Chapter 410: Clementine's Sorrow
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Clementine had emerged behind the group, having prepared herself to look as pretty and presentable as possible to not embarrass her daughter before her friends, only to find her saying a pile of awful things behind her back…
Each word was like a stake piercing her vampiric heart, she felt sickly out of nowhere, and her heart was itching in pain… Her face got all sad, as the brightness of her spirit dissipated…
"H-Harumi… D-Do you really think that of me?" she asked.
Harumi felt a sudden chill run through her spine as she was left paralyzed…
"Ah…"
Frank was left speechless over the situation. Not only because he disliked how Harumi spoke about her mother, but also because her mother herself just showed up and heard everything!
Harumi slowly glanced back at Clementine, as everyone else present behind Frank were watching the scene in silence, feeling like chaos was about to be unleashed…
Clementine's presence grew bigger and bigger, like an eternal void of darkness and crimson-red color. Even Frank felt the pressure of her presence. She was a very ancient Vampire, her power was already equal to a Demigoddess.
Harumi glanced at her with a bit of fear for her life…
However.
What greeted her was perhaps something even more painful than a beating…
The prideful and cold-hearted Clementine, who had taken care of her this entire time, who had softened for her, and who was so dedicated to her daughter… Her expression seemed saddened, sorrowful even, she seemed as if her entire soul was crumbling apart, as little tears started to come out of her beautiful and sharp eyes…
"Sniff… Y-You hate me, Harumi? Do you hate your mother? Sniff…" she asked.
Harumi realized that she might had spoken too ahead of herself… Maybe her mother wasn't the one to blame for everything just because she took care of her or was too overly protective of her…
Maybe just because she wanted her to interact with other people, it didn't mean that… she was someone bad, or that thought that she owned her life.
"L-Lady Clementine!"
The Vampire Butler rushed towards Clementine, seeing her respected Master crying like a little girl that had lost everything made his heart shatter into pieces. Such a tall and beautiful woman reduced to this state… It was simply awful.
"Please, don't cry like that in front of our guests! I-I think Harumi-sama was just… joking around! Right?" asked the Vampire Butler, an old man-looking vampire with a bald head and white mustache.
Harumi felt paralyzed so she didn't even know what to say, she saw her mother crying like she had never seen her before… Simply by saying some words, she completely defeated her… But instead of getting any satisfaction out of it, she only felt horribly awful.
Clementine covered her face as she began to cry even more.
"It's true… I am… Sniff… A bad mother… I suck… S-Sorry… Sorry if your mama is such… a disappointment… sniff…"
Clementine rushed back to her room, as everyone watched her disappear from the room, the butler rushing at her back.
"Please, wait, lady Clementine!"
"I never thought I would see a Vampire such as Clementine ever cry… So even she has feelings… Harumi, what you said was awful, you know? Mothers are sacred!" said Matsuo, getting all angry.
"Ah… I…" muttered Harumi.
"I know that sometimes we might seem a bit overwhelming, but it is all because we always think about our children, and the best for them. Mothers live for our children, and we strive forward with the sole reason of seeing them happy and prosper… I don't know how much this applies to such an ancient vampire as Clementine but… I believe that, if she cried like this… It means that she really… loves you a lot," said Gwendolyn.
"She loves me…?" wondered Harumi.
"Hehe, I wish I could have a mother like her… My parents left all by myself for thousands of years… Thousands of years alone… It was… painful… Hehe, but after all that time, we can finally get along and I wish I could had been with them through my childhood… You're very lucky," said Axitl.
"Lucky…? Me?" asked Harumi.
"I don't know much about that stuff because I gained sentience some little time ago. But still… I don't think you should ever say that about your mother… Frank has been trying to revive his mother all this time, and you that have one end up talking awfully about her…" sighed Orb.
"Eh?"
"Well, I kind of understand her a bit… My mother wasn't the best when my father left us… I received a lot of… things that perhaps I didn't deserve from her… However, after a lot of things, she slowly realized that what she did was wrong… Although my childhood was awful, after all of that, it became pretty nice… Mothers can also make us hate them sometimes… But there are always reasons behind what they did… I decided to forgive her because… at the end of the day… you only have one mother. Ah… Maybe I am not a good example," said Frank.
"F-Frank…"
Harumi glanced at everyone who looked at her rather angrily, although Frank didn't seem angry, he looked concerned…
She began to reconsider her thoughts a little bit, as she recalled her past.
Harumi remembered years in the past. At times when she was little and weak, how Clementine took care of her, how she carried her in her arms around the manor, how she showed her anywhere she wanted to go.
She remembered the times she feed her fresh blood, how she cooked for her, how sometimes, despite looking so mentally exhausted, smiled warmly at her.
"Mama…"
"Uwah! Harumi-chan… D-Did you just said mama?!"
"Mama…"
The adorable and little Harumi-chan said her first word, and it was mama…
Because of being a Dhampir, she had exceptional memory, she even remembers the times when she was very little.
She only just remembers that after hitting puberty she started to feel embarrassed for everything and caged herself in her room a lot, she began to get obsessed with internet to pass the time, and forgot about everything else…
Her mother just wanted to get closer to her, but she thought of that as something annoying.
"Ugh… I have to go!"
Harumi quickly ran towards her mother's room, feeling terrible with herself…
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