The Young Princess Kills Everyone: Re
A woman’s weeping echoed in the hospital’s corridor.
“Ugh, uuugh…… Ugh…… Mary…… Why……!?”
Exhausted from crying, Francis hung her head down while sitting on a bench in front of the medical treatment room.
Catherine sat next to her and rubbed her on the back.
Henry was standing by the wall in front of them, watching his daughter cry with a serious look in his eyes, and Edward was leaning on a wall while crossing his arms and staring at the medical treatment room.
Mary was on the other side of that door.
“I should have stopped her faster…… Aaagggh!……”
After suddenly stabbing herself in the abdomen with a sword, Mary received first-aid treatment and was hurried to the hospital.
Her wounds were deep, and her internal organs were hurt.
She was too heavily injured for even restoration sorcery to heal her.
However, what hurt Francis more than Mary’s wound, were her words and deeds.
(Why did Mary do that? Why was Mary laughing……? Is it my fault? Did I miss something?)
The scene of Mary stabbing herself while laughing constantly repeated in Francis’s mind.
Her feelings of remorse only further tormented her.
“I should have known…… Ugh…… When she stopped sleeping…… I should have been kinder to her……”
“This isn’t your fault. It was so sudden. No one could stop it.”
“Yeah…… Don’t blame yourself too much.”
The air was heavy in the corridor.
Naturally, the hospital director recommended the family to wait in the parlor, but Francis refused to leave.
So the director awkwardly watched on from a spot a little further.
The family was completely quiet, except for Francis’s weeping, then, Edward spoke up.
“It’s my fault……”
“You too? It’s not your-”
Catherine cut in, but Edward quickly interjected.
“No, I told her. I told her she could make sister mad by hurting herself!”
“What are you talking about?”
Henry seemed suspicious.
Edward felt overpowered by Henry’s pressure and slightly hesitated to say his next words.
But he clenched his fists, and continued his confession.
“Mary suddenly asked me a question. She wanted me to tell her how to make sister mad, because she wanted to see Francis in a different way. I thought it was strange too, of course! But she said she was just curious, so I……”
“……Mary did say something like that. About wanting to see me angry.”
Mary had mentioned that many times until she bled unconscious.
Francis could not understand it back then, but-
“Are you saying that’s the reason she hurt herself?”
“If she just asked me…… I’d do anything for her. I’d do anything for Mary…… Anything……!”
“Maybe she wanted to see you get angry for real.”
“Edward, did Mary ask any other questions?”
“Other questions? Yeah, she mentioned what happened 16 years ago, and arcana……”
“Arcana!?”
Henry went speechless.
This reaction confused Edward.
“Do you know something?”
“No…… But, impossible……”
Henry was clearly perplexed, though he did not say why.
Catherine watched her husband’s sorrow.
Then, the medical treatment room’s lamp turned off.
The door opened, and the woman doctor from the previous day came out.
“Oh, I see you are all here.”
“Doctor!”
Francis grabbed the doctor.
“Mary! Is Mary alright!? She’s not dead, right!?”
“Calm down…… She narrowly escaped death. She is still unconscious, but I think she will wake up soon.”
“Thank goodness……”
Francis fell on her knees.
Catherine rushed towards her and held her.
“She will need to be hospitalized for some time, however…… Your Majesty, may I have a word?”
The doctor walked up to Henry, and began speaking about Mary’s treatment hereafter.
◇◇◇
Mary woke up in her dream.
The ceiling, which she had seen many times before, was the first thing she saw.
(A hospital…… I think?)
She had been hospitalized a few times during her childhood.
She wanted to get up and check her surroundings first, but she could not move.
“Hnng!…… Mnng!……”
Mary’s hands and feet were tied up, and there was also a gag in her mouth.
The first word that came to mind was ‘confinement’.
She thought she might have gone to a different world after dying in her dream.
She found this convenient, if it meant that she did not have to go through that empty world again.
(Well, let’s see what my sister will look like in this dream.)
Just when she was getting excited, someone vigorously opened the door.
Francis rushed towards Mary and looked at her with tears in her eyes.
“Mary! Are you awake!?”
Mary understood when she saw Francis’s reaction.
(Aah, I see, I failed to die.)
Mary thought that human bodies were frail, but they turned out to be sturdier than expected.
The fact that the royalty always had skilled restoration sorcerers on stand-by was also a big factor, of course.
“Sorry, I know you can’t talk. Here, I got permission to take that out.”
Francis unfastened the belt between Mary’s teeth.
“I’m so happy you’re alive, Mary.”
Mary stared at her sister, or she seemed to while looking at ‘something else’, and spoke up.
“I wish I stabbed myself in the heart or the neck.”
“Huh……?”
“I can’t believe that I, the best murderer in the world, failed to kill myself. Everyone in that world will laugh at me.”
Mary spoke with a bitter smile on her face before biting her tongue.
“Stoooooop!”
Francis screamed and covered her sister’s mouth with her hand.
Then, a different doctor who seemed to be on watch barged into the room and inserted a belt in Mary’s mouth again.
In the meanwhile, Francis fell to the floor, rubbing her wet teary eyes.
◇◇◇
Henry, Edward, and Catherine went to the hospital’s parlor.
Henry wanted to ask his son a question.
“I want to talk about your conversation with Mary again.”
“Like I said yesterday, she asked about what happened 16 years ago.”
“Anything else? Anything. Didn’t she say anything else that seemed strange?”
“Hmm…… Well, she was muttering and talking to herself. And she mentioned…… homun something?”
“Homunculus?”
“Yeah, that!”
Henry covered his face with his hand, and breathed a big sigh.
“I see…… I understand now……”
“What are you hiding, my dear? It’s about time you tell us.”
“I suppose there is no need to hide it now that Mary knows. We’ll talk when Francis comes back.”
Then, Francis returned to the parlor after a short while.
She had wept her eyes out, and Philias held her up as she entered through the door.
She sat on a couch, leaned back like a corpse, and stared into nothingness.
“Sister, are you alright?”
“……Mhm.”
“I suppose we shouldn’t ask about Mary?”
“She’s the same…… Same as when she tried to kill herself……”
Mary tried to harm herself again.
This truth caused a gloomy expression on everyone’s faces.
Then, Henry continued to talk.
“Francis. It seems Mary has learned about her birth.”
“……W-What? Where!? How!?”
Francis opened her eyes wide and stood up again.
“I don’t know. But that must be why she is acting so strangely.”
Not knowing Mary’s real circumstances, that was the ‘closest’ answer they could come up with.
“Then, she also knows…… her relation to me……”
“Probably.”
“Tell me. Tell me Mary’s secret, dear.”
“……Yeah.”
Henry talked about the events that happened 16 years ago.
He talked about the creation of the homunculus theory by a young girl named Justia.
He talked about its goal, which was to seal Death God and destroy a dangerous arcana named World.
“It was always an absurd project from the start. Because, even if she was an arcana user prodigy, I left the project’s advancement in the hands of Justia, a young teenager, and her little sister Yueri. I should have known how exhausting it would be for them. But my eyes were muddy because of my naive sense of justice, and my goal to ‘save the world’.”
The researchers got impatient due to the severe working conditions.
And, just at the worst timing, the secret that the closer the degree of kinship, the higher the resulting homunculus’s Sorcery Rating would be was revealed.
“The researchers wanted to get it done fast…… So they created a homunculus not with me and Blair’s blood, but with Francis’s.”
“Then…… Does that mean Mary is you and Francis’s child……?”
“……I suppose so. I am Mary’s sister, and her mother.”
Catherine’s face went pale after hearing Henry and Francis’s confession, and she lurched over.
Edward, sitting next to her, frantically held her up: ‘Mother!’
“Thanks, Edward.”
“Wanna rest outside?”
“No…… I’m alright.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you until now. I really am sorry, from the bottom of my heart.”
“You had no choice, father. How could you talk about something like that?”
“Yes…… Besides, you’re not the one who wanted to do it.”
“Thank you for saying that. Thanks, Catherine, Edward.”
Henry was wholeheartedly grateful to Catherine and Edward for accepting the truth.
But they still needed to talk.
“Ironically, though, Mary was flawless as a vessel for arcana.”
Francis followed up after Henry.
“She never resembled me or father since her birth…… That’s probably what Luno Aplix intended.”
“Is Luno that God you mentioned named Death God, father? Was she really a God?”
“That much is certain. I think her desire to be released from World became a part of Mary.”
“But the research stopped because of Mary’s birth, right?”
“Why? Why didn’t it continue if it succeeded?”
“Because all arcana disappeared on that day.”
That was the truth behind the disappearance of the arcana.
Each country only announced it after some delay, so the official dates were a little delayed, but it happened exactly when Mary was born.
“Really…… There was no warning. Even World was destroyed. Coupled with Mary’s birth, things got really chaotic back there.”
“And Mary was taken into the Pulsherima family as Miss. Blair’s child, yes?”
“Yeah. The remaining homunculi live in a facility outside the royal capital, built together by the kingdom and Pupa. Justia and Yueri are also there.”
“I may have seen that building. It looks like a school, right? I always wondered what that building was…… Wait, does that mean the children living there carry the blood of Pulsherima?”
“Yes, the late stage homunculi that were created using father’s blood.”
“That would create a horrible inheritance struggle if people find out……”
“That’s why they’re being hidden. Only a handful of people in the kingdom know about it. I have no idea how Mary found out.”
Henry clenched his fists, not hiding his frustration.
He likely thought that it was his mistake that Mary found out.
“Dear, let’s think about how the information leaked later. We have to think about how to heal Mary’s heart first.”
“But what can we do?”
“All we can do is be with her as much as possible. I have to…… protect Mary……!”
Francis firmly clenched her fists.
Then, she rebuked her weakened heart, and found new determination.
Without knowing that the truth was something entirely different.
◇◇◇
The family’s efforts were in vain as Mary’s psychological condition did not improve.
She was discharged from the hospital and returned to the castle to rest, but her restraints could not be undone.
They could not even properly talk with her.
Further, she refused to eat anything, so she was being fed through intravenous drip.
Francis was the most exhausted by this experience.
Mary’s existence meant everything to her.
Francis could protect her with her life if Mary was attacked by enemies, yet it was not an enemy who was trying to kill Mary, but Mary herself.
She did not know how she could protect her sister.
She thought, and thought, but could not come up with any good ideas.
“All my intellect…… means nothing if I cannot protect Mary……”
She read medical books until the late hours of the night, and lamented her powerlessness every day.
◇◇◇
Two days after Mary’s attempted suicide.
There were visitors in the royal castle.
The two visitors who came without appointments seemed to be in a hurry.
Henry happened to be free, so he welcomed them in the parlor.
This visit did not appear to be related to Francis.
She noticed the visitors’ presence as well, but she ignored them, focusing on searching for ways to save Mary instead.
However, someone knocked on her door.
She pouted a little as she told the visitor to come in, and Philias entered the room.
“You have been summoned by our guests, my princess.”
“Father can deal with them.”
“You were requested by name.”
Francis stood up after a sigh, and left the room while seeming a little annoyed.
She headed for the parlor with quick steps.
She entered the room, and was surprised by whom she saw.
“Miss. Stella……”
One of them was Stella Grant.
As for the other-
“Luno Aplix.”
A former God was sitting next to Stella.
Leaving Stella aside, Luno rarely ever came to the royal capital.
Because she resembled Mary too much.
Looking at her also gave Francis mixed feelings.
Descended from her father and sister, and given the form of the Death God – Francis wondered how many more mistakes they could burden Mary with.
Right now, Luno had the body of an adult in her early thirties.
So she could not be mistaken for Mary, but still.
“I know you are busy, I apologize for asking for you. But we must talk.”
Stella bowed her head to Francis.
Luno stared at Francis like a doll.
Francis sat next to her father and faced the two visitors.
“Did you talk yet, father?”
“No, not yet. But if they want to talk with us, then-”
“It’s about Mary, isn’t it?”
Luno answered that question.
She had the voice of an adult, but it still resembled Mary’s.
“We came here to end Miss. Mary’s fight.”
“……Fight?”
Francis curiously tilted her head.
A world without arcana.
The broken remains of a god named Luno.
The answers seeked by the ‘living contradiction’ spelled the end of the young girl’s story.