Chapter 71: Waiting for you in the real future (Part 2)
Noa Continued, “Seeing her like that reminded me of when she had just given birth to Muen and me. She was also so lost, often staring blankly at you while you were in a coma.”
“But this time, it’s different.”
“She had no one left to stare at in a daze, no one to wait for, no certainty that this long wait would ever end.”
“No one could understand the depth of Mom’s sorrow and grief after losing you. Anna said that without you, she became the loneliest queen on the throne.”
Noa recounted the truth with a calmness that had taken her twenty years to practice in her heart.
At this moment.
To tell Leon everything without missing a word, now that he had returned.
“Later, Mom stopped drinking and threw herself back into work.”
“We thought she had moved on from her grief, but that wasn’t the case.”
“She worked obsessively, sleeping less than six hours a week. No makeup, no diplomacy, no talking with Aunt Isha, rejecting everything from the outside world.”
“That’s when we realized she hadn’t healed at all, instead, she was sinking deeper. Alcohol didn’t work for her anymore, so she used work to distract herself.”
At this point, Noa paused, turning to look at Leon.
The man’s face was already filled with regret and guilt.
He was on the verge of breaking down, so Noa slowed her pace, switching to another topic.
“Do you know why I was so determined to become stronger when I was little?”
Leon looked at her and shook his head.
“For the two of you.”
Noa said, “I thought if I became stronger, you wouldn’t leave us, and Mom wouldn’t wear that sad expression again. But in the end, I couldn’t achieve either wish.”
“You disappeared into the space rift; Mom cried every day.”
“Since I was a child, my greatest fear was seeing this family fall apart, even if it had once been a lie.”
“But as you said, the appearance of a home might be a lie, but the love between family members is undeniably real.”
She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, slowly exhaling as if to adjust her emotions.
“In the sixth month after you disappeared, the Silver Dragon clan was attacked again.”
“Two dragon kings, along with a human named Nacho Salaman, launched relentless assaults against us.”
“Aunt Isha was also blockaded and couldn’t provide support.”
“In the end, Mom killed one of the dragon kings, but she was exhausted and couldn’t defeat the second one.”
“But miraculously, she unleashed an extraordinary power at the last moment, completely obliterating the careless dragon king.”
“However, that move wasn’t an energy self-destruction from her dragon scales, so Mom didn’t sacrifice herself, but she was left too weak to even get out of bed.”
“She realized this wouldn’t be the last time the Empire and the Dragon Clan joined forces to exterminate the Silver Dragons, but as the Dragon King, she was already too weak to fight, and there was no one in the clan qualified to inherit the throne.”
“So, Mother disbanded the tribe, letting the clan members flee for their lives. That was the only way to ensure that most of them would survive. But Anna and Sister Shirley didn’t leave. They said they wanted to stay with Mother until the very end.”
“During the days when Mother was bedridden, she told us sisters the story between you and her—how you met, came to know each other, and eventually… fell in love.”
“Mother said she didn’t understand what romantic love between a man and a woman was, but she thought, she must have loved you.”
“She said she would wait for you, wait for you to return home, until you told her, face to face, that you loved her.”
“She wanted to hear your confession, a confession face-to-face, not one made in some life-and-death moment of passion.”
“But… alas…”
Noa reached out and gently caressed the crystal and said, “She never got to wait long enough. The sun and moon took turns outside her window, but the you, she longed for never returned. That move to kill the enemy didn’t draw its strength from the heart-protecting dragon scale. It was a miracle created by a mother at the brink of death.”
“And the cost of that miracle was a deep, unyielding slumber.”
“Mother’s last words to us were to survive at all costs, to live until our father came back.”
“Because she believed, as long as you were here, everything would change.”
“Later, Great-grandmother returned and created this crystal for Mother. The crystal can maintain Mother’s bodily functions. Once Mother awakens and uses a bit of her power, the crystal can be broken from the inside.”
“Of course, a specific external magic command could also break it.”
“Great-grandmother said that although Mother is in a deep sleep, she should still be able to hear our voices.”
“That’s why Muen has been talking to her, not wanting her to be trapped alone in a dream of longing for you.”
“For the past twenty years, Great-grandmother and Aunt Isha have been searching for a way to restore Mother; and we, we’ve been waiting for you, hoping to change everything in another way.”
Muen pulled the only chair in the room to stand behind Leon, then tugged on his sleeve, signaling him to sit down.
He fell into the chair like a soulless puppet, hollow and lost.
Noa sniffed, waiting silently for a moment, then asked, “Are you feeling better? If so, Little Light will explain the method we’ve come up with. We don’t have much time to give you more room to grieve.”
Leon blinked hard, pinching the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. The pain helped clear his mind a little.
“Alright, I’m listening.”
Aurora walked to Leon’s side and began to speak slowly,
“First, let’s correct a misconception, Dad—you didn’t ‘sleep’ for twenty years inside the space rift before waking up.”
“No space magic can last for twenty years.”
“During that battle, Ravi used his heart-protecting dragon scale to forcibly alter the nature of the space magic, causing uncontrollable changes.”
“And it was these changes that ‘transported’ you to twenty years later… to here.”
Poor Rosvitha! 😢😭
Even Leon Casmodes can’t escape the power creep.