Chapter 151
Contagion
“…Are you God?”
She asked even though she already knew. God seemed to smile.
“We’ve already met.”
“That’s right. But why didn’t you come on the promised day?”
“My beloved child liked you so much. I couldn’t separate you from him…”
“Your beloved child?”
“All living beings in this world are like my children. Especially Nox, that child was one I took great care to bring into the world.”
At the unexpected words, Sia was momentarily speechless. Then a question came to her mind.
“Then why did you leave that superstition alone? If you’re God, couldn’t you have given a prophecy saying that such superstitions are meaningless?”
If he was a beloved child, she couldn’t understand why he had been left to suffer his entire life because of his hair color.
“I already allowed him to be born against the law of causality, so that level of suffering had to be endured.”
“…That’s strange. You say you love him, but you just left him like that and watched.”
“Fufu… But it wasn’t easy to restore the black hair gene that had died out. Among the existing families, after tracing back several generations of ancestors, the one I barely found was the Blois ducal house.”
Surprisingly, God answered her questions one by one. Sia gradually relaxed. She had thought that God would be frightening or absolute and would look down on humans, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Then why were you looking for the black hair gene?”
Sia asked while gently stroking Cola, who rested quietly in her arms. Come to think of it, Cola, who was said to be God’s messenger, was also a black cat.
“I like black hair, but before I knew it, the black hair gene had completely disappeared from the cat tribe. So I chose you because of your hair color as well.”
“…Pardon?”
“Your world is quite strange. Why do people dye such beautiful black hair into such odd colors? I selected those with natural hair colors, and among them I looked for someone who cherishes animals. You alone stood out.”
“But there are many people who truly love animals among humans like me…”
The more Sia talked with God, the stranger she felt. From the aura, God seemed to be saying that out of all those humans, she was the one he liked the most. She couldn’t explain it clearly, but if it looked like the relationship between her and Cola, wouldn’t that be strange?
In other words, God adored humans. Like the way humans adored animals.
God sitting across from her seemed to be smiling happily. Feeling vaguely uneasy, Sia simply stared. Then God spoke gently.
“It seems you like peaches. Have some more. You still cannot return yet…”
The peaches that had tasted sweet before no longer tasted that way, but Sia had no choice but to lift her fork. For the first time, she felt afraid of God of this place.
* * *
“Your Highness, what kind of letter is it that your expression has become so severe?”
Dylan asked Louis, who had gone stiff while holding the letter. At his words, Louis, who had been standing like a statue, trembled with the hand holding the letter and burst out in anger.
“How dare they!”
“…What is it? Did I make some mistake?”
Dylan was flustered by Louis’s anger. It was rare for the Crown Prince to express his fury so openly.
Louis couldn’t hear Dylan’s words at all. His gaze was fixed only on the contents Nox had written in haste.
Even from the hastily scrawled handwriting alone, he could feel how urgent and furious Nox was. Louis had only just apologized to the duke for his past actions and had been trying to maintain a good relationship, so Nox’s suffering felt even more vivid to him.
“And it had to be the female he spent his rut with as well…”
A partner who had shared a rut carried deeper attachment. It was entirely different from a female one had simply spent a night with. And if he imagined that ill female being suddenly taken by another male, the depth of that anger was more than understandable.
“Those damned bastards.”
“…I’m sorry, Your Highness.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I don’t know what happened, but I thought I should apologize first and then listen.”
“Don’t talk nonsense and send a request for an audience with His Majesty the Emperor. Tell them I must see him immediately.”
“Yes, understood.”
Before going to the Emperor, Louis wrote a letter. It was addressed to the commander of the forces under his authority. Before reporting to the Emperor, he intended to send strong military support to Nox first.
After having the letter sent through an attendant, he immediately headed toward the imperial palace.
“This time, whether it’s the wolf tribe or the snake tribe, they need to be properly shown who holds the advantage.”
He had no intention of letting this matter pass. With firm resolve, Louis’s steps quickened.
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