Please Don’t Die, My Lady

Chapter 31

On my 11th birthday, my father died.

It wasn’t a big deal.

It was such a dry and meaningless death that it left me feeling a little hollow.

It was an end no different from that of any vagrant, forgotten and unmemorialized by anyone.

It was suicide.

***

In the summer when I was 14, on the night of a waning moon, my younger sibling died.

It wasn’t a big deal.

It just startled me a bit since I never thought it would happen twice.

It was still a death only I remembered and mourned, no different from that of a small animal.

It was suicide.

***

In the winter when I was 16, on an especially cold day when we were checking the mansion’s heating system, my mother died.

It wasn’t a big deal.

I only found myself disgusted by how numb I’d grown to such an obvious and uninspired death.

It was the selfish end of someone who thought they were atoning, even though I had never asked for it.

It was suicide.

***

I never cursed my circumstances.

I was just aware, objectively, that I wasn’t particularly lucky.

A father who conned his way into a title.

A mother forced into marriage through financial ties.

A family bound solely by mutual interests, devoid of love, always desolate, where shouting and violence were constant.

And, of course, their rage wasn’t solely directed at each other.

The two were like unwilling passengers on the same ship, tied to one another until one of them died.

Naturally, there were two convenient scapegoats at hand, aware of their situation yet unable to object.

Still, it seems they loved each other in their own way.

After nights filled with beatings and insults, mornings would always bring tears, embraces, and the semblance of a warm family union.

The carrot always followed the stick.

I don’t think they were cunning enough to consciously manipulate us, but…

My younger sibling, who was tender-hearted, seemed to give her heart to them.

I didn’t.

I don’t think I ever loved them.

Though it doesn’t seem I hated them either.

My father’s reckless decisions in his youth brought him the barony, a status, and wealth that a commoner could never dream of.

But he lived his entire life tormented by a fear greater than what he had gained.

A single slip-up, and it would all be over.

No matter how carefully he concealed it, the pressure was unbearable.

Every time I looked at him, I felt pity more than hatred.

Even if he was a detestable man who wielded violence and then sobbed apologies the next day, I could at least understand the torment he carried.

Though I couldn’t help but think he shouldn’t have had children in the first place if he was going to apologize like that.

Still, the time when my father was alive was the least painful.

At least for my younger sibling.

She was small and fragile.

Rather than see such a little child hurt, it was better that I took it all.

I was already a prematurely withered child, devoid of affection or expectations for them.

If my sibling, who still loved them, suffered as I did, it would clearly leave deep scars in her heart.

It actually happened a few times.

So, it made sense for me to take the brunt of it.

Even my father seemed to agree.

Whether it was instinctual or intentional, he mostly hit me in every situation.

I thought that was enough.

Deficiency breeds dependency.

Of course, it wasn’t healthy.

Alcohol, drugs, women.

It was a cliché downward spiral.

And soon, it became just as typical for him to lose his reason entirely.

After countless tearful apologies, swearing he’d never do it again, he’d return the next day as the same beast.

On the night before my 11th birthday, it was just another one of those nights.

Only slightly worse than usual.

He punched, elbowed, kicked, and struck until he finally picked up a shard from a broken glass that had rolled onto the floor.

Through my bloodied vision, I saw him walking toward my sibling.

The glass shard in his hand sparkled like a jewel, dangerously sharp and glaring.

Without thinking, I ran toward him, throwing my entire body against him.

Of course, with the strength of an 11-year-old, I couldn’t even push him back a step, but I managed to divert his attention to me.

What happened after that is a blur.

Just pain, pain, and more pain.

When I opened my eyes, I saw my sibling sobbing and screaming while holding me tightly.

I saw my father trembling, dropping the glass shard as his hands quivered violently.

Feeling relief, I smiled faintly, and then I saw my father widen his eyes as if they would pop out and rush toward me.

He screamed for my mother, the mage, while pressing on my chest so hard it hurt.

And then, I must have fallen asleep.

The next day, I thought, Maybe I’ll have a warm birthday today.

With a child’s naive hope, I dragged my aching body to my father’s door, only to be greeted by the sight of his body hanging limp from a noose.

A sallow corpse dangling in the loop of a rope.

His eyes stared vacantly into nothingness, his tongue lolling out.

Yellow fluid and filth dripped from his crotch, staining the floor.

Dried stains marked where fluids had seeped from every possible opening.

I thought I’d cry, scream, or react somehow at the sight of someone’s death.

But I just stood there, silently, and picked up the neatly arranged letter on the desk.

He said he loved us.

He said he didn’t do it out of hatred.

He said he was sorry.

He said he was scum.

He said he regretted having us.

He said he regretted becoming a noble.

He said, Happy birthday.

Ha.

I tore the letter to pieces and scattered it beneath his corpse.

It was the only way I could bear it.

Then I quietly sat down, leaning against the wall.

I stayed there until my mother, noticing the silence, came in and screamed.

Could there be a worse birthday gift?

An unbearably heavy burden I never asked for.

The life of my own father.

An utterly horrifying thing.

***

The Empire wasn’t such a prosperous place that it could concern itself with every barony in the outskirts.

That’s why my father could commit such atrocities and still indulge in the luxury of choosing his own death.

But if someone had been dispatched from the capital to investigate his death, everything would have been exposed.

In the end, he was irresponsible to the very last.

By choosing death, he tried to strip even our right to live.

Though I don’t think he intended for things to turn out this way.

He was just a terrible human who ran away under the guise of atonement, not one acting out of malice.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left a letter like that.

The grotesque collection of letters that managed to disappoint me, someone who thought I wouldn’t be let down as long as I never expected anything in the first place.

In any case, the reason I could survive even after my father’s death was because my mother was, in her own way, a skilled mage.

She concealed his death, handled his responsibilities, and even created an imitation of him to attend the social gatherings he couldn’t avoid.

In truth, it wasn’t much different from how things had been before.

My father had always relied on her for everything, having talent only for deception.

Even so, the burden of fear my father left behind steadily consumed my mother.

My sibling.

My kind and lovable sibling seemed to have been deeply shaken by my father’s death.

She locked herself in her room and cried for days, refusing food, leaving me more worried about what I should do for her.

My mother didn’t have the capacity to console her.

My mother became my father.

She had cursed before, but the first time she lashed out violently, claiming my sibling’s crying was annoying, was on that day.

Tragically enough.

My sibling stopped crying.

It seemed my mother found this to her liking.

So much so that similar incidents happened repeatedly afterward.

Unlike my father, my mother’s violence was strangely targeted solely at my sibling.

I don’t know why.

Perhaps she thought I was too old and unyielding to be an easy target.

Or maybe she had already taken note of my magical talents back then.

I never wanted such favoritism.

If my sibling was going to suffer, I would have preferred to endure it myself.

Not out of altruism.

But because she was the only precious thing I had.

The only family I was left with.

I tried pleading with my mother.

I begged her to stop. To hit me instead.

Of course, she didn’t listen.

All I could do was hold my sibling tightly in my arms.

I couldn’t kill my mother, after all.

My sibling began to break down.

Her bright, radiant eyes became nothing more than dull black spheres, lifelessly open.

The one human expression left in our family, which had belonged to her, eventually turned into something like mine.

Even so, she tried to act cheerful. Her effort was almost pitiful.

But there were too many things I couldn’t ignore, no matter how hard I tried.

Though the wounds on her body were erased by magic, there always seemed to be a new one whenever I saw her.

Every night, I heard muffled sobbing from her room, as if she were choking on her cries to suppress them.

The day I found a trail of straight scars starting at her wrist and climbing up her forearm, I thought perhaps I should have killed my mother.

No, even if I had, my sibling would have suffered in her own way.

The moment she was born into this household with her fragile heart, her ending seemed predetermined.

The worst possible ending.