Chapter 469: Dirty Laundry
Cecilia froze.
The spoon in her hand hovered motionless over the bowl.
Whatever the System had just said, it sounded like something they didn’t want anyone to know. Or at the very least, a very big accusation.
Dead star gluttons. Perpetrators of the Massacre of the Sixth Realm.
She turned the phrases over in her mind, trying to make them fit the two figures at her dinner table.
Bunny, who had wept over his brother’s corpse and kissed his forehead goodbye. Momo, who had stroked her hair and told her to pray.
The same hands that had pinched her cheek and passed her ice cream and folded pasta dough with impossible gentleness—those hands had done something terrible.
Something that made the System, a cosmic entity of unknown power and origin, hiccup in fear.
What... would they do now that she... heard about it?
Momo closed her eyes and shook her head, sighing as if she was relieved. A sigh a mother might give when a child had wandered too close to a busy street and been pulled back just in time.
She rubbed her chest with one hand and then glared at Cecilia. Not an angry glare. A scolding one, one that said you almost gave me a heart attack. Then she raised her hand to the side of her head, made a gesture of her head exploding with her fingers, and mouthed a single word. "Boom!"
Cecilia fell speechless.
Bunny also sighed, but his was different. His golden eyes met Cecilia’s, and then he smiled, reaching across the table. His large hand grasped the top of Momo’s head, and he turned her face gently back toward her bowl of pasta.
Do they not care?!
The only thing they were worried about was that if she knew too much, her head would explode from the knowledge. Not that she would judge them. Not that she would fear them. Not that she would look at them differently.
They weren’t worried about whether she’d know what they had done. They were worried about whether the knowing would hurt her.
"System..." Cecilia whispered in her mind. "They don’t seem to be people who would..."
[Don’t be fooled, Cecilia.] The System said steadily, but still hushed, still trembling at the edges. [These two are more dangerous than the God of Dragons, the Goddesses of Dreams, The Twelve Seats, The Goddess of Fate, and even the God of Equilibrium combined!]
W-who...?
E-each title felt heavy, weighty with meaning she couldn’t begin to parse. And the System was saying that the two people at her dinner table were more dangerous than all of them combined?
"Mmm~ delicious~" Momo’s voice cut through her thoughts. She was glaring down at Cecilia with a wide, bright smile that did not reach her eyes. "Cecilia, eat the pasta~! You’re not too full, right? Be careful not to explode~!"
Wow. They were warning her blatantly right now. The goddess was literally telling her, in the sweetest voice imaginable, that her head might explode if she kept thinking about this.
Honestly? Yes. Her head might actually explode if this continued.
But Cecilia didn’t actually mind. That was the strange thing. She didn’t feel betrayed. She didn’t feel deceived. Knowing that they were capable of terrible things, even knowing that they had done terrible things, didn’t change what she knew about them.
It didn’t erase the tears Bunny had shed over his brother’s grave. It didn’t erase the gentle way Momo had caressed her hair and told her to pray.
Both facts could be true. Both versions of them could exist in the same universe, in the same beings, in the same hands that had cooked her dinner and blessed her food and made her laugh when she wanted to cry.
They could be both compassionate... and cruel.
She ate her pasta with a smile. Momo saw it and nodded, her own expression softening with relief.
"I understand, System." Cecilia’s inner voice was gentle now. "Sorry for expecting you to say anything at all."
[...thank you for your understanding, Cecilia...]
The System fell silent and Cecilia let it. Some fears couldn’t be reasoned away. Perhaps they were older and deeper than logic could reach.
The System had survived something terrible, and the beings who had caused that terror were sitting at the dinner table eating pasta like normal people. She couldn’t fix that. She could only acknowledge it and move on.
Honestly, right now, there were more pressing issues.
She had glanced at her phone between courses, and the screen had been full of notifications.
Texts from Gregor and Thalia, flowing in rapid succession, each one more urgent than the last.
Arzhen... might have made his move.
She knew what he would’ve done given the situation, his option, she had predicted it all. But for him to abandon money by deciding to take her invention hostage, it was a bit funny, actually.
Strange. Uncharacteristic.
And yet here he was, apparently willing to let a fortune slip through his fingers, to burn bridges with the Hunter Association, to hoard a technology he couldn’t use and wouldn’t sell, all for what? To force her to come back? To make her choose between her freedom and the lives her invention could save?
He... might actually believe he truly loved her.
Maybe he did love her. Just that it was the wrong kind of love.
She would contact Damon soon. That man could make anything happen. His involvement, especially now, would be enough to ensure victory.
Whatever Arzhen was planning with the patent, whatever hostage situation he was trying to engineer with her invention, Damon would find a way to fight it.
There was still too much to do.
Everything seemed to... never end.
The world’s approaching apocalypse, whatever was causing the rifts, whatever corruption was spreading between dimensions. Arzhen’s... thing. Her mother’s mystery, the truth about Summer Silver’s death, the investigation she had barely begun, the questions that still had no answers... The gods... And her baby.
Everything needed to be solved. Everything needed her attention. Everything needed her to be stronger, smarter, faster, better.
And apparently, she knew as she glanced at Momo, who was delicately twirling pappardelle around her fork, and at Bunny, who was helping himself to a second serving, evidently... it had to be her.
For some reason.
Was she even worthy to be the one?
She had been chosen. Integrated. Given a System and a task and a destiny. But why her? What made her special? She was just—Cecilia.
Strange. She felt both overwhelmed by the pressure and unworthy to be sitting here, among three great men and two great gods. And yet, beneath the pressure, there was the fear that she didn’t deserve to be the one they were counting on in the first place.
Did she want this? She wanted to do whatever she could.
That was the truth. If there were people who needed saving, she wanted to save them. If there was a world that needed protecting, she wanted to protect it.
She had always been that way, reaching, grasping, trying to help even when she didn’t have the strength.
She wanted to do whatever she could.
But could she? She had done so much already. She had survived so much already. But there was still so much more, and the road ahead stretched on without end.
It was—heavy.
"Holy shit—what do you mean we were crushing on the same person?"
"Why are you recording?"
"Bro, we were crushing on the same person! This needs a little commemoration!"
"Eastiel—"
Cecilia flinched. She turned in her chair, her spoon forgotten, her eyes landing on the living room where the large television screen had suddenly blazed to life.
On it, a video played, shaky, clearly shot on a phone, the perspective bouncing with the unsteady hand of someone who had perhaps had a few drinks.
"A-ah! Miss Momo! Th-that’s my phone!" Eastiel’s voice cracked as he scrambled up from his seat, his lion ears pinned flat against his head in pure panic.
Cecilia turned to look at Momo, who was holding a phone that looked, at a glance, identical to her own. The goddess’s expression was one of pure, mischievous delight. Like a cat who had not only caught the canary but was planning to livestream the canary’s greatest hits.
"I figured," Momo said, her grin widening. "It seems that we have the same model of phone, and when I looked, I found this video! Ahaha!" Her laugh was light and musical and—
"P-please turn it off!" Eastiel lunged toward her, his hand outstretched, desperation written across every feature.
Cecilia turned back to the television. The video had steadied slightly, the camera lifting from a view of three pairs of men’s shoes walking across a polished floor, a club, by the look of it, dark and pulsing with distant music, to reveal the faces of her three boyfriends.
The Eastiel behind the camera spoke first, his recorded voice slightly tinny through the television speakers. "Arkai, when and where did you meet her?"
The Arkai on the screen rolled his eyes, his wolf ears flicking with irritation. "Stop it, we’re here to drink, not film a stupid documentary—"
"He’s going to show this at Rinne’s birthday to humiliate us," Oathran’s recorded voice cut in.
"Humiliate him first, Oathran."
"Pff—" The camera shook with Eastiel’s suppressed laugh. "Listen, guys. If we actually have a crush on the same woman, who’s getting her?"
"No fucking one. That’s the bro-code."
Arkai’s hands suddenly closed over Cecilia’s eyes from behind, his palms warm and slightly desperate. "DON’T LOOK! OATHRAN! TURN OFF THE TV!"
"ON IT!"
"PLEASE MISS MOMO, TURN IT OFF—" Eastiel’s voice had reached a pitch she had never heard from him before, but Bunny had risen from his seat and was blocking the path to Momo with one massive arm, his laugh rumbling through the apartment like thunder.
Eastiel pushed against him and bounced back as though he’d hit a wall. "WHY ARE YOU SO STRONG?!"
Oathran had flown across the living room toward the television. His hand reached for the remote on the coffee table, but somehow, impossibly, it slipped from his grasp. It skittered across the floor, spinning just out of reach, as though the universe itself wanted this video to play.
Cecilia pried Arkai’s hands away from her eyes. She needed to see this.
"I mean..." The Eastiel on the recording sounded thoughtful now, his earlier teasing tone giving way to something more serious. "We can date her toget—"
"Brother, don’t joke around, her honor—"
"As long as we beg her to take us al—"
The camera shifted abruptly. "Wait, that’s—that’s her?"
"Huh?"
"Look, on the dance floor—"
The phone swung around, scanning across a crowded club, and then landed, slightly blurry, slightly unfocused, but undeniably, on her. Cecilia.
She was on the dance floor, moving unselfconsciously along with the music. When some men approached her.
"Turn the camera off, those men don’t look good."
The recording stopped.
Silence.
Then Cecilia’s voice rang through the apartment. "I WANT TO SEE MORE PLEASE! TURN IT BACK!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
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