APIBAGS Chapter 38

Yulma froze mid-motion. Someone who had no business being here had appeared.

"Daisy?"

"Thank goodness, you're not hurt. I'm so relieved you're safe."

Daisy, face streaked with tears, pulled Ranen and Yulma into her arms. Troy was visible behind her. Just like Ranen said—Troy really did come to save them.

And then Yulma saw the person who walked in after him and drew a sharp breath. Insane. What kind of person looks like that?

Just from her clothes alone, she was clearly a highborn noble. And yet someone that delicately-built radiated an overwhelming presence. If all nobles were like that, Yulma thought she'd find them a little frightening.

Since she'd come with the others, she'd probably been brought by Daisy or Troy.

"Director..."

The arrival of new faces had yanked the director back from memory to the present.

So the helpless son's ally turned out to be Daisy. The director's memory of Daisy was of a fortunate child—always meek, always obedient. Good selling conditions, but Troy had interfered at every turn, and so Daisy's final impression had stayed just that. The leftover.

She'd posed no threat, so she'd been left alone. It hadn't occurred to her that Daisy and Troy, who had always been at such odds, would ever join forces.

"Troy. You obstruct me to the very end."

Why was it that no one ever understood her?

Merai had given everything at the director's side, and yet there had been no one at Merai's side in return. Not her son, and not even the demon—nothing had moved as she'd willed.

And then white fabric billowed.

The director saw the angel standing behind Troy. Merai lamented. She glorified. She trembled and was overcome.

The whole world bled white. The feeling was like the one she'd had when she first saw the painting in the Grand Temple. What a sublime, radiant, authoritative being.

The angel smiled faintly. Merai took it as a revelation. The angel had come to give her the key to this situation.

Yes. Her beloved son, right in front of her.

Merai reached along the wall. Something blunt pressed into her palm, and she carefully wrapped her fingers around it and hid it behind her back.

There were too many obstacles right now. She would have to wait for the moment when the others' eyes turned away.

Like right now.

"Ranen? Yulma?"

"Mary! I told you to keep your eyes closed!"

"But I counted all the way to a hundred..."

The one miscalculation Yulma had made was that Mary counted very well indeed. Mary had lost track a few times before finally reaching a hundred in full, and then she opened her eyes.

As Mary mumbled her explanation, Yulma erupted at her. Mary, convinced she'd done something terribly wrong, flinched with preemptive dread.

And while every eye turned to Mary, the director seized her opportunity and lunged at Troy. Sensing the danger, Yulma threw herself over Mary and covered her eyes.

Thud!

"M... Mother?"

"Hah... hah. Ha—ha ha, hahahaha—!"

The director laughed. The expression on her face was pure elation, yet tears welled up and tracked down her cheeks, and no one could interpret that expression as a smile of joy.

No one had anticipated the director striking her own son. The director herself had no intention of harming Troy—which was, of course, exactly why no one could have seen it coming.

Troy staggered and fell against her. Daisy tried to rush forward, but Yulma and Ranen grabbed her arms and held her back.

"Melek. I offer my son as a sacrifice. Troy has that much worth, at least. You'll grant my wish now, won't you?"

The director murmured to the demon, holding out a bloodied hand. Melek—barely drawing breath from the blind blow he'd taken from Ranen's knife—swallowed at the appetizing scent. He'd been starving for too long. His body was already weakened, and the wound made the hunger more savage than ever.

His reason began to erode. Just as Melek moved to feed on Troy, a clear voice cut through and sharpened his mind.

"Are you hungry?"

Melek nodded, not even knowing who was asking. The director dismissed it as a lie, but Melek truly had not had a proper meal since he'd become a demon.

"I will attend to your hunger. There is no need to force it now."

The voice was firm as a command, and yet somehow gentle, and Melek decided he would do as it said.

"What are you doing, Melek?"

The director's cry filled Melek with deep sorrow. It was clear that Merai still had not escaped that basement from twenty years ago. Was Melek the same?

The director redirected her grievance.

"You—didn't you come to save me?"

The director appealed to Evangeline. Just as when she had manifested through the painting in the Grand Temple, had she not descended now to give the answer? Evangeline replied without particular weight.

"That was the original plan, but the situation has changed."

"Am I to be abandoned?"

"Yes. You didn't meet the criteria. So stop now."

It was only after being cast off first by the demon and then by a being who could only be an angel that the director relinquished everything. Through Merai's eyes, the scene of the underground space came into view.

Her son, bleeding from the blow his own mother had struck. Daisy and Ranen and Yulma and Mary, watching her with wariness. And the other children, pressing their eyes and ears shut and turning their faces away from Merai.

Merai broke into sobs.

The understanding came over her skin: she had ruined everything.

Ranen and Yulma, realizing the director had lost the will to fight, moved quickly to take Troy from her and support him. Troy had somehow managed not to lose consciousness.

"Thank you, Ranen—Yulma."

"Don't. Injured people don't get to talk."

Yulma's emotions were too tangled to let her accept the thanks, so she swore at him instead. Daisy listened to the two of them bicker and checked Troy's wound. It was deep.

Daisy looked at Evangeline.

"Why—why didn't you save Troy?"

Whether it was Lady Evangeline or the demon called Jelly, either of them could have stopped the director easily enough. And then Troy wouldn't have been hurt.

"It wasn't part of our agreement."

To Daisy's reproach, Evangeline answered without inflection.

Hearing that, Daisy felt a dull shock go through her head. That was right. What Daisy had asked to be rescued were the director and the children.

Daisy realized she had no grounds to blame Evangeline. There was no reason to expect understanding of human feeling, so she had simply tried to honor what Daisy had asked of her, in her own way.

Daisy had been the one who cursed Troy at the start and knocked him over the head from behind. She had no right to reproach Lady Evangeline for standing by while Troy was stabbed.

"Do you want to save him?"

"Yes. I want to save him."

Was there even a method? Bringing a corpse back to its feet like Jelly had done was of course out of the question...

"Fortunately, I have holy water. Only one bottle."

One bottle?

"Choose, Daisy. Which of the two shall I give the holy water to—Troy, or that man?"

Evangeline raised one finger and pointed, first at Troy, then at Melek, whom Jelly was tending. Daisy hesitated, and Evangeline withdrew the question.

"Just kidding."

Evangeline curved her lips like something painted.

Nausea rose in her throat. If she hadn't heard that last line, it would have been obvious who she'd have chosen.

Daisy rushed inside. Thankfully, it looked like she'd found the children. She grabbed a boy and a girl, pulling them away from the director as she retreated toward the back.

All the other children were huddled together safely in a corner—so why the hell had just those two been left out in the open like that, completely exposed?

The director had apparently sensed us coming and was in the middle of her last-ditch thrashing. There had been some kind of knife incident, because someone was already injured.

The figure with chained arms and covered eyes—this person, too, had clearly been kept locked away to be sold into slavery as well.

"Melek?"

"You know each other?"

"Yes, more or less. Though something seems... different?"

On top of that, Jelly seemed to know this person. Someone he knew from when they were kidnapped by slave traders? Or was this person also a beastfolk?

"Same kind?"

"What? Well, if you had to classify it that way?"

So he was beastfolk, and they'd been kidnapped together as well. That meant the director was connected to the incident with Jelly and Daisy. Exposed quite thoroughly, wasn't it.

"Troy, you obstruct me to the very end."

Would you look at that. Talk about "the thief's own feet betraying them"—she's the one who did wrong, but she's making Troy out to be the villain. Is that not gaslighting? Domestic abuse, that's what it was.

With no intention of admitting her faults, the director stabbed Troy and took him hostage the single second our eyes were turned. Taking her own biological son hostage—what kind of logic was that?

And apparently having just Troy wasn't enough leverage to feel safe, because she seemed to be trying to recruit Jelly's friend. She was whispering, so I couldn't make out the words. Thankfully, Jelly—whose hearing was just as freakish as his sense of smell—summarized the conversation for me.

"She's trying to bribe him with food."

What? Who would fall for that?

"He seems starved."

Well, apparently someone would. He's been starved? The director must have been keeping him without food. So the moaning sound I'd heard about being hungry wasn't the children—it had been this Melek person.

There really is nothing more pitiful than being held over a barrel with food. Better stop him before Jelly's friend completely gives in.

"Are you hungry?"

The director—genuinely cheap of her. I mean, does she think she's the only one with food? Hey—I have food too! I bought loads of bread for the kids. There's a whole armful of it in the carriage, I'll have you know.

"I will attend to your hunger. There is no need to force it now."

"What are you doing? Melek!"

It seemed I'd managed to cut through the director's gaslighting adequately. Melek resisted the director, and the sparks flew my way.

"You—didn't you come to save me?"

"That was the original plan, but the situation has changed."

Did she plant a listening device? How did she know I’d originally intended to save her? Oh—come to think of it, spirits relay people's words to each other, don't they? That must be how she heard.

Even Daisy wouldn’t have asked me to save her if she'd known the director was such a rotten person. But circumstances were different now, weren’t they?