Training in the House of the Hearth
"Do real mothers and daughters argue, too?"
Xingsu was bandaging the wounds on Clervie's body while Peruere, sitting beside them, asked the question as she helped comb Clervie's hair.
"Mother, she..."
Clervie did not continue.
She did not know when Mother had started to change. Or rather, perhaps she had never changed at all; it was just that she had put on far too good of a disguise before.
As the days passed one by one, Crucabena's demands on the children grew more and more outrageous by the day.
This time, Crucabena personally made the children kill the child who had been defeated in the practical combat class.
That was the first time those three children had killed someone.
Peruere had the smallest reaction; with trembling hands, she carefully and gently stroked the deceased's wide-open eyes, and then left that place. She said nothing, nor did she look back.
The one with the greatest reaction was Clervie. Pressured by Mother standing right beside her, she kept her eyes tightly shut, and with no technique whatsoever, like hammering a stone downwards, she drove the sword into a human body.
"Haah, haah, ha..." Clervie breathed in trembling gasps, drenched in sweat. After finishing it all, Crucabena, who was beside her, nodded lightly and left of her own accord.
Clervie seemed to have lost all her strength, dropping to her knees in front of the corpse with a thud.
Anger? Fear?
Clervie did not know what she had felt at that moment. She only felt that in front of this morbid woman, she seemed to have lost all her strength and means, being toyed with by Crucabena like a marionette on strings.
"Clervie."
Xingsu, who spoke with her, looked very exhausted; he rarely had such a state. It seemed that feeling the sensation of life slipping away in one's hands was not easy for anyone to bear.
"Crucabena has gone mad! She's turning the House of the Hearth into a colosseum!"
Confirming that Crucabena had walked far away, Xingsu finally poured out the words that had been bottled up in his heart.
"Why does she want a king so badly?! Is she about to lose it herself and looking for the next generation of Knave to send her off? Or does she simply not regard the children's lives as lives at all, just to satisfy her perverted..."
"That's enough!" Clervie suddenly stood up and grabbed Xingsu in a tight embrace. "I'm sorry, it's my fault. It's because I couldn't meet her demands that she treats everyone this way. I, I'm sorry to everyone. If I could just live up to Mother's expectations, I, I..."
"Alright, it's not your fault at all." Xingsu also realized that cursing someone else's mother like that was not very good.
"Clervie, have you ever thought about it? If the House of the Hearth were actually a warm home, where everyone gathered around the hearth to tell stories, eat together, play together, share together, and all worked with one heart and mind toward the exact same ideal-what a wonderful scene that would be."
"Yeah, if it really were like that, how wonderful it would be."
"..."
"..."
"So..."
"She's my mom, after all..."
Trembling all over, Clervie hugged Xingsu even tighter.
"But she's my mom."
"She's my mother!"
"She... she's my biological mother..."
Clervie gradually lost control of her emotions and began to cry again. No matter how good her personality was or how strong she pretended to be, she was still just a little girl.
At an age when she should have been learning knowledge and growing up happily, she really carried a heavy load of things.
Xingsu did not speak, letting Clervie's tears and snot wet his clothes.
Joy and sorrow could not be seen in his eyes; he just stared blankly ahead, thinking while gently patting Clervie's back, hoping to make her feel a little better.
When he came back to his senses, he suddenly saw a pair of ✘ ✘ eyes. Peruere had appeared before him at some unknown time.
"Whoa!" Xingsu was startled, and Clervie, in his arms, turned her head and saw that pair of mushroom eyes as well.
"Whoa! Th-that, Pepe, it's not what you think. That, it's just..." Clervie's face turned completely red, flustered and in a rush as she wanted to explain to Peruere.
Yet her overloaded brain, having been through so many events, simply could not explain the current situation clearly no matter what.
Faced with Peruere's increasingly dangerous gaze, Xingsu reacted a bit faster and quickly changed the subject.
"Um, let's get Clervie back to her room first anyway, since..."
Xingsu did not continue; after all, the events that happened today were still far too heavy.
Peruere escorted Clervie back to her own room, while Xingsu disposed of the corpse on the ground.
"Pepe."
"Hmm?"
"Do I make you all very disappointed?"
"No."
"Yet..."
"He understands you, and I understand you."
He did not know whether those words served any comforting purpose.
After finishing up, Xingsu returned to his own room. As he walked up to his doorway, he found Peruere leaning against his room door, looking at him with her arms crossed.
Looking closely at Peruere, her short, silver-white hair was touched with a hint of black, and the blood-red X in her eyes remained as distinctive as ever. Compared to when she had first entered the House of the Hearth, she had grown even colder and more rational.
Xingsu suddenly realized that he seemed to have no deep understanding of this friend at all. His interactions with her were limited only to Clervie.
Yet right now, Xingsu could not afford to think about that so much. Faced with Peruere's gaze, he only felt as though his toes were curling so hard they were digging out a three-bedroom apartment, for the awkwardness of being caught hugging her good best friend was simply too great.
Hoo. Taking a deep breath, Xingsu had no choice but to bite the bullet, turn around, and face Peruere.
"Um, Peruere, Clervie and I really aren't..."
"Get in. Business."
Xingsu had no choice but to open the door and follow Peruere into his room.
As soon as she entered the room, Peruere turned around, locked the door, looked straight at Xingsu, and asked word for word:
"You are going to overthrow Crucabena."
It was not a question; it was a statement.
Xingsu's gaze instantly sharpened as well, and his not-yet-overloaded, clever brain raced at high speed.
Peruere definitely didn't come here to settle accounts with me. She must have heard my probing words to Clervie-she might even have been there from the very beginning-yet as soon as she realized what was happening, she came straight to find me. Her stance is still unknown, so I need to probe her out first.
"Why would you think that?"
"Don't answer a question with a question." Peruere clamped a hand onto Xingsu's arm.
Xingsu was astonished to discover that he, whose physical strength should normally have held the upper hand, could not shake off those hands no matter what he tried.
He noticed that Peruere's fingers, which originally used to be black near the fingertips, had now had that hint of black spread across her entire fingers.
"Peruere, your hand..."
"An!swer! me!"
Looking at Peruere's man-eating gaze, and considering her personality and their relationship, Xingsu decided to lay his cards on the table and talk openly.
"I've only thought about it, just..."
Peruere released her grip and stretched her wrists.
"Alright, I know."
"So, when was it that you heard?"
"From the start."
"Then why didn't you-"
"She has to face it herself."
"Mmm..."
"..."
"..."
Both of them fell somewhat silent. Xingsu felt even more awkward, so he decided to explain something.
"Pepe... can I call you that?"
"Whatever."
"I don't hope that one day I will draw swords against you and Clervie. Can you understand me?"
"Mmm."
"..."
"..."
The two of them fell silent again.
Actually, Peruere was not deliberately making Xingsu feel awkward, or rather, she did not know what to say either. Of course she understood Xingsu; if things continued along this pace, they would inevitably draw their swords against each other sooner or later.
If one day Clervie were forced to draw her sword against her friends, she would probably...
"Peruere," Xingsu interrupted her deep thoughts, "do you trust me?"