“I have two requests,” she said. “Please forgive Arus. And…please allow me to give birth to his child.” At the very end of her sentence, she gently caressed her swollen belly. “After that, please…please dispose of me. I’m happy you think of me as family, but what I’ve done can’t be forgiven.”
“Dispose of, eh…?”
I shifted my body from leaning forward to leaning back on the chair I was sitting in, then looked up at the ceiling. I organized my words a little. It didn’t take long. I’d had a full year to prepare.
“Given my history in my previous life, it’s honestly hard for me to approve of your relationship with Arus,” I began.
“I know.”
“And even removed from all of that, I felt betrayed because of how much I trusted you.”
“Yes.”
“But I think I’m ready to accept your relationship.”
She took a second to register what I’d said. “You… What?”
“I’m still pretty resistant to the idea, but I know now that that’s because of my own trauma. In other words, it’s an emotional response. I want to put that aside for the moment.”
“But you can’t. You can’t forgive me, and it’s not purely emotional, is it? If you let this slide, people are going to undermine the Greyrat family. We have authority now, and that authority is derived from protecting all manner of things.”
“Authority? Hmm. Honestly, I don’t really subscribe to that whole thing.”
“This isn’t just about you. I’m sure Lucie, Lara, Sieg, Lily, and Chris will be affected. They might even get hurt. You need to dispose of me. I’m sure anyone you ask would say the same.”
“Fine, but I really don’t like that word. Let’s call it a punishment, all right? Lemme think of something… It’s just that I don’t think it should be a severe punishment.”
I leaned forward again and looked at Aisha. She looked back with wide eyes.
“Aisha, you messed up this time. Running away with Arus was the worst choice you could’ve made, but you said it a moment ago, right? You didn’t know what else to do. This might be a first for you, but for normal folks like me, we make these kinds of mistakes all the time. Even if you know better in your mind, your body doesn’t do what you tell it to. You know what the right choice is, but you can’t do it for whatever reason, and you end up picking the worst option,” I explained, peering into Aisha’s face.
I laid it out for her: “If you’d taken someone else’s son, or if Arus ended up in tatters, I don’t know what I would’ve done with you. But Arus was doing well, and even if he strayed from the right path a little, he grew up. And he’s my son, and you’re my little sister. Sure, on a biological level, I dislike the two of you together, but you’re both a part of my family. All of this is a family matter.”
I said I was going to put aside my emotions, but in the end, it came back to that.
“Basically, my family messed up. That’s all,” I said, concluding my explanation.
Aisha quietly bit her lip. I could see the tears forming in her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away.
“What did…I do wrong…?”
“Let me see…”
Aisha must’ve known, but this was her way of checking her answers.
Let me think about this rationally.
Today, I was going to stay calm and talk things out. For Norn, it made sense to sit next to her quietly, but for Aisha, I needed to talk. She would listen.
“First, about Arus. I think he’s still too immature for you. He didn’t have the ability to think on his own and make good choices. Obviously, he’s much better now. You said he wouldn’t change, but that’s not true. In the last year, he’s definitely grown. He’s still plenty immature, but that goes for everyone. There’s no one in the world who isn’t in some way. Hell, this whole thing showed you how immature you are too, right? People make mistakes, and they learn from them. That’s how it goes.”
If nothing else, Arus wasn’t capable of truly protecting Aisha yet. His actual strength hadn’t caught up with his fiery drive. He had grown stronger, and he found his resolve, but Aisha’s depression spoke to the fact that Arus wasn’t able to protect her mental well-being.
That said, it was questionable whether I was doing that for my wives…
But I digress. At the end of the day, Arus was still lacking in all sorts of ways.
“It’s less that you did something wrong and more that you messed up the timing. It was way too early for this. You should’ve waited to marry him once he’d graduated from school, come of age, found work, built up experience, and became able to make decisions on his own, even if he never quite got on your level. Given his age, it’s impossible to avoid him ending up relying on you way too much.”
“Marriage…? Arus is your oldest son. Isn’t he going to become the next head of the family?”
“Our family doesn’t have any customs like that. Eris is always going on about that kind of thing, but she doesn’t actually care that much. Lucie could be the next head for all I care. Honestly, even if Arus becomes the next head, I have no issue with you being his wife.”
“But I’m a maid!”
“If that’s a problem, I’ll just dismiss you. You retired because of your marriage. Boom, done.”
“Haha, what the heck?” Aisha said with a laugh.
She was finally laughing a little. I was relieved to hear her laughter for the first time in so long.
“Next, we have to talk about you.”
She paused. “Right.”
“First, you should’ve talked this out with someone. Before ever laying a finger on Arus, before ever running off, you should’ve laid some groundwork. If you’d done that, you could’ve had support when I pushed back during the meeting. And I would’ve been able to prepare myself mentally and emotionally.”
“You’re right. Why didn’t I do that…? Maybe it never occurred to me you’d say no.”
While she’d suspected I had memories from a previous life, she didn’t know what those memories consisted of. Considering that, it wasn’t all that strange for her not to worry.
If I wasn’t against their relationship, that’d only leave Lilia to convince.
“You really should have started dropping hints with Lilia.”
“Yeah, but if you weren’t against our relationship, she probably would’ve been fine with it.”
She might’ve been right. However, Lilia was Aisha’s mother, so she should have told her how she felt about Arus and gotten her support. If Lilia had been on Aisha’s side for the family meeting, I might not have objected so strongly. Despite appearances, I was pretty weak when it came to Lilia. She’d looked after my mom for all this time.
“You know, you caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people,” I told Aisha.
She considered this. “Was everyone angry?”
“They were worried.”
“What do you think I should do about it?”
“Reflect on your actions first, then apologize. Especially to Lilia. You need to sit down and really apologize to her.”
“Right,” she agreed after a moment.
Lilia… Aisha’s actions had deeply hurt the hardworking granny of the household. Regardless of what Aisha was going to say to her mother, their conversation needed to happen. If I involved myself a little, she’d understand.
“What else…?” I wondered. “Well, I should say I was in the wrong too.”
“What? You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.
“Not true. I told you to live your life as you see fit, but when push came to shove, I was the one who put my foot down. I shouldn’t have done that. I should’ve figured out my own feelings before reaching a conclusion.”
“Considering the situation, that’s just the way it was. And I was a coward.”
She might have said that, but this was something I would pay more mind to going forward. I needed to reflect on my own mistakes.
“For now, that about sums it up, I think? Anything else?” I asked.
She thought for a second. “Rudeus, you need to talk to your children more.”
“Huh? Well… Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know what to talk to them about, but I’ll make more time for it.”
If nothing else, I clearly should’ve talked to Arus more. If he’d trusted me more, maybe none of this would have happened. That wasn’t limited to him. I was going to talk to all of my kids more. I needed to really get to know them.
“What else?”
She didn’t answer.
“If that’s all, would you be okay with coming home for now?”
Again, she didn’t answer.
“I want to discuss what to do with you and Arus with everyone else.”
Aisha looked a little concerned. Was there still something else on her mind?
If there was, she didn’t say so. Instead, she slowly nodded. “All right. I understand.”
“Okay, I’ll go call everyone else over.”
I stood up. All that was left was to go home and convince Lilia. Then everything would be back to normal…not. Things would never go back to how they’d once been. Everything had changed too much for that. For one, we were getting a new member of the family. That in and of itself was something to celebrate.
There wasn’t much you could do about change. You just had to accept it and move forward.
“Rudeus?” Aisha asked, as I thought about all of that.
“Hmm?” I turned around to find Aisha sobbing, a devastated look across her face.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, I know.”
“I’m sorry… I was such an idiot… I’m so sorry.”
I returned to Aisha’s side and stroked her hair as she cried. She continued to weep, even as everyone worriedly peeked into the house.
I’d never noticed because she was so talented, but maybe my youngest sister was actually far more of a child than my other sister.
That was how Aisha and Arus’s elopement came to an end.