person she hated? Were those heart-shaped pupils really a sign of rejection? At least, I couldn’t see it that way.
Thanks to that, I finally understood.
I was not the liar. Yubel was.
She was just a fragile girl hiding herself away out of instinct for self-preservation.
“What do you mean, you hate it! Is that how someone acts when they hate the person doing this to them?!”
Squeeze!
I wrapped my arms around Yubel’s entire body, holding her so tightly she couldn’t move.
Then I felt her petite body against me.
“Hyaa!? W-Wait! I’m being squished! If you hug me there, ahh, nooo!!”
“Don’t mess with me! I’m not letting you go until I give you back exactly what you did to me!”
“Eep!? I-I can’t breathe! I-I was w-wrong! Let me gooo!”
“You think I’m going to let you go!? Even now, you’re spreading your legs like you’re enjoying it……! If you really hated it, you’d push me away or—”
Smack—!!
A sharp, stinging pain in my right cheek.
It hurt much more than I’d expected.
But the shock was even stronger than the pain.
Because Yubel wasn’t the one who’d caused it.
So, after getting slapped for the first time in my life, I reflexively turned my head. And I saw who had struck me.
“W-What are you doing to our baby!!”
It was Yubel’s self-proclaimed mom.
Hmm, that is……
Prea.
“B-Be quiet! You child sex offender! Lolicon! Horny trash! Perverts like you are forbidden from going near Lady Yubel!!”
“What do you mean……! Yubel is definitely an adult…….”
My voice trailed off.
Because I didn’t know whether Yubel was an adult.
My mind went blank, and cold sweat poured down my face. I felt all the blood drain from it.
Was Yubel an adult? Come to think of it, I didn’t even know her age. Had I really committed child sexual abuse? How old did you have to be to count as an adult in this world? Ah, I’m going crazy.
As I fell into the depths of confusion, a voice of salvation came from behind me.
“It’s fine! Yubel is an adult!”
“R-Really? Phew, thank goodness……”
Riella stated it with certainty.
She must have had some reason to be so sure.
That was a relief.
“She even taught me how to make a baby!”
“……Pardon?”
Unfortunately, Riella’s words did nothing to save me.
If anything, they felt like they were tightening the noose around my neck.
“Gurgle……”
“Kyaaaaaa!! Lady Yubel fainted!”
To make matters worse, Yubel’s mind reached its limit from all the excitement, and she fainted. I could see her writhing beneath me, her legs spread wide.
Wow, then what did that make me?
Was I now the most infamous child sex offender of all time, after sexually harassing an innocent girl until she fainted? It was a fantastic epithet, straight out of a web novel title.
Thwack!!
My consciousness faded.
It was because Prea’s divine-power punch had struck me in the head. The blow shook my skull more heavily than any attack I’d ever experienced.
Thanks to that, I passed out, too. Damn it.
~
When I opened my eyes, it was evening.
The floor, once stained with blood, had been cleaned spotless. Unlike Yubel, who was sleeping peacefully on the bed, I’d been dumped on the floor amid a pile of trash. Thanks to that, my clothes reeked of garbage.
Even so, wasn’t this treatment a little much? I was a Hero, after all.
“You’re awake, criminal.”
“Ah, Prea. How’s Yubel now?”
“Thanks to a certain someone, she still hasn’t woken up.”
Urk.
Prea’s icy voice cut me to shreds.
“I almost feel bad for Lord Broad now. All the other houses left in the kingdom are a mess, so he kindly lent us his own home, and we have no choice but to keep staying here.”
“Ahaha…… If you think about it, none of this would’ve happened if Prea hadn’t been jealous of Yubel—”
Ah, I’d messed up.
That was the most hurtful thing I could have said to Prea.
As proof, Prea’s expression instantly stiffened. She looked as if she might burst into tears at any moment, crushed by guilt.
I was screwed.
In my defense, I’d been in a bad mood because Prea had hit me and was speaking so sarcastically, so I’d blurted it out without thinking.
Still, I should’ve held back from saying something like that.
“S-Sorry……”
“……It’s all right. Lord Se-on isn’t wrong. I really do have to atone for the mistake I made that day. Probably for the rest of my life.”
Prea sat on the edge of the bed, stroking Yubel’s hair as she continued.
“But I don’t dislike it. Don’t you think it’s a blessing to be able to stay by the side of such an innocent, kind girl and care for her? At least, that’s what I think. Besides, now…… I don’t even care what happened to Lady Yubel in the past. She’s still the same lovable girl.”
“……Yeah.”
An innocent, kind girl with a sad past.
We had tacitly agreed not to pry into that past.
Because it might hurt Yubel.
I was desperately curious about why the witch had called Yubel her mother, and why the demon had settled inside her.
But rather than hurt Yubel’s wounded heart with such pointless curiosity, I thought it would be better to leave the past alone and give her a happy future.
“Oh, right. Lady Riella said she was just stepping outside for a little while. It seems she’s going to find something to eat……”
“Now? It’ll be dark soon. It’s almost time for bed.”
“I thought so too, but she said she’d be fine in the dark thanks to the spirit.”
I see.
Well, she’d make it back safely, I was sure. Even if she was a little scatterbrained, she was the Hero’s party’s scout.
“Then shall we get ready for bed?”
“The bed looks like it’s meant for two.”
“Obviously, Lord Se-on will be sleeping on the floor.”
“Ehhh……”
Sigh, I’d wanted to sleep beside Yubel…… But I’d said something careless to Prea this time, so I supposed there was nothing I could do.
After that, I spread a fur on the floor and got ready for bed.
I lit a nearby candle before turning in, in case Riella came back and stepped on me.
Hoping I’d get to talk with Yubel a little more tomorrow,
I fell asleep.
***
[Stop pretending to be asleep and get up now. It seems everyone has fallen asleep.]
“R-Right……”
It was the dead of night.
At this hour, while Prea and the Hero were both asleep, Yubel stopped pretending to sleep and sat up.
Only then did the demon wings, which had been thoroughly pressed down, begin to emerge little by little.
Rustle.
A wing lightly brushed Prea’s cheek.
Prea made a soft noise and turned her head to the side. Yubel’s eyes widened, and she immediately grabbed hold of the wing.
Prea couldn’t wake up now.
[Sigh…… Must you really do this? There’s no way that spell comes without a price—]
“This is the most important thing to me……! Maybe even more important than my life!”
[What life……? A passing kobold would laugh at you. You panicked over the Witch of the Bitter Cold and screamed that you wanted to live.]
“Shut uuuup……”
After whispering an angry retort to the parasite, Yubel carefully climbed down from the bed and straddled the sleeping Hero.
Squeeze.
Their lower bodies were pressed flush together.
The Hero’s peaceful face was now right in front of her, wearing a strangely contented expression.
Yubel gently placed her hand on that irritating face.
“I have to find out what this guy’s real goal is.”
To find out whether the Hero planned to swallow up this world or really just wanted to return to his original world.
Yubel decided to enter the mental world once more. There, she would be able to hear the Hero speak honestly…… even about whether he really loved her.
Yubel shook her head.
‘He loves me? Me, myself? That’s bullshit, no matter how I look at it. I can’t even love myself, so what reason would he have to love me? ……He definitely used some kind of skill on me to make me feel that way before. That piece of trash.’
Yubel closed her eyes and took a shallow breath. Her petite chest rose and fell in rhythm.
And then.
“Bang.”
A moment after the gunshot she’d made with her mouth,
Yubel’s body went limp and collapsed onto the Hero.