“Alex Eagley,” she said. “Help me build this small world. I’m sorry, but I need you to betray our founder, Aros Hawkeye.”
After hearing all this, do I even have a choice?
He’d been boxed in so thoroughly that even that realization sent another shockwave of pleasure crashing through him.
His answer had been decided from the start.
“I’d love to!” he cried. “Are you, like, a genius or something, Joanne-sama!?”
I’ll fall with her. As far as she goes, I’ll go.
He wanted to help create the “small world” Joanne dreamed of. And seeing what kind of hellish confusion the world would sink into along the way? That would be a spectacle worth living for.
Alex couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from curling upward.
He would follow Joanne all the way to the bottom of hell.
No, he had to.
It didn’t take long for her words to seep into him and stain him completely.
“Man, just thinking about it now, I can’t stop getting hyped!” he burst out, practically shaking. “The Kenneth Orthodoxy, the Aros Temple Cult, and then the whole world, playing them all like puppets. Ahh, that sounds so damn fun!?”
“Good,” Joanne murmured. “I’m glad. I knew I could trust you.”
She let out a quiet breath of relief, the tension easing from her shoulders.
After confirming that there was no lie in Alex’s eyes, she reached a firm conclusion. This man will be useful.
“I want you to serve as my loyal retainer,” she said. “You okay with that?”
“Of course, I am!” he replied immediately. “I’ll do anything you say!”
“Good… Then I’ll tell you the plan. Listen carefully, okay?”
Alex leaned forward, hanging on her every word.
The plan went along the lines of this:
At the core of everything was Oakley.
To fix his short lifespan, they needed to transform him into something utterly beyond the concept of mortality.
To do that, regrettably, every human being in the world would have to become a sacrifice for Oakley’s sake.
By annihilating all of humanity, they would create a world without conflict, a world where they alone could enjoy eternal happiness.
In other words, the foundation of Joanne’s plan to reach her small world was this:
She intended to cause a catastrophe surpassing even Aros’s scheme to sacrifice every citizen of the Holy Kingdom of Gerleid and pay with the entire world if that’s what it took to extend Oakley’s life.
The sheer scale of it, far beyond even Aros’s ambition, left Alex stunned. Just imagining it made sweat break out across the bridge of his nose.
“If you leave behind grudges, they’ll turn into the seeds of the next war,” Joanne went on. “Individuals might manage to understand each other, but the more people you have, the more friction you get. I want a small world that begins and ends with just me and Oakley.”
Sanity and madness, two incompatible minds, had fused inside her.
What now resided within Joanne was a chaotic psyche no one else could have imagined. A girl so devoted that, for the sake of the one she loved, could sacrifice every other human alive without a flicker of hesitation.
Oakley, who knew nothing of the plan’s true shape, would end up dancing on the palm of her hand.
The worst part was that Oakley’s “Orthodoxy victory route” and Joanne’s plan to create a small world followed the same path. At least for a while.
More specifically, the equalization of power between Orthodoxy and heresy—the internal operations Joanne and her allies needed to carry out for that—would, in practice, end up piggybacking on Oakley’s actions.
Because of that overlap, Joanne would throw herself wholeheartedly into supporting Celestia’s “reverse brainwashing.”
They’d bring the two sides’ strength to an even balance, let them grind each other down until they were in tatters, and then swoop in to snatch everything away.
Along the way, Oakley might get the wrong idea.
He might start to think, Maybe Joanne really has become my ally.
For Oakley, that would be a fatal misunderstanding.
For Joanne, it was nothing but the pure, undiluted truth.
Joanne was on Oakley’s side. She acted for his sake. If Oakley could live in peace, there was no greater happiness. After all, what could possibly be strange about wanting the person you love to live a long life?
Before the plan reached its end, she and Oakley would clash over and over.
Words would eventually fail them. At some point, they’d come to blows, literally trying to kill each other.
But in the end, he would understand.
He would be grateful.
“Thank you, Joanne…” he would say. “Thank you for creating such a happy world for us.”
After it was all over, she wanted to do the kind of sweet, ordinary things normal lovers did. To stare into each other’s eyes for no reason at all until the tension became too much and one of them burst into helpless laughter.
To ask, “What’s so funny?” and hear, “Oh, nothing,” in return.
To tickle his palm, teasing him into inviting her closer.
To lean in at the same time without knowing who moved first and share a light kiss.
To slide all the way down into debauched acts, tumbling into a deep, tangled joining.
A simple embrace would be enough. Just touching him would be enough.
She wanted proof of him.
She wanted to feel him for as long as time would allow.
She wanted to know his weak spots.
She wanted him to know hers.
I’ll hold your weaknesses in my arms, she thought. So please, accept mine too.
She wanted to bear his child.
To sink him into the cradle of her chest and let him drown there.
She wanted to taste his body.
Blood. Fluids. Flesh. Fat.
Red. Purple. Yellow.
She didn’t want to die before the man she loved.
She wanted to die with him.
She wanted to be the one to see him off at the end.
She wanted to live alongside him, with nothing left in the world to worry about.
Happiness, savagery, decay, like a jumble of childhood dreams and fantasies bathed in sunlight, free of every chain and obligation, in a ruined world where nothing remained but warmth and quiet… forever and ever…
That was Joanne’s wish.
“Right now,” she said, voice steady, “we’re in the preparation phase. Oakley needs to get stronger and move freely. First, we gotta earn his trust.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Alex answered, eyes gleaming.
“We won’t start moving for real until much later. Until then, sharpen your fangs.”
Joanne let out a slow breath. I really did get myself a good subordinate, she thought.
Alex, meanwhile, was practically bouncing. Best boss ever, his expression said.
A psychopath and a psychopath, hand in hand, guiding Oakley toward the best possible ending by their standards.
“By the way, Joanne-sama,” Alex asked, tilting his head, “why’d you decide to pull in a guy like me? We’ve barely even talked before, right?”
“It’s simple,” she replied. “You’ve been giving Oakley those weird looks for a while now. I figured people drawn to him the way we are would probably get along.”
“Oooh, that makes sense…”
Alex’s fixation on Oakley was abnormal.
Even after witnessing Fuankilo’s murder, his admiration hadn’t cooled at all. Of course, Joanne had noticed that gaze.
I always figured Joanne-sama only cared about Aros-sama and Oakley-senpai and literally no one else, Alex thought. Didn’t expect her to be this observant. Her awareness is kinda huge, huh?
They were moths drawn to a blinding light.
Their eyes met.
Between them, a fragile, dangerously unstable bond formed, one that existed only through a third party named Oakley Mercury. That thin connection was enough, and the two of them clasped hands tightly.