78 . Maria (1)
Rihanna, who was grabbed by her children and dragged into her basement as soon as she woke up in the morning, was familiar with the situation.
Before her children could speak, Rihanna volunteered to ask them questions. She said that it is better to be beaten first, Rihanna said, but she was trying to find her own way to survive.
“I… What about today?”
Rihanna, imprinted with an overwhelming fear of being attacked by her children from her first meeting, was still obedient, but after she heard about them in the Great Forest, her attitude changed even more politely.
Sitting on her knees, holding her hands together and bowing her head, at first glance, she looked like an ascetic who had gone through all sorts of hardships.
Her children didn’t hate Rihanna like that.
Gods are naturally merciful to the humans who serve them.
She didn’t have to harm Rihanna, who had come into their territory before she knew it.
Stella opened her mouth, caressing Rihanna’s hair in her soft voice mixed with her lithe tone.
“You don’t have to be so scared.”
“Right, you also have a rough idea of why we call now, don’t you?”
I could now understand that when they called me, it was related to Ain’s past.
Now I can roughly predict the contents.
Helga, Cassandra, and Leon met all the party members once, but there was one person Ain hadn’t met yet. It’s probably her thing about her.
Rihanna lifted her head and took one look at her children’s faces before she spoke in a voice that trembled as pitifully as she felt now.
“Maria… Right?”
Among the trembling voices, these were words of unwavering conviction.
“Yeah, you know without telling me now, right? Great.”
Olivia complimented Rihanna by touching her cheek or chin as she really treats her dog.
Human dignity is a light trampling, but they had the right to do it, and Rihanna didn’t feel particularly offended. She
She wanted to be She was excited at the thought that she could be recognized by them. She wanted to talk even more. But Rihanna seemed reluctant to answer as she hesitated for a moment.
She
She wanted to give an answer, but she couldn’t open her mouth about areas she didn’t know much about.
“Honestly, I don’t really have anything to say about Maria….”
Rihanna rolled her eyes and looked at her, noticing the unusual expressions on her elves’ faces, and swallowed her breath.
“So you have nothing to say?”
“Oh no! No!”
Rihanna hurriedly denied her own words, waving her hand, and she went back to thinking about herself.
Maria.
To be honest, when I thought about her again, there was nothing to criticize about her.
She was always a woman who gave good vibes to everyone at the party.
Neither Helga was particularly drunk in front of her, and Cassandra would proudly talk about her achievements or show off her newly researched magic. Rihanna was no exception. She also recalled the time when she, too, went around her dungeon, showing her jewelry and trinkets she had obtained, and talking with her triumphantly.
Her appearance is also thanks to her pale blonde hair with white color and red eyes reminiscent of rubies, she boasts an outstanding beauty where mystery and beauty coexist. Besides, she always had a benevolent smile on her face, so just thinking about her face made a part of her heart feel warm.
Unlike when he treated Cassandra or her other party members, Leon was kind to her, and he never had any s*xual contact with her, even though he had touched her Hel or Cassandra.
Helga, Cassandra, and Leon had a side of subtly ignoring Ain, but not Maria. She didn’t treat her child as a porter, but treated her as an equal person, showing a course worthy of the name of a saint.
Rihanna could fully understand her son’s crush on her.
She was one of those party members that Rihanna would like to keep in touch with, if she could. Who could hate her for her good influence on everyone?
She said yes, but she couldn’t get this out of her mouth. They probably didn’t invite Rihanna to hear good things about Maria.
As if to prove him, Elia stared at Rihanna, and a negative voice came out of her mouth.
“The thought you are thinking right now is not the answer we want?”
Rihanna swallowed her breath with a gasp, then rolled her eyes down again.
A sigh leaked from Rihanna’s slightly quivering lips.
“Um….”
They are scary, but the truth is.
Besides, Rihanna didn’t really know anything about Maria.
If you think about her now, Maria was usually a listener, but she never spoke of herself first.
Stella, who felt sorry for Rihanna when she couldn’t get her answer right, sorted things out.
“Then I don’t even know where you are?”
That was enough to answer. Rihanna answered, lifting her head and looking Stella’s face.
“I don’t know exactly, but maybe they didn’t go to the capital?”
“Really? Then we can go there.”
A very easy thing to do is to ask to go to the capital city and then make another case there to meet Maria.
However, Rihanna’s next words made them think differently.
“But Ain wouldn’t want to go there?”
The children answered the unexpected words at the same time.
“Why?”
Reflexively, I first brought up the word why, and then I fell into thought.
Come to think of it, Ain had never taken them to the capital for the past four years. She hadn’t found it odd until now, but there was definitely a snag.
Until now, the only places Ain had taken them were the nearby villages, the back mountains, and the southern part of the continent. Isn’t it much better to go to a big city or the capital when it comes to children’s education or things to see?
Rihanna looked at the faces of the elves in her doubts, then carefully parted her lips again.
“Uh… Haven’t you heard from Ain yet?”
Unlike before, the children’s tone became sharper, probably thinking that there was still more they didn’t know about Ain.
“What?”
Rihanna said in a more restrained tone, her body quivering like someone who’d touched the odds.
“That… There is an orphanage in the capital where Ain, Leon, and Maria grew up together. This is something Ain said only once rather than Maria.”
“Nursery school?”
The expressions of the girls, who thought Ain must have decent parents, were momentarily tinged with bewilderment.
I saw myself superimposed on them, and that wasn’t just the feeling of being abandoned by Leon.
She was the one who knew the pain of being abandoned, so she was able to reap them willingly.
“Ain has told me several times that she was abandoned by her parents. No one showed up to adopt her, so she was told she lived with Leon until she was older. She seems to have met a good guardian in this town now….”
Rihanna sat down comfortably, took a short breath, and laid out her own thoughts.
“This is my opinion, but maybe that’s why Ain can’t forgive Leon more? She gathered together with people who knew the pain of being abandoned by someone dear to her, but she didn’t know that they would abandon her so coldly. To the person she trusted the most, to the person she considered her family.”
After all of her talk, Rihanna began to look at her again.
After hearing Rihanna’s story, the girls didn’t say anything for a while and looked like they were lost in thought.
It was Stella who broke the awkward silence. She patted Rihanna on the shoulder with a more tired expression than the first time and praised her for the first time in a while.
“My doggie has been helpful for the first time in a while.”
The atmosphere is not bad. Rihanna didn’t miss this moment, she asked them.
“Then I can just go… ?”
But Elia shook her head and flatly refused.
“No, that doesn’t work. Now that you’ve become like this, shouldn’t you plan a strategy together with us? And if Maria really is a good influence on everyone, would she have said that wizard bitch?”
Cassandra’s last words, that Maria was the problem, were never to be overlooked. It’s not that she doesn’t believe Rihanna’s words, but she saw the truth in Cassandra’s words as well.
And the important thing to them was not Maria. The fact that Ain, who was the first priority for them, still had memories of him that he was reluctant to, made them uncomfortable.
Olivia stretched her body and opened her mouth first.
“Besides, if Dad has bad memories there, shouldn’t he just change them to good ones from now on?”
Stella said she couldn’t get out of this position, lifted her languid Rihanna from her seat, and then she said with an ambitious smile.
“We don’t need a grandiose narrative that the woman is the problem. We’ll just live our lives doing what we want to do. If there’s anything you want, take it all, and if there’s someone you don’t like, deal with it. This is an extension of that If Maria doesn’t clean up her woman perfectly, won’t her father’s regret remain in her heart? In Dad’s heart, we should be alone. I will never tolerate another woman.”
A very simple, selfish reason.
Although the amount of time they have lived in reality cannot be counted by the number of human beings, the very short time they spent with Ain for 4 years was the most precious time in their lives.
That’s why being deprived of Ajin is like having her reason for living taken away, and I couldn’t bear that kind of shame from a single saint.
Rihanna saw pure madness in their aims, and this time she just wanted them to fail.