She wanted to die.
Everything had become loathsome to her. She was exhausted.
She understood she could expire peacefully if she directed God’s Command at herself. All she would have to do was say one little word—die—and she could pass on.
But Brunhild was unable to do that because she was no longer alone.
She touched her stomach. She felt a new life inside.
The last of her family, left by her beloved.
Ten months and ten days later, she gave birth to a child. After the pain of childbirth, a child was safely born.
The midwife brought over the baby. She tried to put the little pink life into Brunhild’s arms.
Brunhild shrieked and batted her hands away, and the midwife nearly dropped the child.
She didn’t want to see anything like that anymore—she was sick of it all.
She was scared of having a family.
Brunhild left her baby to a wet nurse. She didn’t nurse the baby at all. She gave the child everything it would need to live and made use of her power as queen to help it from the shadows, but she didn’t touch the child even once.
When the child eventually became an adult, Brunhild left the castle. She was fed up with getting involved with people. Since Brunhild had God’s Command, she had been a great ruler, no less than her predecessor. She had been popular. She was loved even by the child she had never touched.
Their love was revolting to her.
She settled in a hut in the mountains. There, she lived off the blessings of the forest. She was alone. She recalled that it had been terribly painful when she was young. But now, the tranquility of isolation was her greatest consolation.
A thought came to her: She should have done this from the beginning.
She should never have sought out a family.
In the early afternoon light, she turned the page of her book.
The woman lived alone in a mountain hut.
He heard the sound of the rain.
The man lay there in the darkness.
A raging storm was tearing him apart, a rain like needles stabbing at his body.
It was hell.
The place where those who commit sins fall.
This man had offered innocent children as test subjects for evil experiments; it stood to reason he would go to hell.
He was unable to get up. But not because the rain striking him was cold.
His heart was dead.
His sister’s rejection had shattered his heart. His whole life seemed terribly foolish in retrospect, and he wondered what he had ever worked so hard for.
But he wasn’t angry at his sister. Thinking about it now, he had been in the wrong.
To him, she had been family, but to her, he had not been. Of course. He hadn’t resembled the brother she had lost, even a little. And he had treated her as a stranger for a very long time. So of course, she would have rejected him at the end.
But his head had been filled with stories he’d made up to suit himself.
With the mistaken idea that she was still waiting for a reunion.
There had never been any family waiting for him.
That was just complacency.
But even so, his love for his sister smoldered within him.
He wanted to apologize to her, at least. He had said something cruel at the end.
But that could no longer be granted.
His sister was not in hell, and she would not fall here.
So the man could not get up. There was no reason for him to.
Time passed by, just like that. There was no concept of time in hell, but if there had been, then what corresponded to a hundred years would have passed, at the very least.
The man had become like a rock now. He was just a stone statue, battered by the rain.
A stone statue that would simply continue to lie there, on and on.
Then he happened to hear some footsteps in the distance. They came with the faint sound of splashing water.
Someone had come to the stone statue.
“I’ve finally found you.” That remark came from a man with black hair and black eyes.
There was a faint light in his right hand. It vanished like the flame of a candle. “That’s it for my Thunder. It just barely lasted long enough. I can’t even make my way through this true darkness now.”
The man knelt down by the stone statue.
The stone statue’s lips slowly moved. “…Get lost.”
He spoke for the first time in a very long time. It took him some time to remember how to speak.
The man looked up at the black sky and said, “What terrible rain.”
“I told you to make yourself scarce.”
“I figured you’d be lost. I thought a king should be magnanimous enough to show care for his retainers.”
The statue scoffed. “A king. A king, hmm? So you still believe that nonsense?” Words of hatred spilled from the statue. “You’re no king. You’re an orphan who doesn’t even know his own name.” The statue spoke his secret—what had made the man king. “Worthless. You’re the most worthless man in the whole kingdom.”
The statue hated the man. He was only telling him this out of hostility.
The man listened silently to the truth about himself.
After telling him everything, the statue insulted the man. “But even after falling to hell, you still believe you’re king? How incredibly comical.”
After hearing what the statue had to say, the man said, “If you say this is true, then I’ve no doubt it is.”
“Of course. You’re so self-important.”
“So it seems. But here’s what I think. I don’t mind if it’s just arrogance on my part.”
“What…?”
“You lit the way for me. Without that, I wouldn’t even have been able to live my life. I have no regrets at all about having walked the path you showed me.” The man added, “Thanks to you, I was able to be myself.”
“Are you a fool? Never once have I done anything for your sake. Everything I ever told you was nonsense. I’ve never taken you seriously.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that you saved me. And that I still need you.”
“What point is there in seeking me, in this darkness where we can’t see a thing?”
“It’s precisely because we’re in the darkness that I seek light.”
Rain soaked the statue’s cheeks. Droplets dripped from his eyes. They flowed to the black earth.
The statue said, “Worthless. You truly are worthless…”
But the statue didn’t reject the man again.
Now neither of them was alone.
The man leaned against the statue.
Just like family.