“This place looks the way it should.”

The corridor of the Duke of Vermia Leoral dri Vermilia, seemed fuller than the rest of the church.

The corridor was entirely for the use of Duke Vermilia, and inside was his large entourage.

“Lady Neko of Virgo Cathedral is here to see Duke Vermilia.”

“His Excellence has been waiting for some time, please wait for me to inform you.”

The maid who went to tell Duke Vermilia that Yurine had arrived was a thin, blond half-elf. When he saw her, Yu realized he hadn't seen an elf since he left Rolderhelm.

In fact, he had seen almost no non-human creatures.

In Rolderhelm, different kinds of creatures were part of everyday life and you could meet them everywhere, but since he left, almost everyone he met was human.

Not counting the roarons who lived in a forest the world didn't care about, the wolf-eared sisters in İlonya, the demons and Yurine.

When he saw that the rest of the world was dominated by human beings, he felt that the fantastic dimension of this world was diminishing and he was upset by this sudden normalization. He was afraid that it would become like his world.

“Yu, I don't know why he would want to do such a thing.”

As they waited for the maid to come back, Yurine started talking. As she spoke, she looked around to make sure no one else could hear her.

“He was always kind to us.”

“Look for your enemy near, they say. When we talk to him, we will get an idea.”

Soon Yurine would meet the man who could be responsible for her mother's murder. Her impatience was evident in the way she kept tapping her foot on the floor.

“Maybe Leoral used his son as a pawn to kill Rie.”

He still couldn't understand why Leoral would want Rie dead. The last thing he could think of was that Cecilus had planned it without his father's knowledge.

“No matter who it is, I will not forgive those involved.”

As Yurine uttered the last word in an eerie tone, maid came running out of Duke Vermilia's room.

“The young lady's determination is admirable,” Yu said. While the maid was panting.

The half-elf straightened her body, looked at them and spoke excitedly. “His excellency is waiting for you!”

Leoral must have told her to be quick. As soon as she finished his sentence, the half-elf turned and started walking so that she could accompany Yu and Yurine to the duke's chambers. As they followed her, Yu turned his head and called out to Kigaro.

“Wait for us here.”

Link finally left them, saying he had something else to do, so Kigaro had to wait alone.

“Your Excellency, Her Excellency Neko is here.”

When the half-elf maid opened the door to the room and let them in, they were greeted by an emaciated old man lying on the bed.

“Neko...”

In his weakened state, Leoral tried to stand up with the support of his thin arms, but his efforts were pathetic.

Seeing this, the servant rushed to his master and tried to stop him.

“Sir, you need to protect yourself. For your health...”

“I'm fine.”

“But Lady Cornelia's instructions-”

“I said I was fine!”

As the half-elf servant tried to persuade him to go to bed, the Duke of Vermia became childish and stubborn. Leoral could not get up, but he would not give up.

“It's okay, it's better for you to lie there,” Yurine said. She was annoyed by his stubbornness.

Yu looked at Leoral's face again. The Duke of Vermia must have been over seventy years old. His face, though wrinkled, bore no signs of old age, but it was pale, his skin a shade closer to the white skin of the dead. His hair, bleached and cut short, was sparse, as if it had just begun to fall out, and he had no beard, but a thick mustache stood above his lip.

His face was thin and bony, his cheeks and eyes sunken in. His thin, trembling fingers gave Yu a pitiful impression.

“This man... He's not what I expected.”

The man Yu expected to meet was no more than fifty years old, powerful and authoritative, and his desire for power was reflected in his eyes.

He thought Leoral would try to control Yurine when he met her, but Leoral wasn't even strong enough to control his toilet. He was a broken man and there was no light in his eyes to show that he was clinging to life.

Listening to Yurine, Leoral apologized and wished he could at least stand up straight in front of Yurine. To fulfill this wish, his maid helped Leoral to sit up by straightening the pillow on which his head rested.

“You two get out,” Leoral said.

He ordered both his own maid and Yu. The half-elf bowed his head and left the room, while Yu remained where he was with a fixed expression on his face. Seeing Yu's stubbornness, Leoral repeated his words, this time a little angrily.

“Do you have milking ears, boy? Come out, I want to be alone with her.”

Yu's expression was still the same, he remained unmoving.

“Yu will stay with me.”

Before Leoral could turn red with anger, Yurine put a stop to it. Leoral tore his eyes away from Yu and turned to Yurine.

“He can stay if that's what you want.”

Yurine took a chair in the room and sat down, dragging it to a spot where she and Leoral could talk to each other, while Yu continued to watch them a few meter from the door. In this position Yu could see her face.

“I heard what happened... I'm sorry for your loss, I'm so sorry.”

Leoral's eyes suddenly filled with tears as he had just begun to speak. This conversation really didn't seem to be going the way Yu had expected.

“I apologize for greeting you like this. My condition has been deteriorating for some time now, and I feel I don't have much more time left.”

Yurine continued to listen without opening her mouth. Both Yurine and Yu were listening intently to his words, waiting for him to blurt out some information that would provide a clue to the murder.

“Neko, I know how hard times have been for you, but those girls said you came here to take over your mother's mission. So I hope at least you can accomplish what she couldn't.”

Leoral's speech was slow. He took deep breaths and his chest was constantly rising and falling. He tried to speak as quickly as possible so that Yurine wouldn't get bored, which made him gasp.

“Forty years ago is in my mind as if it happened a second ago... Everything is still in front of my eyes with the same vividness... Everything... Everything is so vivid... As if I could touch it with my hand...”

Leoral's dark blue eyes began to glow, not at Yurine but at the air. Yu thought for a moment that he was dying and rushed forward to intervene, but stopped when Leoral started talking again.

“But I don't even have the strength to raise my hand, ah... How did I come to this? Back then I was like that headstrong boy over there, vigorous. When I was young, the sword was like a piece of my hand. Now... I am incapable of lifting a knife.”

She closed her eyes and her thin lips curled upwards trembling. A faint smile formed on her face.

“Denise, Yumi, Tauntis, Galahad, Rhea, Vilonet, Lancel, Flory, Claudel, they are not just ordinary men but all of them were holy. And my God, what a beautiful being it was and how lucky I am to see him, our mothers and their children... And her, Natalia... All my friends are in the past and I'm here, far away from them. How awful longing is...”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“I agree with that.”

Especially if it was no longer possible to reach what was longed for, longing was nothing but hell.

Yu knew each of the names he mentioned and had met Denise and Yumi personally. Natalia was Rie's master and Galahad and Rhea were the Envy and the Goddess who fought for the world forty years ago. Lancel is probably short for Lancelot of Pride and Flory is short for Florencea of Lust. Claudel was the King of Clermont, and Tauntis was the name of the Pontifex of Andromeda whom Yurine had just met. And if Leoral was not a hypocrite, the one he referred to as his god was Azer.

But the name Vilonet confused him. He had met a Vilonet in Rolderhelm, but he was with the grandson of Galahad of Envy.

“It must be the similarity of the name.”

Leoral suddenly began to tell his story, even though they hadn't asked him, as if he had been waiting his whole life to tell it.

“It was a scary time, but now I realize that I loved it. No matter how scary it was, I had my friends by my side. Although... I was older than most of my friends in those days too, back then. We often talked about what we were going to do after the war. I had a lot of responsibility as the future head of the Vermia family and I had to work for the good of the country.”

“You should have started when you were a baby...” Yu thought.

“I went to Rolderhelm at the time, to talk about what we were going to do. Rolderhelm... Ah... It was so beautiful and I loved it so much that I even thought about living there after the war. But I couldn't escape my responsibilities. So I said, if I can't live there, then I'll make Mora a place to love it... Peace... Security... Happiness... Prosperity... A country where people can live without worries, a dream... A utopia.”

Rolderhelm was beautiful compared to İlonya and Mora, but there were monsters there too, and things that made people fear them, like the Redchapel Killer. The landscape Leoral saw must have been much whiter than the one Yu saw.

“I wanted to make this place a paradise because Rolderhelm was. It was a long time ago, but I still remember it, in my mind's eye it still looks like it did forty years ago... Tell me, Neko, is it still beautiful there?”

“Yes, Rolderhelm is very beautiful.”

Yurine was speaking for the third time since she had entered the room and Yu agreed with her. After all, Rolderhelm was much more beautiful than here, and he had only seen it in the fall. He couldn't even imagine how full of life Rolderhelm's spring and summer months were.

Thinking about it now, he realized that he even missed the village of Urta, next to the Wizarding Academy.

“When the war was over, we would start all over again. Our God Azer would be with us and guide us, we would glorify the Mora and our religion. The people would be at peace; we would have peace, prosperity, abundance and fertility... We... We would build heaven on earth.”

His eyes would remain closed for a few seconds, and when he opened them again, he would continue talking. He was tired of talking so much.

“We would all work hard for it, of course. There was no room for laziness on the road to our dream, and the real battle would begin after we defeated Gluttony. I believed, Neko. I believed that everything was going to be beautiful. Just as forty years ago is before my eyes now, so were these days before my eyes then.”

A painful smile settled on the wrinkled man's sorrowful face.

“But I underestimated the stupidity of these people. I guess I'm as stupid as they are.”

Leoral's tears rolled down his cheeks and fell down his chin.

Normally, Yu would be moved by someone crying in front of him, but strangely, Leoral's crying didn't affect him at all.

“I'm sorry... I'm sorry... You don't want to be bothered by an old man crying in front of you.”

Yurine, like Yu, ignored his crying. She was waiting for the rest of the story.

“And then you failed?”

“Yes, I failed. Nothing went as I imagined. Neither Mora was what I wanted, nor Zodia…” Leoral swallowed and kept his eyes closed for a long time. Meanwhile Yu thought again that he was going to die.

“Religion has become so rotten that not even the enemies of our God have done such damage to it. The Mora is full of scavengers and they exploit everything they find, down to the bone!”

He had spoken so fast that when he finished speaking angrily he had a coughing fit. Yurine poured a glass of water for Leoral from the jug on the table and handed it to him, but he didn't have the strength to lift his hand.

Yu approached and took the glass from Yurine's hand and made Leoral drink the water.

Coughing like he was going to die, Leoral drank the water, took a deep breath and waited a short while to regain consciousness.

“Natalia...” he said. He said the name with such passion that Yu felt his own heart tremble. “I was good friends with her. She was a good person, far ahead of her time. She came from the Witch Academy in Clermont, with Vilonet. She was a well-educated, intelligent woman.”

Leoral's misty eyes stared at the ceiling.

"I can't lie, I liked her. I lied... I was in love with her, I loved her, and I found myself thinking about her all the time, even... I even dreamed of leaving the Mora and moving with her to Rolderhelm, so much so that sometimes I thought I was in Rolderhelm. Even in my death bed, I still think of her…”

Yu yawned. “Is it time for a love story now?”

“Of course, at that time I was afraid to confide in her, thinking that she would reject me because I had already turned thirty. Finally, I made up my mind that I would confess my feelings to her after the war was over.”

Leoral's tears continued to roll down his cheeks.

“The war is over, but as soon as it was over, Natalia disappeared.”

Leoral bit his thin lips, sniffled and closed his eyes for a moment and waited.

His cheeks trembled and he tried to hold back the tears, but it was futile. Leoral started sobbing, and he shouted when the half-elf maid, hearing his sobs, opened the door and came in.

“Get out!”

When the maid apologized and closed the door quickly, Yu felt sorry for her. She was being scolded when all she was doing was looking out for her master's welfare.

“When I met your mother and she told me she were Natalia's apprentice, it was like seeing her again.”

At this Yu clicked his tongue. Leoral didn't hear it, but Yurine noticed and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. When he looked into Yurine's eyes, he realized that she was as disturbed by what she had heard as he was.

“I couldn't stop dreaming at that moment. Maybe the dreams Natalia and I talked about the world together hadn't come true, but her apprentice... As her apprentice, Rie could inherit her dreams, our dreams. She, Rie, would perhaps be the one to realize the utopia we dreamed of. I believed we could finally build the heaven we wanted.”

“So is that why you helped us, is that why Vermilia supports the Virgo Cathedral?”

“Yes, Neko. For many years I could not find a child to entrust my dreams to, my daughter Cornelia. She's a good girl, but too headstrong. And my son... I'm ashamed to call him my son. I've never seen the good in my stupid son. He's a failure.”

Yu became excited when they arrived where he was waiting, listening with Yurine and paying close attention to the words that would come out of the old man's lips.

“I wanted Rie to marry my son and become my daughter so that I could entrust my inheritance to someone trustworthy, but my useless failure was rejected.”

Leoral fell silent and didn't speak again. Meanwhile Yu was frozen.

“Is that what this is all about?”

He had a terrible expression on his face. His pupils constricted, his brows furrowed and his teeth clenched. It was the first time Yu's face had ever looked so ugly. If he saw himself in the mirror, he wouldn't believe it was him.

Yurine was experiencing the same shock. She had the same expression when she blamed Yu for her mother's death. If Leoral hadn't closed his eyes, he might have thought they wanted to kill him.

Yu clenched his fists and tried to wipe the expression off his face so as not to make Leoral suspect something, Yurine wasn't even trying.

Meanwhile, Leoral spoke again.

“Of course I'm not angry with Rie. Who would want such a failure as a husband?”

“I… Something like that... Something like that...” Yurine couldn't speak, she took deep breaths and tried to gather the words in her head. “I didn't know such a thing had happened...”

“Rejected at the prom. Maybe your mother didn't think he were worthy enough to tell you. What's wrong?”

When Leoral opened his eyes and saw Yurine's face, his eyebrows rose in curiosity.

All the teeth in Yurine's mouth were showing, her canines were sharper than a human's and her eyes now resembled those of a monster.

Once upon a time, looking at that face had scared the hell out of Yu.

Unable to anticipate Yurine's next word, Yu interjected so that she wouldn't make a blunder here.

“My young lady has some work to do...” He gritted his teeth to keep himself in check next to Leoral. “We'll have to continue this conversation later.”

He opened the door for Yurine to come out and waited for her to pass. Yurine went through the door without bothering to return the chair she had pulled out, Leoral talking behind her as she went.

“As long as I breathe, I will continue to support Virgo Cathedral. I wish you to achieve what we have failed to achieve.”

Yurine had walked away without even hearing what he said. Yu bowed his head and wished him a good day before closing the door to the room and running to catch up with Yurine.

“Is that why everything we've been through? Everything we've been through because of the pride of a fool? All the pain we suffered...” His nostrils flared wide as he breathed. “All that pain I suffered!”

He came close to death and even died! He had skewers stuck in his body, he was on fire and he was dying again. Then he had to kill an innocent person and then he had to face death again. The night they had found Kigaro, he had been cursed by a demon, and now he was going crazy to find out that it had all happened for some absurd reason!

Yurine was also so angry that she didn't know what to do. She kept opening her mouth to speak, but because of her anger she couldn't get the words out.

Those who saw them and heard their angry breathing looked at them in surprise and whispered among themselves, while Yu and Yurine did not even notice their surroundings.

“I think so hard, think of so many reasons, come up with so many logical reasons, and all because a son of a bitch can't take rejection!”

When they came to Kigaro, a large half-lion moved out of the way and chased after them

“What's with your faces? Did something happen inside? Hey, who am I talking to?”

They both kept walking, ignoring Kigaro's question after question. They didn't even know where they were going, where to go. They were just walking.

“Cecilus faggot, son of a bitch, just wait... Just wait... I'm going to fuck your sister. When I learn how to use a sword, I'll come and shove it up your ass, you old motherfucker son of a bitch whoreson.”

He was so angry that he could no longer talk about it internally.

“Wait, wait, your death is coming... Motherfucker, wait!”

Kigaro and Yurine were the only ones who heard her low words.

“Whose death is coming? Ah, you two are incomprehensible.”

Kigaro gave up talking and kept quiet. No matter what he said, he was not going to get either of their attention.

“Son of a bitch...”

At last Yurine was able to speak. Yu didn't want her to use such bad words, but the situation was exceptional enough for him to allow it.

“Son...” Yu opened his mouth again to swear.

“I am your daughter.”

“...”

“...”

He was about to cry out of anger when Yurine blurted out four words that first silenced him and then brought a crooked smile to his tense face.

“Idiot! Shut up!”

“I wasn't really talking...”

“I said shut up! Keep walking! Walk ahead!”

Yurine's face was a mixture of anger and shame. It was the first time she had said anything about being a daughter.

Yu stepped forward and the crooked smile on his face grew a little bigger. His eyebrows were furrowed, but the tips of his lips turned up mischievously. He started laughing. His nerves were frayed.

“When I'm so angry...”