The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 185: When you are you but not entirely you

Chapter 185: When you are you but not entirely you

I had almost forgotten about this, thanks to that annoying Lord of Lust debacle.

But it came to me all over again, the impending question of who exactly my grandmother was.

"I think...I think my grandmother came from this world," I told him as my heart beat loudly that I could hear it in my ears. "Not like you, but...physically."

"Like the hero," Natha concluded.

"Yes," I nodded fast, and I started to dig up all the things I could remember about her from my previous life. It wasn’t easy, mind you, because my memory of my childhood was so jumbled and blurry. "She...she had always been sickly, but the doctors never knew why. And she would get better when she was surrounded by nature, so she lived on the hill and in the countryside," at this point, I didn’t even realize my arms were flailing around. "You know...like a druid."

"Hmm..." Natha frowned slightly, holding my arms again so I wouldn’t flail so much. And then something clicked in his mind. "Was that why you were freaking out when you saw the princess’s picture?"

"Yeah," I nodded again, trying to be calmer this time. "If...if it was the Demon God that sent you to the human realm...do you think my grandmother got transported by the Goddess of Nature?"

I had thought before that maybe, maybe my grandma and the princess were just two different people with the same face, just like Natha and the doctor. That everything was just a coincidence. But now...knowing that there was a case someone from this world crossing over to my previous world...

I couldn’t just think it was a coincidence anymore, especially when I recalled the weird things around her.

"That...might be possible," Natha nodded. He had his serious face now, although his hands were still holding me. "I heard she had a child during the war--during her disappearance. That child is most likely one of Valmeier’s parents. And then she crossed over, and conceived your parent."

I just nodded at his words, letting him do the explanation, dissecting the possibility. "But it was also possible that she just died and her body was never retrieved, and the grandmother in your world is another person," he said, trying to cover every chance, I think. "I was sure my parents or grandparents never crossed over but I was basically Nathanael’s twins."

Uhh...that was also true. "Oh, but...there’s something weird with my grandmother," I shited and straightened my back, digging at my memory again. "My other relatives...even her children and grandchildren, would say she was weird and silly, always talking about magic and fairy. Among all of them, I was the only one who resembled her," I paused for a bit, looking down at my lap.

"Down...to the condition of my body..." I looked up at Natha again, biting my lips as I continued. "Do you think perhaps...it was because we were supposed to receive magic? Like any other druid?"

Or perhaps not magic, just life energy from nature itself.

Again, Natha frowned, staring at the air as if he was contemplating hard on something. "Hmm..."

I waited for his thought impatiently, pulling on his sleeve because I need him to share whatever he was thinking right now. "What?"

He looked at me for a bit then, as if gauging my emotional state, before finally speaking. "That might be the case with her, but..."

My brows arched by themselves following my surprise. "Not with me?"

Natha shook his head slightly. "I didn’t see that condition in you when we met--or perhaps it was because I lack experience and was in a new body,"

"Oh..."

"That you have a half-druid body might also take a part, but in that case, you shouldn’t get sicker than your grandmother, who was a full-fledged druid."

Ah...that’s right. Grandmother could hold on until she had grandchildren, and had never needed to live in the hospital until the end. She died quite peacefully before I turned eight, and I thought she looked happy.

Perhaps...because she thought she could finally go home? Or...being together with her other family...

"And I think, it had something to do with your soul," Natha continued, slowly and carefully.

"My...soul?" I blinked, something in my mind was clicking with an event that happened not long before. "Ignis! Ignis said my soul is weird, is it because I came from another world?"

"No," Natha grabbed my hand tighter, and as I was looking at our hands in surprise, he told me why. "It’s because your soul is broken."

"...brok--" it took me a while to be able to respond. "What’s that even--"

Natha sighed as he replied. "It wasn’t whole, he said. "It’s not whole even now."

"H-huh?"

I blinked repeatedly. I had no idea what kind of face I made right now. Probably shocked? Dumbfounded? But Natha, who still held my hands, stroked them with his thumb, making soothing circles on my skin.

"Sweetheart, I did say that you and Valmeier had different souls, but that wasn’t quite accurate," he spoke again, giving me more explanation. "The reason why I still had hoped you’d come back was that...your soul and Valmeier’s are like a puzzle."

"Puzzle..." I muttered.

Puzzle...broken...whole...

The dream that I had before came into my mind suddenly. The dream where I was a little, cracked speck of light. And at the end of the dream--the memory--I met with another broken speck of light.

"Y-you mean...our souls are like two separate puzzle pieces that need to be combined?" my eyes widened even more, as if I wasn’t looking stupidly confused enough.

"Yes," Natha, the one who had met both me and Valmeier, confirmed this. "That’s why, both of you...have broken souls."

I looked down, still blinking and trying to digest another train of information that felt too much for my little mind. Wiping my face, I felt so glad we already finished eating. "C-can you like...explain it a bit..."

"Breathe," I felt Natha’s cool hand on my back, stroking me. He shifted closer, so I could feel even more of his temperature. "Breathe first."

I didn’t even realize that my breath had stuttered. Following his words, I tried to breathe more evenly, following his guide, until I could take a deep breath and my hand stopped trembling.

Natha climbed fully to the bed at this point, still holding my hand. He sat in front of me, pulling us closer together so our legs tangled.

"Okay, let me put it this way," he started to explain. "There are multiple worlds in this universe, as we know. And in those worlds, there are souls that are very similar, like a duplicate of each other,"

"Like you and the doctor?" I gasped. I mean...I knew about these multiple worlds, but I never thought about souls, or why there were people who looked like each other in those different worlds.

Natha nodded in affirmation. "Yes, like me and Nathanael. We are copies of each other, and it was translated to our appearance. But since we live a very different life, we ended up with different personalities and egos," he continued his explanation. "But we do have a connection, and it was through this channel that I was allowed to possess his body."

He paused then, probably waiting for me to digest the information. So I nodded to show him that I followed well. "Alright," I said, and he continued.

"But you and Valmeier...you’re not copies," he told me. "You are one soul that got broken and shoved into two different bodies."

"What..."

Even though I had prepared for the explanation of how we were a ’puzzle’, it still surprised me.

"That broken soul resulted in you...being half of yourself," Natha lifted his hand, brushing my fringe and resting his thumb on my temple. "You have a sound mind, but a broken body," he moved his hand down, rubbing my shoulder. "And Valmeier had a healthy body, but a broken mind."

I almost choked at this. The gasping sound that came out of my throat was terribly unsightly. Natha frowned as he continued with an annoyed tone.

"Isn’t it weird? However devoted someone was to their King, would someone as powerful as him just bow down after being treated like a tool and trash? Even after knowing that the priest he thought of as his father was being neglected while he was serving in the war?"

My brows raised, because Natha just said everything that I had been thinking about Valmeier. I didn’t really like going inside Valmeier’s memory because of that--because it was too frustrating how obedient he was to those horrible people.

"Sure, it might be because he was kind and had too much compassion," Natha shook his head and added. "But someone like that wouldn’t go around killing non-combative demons in cold blood, would he?"

I pressed my lips at the incoming conjecture. "You mean..."

"It’s because he couldn’t think for himself," Natha said. "He couldn’t feel, he had no deep emotions."

I took a deep breath. It might sound cruel, but it was the truth. Valmeier did feel a sense of duty and gratitude to the priest who took care of him since he was a baby. But there was no deeper feeling like love or devotion.

The comrades that wrote letters to him were doing it because they adored and pitied the young man, but Valmeier did not have someone that had a deep enough connection to be called his friend. That was why I was all alone fighting for my survival after I got transmigrated here. There was no one to help me.

It wasn’t that he was stupid. He was like those people who had an undeveloped amygdala. He was told by the priest to obey the King, to dedicate himself to the cause, so he did it. He was told that demons were evil, so he slayed them.

I just chalked it up to him being brought up like that, but...I had no idea it was because of an incomplete soul.

"When I met him that day, he was like a doll, a...machine," Natha continued, tilting his head while he recalled the memory. "He wouldn’t even let a demon talk, and just go after them because that’s what the others told him to."

Ah, was that why he immediately stabbed Natha even though I was sure he came with a peaceful gesture? For Valmeier, there was no difference between demons--there was no good or bad, just enemies.

"At first, I thought he was a product of brainwashing, which was why I started investigating the kingdom and implanted my spies in the palace..."

"But there was no such method," I concluded.

"There was none," Natha confirmed it once again.

I let out a heavy breath and repeated the conclusion. "So...it was because he wasn’t whole."

Natha touched the center of my torso, the place below my chest. "And with you, it’s afflicting your body instead," he looked at me with a frown and a frustrated voice. "That’s why there’s no explanation for your condition. You receive a bunch of illnesses and symptoms, but there’s no conclusive root," I could see his jaw clenched, probably from relishing the memory of looking at my chart when he was in the doctor’s body. "You just grew weaker and weaker because your soul continued to lose the power to support your life force."

He took a deep breath, stroking my cheek gently as he stared at me with a mix of sadness and relief. "And there’s no medicine for that."

"Oh..."

To think that I could finally receive an explanation on the cause of my sickness. After all this time, after crossing to another world.

After dying once.