Agatha had no idea what had just happened. One moment Christie was standing at the door crying, and at the next one she was asleep on her chest. The dirty-blond girl hadn’t bothered to ask questions; she just limited herself to caressing the redhead’s mane as she knew that in moments like this she certainly wouldn’t like to talk or be talked to.

  And Christie fell asleep because of that.

  The seamstress-in-training didn’t blame her gorgeous yet distraught girlfriend for it, after all, it was late, and she looked like she had gone through a lot. So Agatha just continued caressing that fiery mane – not minding the drenched part of her nightgown from all the tears – well after Christie had fallen asleep. Soon it was her own turn to fall asleep.

  When she woke up, her first thought was, “Ugh, she’s heavy.”

  Once again, she didn’t blame her tall and afflicted girlfriend for it. If anything, Agatha would be surprised if Christie didn’t weigh her down. Not just because of that sea of stones she possessed – which she still had no idea where the redhead stored them – but of her massive size. Christie was lithe like her father, but also as tall, and regardless of how thin one was, a person who was closer to two meters than the meter and a half mark was bound to weigh quite a bit.

  I think there are other culprits influencing that weight… Agatha’s thoughts were drawn to the soft mounds that pressed against her belly. So soft they were that they looked like pancakes more than… Focus, Agatha. Focus! She reminded herself of the situation. I don’t know what has happened, but this is NOT the time to think about that.

  She wormed around as her back and neck were killing her, but she was wholly unsuccessful, as one arm was pinned beneath Christie and the other one didn’t reach the pillows, for she had pushed them to the side at some point. Fractured be these short arms of mine! She cursed and sighed. Fortunately for her, she had a far more dexterous extremity available. I don’t know why, but that sounded weird…

  Agatha resummoned her sapphire, the half on her neck disappearing, and instead the whole agate appeared in the air. So tumultuous had the night been that she had forgotten to recall it altogether. At least her mental strength had grown enough to tolerate being asleep with two commands active without any headaches.

  Control Shape Watch.

  Her agate turned into a literal hand with the upgraded shaping of her agate, thanks to the Control Shape synergy, and also an eye at the same time with Watch. She picked up a pillow from the other side of her king-sized – and worthy – bed with her lithic hand, which had a dexterity so life-like that it even surprised her. Control also seems to increase the speed of the shaping beyond its accuracy. Good to know. The lithic hand raised the pillows below her head and put the new pillow at the bottom, now saving her coccyx from a world of pain.

  Even with all of her hijinks, Christie failed to wake up. She looks so cute while sleeping… Agatha couldn’t help but smile as she looked at the face of her dormant and dainty girlfriend. But also… pained. There was something in that visage that irked her.

  So she let her rest.

  It wasn’t until a couple of hours after first light that the redhead moved around, and even then, it still took her a handful of minutes rolling around before she opened her eyes and let out an adorable yawn.

  “Good morning,” Agatha welcomed her with a smile.

  “Oh. Hi…” Christie blushed, whether because she realized they had slept the night together – technically a first – or because the dirty-blond girl had heard that loveable yawn.

  “So,” the petite girl caressed the long mane, “are you fine?”

  “I…” The blush disappeared from the redhead’s face and was substituted by distress. “Would you believe me if I told you yes?”

  “Yes,” Agatha responded without hesitation, which made Christie’s eyes shoot wide open. She definitely hadn’t expected that answer.

  “Really?” She asked with… expectation.

  “Yes,” the single-agate lithorist reiterated. “But that does not mean I would not continue to ask if you were fine.”

  The myriad-agate lithorist frowned. “That does not sound like you would believe me.”

  “Oh, I would believe you because you said so. But if you continued to make that face, I would still ask.”

  Christie’s expression was a mixed bag. In one corner, blushing and yearning. In the other corner, annoyance and pain.

  “I…” Her mercurial and drowsy girlfriend tried to speak, but the words died on her tongue. “Could you bring me something to eat?”

  Now it was Agatha’s turn to frown. “Is it because…?”

  “No,” Christie instantly interjected, yet not even a moment later, she rubbed her thighs together and sighed. “Okay, yes. But only since now. It is not because of… yesternight.”

  “Can you wash yourself?” The seamstress-in-training inquired as she lifted her body from the body.

  “Yes, I am not helpless,” the redhead groaned. “It is just that… I would rather not see anyone for the time being.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Agatha kissed Christie on the forehead and walked out of the room with her nightgown still on. It didn’t feel right changing when her tired and brooding girlfriend was lying on the bed as if someone had died, and Agatha herself didn’t feel comfortable doing so. Still.

  To her surprise, Agatha found Hasel and Miss Diorite in the dining room. The man looked miserably as he stared into a full and untouched plate, while Miss Diorite calmly took a teacup.

  “Agatha!” The patriarch suddenly jumped from his seat the moment he noticed her. “Have you seen Christina?”

  “Y-yes,” Agatha stated hesitatingly, not out of surprise, but because her brain started putting the pieces together. Family dispute? Has he… found out? She approached the big table slowly. He had bags under his eyes. No, he wouldn’t react that way if he had cast her daughter away. And I wouldn’t be standing here either. “Christie has slept in my room. She showed up late at night distressed, and collapsed soon after.”

  “I see…” The man himself collapsed on his chair.

  Carefully and perplexedly, the girl approached the old maid and whispered to her. “Is everything… okay?”

  “Has Miss Christina told you anything?” She looked at her in an analytical manner.

  “Beyond wanting to bring her some breakfast, no. She has not told me anything.”

  “I see,” Miss Diorite took a sip of her cup and put a kettle and some food on a tray. “Here, tell me if she speaks up.”

  “I… will,” Agatha nodded solemnly before dashing away from the room. The atmosphere was too charged – or rather, dead – for her.

  By the time the dirty-blond girl came back to her room, Christie was still in bed, but at least she looked better now. Her face glistered with humidity and some traces of water. Nothing like a face wash to recover one’s mood, Agatha thought as she left the tray on the bed.

  “Better now?” Agatha asked as she checked the kettle. Fortunately, it was still hot, so she didn’t need to take out her agate.

  And talking about her agate, the petite girl noticed how it was in her prone and absentminded girlfriend’s clutches. Even though she had been awake for hours now, Agatha was still drowsy enough to leave it on the bed without any commands on, something she usually did during the night to not always keep two commands always active. Being in the Third Stratum didn’t mean that the Second Stratum didn’t tax her mind, after all.

  “Refreshed, at least,” Christie hummed while toying with the perfect sapphire. “It is quite heavy.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Agatha chuckled and summoned it on her palm. “But it is now time for breakfast, not to caress an extension of my body.”

  A semblance of a smile appeared on the redhead’s visage as she stood on the bed, but as soon as she was about to talk, her mouth closed. That’s fine, the seamstress-in-training thought as she passed her some pastries. They ate in silence. Comfortable. Awkward. It didn’t matter. It was a silence she shared with her.

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  “Agatha,” Christie said out of nowhere once they finished having breakfast.

  “Yes?” She inquired politely.

  “I killed my mother.”

  “Yes, you have already told me that,” Agatha nodded in understanding.

  “No, you do not understand,” the redhead grabbed her hands and looked at her with those agate-like eyes of hers. “Neither did I, truth be told,” she cackled grimly.

  “It is no one’s fault; it is something completely natural.”

  “Agatha,” her shaking and pale girlfriend reiterated. “It was not a complication in pregnancy. I killed her. With my agates.”

  “Oh.” That was the only response she could mutter. “Is that why you are down?”

  “I…” Christie bit her underlip. “I just told you I am a murderer! Why are you not…”

  Agatha kissed her on the lips before Christie had a chance to finish that fractured sentence. She didn’t even want to hear whatever idiocy the redhead would have said. Still, Christie pushed her away.

  “This is wrong,” she protested.

  “A murderer would not be suffering so much from a kill,” Agatha stated cynically. “Is this why you are avoiding your father? Because he is looking at you like a killer?”

  “No!” Christie’s protests turned loud and clutched the petite girl’s hands with strength. “No! He… does not blame me, Agatha.”

  “Is that not good then?”

  “No, no! No, it is not!” A tear flowed from the redhead’s eyes. “I have killed the love of his life. His dearest wife.”

  Is this about him or about us? Agatha nearly asked, but had enough presence of mind to keep it to herself. That is something she didn’t need to hear at the moment.

  “So what are you fearing?” She tried another angle instead.

  “Fearing?” Christie looked at her in confusion.

  “Yes, fearing,” Agatha nodded. “Christie, you are trembling, and not because you are a murderer, but because you are scared. So, what are you so scared about?”

  “I…” The redhead inhaled, then she looked from side to side. Either looking for something or avoiding something. Finally, she exhaled and kissed Agatha on the lips.

  Agatha didn’t push her away, even if she considered this deeply manipulative. Christie’s kiss was tender and warm, but not exactly what the dirty-blond girl was used to. It was too shallow; it wasn’t overflowing with Christie’s yearn, but another type of yearn altogether. It was the redhead who separated their lips, and not long after either. She then pressed her forehead against Agatha’s and surrounded her with her arms. As the seamstress-in-training looked at her lost and warm girlfriend, she finally realized what the kiss was all about.

  She was mustering courage.

  “I… am scared of hurting my dearest father,” Christie revealed, and Agatha instantly knew how much it had cost her to say it.

  Agatha grabbed her by the sides of her head. “Christie, oh beautiful dummy doll,” the redhead squinted at those words, but the dirty-blond girl didn’t let her interject as she rubbed her nose against hers. “Your ‘dearest’ father is down in the dining hall looking miserable, and I am willing to bet my single agate that it is because he thought he hurt you.”

  “I am not talking about that type of hurt,” the dummy doll protested.

  So Agatha kissed her. A quick peck on the lips. It wasn’t the gesture that made the redhead open her eyes, but the background behind it. A kiss like that was what started all of this.

  “You have controlled your agates perfectly this last year. You have worked yourself to the bone to even gain a fraction of control more. And if it were not because of that massive and beautiful sea of stones, I would have been dead. Can it hurt? Of course, all agates can. But yours saved me, Christie.”

  Her gorgeous and red girlfriend softly grabbed the hands that were sandwiching her head and clasped them. Agatha loved each and every one of Christie’s expressions, but the resolute one she was boasting right now was certainly one of the better ones.

  “Meet me in the dining room in an hour. Tell everyone to be there.” Christie commanded.

  “Anything for you,” Agatha smiled warmly as she saw her girlfriend stand up and walk out the door.

  ***

  “So…” Adrien mouthed. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Christie,” Agatha replied as she tapped the floor with her boot. She was wearing her patchwork dress because she knew the redhead loved it. “She said she would be here in an hour, but I did not expect it to be that literal.”

  She turned her head to look at the other two people in the dining room. Miss Diorite was calm, or so she would have looked if she wasn’t going through her fourth cup of tea. Hasel just plainly looked mortified.

  What is she planning? The dirty-blond girl played with her agates as she waited impatiently. The good thing that her studies and Strata had brought was being able to fondle her agates. With Amplify Duplicate, she had four agates, but if she applied Duplicate again to every single one, then she could have eight total. It was a satisfactory experience finally being able to fondle her agates, especially as many as these, but at the same time, she didn’t appreciate being so nervous that she was fondling them.

  It took her slow and planning girlfriend another quarter of an hour to make her apparition. To no one’s surprise, she was dolled up with makeup, a new dress, and a fresh shower. To say that she looked divine would have been an understatement. A paragon of beauty by all means, and certainly not looking sixteen.

  “Christina!” Hasel jumped from his seat when he saw his daughter.

  “Sit down,” Christie commanded sternly, and surprisingly, the patriarch obeyed without protesting. She then took a deep breath. “Depths, I am bad at this. I am not mad at you, dearest father. I…” She grew silent, smacked her lips, and walked forward to sit at the opposite extreme of the table from the whole gathering. “I just want reassurance. If you really meant what you said yesternight, then you will repeat what you said word for word.”

  “Will that make you forgive me?” Agatha had never heard more pathetic words in her life, and that came from the mouth of a person who could easily fight her whole class at the same time. Handicapped.

  Christie didn’t respond; she just looked at him without blinking.

  “Alright, word for word…” Hasel started speaking, and Agatha honestly wished he hadn’t.

  What she heard was… the most awful tale she had heard in her entire life. Fractures, that was all she could think about as she heard about the man’s wife. Oh, Christie… Agatha wanted to punch herself. She truly had no idea what she had been speaking about when she tried to comfort her. This was certainly way worse than she had expected. Infinitely more than a botched birth.

  On the one hand, she was horrified and couldn’t help putting herself in that position as she had been seconds away from ending like Cordellia. On the other hand, however… she could only look at the Valasela family with the greatest of pity.

  “Miss Diorite, could you verify my dearest father’s words. Has he spoken the truth?” Christie’s expression was unreadable, and that hurt Agatha.

  “I…” Even the massive woman was confounded. But she recovered herself far faster than anyone else. Perhaps by virtue of having experienced the scene many years ago herself. “Yes, Miss Christina. Everything Mister Hasel has said is true. Cordellia… she always had dreams of grandeur. Always aiming higher. But she was not a heartless woman, I was with her since the start of her pregnancy, she only did that because she loved you!”

  “No one asked you about that,” Christie snapped at the maid. “Sorry, sorry… I…” The redhead rubbed her temples. “I have one question for every single person in this table. I want everyone to answer honestly.”

  Agatha almost asked ‘Even me?’ but she was too cowed into submission to ask that. If a question arrived, for whatever reason, she would think about it then.

  “First, Adrien,” she looked at the coachman. “Have both my dearest father and Miss Diorite told the truth?”

  “Christie…” The old man looked at the young girl with worry.

  “Answer the fractured question!” Christie commanded. She looked so… Fractured, Agatha thought. Never before had she seen the redhead in such distress. It was unsettling for the petite girl.

  Adrien sighed. “…Yes. I have been with Hasel and Paciencia since the beginning, even before I met Cordellia. Biased as this old man might be, they are telling the truth.”

  It was also unsettling to see the informal man act so straight. The tone seemed alien coming from his mouth.

  “Understood,” the girl with the fiery mane nodded and her blazing fire seemed to die down a bit. “I am back to you, Miss Diorite,” she turned to face the maid. “You and my dearest father have spoken of my mother’s ambition,” Agatha noticed the lack of the ‘dearest’ epithet, “yet you also have mentioned how she loved me. Would a loving mother risk her own daughter?”

  “I…” Diorite might be her surname, but she looked as brittle as chalk. “That is not a question I can answer in good faith…”

  “Why not?” For the first time, Christie was soft with her words.

  “Because I have never been a mother,” Miss Diorite caressed her stomach. “But I can assure you that Cordellia always spoke to you when she was carrying you. And that face she made when she whispered whilst caressing her round belly… if it was not love, I do not know what it is.”

  “I see,” the redhead still kept an unreadable expression. But the subsequent sigh betrayed pain. Betrayal certainly felt like the perfect word to describe that face. “Dearest father, your turn.”

  “Ask whatever you need, my dearest daughter,” Hasel looked at Christie with a mixture of dread and acceptance.

  “Do you hate me?”

  From whatever reaction anyone in the dining room could have imagined, Agatha was one hundred percent certain everyone had guessed wrong. The moment Christie asked her question, the man broke into tears.

  “Never, Christina. Never,” the tall and well-built man said without hesitation as tears flowed down his cheeks. A mighty miner, a powerhouse respected by the whole country, and he… just cried. He acted as if they weren’t there; everyone else seemed more afflicted by his tears than he did.

  Christie snorted. “I see. I see…”

  Then she cried herself.

  It was a silent sob like her father’s. Old tears that had finally had the chance to escape.

  “Thank you,” she uttered weakly. “Thank you for telling me the truth. Thank you for not… hating me.”

  “I could never, I told you,” Hasel smiled weakly. “It was and has never been your fault. The moment you decided to go to the Skyscraper Academy on your own to control those agates… it was one of the proudest moments of my life.”

  “And the best?” Christie looked at her father with a hint of sourness.

  “For better or worse, when I held you with Cordellia. Both of you in my arms.” The man’s smile was sad, yet at the same time, the purest display of happiness Agatha had seen in her life. That only made this situation more uncomfortable. I shouldn’t be here.

  Christie turned her head with a smile and faced Agatha. She stood up and slowly walked up toward her. “It made me really happy to hear that you will never hate me, dearest father, but… I cannot help but feel angry at myself now.”

  “I told you it is not your fault, Christina,” Hasel protested, ready to fight for her daughter.

  “It is not because of that I am angry,” Christie heartily giggled with a hand before her fleshy lips. “You have mustered your courage and blessed me with the virtue of the truth, so it now feels awkward that I keep secrets of my own. So I thought I should reciprocate.”

  “Secrets?” The patriarch frowned with perplexity, and his daughter nodded.

  “Now for my last question,” Christie stood in front of Agatha, her agate-like eyes locked with the petite girl’s azure ones. “Agatha of Malachite, do you love me?”

  “Uh?” Agatha uttered in complete confusion, her eyes no longer fixed on Christie but on the rest of the members of the gathering.

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