Chapter Three Hundred and Forty-Three: Taking Home (Michael’s POV)
“It’s… enough…”
“Hm?”
Hearing Lena whisper into his ear as he carried her in his arms, Michael blinked in surprise.
“What do you mean, it’s enough?”
He kept walking as he responded. When Lena let the words trail off, Michael patted her small back gently and said:
“It’s alright, Lena. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll take you home.”
“No… it’s really enough…!”
Lena said it again, more forcefully this time.
“It’s enough… Lena doesn’t… need to go home anymore…!”
“That’s not true.”
At Michael’s words, she stiffened in his arms. Without looking up at Lena, who stared down at him in utter disbelief, Michael calmly continued:
“After all, you’re going home to Mama, aren’t you? You’ll get to play with Papa, won’t you?”
Lena began trembling in Michael’s arms. But Michael kept walking, paying it no mind. To any outside observer, they would have looked like nothing more than a close pair of siblings.
“—You only called Lady Karen a kidnapper because you believed you could still go back to that life, right?”
“I’m sor—I’m sorry…!”
“You know, there are surprisingly many things people will forgive if you say you are sorry. I mess up all the time trying to make people smile, and I get scolded for it—but when I apologize, they forgive me.”
His tone sounded almost cheerful, and yet Lena’s trembling wouldn’t stop.
“But there are also things in this world that can’t be forgiven no matter how much you apologize.”
“Please forgive me, no… please…!”
Lena began kicking her legs in his arms, struggling to break free. Michael held her firmly and refused to let go.
“Let’s go see the reality of it, properly, so that Lena will never again be able to believe her parents love her.”
He said it in a soft, gentle voice. The calm of it carried something almost like mercy and compassion, and Lena began to cry, swallowing her sobs. Michael’s smile didn’t waver as he listened to her weeping.
“—Michael. That’s enough.”
“Huh? Big Sister?”
The unexpected voice made Michael blink, and he turned around and stopped smiling. Ottilie was there, looking down at Michael with an expression like someone holding back pain.
He always wanted her to be smiling, and yet for some reason, this was the expression she wore most often. That was why Michael always wanted to find a way to make Ottilie laugh. She was the one person who never forgot, even without being made to laugh, that Michael was a person—but even so, she was the one sister whose smile he most wanted to see. Even if he usually ended up failing, annoying her, or causing her trouble instead.
Since coming to the Ehlertt territory, she’d been smiling more often—especially when she was near Karen.
“Let Lena go, Michael.”
“But…”
“Michael.”
His name, spoken in that soft voice. Being treated so gently, like something fragile, made his chest ache more than being shouted at ever could. Michael gave in and set Lena down on the spot. Lena took about ten steps away from him, stumbling as though trying to flee, then crumpled to the ground where she stood.
“Ugh… ugh… uhh…”
She seemed to have lost any sense of where else to go. Michael felt, in some vague way, that he understood what was happening in Lena’s heart. He let out a quiet breath of relief. Lena was going to be alright now. She would never again call anyone a kidnapper. No one would speak ill of Karen—or of Ottilie, who had chosen to become Karen’s sword—ever again.
Michael turned to Ottilie and smiled brightly.
Ottilie smiled back, but there was pain behind her smile, and at last Michael understood the mistake he had failed to realize even when Lena had been crying.
As though embracing even that mistake, Ottilie wrapped her arms around Michael, whose brows had drawn together with unease. Watching Ottilie embrace Michael, Lena finally stopped crying.
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