However, before he could move for real, the beguiling voice slipped into his mind from his two ears once more.
"I wonder if that really is true...? Does that child truly love you and only you...?"
That reverberation hid faint laughter under its compa.s.sion.
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"You have forgotten. I"ll let you recall them. Your true memories, buried deep within the depths of your heart."
Eugeo"s vision lurched in that instant.
The luxuriously downy bed faded and he fell into a dark, deep hole without end.
The scent of fresh, green gra.s.s p.r.i.c.ked his nose all of a sudden.
Verdant light filtered through trees flickered in a corner of his sight while the chirping of small birds overlaid the sound of footsteps over the undergrowth.
Eugeo was walking deep in a forest when he became aware of his situation.
His line of sight was awful y low and his steps were short. His legs stretching out from his shorts made from fiber were those of a child, slender and weak, when he took a look downwards.
But the sense of unease immediately vanished, overwhelming irritation and loneliness filling his chest in its place.
For some reason, he hadn"t seen Alice at all since the day started.
Upon finishing his morning work, tending to the cows and weeding the vegetable garden, Eugeo rushed as fast as he could towards the usual gathering spot-underneath an old tree outside the village. However, Alice didn"t come no matter how 202.
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long he waited. In addition, neither did his other childhood, that black-haired boy.
After waiting for the pair until the sun climbed up to its highest place in the sky, Eugeo tottered to Alice"s home while feeling an indescribable emotion. She must have been found out after playing some prank and got stopped from going out to play. That was what he had thought, but her mother who greeted him there said thusly with her head tilt in confusion.
That"s strange, she went off rather early today. Kiri-bou came for her, so I was sure she would have been with you too, Eu-bou.
Mumbling his thanks and leaving the village chief"s residence, Eugeo felt his unease turn into impatience and searched around the village. However, though the central plaza occupied by the guard chief"s son, Jink, and his henchmen was a given, he couldn"t find Kirito and Alice at any other playing area or hiding place.
Only one other place came to mind. A perfectly round gra.s.s patch they had recently found deep in the eastern forest that the other children didn"t approach. It was a secret place for the three of them, cal ed the "fairy ring" by the adults and filled with various flowers and sweet berries.
Eugeo desperately ran towards there, halfway on the verge of tears. His body set into motion by his loneliness, doubts, and one more emotion, one he couldn"t fit a name to.
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After running through the winding, smal path, and reaching the secret, empty land surrounded by remarkably thick, old trees, a dazzling, golden light swayed in between the tree trunks in his path and Eugeo"s feet jerked to a stop.
That was unmistakably the radiance from Alice"s familiar golden hair. He instinctively silenced his breathing for some reason and p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. Fragments of whispers, quietly exchanged, were conveyed to him on the wind.
Why... why?
With nothing but those words set on repeat in his mind, Eugeo walked closer to the vacant land with subdued steps. His heavy melancholy threatening to crush him, he hid himself behind the mossy trunk and peeked into the secret place flooded with light from Solus.
Alice was sitting in the center of the multicolored blooming flowers with her back to him. He couldn"t see her face, but there was no way he could mistake her flowing, straight, golden hair, her deep blue dress, and her white ap.r.o.n.
And by her side was a head covered in p.r.i.c.kly black hair. His one and only best friend, Kirito.
His clenched hands were soaked in damp and chilly sweat.
The fickle wind sent Kirito"s voice to Eugeo"s ears as he stood still.
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"Hey... let"s go back already. Someone will notice."
And replying to him was Alice"s voice.
"It"s still alright. Just a little... a little, okay?"
No.
I don"t want to hear anymore.
But Eugeo"s legs refused to budge as though the tree"s roots had entwined around them.
In his sight he couldn"t turn away, Alice"s face softly approached Kirito.
He caught a shred of her quiet whispering.
The pair, snuggling together in the middle of flowers in ful bloom, under the bright sunlight; it appeared just like a painting.
No.
Lies. These are al , lies.
Eugeo shouted out in the darkness. But no matter how he tried to deny it, his conviction that this scene was one dragged out from the depths of his own memories gushed up and streamed into his chest like cold water.
"You see... don"t you?"
Sniff.
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The whisper with a tinge with laughter wiped away the forest scene.
Returning to the gigantic bed in the highest minister"s room on the top floor of the Central Cathedral, that golden radiance burnt into Eugeo"s eyes remained even with his eyelids shut.
Along with Alice and Kirito"s whispering voices, echoing deep in his ears.
His voice of reason, that said he should have only met Kirito in that forest two years ago, long after Alice had been taken away to the church, failed to quench the dark emotions filling his chest. The girl with silver hair right next to Eugeo turned towards him with an expression fil ed with compa.s.sion as he opened his two eyes and let out ragged breaths.
"Now you understand, don"t you...? Even that child"s love did not belong to you alone. No... was there even any for you in the first place?"
The sweet voice sleekly slid into Eugeo, violently stirring up his thoughts each time. The boundless hunger and desolation clearly rising up within himself. The sensation of cracks rapidly spreading over his heart, flaking off and plunging down.
"But I am different, Eugeo."
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Her most seductive voice thus far seeped into his ears, like the drifting fragrance from a fruit fil ed with copious nectar.
"I will love you. I wil give all of my love to you, and you alone."
In Eugeo"s vision as he opened his half-clouded eyes in a daze, was the girl-Administrator, the highest minister of the Axiom Church, with her glossy silver hair and eyes gleaming away, showing a bewitching smile.
Moving her legs that had sunk into the soft sheets, she straightened her upper body.
Slowly bringing up her hands, she appeared to fiddle around with the ribbon keeping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in place on her light purple silk sleepwear.
Her flexible fingertips gripped the ends of the ribbon made from silver thread and pulled slowly, gently.
With more than half of her wide neckline exposed now, the graceful, white skin quivered as they lured him in.
"Now, come, Eugeo."
That whisper seemed both like the voice of his mother he had heard in the midst of that dream, and the voice of Alice that reached his ears in that il usion.
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With his impeded consciousness, Eugeo stared at the thin, purple fabric fluttering down like flower petals around her dreadful y slender waist.
She was truly a flower-a large, devilish one that tempted and captured bugs and small birds with its ardent aroma and dripping nectar.
Although a part of Eugeo still felt that way, the allure of that flower, oozing from its pure white heart gingerly lingering amidst its violet petals, was far too intense and Eugeo"s thoughts, smashed into pieces from the earlier illusion, were wholly drawn into the viscid fluid.
You have never been loved before; that was why you could truly feel satisfied with what you have.
Administrator had said so. And Eugeo had gradually begun to acknowledge an aspect of that as fact.
Eugeo himself could frankly say that he loved his parents, brothers, and friends in his childhood. Looking at his mother being pleased at the flower he plucked and watching his father and brothers enthusiastical y eating the fish he caught made him happy. He would even gather herbs in the forest and send them to the Jink and his circle, nasty as they were, if he heard that they caught a cold.
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