The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

Chapter 56: Two mind One Body

Violet woke up on a bed that was not hers.

She lay still and looked at the ceiling. Stone, high, arched. Not her apartment.

She sat up.

The room was large. Furnished well, the kind of well that came from money old enough not to bother announcing itself.

A dress she had never seen before hung over the chair beside the bed. On the bedside table sat a small portrait: a family, formal, painted by commission rather than affection, and one of the children in it had a face she was going to have to get used to.

She set the portrait face-down and got to her feet.

Her feet were further from the floor than they should have been.

She walked to the mirror against the far wall.

Dark hair. Violet eyes, which she noted and moved on from. Good bone structure. A face that was real and belonged to someone who was not her.

She stood there.

Then she went back to the bed and sat on the edge of it and thought about the station.

She had been the one who made Yuta go. He had shown up at her door after the bench, after the guild hall, after the thing on the pavement that strangers had stepped around without knowing what it was, and she had listened to everything he said and then picked up her bag and told him they were going.

He had been too tired to argue.

She had done most of the talking at the station because if she had left it to Yuta the officer would have gotten the story in the wrong order and walked away with the wrong conclusion.

They had walked out together afterward.

She remembered the door. The cold air outside. Turning to say something to him, probably about food, neither of them had eaten, and then the air had done what it had been doing for weeks, thick and pressing, and then nothing, and then this ceiling.

He had been standing right beside her when it happened.

Which meant either it had happened to him too or it hadn’t, and she was in an impossible situation with no way to know which. She sat with it until she could, then set it aside.

She went back to the mirror.

She was still looking at the face that was not hers when the voice arrived.

Who are you.

Violet went still.

You are not supposed to be here. This is my body.

The voice was precise and controlled.

Violet looked at the hands at her sides and took a breath.

"I am going to need a moment before we continue this conversation," she said, out loud, to the room.

I am not giving you anything. I am telling you to leave.

"I would love to leave. The problem is that I have no idea how I got here and therefore no idea how to reverse it, and telling me to leave is not going to get either of us anywhere."

A pause.

You can hear me clearly.

"Yes."

You are not panicking.

"I am panicking thoroughly on the inside. I spent three years working for people who thought shouting at staff was a management strategy. Keeping it off my face became a survival skill."

The anger was still there. Underneath it, something that was trying to be curious.

My name is Violet Ashford. This is my body and I have been in it for twenty years and I want it back.

"Violet," Violet said. She tried it with the weight of a surname attached. "My name is also Violet. That is going to be a problem."

A silence with a very specific quality to it.

You are joking.

"I genuinely wish I were."

Violet, said the voice.

"Ashford," Violet said. "I will call you Ashford. It is cleaner."

Fine. I have not accepted this situation.

"Noted. Neither have I. We have that in common."

What do you want.

"To go home. You?"

The same thing. Which means we have a problem.

"What problem."

I do not know how to separate us. I have been working on that since I understood what happened. I have not found an answer.

Violet looked at the mirror. Ashford’s face looked back, composed, refined.

"So neither of us knows how to fix this."

Not yet.

"And we are stuck with each other until we do."

Unless you have a better suggestion.

Violet did not.

She looked at the window. The grounds outside were well-maintained and extensive. The sky was a shade of blue she had never seen before.

The person you were thinking about, Ashford said. When you first woke up. Before the ceiling. Before the room.

"You can hear that."

I can hear everything you think. I would prefer not to.

"He was standing right beside me when it happened," Violet said. "I don’t know what happened to him."

I am sorry. That is a difficult thing not to know.

Violet looked at Ashford’s grey eyes in the mirror.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

She stayed with it for a moment. Then:

"Alright," she said. "We figure it out together. I am not going to pretend I am happy about this and I imagine you are not either. But being unhappy about it separately is not going to get us anywhere faster."

The silence that followed had a different quality than the ones before it.

You are very strange, Ashford said.

"I have been told that before. Usually by people who meant it as a criticism."

Fine, Ashford said.

The silence stretched before Ashford broke it.

You worked in a studio.

"Animation. Three years. The kind of place with strong opinions about overtime that I disagreed with consistently."

What is animation.

Violet looked at the face in the mirror and found a simpler way to explain it.

"Stories made of moving images. Drawing, sequenced, with sound attached."

You drew things for a living.

"I drew things for a living and was underpaid for it and worked longer hours than anyone should and did it anyway because I was twenty-two and believed in what I was making." She looked at Ashford’s hands. "I’m not sure I believe in it the same way now. That’s a problem for later."

How old are you.

"Twenty-five. You said twenty."

Yes.

"What do you do. With your time."

I study. Magic theory, political history, imperial governance structures. I train. I attend functions my family requires. I say what I am supposed to say and leave as soon as I am allowed.

"That sounds exhausting."

It is the life I have.

Violet heard it anyway.

"Do you have people. Friends. People you actually want to spend time with."

Ashford did not answer immediately.

I have people who find me useful. People who find me intimidating. The overlap between those two groups is not large.

"That is not what I asked."

I know what you asked.

Violet looked at the mirror and waited.

No, Ashford said. Not really. There was someone once. It did not end in a way either of us wanted to repeat.

"I’m sorry."

I did not say it to receive sympathy.

"I know. I said it because it deserved to be said."

You have people.

"I have Yuta. And a few people from the studio I still talk to. But mostly Yuta."

How long have you known him.

"Since university. Same program, then the same studio, then just the only two people in each other’s lives who understood without having to explain it."

That sounds significant.

"He is difficult and he doesn’t ask for help and he works too hard and he has been alone for longer than anyone should be. But he is worth knowing."

I can hear your thoughts, Ashford said. Since before you were fully conscious.