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As her apprentice approached us, Ryoshu’s “Nursefather” slowly stepped away, toward where the container of Golden Boughs lay nestled, emanating a soft glow.
Yi Sang: “The grafted boughs… what purpose the House of Spiders intends for them, I cannot well divine. Nevertheless… Dante, please give the order to intercept them. I ill wish to merely watch askance as the labor of mine fellows is squandered before our eyes.”
Dante: <Yeah. We’re getting those eight Golden Boughs back.>
Gregor: “Er… I think we only got seven Golden Boughs, not eight. Remember, Manager Bud?”
Gregor reminded me of our first official mission as Limbus Company with a strained smile on his face. I could still see the weight… of his mother’s giant hands, crushing and gripping their way through Gregor’s fathoms.
Meursault: “To be precise, the LCB has recovered six Golden Boughs that match the visual description of ‘warm, but not too warm’ adherent to the company definition of ‘Golden Bough’.”
Ryoshu gripped her scabbard tightly; red swimming behind her eyes.
Ryoshu: “Six, seven, it doesn’t–”
???: *SNORT*
The unfamiliar-sounding laughter reverberated throughout the room, bringing the discussion to a dead halt.
Dante: <Did someone just… laugh?>
Yi Sang: “T-twere not I, Dante. Yet, I fail to see the according mirth upon the faces herein gathered, either…”
???: “Fascia doesn’t laugh.”
A figure next to Gregor, clad in steel armor, spoke. She must have snuck into the room while we were all stunned.
Gregor: “Schiebe!”
Gregor jumped backwards in surprise, crashing into Meursault. The figure didn’t move.
Gregor: “Ha… ha… right, lady. Thanks for that.”
Gregor: “...Meursault. Do you know who laughed at Ryoshu?”
Meursault: “The Pinky Nursefather.”
Every gaze in the room slowly turned towards the Pinky Nursefather, who stood before us impassively. Without realizing it, we had all descended into a stunned silence once more. Ryoshu was the first to break it.
Ryoshu: “...You. What is this bullshit?”
Ryoshu put a hand on the hilt of her scabbard, and stepped towards the Pinky Nursefather.
Ryoshu: “I made sure to cut your vicious tongue clean through. This sword’s wounds; they can never be repaired… that’s what you told me. You should barely be able to breathe, much less talk. But… more than that.”
Ryoshu pointed her scabbard directly at the Pinky Nursefather.
Ryoshu: “The bitch that wore that veil… she would hurl all sorts of abuse my way; but unlike that drunkard piece of shit, it never seemed to lessen her own misery. Every laughter I heard from her was a withered, hollow thing. She could never sound so carefree.”
Ryoshu: “You aren’t the Pinky Nursefather. You aren’t my… you aren’t Shiomi.”
Suddenly, Ryoshu darted towards the Pinky Nursefather with a flash.
*CLANG*!
The Pinky Nursefather’s apprentice blocked Ryoshu’s blow; barely managing to drive her back a few paces.
Dante: <I had planned to take on the apprentice with everyone, but…>
…Ryoshu was hacking away at the Pinky Nursefather’s apprentice with an unprecedented fury. With a clash that drove both of them backwards, the Pinky Nursefather’s apprentice finally made enough distance to speak.
???: “Please, pardon this humble self’s intrusion between this reunion of mother and child. However… my master has forbidden me from allowing you to pierce her veil just yet.”
Ryoshu scoffed.
Ryoshu: “What a farce. Pinky Nursefather? Mother and child? I’ve never seen this woman in my life. Who the fuck are you?”
The Pinky Nursefather seemed to… take a breath, in and out. Was she getting ready to laugh at Ryoshu again?
Slowly, her lips parted, and the tongue that Ryoshu should have cleaved right through began to move.
Pinky Nursefather?: “Are you sure? Did you really pierce my tongue with that sword? Think. Was that memory even real? Can you say with such certainty that we have never met? Is there even a single thing about this place you can remember?”
Ryoshu: “…There is one thing I know about this place. Now that you’ve killed Shiomi Yoru, and taken her place as the Dihui Star, your life is over. All of my tutors knew that. Not a one would have willingly stayed here.”
Ryoshu: “There is no escape from the spider’s web; no comfort to be found between its strands. The House of Spiders… in its past, present, and future, there is not a single act of love to be found.”
Pinky Nursefather?: “…Perhaps you are right, then. Perhaps no member of the House ever truly loved another.”
The Pinky Nursefather placed a hand on her sword’s hilt, and laughed mirthlessly.
Pinky Nursefather?: “Then… then, what use is all this? If the one thread I had been following is severed; if you will never return—“
???: “The plan is behind schedule. Fascia is getting hungry.”
Ryoshu and the Pinky Nursefather both snapped their heads towards the armored figure furiously.
Ryoshu: “S.Y.B.A.U. I.S.T.G.”
Pinky Nursefather?: “SYBAU ISTG.”
Ryoshu froze and looked at the Pinky Nursefather; eyes wide. Suddenly, a vision lurched into perception.
???: “Okay. So, this next one’s ‘SYBAU’!”
Yoshihilde: “Si…bao?”
???: “No, mommy! You’ve gotta say it all in one syllable, like this! SYBAU!”
Yoshihilde: “What does… ‘S.Y.B.A.U.’ mean?”
???: “It means ‘shut your bitch ass up’! And if you’re really mad, you can toss in an ‘ISTG’! That one means, ‘I swear to god’!”
Yoshihilde: “Did your classmates tell you that? Did they tell you to ‘sybau’?”
???: “Nooo! Geez, mommy, you can stop making that scary face! It’s just how us kids talk, OK?”
Yoshihilde: “...Ok. But you can’t use that language here. I won’t A.I.”
???: “O-oh. Did I do something wrong, mommy? Do you not like learning these anymore?”
Yoshihilde: “…No, it’s not something you did. Kids… shouldn’t be using swear words in front of adults. Even adults have to watch their tongues, sometimes.”
???: “Hmmm… well, RIP to ‘TS PMO’, I guess. Oh! How about ‘FR’? It means ‘for real’! ‘FRFR’ for if it’s for real for real, ‘cause sometimes it’s not enough to know that something’s FR.”
Yoshihilde: “‘For real’? When would you need to use that?”
???: “There’s tons of ways to use FR, IIRC. But, OTOH… you’d use it to show how genyu… gen… how much you mean something. Like… ‘Mommy, ILY, FRFR!’”
Yoshihilde: “I.L.Y F.R.F.R.F.R.”
???: “Noooooo! You can’t do it three times, mommy! There are rules!”
Yoshihilde: “T.A.R.?”
???: “Yeah, a ton! Lemme show you. See, when you put NGL in the front of a sentence, it…”
Just as soon as it came, the vision left. Ryoshu was the first to recover from the daze. She shook her head, and fixed the Pinky Nursefather with a hateful gaze.
Ryoshu: “Even though I made her swear she wouldn’t say it… I still kept her out of Valencina’s sight for a full month after that. None of the Nursefathers ever heard her say it. How do you know it? How do you know what that means?”
Dante: <Ryoshu!>
A black, murky scream clawed its way out of Ryoshu’s throat, and she leapt at the Pinky Nursefather.
Ryoshu: “What have you done with my daughter?!”
The Pinky Nursefather swatted Ryoshu’s blade aside with a disdainful sweep of her sword.
Pinky Nursefather?: “So you remembered. But you have lost any right to claim her as your child, when you made it clear that you did not care for her. …No, you had made that clear long ago, when you had left her to rot in that Time Safe. If you truly had cared, you would have taken her with you!”
Ryoshu: “I wasn’t strong enough! I needed… I couldn’t risk fighting them all with her on my side, so I needed help! I was going to come back for her! She… she would only have felt a moment slip by.”
I could hear Ryoshu’s voice breaking, and the Pinky Nursefather sneering at her, before continuing to speak.
Pinky Nursefather?: “A moment? She felt a moment, yes. She felt every moment of time reaved from her, decades of life lived in isolation, in abandonment–your abandonment! She didn’t open her eyes to see a loving mother waiting for her embrace! She counted to ten, opened them, and saw darkness. You knew she hated the dark. You knew that, and you knowingly cast her in! ‘You’d show her all the things you didn’t get to experience’? What a joke.”
A hollow, withered laugh escaped the lips of the Pinky Nursefather, as she gripped her sword with lethal intent.
Ryoshu: “Shut… up. You’re lying to me. I know… I’d used that Time Safe hundreds of times. I don’t know how the hell you know what I… told…”
Ryoshu looked at her scarred, mottled hands. The Pinky Nursefather, who seemed all but prepared to end Ryoshu’s life, stopped; waiting on Ryoshu’s next words.
Ryoshu: “What I had told… only to… her.”
Ryoshu’s scabbard clattered onto the floor.
She took an unsteady step towards the Pinky Nursefather, as if under a trance. Ryoshu looked at–no, through the veil.
Ryoshu: “Ara…ya?”
Araya?: “…Hi, Mom.”