After death 2

Chapter 2

****

Lynette barely raised her head to reach out, but Kanna stood just out of her reach.

"Kanna......!"

Lynette crawled to her feet and clutched at the bars.

"Call my grandfather. We don't have much time."

But in contrast to Lynette's wailing, Kanna's expression was impassive.

Not depressed, not sad.......

Eyes that made it impossible to tell what she was thinking.

In that moment, Lynette thought she had seen this unfamiliar expression before.

"Lily."

Kanna spoke after a long moment.

It was when Lynette looked up at her.

Kanna was smiling.

"Grandfather can't come."

"No, it's not too late, so please......."

"Poor little sister, don't you get it?"

Lynette raised her tear-filled eyes, and Kanna spoke again.

"I'm not here to help you."

"Kanna."

Lynette's grip on the iron bars tightened.

Kanna curled the corners of her mouth.

"I'm the one who killed father, actually."

She bent her knees and lowered herself to face Lynette.

"...."

Lynette couldn't say anything, the words lodged in her throat, making it impossible to breathe.

"And I am the one who killed mother."

Kanna spoke in a light tone, as if she were talking about something mundane.

"What?"

Lynette managed to get the words out of her throat this time, only to be cut off again by Kanna's mockery.

"Do you want to ask why?"

Kanna asked, folding the corners of her eyes lovingly.

But Lynette knew she wasn't expecting an answer.

"......Lie."

Her stomach churned.

She felt a surge of nausea, like she could throw up everything in her stomach.

Lynette remembered vividly the day Kanna first came to the manor.

She was tall and skinny, with tangled hair. That was her first impression of Kanna.

An explosion had killed a worker working in Lynette’s grandfather's mine, and his daughter (Kanna), who had nowhere else to go, had been brought in to serve as a maid.

But when she was cleaned up and dressed in new clothes, she was as pretty as a porcelain doll.

Hair the color of ivory, mysterious green eyes.

The child's status as a maid had changed in an instant. Her father gave her the Hilt family name and adopted her. It was when Lynette was twelve and Kanna was sixteen.

"Lily, I've always liked the Hilt family."

Kanna whined in a voice only Lynette could hear.

"I just wanted to be a real daughter of the house."

"..."

"Because I'm a better fit for the family’s name."

At that, Lynette looked up.

Kanna reached over the bars and brushed her poor sister's bangs aside.

Lynette’s right eye, burned and distorted, was revealed. Lynette looked straight into her face, not avoiding her touch.

"If you had died at mother's funeral, you wouldn't be like this."

"I didn't start the fire......."

"Nonsense, you started the fire."

Lynette's mother had died the year she turned twelve, only three months after Kanna had become a daughter of the Hilt family.

Lynette couldn't believe her mother was dead.

Twelve was too young to fully accept it.

Perhaps that's why the tears were strangely hard to come by. Kanna sobbed and blamed Lynette for it.

Hearing those words made her feel like a really bad child.

Lynette was afraid of being a bad child, so she cried because she felt like her mother had left her.

It was Kanna who hugged the confused and vulnerable child tightly.

And that night.

<Lily, I experienced the loss of a family member a long time ago>.

<...>.

<That's why I can understand your feelings better than anyone else.>

<Kanna.>

But when little Lynette woke up, it wasn't her mother she was facing, it was a tragedy.

A room in ashes and a missing right eye.

Her father had slapped her for nearly burning the mansion to the ground, but Lynette couldn't tell him that Kanna had tricked her to do it.

She was clutching her father's arm tightly, tears streaming down her face.

She had a beautiful, immaculate face that invited pity and compassion.

"Bitch. You're the devil."

Lynette muttered in a low voice, and Kanna smirked.

"Better the devil than a stupid bitch, right?"

For a moment, a chill of foreboding flickered behind her bright smile.

"Did you kill the Marquis of Romie, too?"

Passai de Romie.

He was Kanna's dead ex-husband.

In fact, Passai’s proposal was to Lynette, but it was Kanna who eventually became the Marquis’s wife.

Lynette thought it was fortunate that her sister was getting married instead of her.

Passai couldn't even look her in the eye the day he brought the proposal, for Lynette’s face was disfigured by burns.

"Well, what if being shot was the cause of death?"

Of course, the marriage didn't go smoothly.

Her father was a veteran, and he opposed Kanna's marriage like a man out of his mind.

Eventually he consented, but in a horrible way.

He committed suicide by poisoning himself, leaving only a letter telling her to be good to Romie.

Lynette didn't cry. Her father was dead, and she wasn't sad.

But for once, she didn't do something stupid like light a candle and fall asleep alone.

"Was it Argos?"

Since when were the two of them together?

She knew it was a futile thought, but she couldn't stop herself.

"Well, you're not a complete idiot."

"Since when? Since when......."

Kanna straightened up from her hunched over position and shook off her sleeves.

Her chin lifted, Kanna looked down at Lynette, who stood there in a daze.

"Lily, Argos is disgusted by the look on your face. He thinks it's ridiculous that you're running around like it’s nothing, that you think he really loves you."

Kanna smirked and turned away.

"But thanks to you, Argos will be crown prince, and I will be queen."

"That will never happen, and I will never...... let it happen."

Kanna's laughter filled the narrow, dank basement.

"Really? By what means?"

The rest of her memory was a blur.

Lynette was tied up and dragged by someone, and her feet started burning.

All her senses were dead, but her hearing remained. Even as she lay dying, Lynette heard someone cursing her for a long time.

Witch, wicked bitch, lustful daughter of the devil.

Die, die, die.

Such was the end of Lynette Diklahilt’s life.

With the poor baby who never even saw the light of day.

****

When she opened her eyes, Lynette thought she felt lighter than usual.

Her pillow smelled like sunlight, and the bedding was fluffy.

"Bed......?”

Lynette jerked awake.

Lynette Diklahilt was clearly dead.

The flames licking at her ankles, the stones flying everywhere at her body, the curses she could barely stand.

She hoped it was a dream, but it was definitely a nasty, nasty reality.

"Ah!"

Lynette reflexively lifted the covers and wrapped them around her stomach.

Her stomach, where a child should have been, was flat like it had always been.

More than the flattening of my once-convex belly, there was something else that surprised her.

"It's too small."

Her hands were too small, her body too small, her feet too small through her too small gown.

She sat dumbfounded on the bed, unable to speak.

"Miss, are you awake?"

Riley, the maid, heard the sound and approached.

"..."

But Lynette could only stare blankly at Riley.

Riley?

“Miss, please wake up. Today is the day master coming.”

***

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