Chapter 466: Sacred Lore
DING!
[You have succeeded in the Rank 4: Make the CEO Husband chase you and beg you to come back!]
[Reward Rank 4]
- [Get one free custom Five-Stars Item for each Love Interest!]
DING!
[Unlock Rank 4 of all Love Interests’ Scenario to gain this reward!]
[Would you like to roll?]
The notification came a bit late. Cecilia blinked at the System screen hovering in her peripheral vision, its familiar blue glow oddly comforting against the passing cityscape.
Perhaps it was in the word "chase" and "beg."
For "beg," the condition had been fulfilled the moment Arzhen had grasped her arm and whispered I love you like a drowning man gasping for air.
But for "chase"—that might have needed some time. A man crashing through a second-story window and landing on an empty street, looking left and right for a woman who was already gone, and then whatever he did next. That was a chase, wasn’t it?
It was fulfilled just now, right when Olivia Rodrigo, Momo, and herself screamed—"LIKE A DAMN SOCIOPATH!"
Well. Actually, she needed to also acknowledge something. In this world and in the real world, she did get herself three good, hot, S-Ranked Love Interests to console her heart after Arzhen.
That was true. She had moved on quickly. Suspiciously quickly, some might say. The kind of quickly that suggested she had been starving for affection long before her heart was ripped off her chest, and had simply... found a feast.
But whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was still pretty much hurt. Physically and mentally.
She didn’t want to parse through whatever Arzhen had spouted in his mad-induced begging just now. At least, not yet. She didn’t understand most of it, either way.
Save me. Only me. I want to be the only one you saved. What did that even mean, coming from a man who had spent their entire marriage trying to convince her she was worthless?
But she knew one thing.
That was... the real Arzhen just now.
Not the cold, calculated billionaire who had rented out an entire cafe to intimidate her. Not the smug ex-husband who had expected her to beg.
The man who had screamed at her with tears in his eyes, who had asked why he wasn’t enough, who had called her Saintess like it was a prayer—that was the Arzhen she had married in the real world.
After driving around randomly, or, it seemed like it was random, though Cecilia was beginning to suspect that nothing involving Momo was ever truly random, they stopped for ice cream.
Momo just said, "How about ice cream?" And one turn later, an ice cream shop appeared. Wasn’t quite like "they spotted one" or "they searched for one", it simply appeared, its pastel awning fluttering in the morning breeze as though it had been waiting for them.
Just like how Momo turned the radio channel, and the song she wanted would always play, the world seemed to rearrange itself around her whims.
They parked the Hijet at the curb, and Momo sent Bunny to buy for them. He hopped off the truck bed with a grunt, stretched his massive shoulders, and disappeared into the shop.
And just like when ordering at McKing, Momo simply stared at Cecilia for a long moment, her blue eyes unblinking, her head tilted slightly, and Cecilia felt her thoughts being gently rifled through like pages in a book.
Moments later, Bunny returned with three cones. He passed one through the driver’s window to Momo, vanilla with rainbow sprinkles, and he handed one to Cecilia through the passenger window. She looked down at it.
Salted caramel with chocolate flakes.
The exact flavor she had been thinking about, and also one she hadn’t said out loud.
Cecilia took the cone. "Thank you."
She wondered, licking the edge of the ice cream before it could drip, if the world truly would have given them a sushi shop if Momo had said, "How about sushi?" instead.
"Sushi next?" Momo suddenly asked, licking her own soft serve with one hand while continuing to drive with the other. The Hijet merged smoothly into traffic, as though it trusted her completely.
"How... do you read minds like that?" Cecilia asked. The strange thing was, it didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. Her mind was totally being read right now, no privacy, and yet she didn’t mind.
"And..." She hesitated. "Oathran won’t let me eat sushi because I’m pregnant..."
He had been very firm about it. No raw fish. No unpasteurized anything. No soft cheeses. No caffeine. The list of prohibited foods was extensive...
"We’ll order the fully cooked ones," Momo said, as if this were obvious. Then she smiled patiently, making Cecilia feel like everything might actually be okay. "And if you’re still not sure, I’ll cry on it to bless it and kill all bad things in it."
Eh—?!
Cecilia’s ice cream hovered forgotten in her hand.
The same divine tears that turned the whole graveyard into holy ground?! The tears of a goddess, wept over a California roll? The same tears that Bunny had cried over his brother’s corpse, sanctifying the earth so thoroughly that no corruption could ever touch it?
...
...what would it taste like?
S-sweet?
"Her tears are sweeter than honey indeed." Bunny’s voice drifted through the glass separator. "That’s why I like to make her cry every ni—"
"If you never stopped thinking about me since we met, that means you fucked other women while thinking about me." Momo’s voice was ice.
—she didn’t even turn around. She just kept driving, one hand on the wheel, one hand holding her ice cream, and shut Bunny down immediately.
"WELL I CAN’T HELP IT, LOOK AT YOU, GODDESS OF BEAUTY—"
"God of Judgement my ass."
"How can I forget you when your head exploded one of the first times we met, hm?!" Bunny’s voice rose desperately. They had been having this argument for literal millennia and he was no closer to winning it.
"As if most of those first times you didn’t also scream my full original name while slitting your throat? Baby, I can’t forget you!"
Cecilia’s ice cream was melting. She couldn’t look away from the glass window. Her brain was trying to process head exploded and slitting your throat as romantic milestones.
"MOST OF THOSE FIRST TIMES WON’T HAPPEN IF YOU WEREN’T SO STUBBORN!"
"Well, I still fell in love first! You didn’t fall in love until much LATER!"
"HOW WOULD I FALL IN LOVE WITH A MAN WHO KILLED MY FIRST DISCIPLE?!"
"I WAS WRONG, BABY, PLEASE—DIDN’T WE TURN BACK TIME TO UNKILL HIM—"
Cecilia wanted to pull up a notebook. Leather-bound. Perhaps with gilded edges. And note this sacred lore between these two gods.
"Hmph!" Momo’s pout had returned. "Those wasted first loop cycles... I was so young and stupid back then that I just fell for you without question!"
"I was a baby then!" Bunny pressed his face closer to the glass, his golden eyes wide and earnest. "I was 27 Earth years! I was stupider than rock, come on—! You are still the only one who ever defeated me, and I kept my word that no one will ever defeat me except you..."
He stared pitifully at the back of Momo’s head, his expression that of a man who had traversed galaxies and centuries and multiple timelines, and still couldn’t figure out how to make his wife stop being mad at him.
"...also, I’ve never spilled my seed inside any woman before yo—"
"SSSSSSSSHHHH—!" Momo exploded into red, her face turning into a tomato. "YOUR MOUTH—!"
"COUGH! COUGH! DAD!" Cecilia couldn’t hold the laugh anymore. It burst out of her in a violent, hacking cough that did absolutely nothing to disguise the wheezing cackle beneath it. Her own face was red now too, her eyes watering, her ice cream dangerously close to sliding off the cone entirely. "Sushi. We go for sushi, Mom, come on..."
The Hijet swerved slightly as Momo collected herself. The cherry blossom air freshener swung wildly, while Bunny, still pressed against the glass, was grinning. Formation embarrassed-wife with somehow, made-her-less-angry variation, succeeded.
Was this... how it felt to be in the middle of one’s parents’ argument...?
***
Arzhen woke to pain.
It felt like a spike being driven through his skull from temple to temple, pulsing in time with his quickened heartbeat. His eyes opened to harsh white light and immediately squeezed shut again, a groan tearing itself from his throat before he could stop it.
Hospital. He was in a hospital.
The smell gave it away, antiseptic and starch with the sweet undertone of whatever they used to mask the scent of sickness.
The sheets beneath his fingers were stiff and industrial. The beeping somewhere to his left was a heart monitor, slow and steady, oblivious to the pounding in his head.
He groaned again, louder this time, and tried to lift a hand to his forehead. The movement sent a fresh wave of agony through his skull, and he abandoned the attempt halfway through.
He remembered parts and pieces.
The cafe. And she had come. She had walked in wearing that cream blouse, her hair falling in waves over her shoulders... her belly gently curved with the pregnancy he still didn’t know how to think about.
He remembered screaming at her.
But what did he scream?
The memory was there, he was sure of it. He could feel the shape of the words in his throat, the raw burn of his vocal cords, the way his chest had heaved with the force of his own voice...
But the words themselves, the actual things he had said, were muffled. They were blurred. Like trying to hear someone shouting from underwater.
He remembered the feeling of speaking them, the desperate, frantic madness, but not the content.
He couldn’t remember no matter how important it felt.
Then he broke the glass of the second floor.
That part was clearer.
The crash. The rush of morning air as he burst through the window and plummeted to the street below. He had landed in a crouch, his tiger instincts taking over, his body knowing what to do even when his mind was in freefall.
He had looked left and right. He had screamed her name.
Then what?
He ran. He remembered running. A random direction, no plan, no thought, just the animal in him needing to find her, to catch her, to bring her back.
His feet pounding against the sidewalk. The blur of buildings and traffic and startled pedestrians. His breath ragged in his throat.
And then...?
It felt like a dream. The kind of dream that made perfect sense while you were inside it, and then dissolved the moment you tried to hold onto the details.
He had been chasing her. And then the world had closed in around him—shapes, figures, voices—and then...
The police. He remembered the police. Blue uniforms, wary expressions, hands resting on holsters. And beasts. Hunters, perhaps, or something like them.
Figures with claws and fangs and eyes that glowed in the morning light. Surrounding him. Circling him. Their mouths were moving, but he couldn’t hear the words. The roaring in his head was too loud. The pounding in his skull was too intense.
Then he was suddenly sleepy.
Something about a tranquilizer dart, maybe. A sedative spell. Something that had dropped him where he stood and turned the world mercifully dark.
Now he was here.
The door opened.
"Master... You’re awake..."
Arzhen turned his head slowly, sending a spike of pain through his temple, and saw Igor standing in the doorway.
"What happened to me?" Arzhen asked, voice came out rough.
Igor hesitated.
"You fell into a violent rampage in the middle of the street, master." Igor said quietly. "We’ve just barely contained the matter... And bribed the news..."
Arzhen’s eyes faltered.
A violent... rampage...?
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