Love Affair

  I watched as Tamamo struck the sword’s metal with force and power. I saw a celestial light begin to emerge. I saw the fracture in the embedded crystal. The light started to condense, to take shape—a simple sphere of light that floated ethereally in the air, slowly, very slowly rising higher and higher.

  I understood it without anyone saying a single word: that was Nanami’s soul.

  Finally, after so much time, I had found it. After such an exhausting search, after all the pain and despair that had filled my mind and soul, I had found the girl lost in the infinite cosmos and time. At last, I could consider my search, my work, my life, complete.

  With her soul freed from the crystal, she could finally return to the heavens and find the peace and happiness that had been denied to her throughout her life. I was okay with being left behind, because knowing she could see something better than the void was enough for me.

  I could feel my vision blur, my tears running down my face, confused—unable to tell if I felt sadness or joy.

  Tamamo, still exhausted from the effort it took to open the window through which she escaped, placed her hand on her chest. She looked almost afraid to witness something so sacred, even though she was a goddess. Then, for a moment, she closed her eyes, took a breath, and when she opened them again, she looked straight at me.

  “Cesar, Goshujin-sama, do you trust me?” she asked me with complete seriousness.

  I didn’t know what she was referring to with her question, but I didn’t doubt her for a second. I trusted her with my life, fully aware that she was the living embodiment of loyalty, humility, and wisdom. She worked solely for the good of the family—the ideal wife.

  “Yes,” I answered, still watching the sphere continue its path toward the sky.

  Tamamo nodded silently. She said nothing else, as if words couldn’t reach the gravity of what she was about to do. Her gaze became strange… not trembling, but immensely serious. Almost painful. She didn’t look away from my eyes. And then, without announcing it, without a ritual or invocation, raising only a trembling divine hand, she used her magic and devoured the sphere of light.

  She absorbed it.

  Nanami’s soul vanished, absorbed into her mouth, her chest, her essence. There was no violence, no heavenly spectacle. Just a nearly ritualistic inhalation, a light fading into her lips. Nothing remained. Not even a spark.

  My world froze.

  What… did you do?!, That’s what half of my heart was screaming in pain.

  Wait, let her continue!, was what the half that loved Tamamo cried.

  Tamamo didn’t respond. She didn’t even blink. She simply lowered her gaze with an expression I couldn’t decipher: guilt? pain? absolute commitment?

  “Tamamo...?” I asked, unable to comprehend what I was witnessing.

  No words. No explanations. The sacred light we had searched for so long disappeared between her lips, absorbed as if it were a whisper in the wind. Her throat trembled as she swallowed, and in her eyes, there was no cruelty, no glory, no sorrow. Only an unshakable calm… too serene to be human.

  I felt betrayed.

  Empty.

  As if an invisible sword had pierced my chest.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Why did you do it?" I barely said.

  Those were the greatest expressions of love I could offer her, because anger and desperation were taking over my body with each passing second. But out of respect for her trust and love, I held back instead of exploding. It was an internal tear between my loyalty and love for Nanami and for Tamamo.

  She only looked at me… with a mix of fear, determination, and sadness. As if she were saying: "Trust me. I’m not done yet."

  I didn’t understand anything. Why had she done it? Why take Nanami’s soul just as she was about to reach her rest?

  Was this a punishment? A mistake?

  A betrayal?

  A mote of blue fire appeared beside her, then another, floating like ghostly illusions.

  Then an apparition took shape beside the strange fire.

  A human silhouette, dressed in a white kimono, with long, silky, uniform hair, asymmetrical… a face as pale as snow, eyes full of deep sadness yet breathing a kind of peace. Pale. Thin. Floating gently like incense smoke.

  She stepped forward and caressed my cheek with a trembling tenderness. Her voice was so soft, it didn’t seem to come from a throat, but from the moon itself.

  "She’s not ready to leave yet... and I’m not ready to let her go."

  Her hand trembled, as if the soul inside her was struggling. As if Nanami, too, hesitated between continuing her ascent or staying. As if an unbreakable will still lived at her core.

  "Don’t hate me for this… Goshujin-sama," Tamamo whispered.

  "It’s just the cruel whim of a selfish Goddess."

  The air hung in a silence heavier than the stones of Atlantis. There she was. Nanami.

  Not the glorious memory carved in relief, nor the empress of distant gazes. She was a fragile presence, almost translucent, her white kimono floating in a breeze that didn’t exist. Her eyes—those eyes that once ruled an empire—now reflected only a serene sorrow, a peace tinged with resignation.

  I looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time since that day she died for me. And I felt an icy fear run through my veins. What could I say to her? “Thank you” for giving me her life? “I’m sorry” for not being worthy of it? “Goodbye” when now she was a ghost?

  Tamamo paused, and for the first time I saw a divine tear slide down her cheek.

  “She will be able to walk by your side in our home. Speak with you again.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t the right solution, but I did it in the heat of the moment"

  "To laugh. To live… as much as ghosts can live… but with you.”

  “Where everything will be fine, in those future days when all will be better, when the sun will be warm, the days long, and the smiles plentiful.”

  “The day you can sleep without fear, and when everyone will speak your name with love and comfort.”

  “And for that, Nanami must be part of that future too.”

  She stepped toward Nanami, whose ghostly form emitted a faint, milky glow. The mist of her kimono skimmed the floor without touching it.

  “But for you, Goshujin-sama...for the future you both deserve… I have cursed her fate.” Tamamo raised a trembling hand toward the specter. “I didn’t let her go to Heaven. I have bound her to this plane… as a Yūrei.”

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  The word struck the silence like a blow. Yūrei. A ghost, A soul doomed to wander.

  “A… curse?” I managed to choke out, my voice hoarse with contained rage.

  “That’s what you gave her? Another prison?”

  “A second chance!”Tamamo corrected, a spark of blue fire kindling in her starlit eyes.

  “Not in Heaven’s paradise… but what she truly wanted in her heart, by your side. In our home. If you doubt me, then ask her yourself, Goshujin-sama."

  "Her soul is no longer in my hands; this was also her resolve. She is here. for you.”

  I turned to Nanami. Fear clutched my chest. How does one speak to a ghost? How do you look into the eyes of the woman to whom you owe everything—and whom you’ve condemned to limbo? She extended a translucent hand. It didn’t touch my skin, yet I felt her presence like a whisper of winter at the nape of my neck.

  “César…?”

  “Is that you?”

  Her voice wasn't a sound. It was an echo in the soul, like the toll of a bell buried in snow. Sweet. Distant.

  “César...? Is it really you? You look different, your body isn’t the same.”

  I swallowed hard. I felt like an impostor before her purity, before her broken, trapped innocence. I wanted to hug her, but her body was smoke, and mine… was no longer the one she remembered.

  “Yes... It’s me,” I replied carefully, afraid to break her with words.

  “I’ve changed a little, but I’m still me, Nanami.”

  She narrowed her eyes, and her voice grew firmer, more aware.

  “I understand. I was the one who cursed you to live inside my body that day. You just changed vessels again.”

  “I have no attachment to what my father created. It's loss means nothing to me, except for the joy of seeing his legacy destroyed.”

  “But if I may ask… What happened to my body?”

  Her question hurt more than I expected. The silence in the room seemed to hold its breath with me. I lowered my head for a moment and answered with honesty and sorrow:

  “I lost it… during a battle. It was stolen, used, destroyed in an explosion.”

  “It was the only way.”

  The mist of her body stirred slightly, as if her soul had taken a deep breath. There was sadness, but no judgment on her face.

  “Then… how are you here? What are you now?”

  I smiled weakly, a touch of shame in it.

  “I’m a slime. Literally. A mass of water and maybe magic, I think. And… I also decided to stay as a girl.”

  Her eyebrows rose, softly surprised. She didn’t look horrified or mocking—just curious.

  “As a girl? And… do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wanted to be this way. I wanted to be pretty, I wanted to be truly be only a girl. I had the chance, and I took it. I made this choice for myself, now I am only female and nothing more, Cesar is a girl, not something else”

  “This is who I am now. This is my body, and I’m happy to have it.”

  There was silence. Not the awkward kind, but the kind that forms when two souls reunite after crossing eternity.

  Then, Nanami smiled. Not with irony or pity. Just… with tenderness.

  “You were always strange…” she murmured with trembling sweetness.

  “But who am I to judge your mind?”

  “Do you know what my last thought was… before my soul left me to seal Avalon?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “I thought: ‘It’s so cold… and he never learned how to button his coat properly.’”

  He looked around again. His eyes landed on the imposing figure of Tamamo, still marked by glowing cracks in her skin, her kimono scorched, her breathing heavy but dignified, like an altar refusing to fall.

  "And her? "She asked, his voice softer

  "That woman… that goddess. Who is she?"

  I turned to look at Tamamo, who stood with solemnity, as if every word she might speak could alter the orbit of the stars.

  "She is Tamamo-no-Mae. A goddess of the Moon."

  "She used her power to rescue you from the sword....it was also her who gave you a new way to live."

  "And she is also my wife."

  Nanami blinked.

  "Your wife…?"

  I nodded slowly.

  Nanami's smile froze. Her eyes, once full of tender curiosity, darkened like clouds before a storm. The milky glow of her ghostly form flickered, turning cold and sharp. The air around her vibrated with suddenly hostile energy.

  "Your... wife..." she repeated, but the sweetness was gone. Her voice was now an icy whisper. "And is she... the only one?"

  I froze. The weight of her gaze was physical, like a clenched fist around my throat. I knew what she was asking. What she feared. What she remembered.

  "Nanami, it’s not what you think..." I began, but she raised a translucent hand. The gesture, so fragile just moments before, was now an imperial command.

  "Answer!"

  Her scream had no sound, but it echoed inside my skull like a whip of pain and pure disappointment.

  "How many more live under your roof? How many share your bed? Your... love?"

  The last word was spoken with pain.

  I saw her memories reflected in her ghostly eyes, as vivid as my own: the long galleries of the imperial palace of Atlantis, the locked doors of the “Flower Room” — her father Orion’s cruel euphemism for his prison-harem. The silent women, lowered eyes, broken spirits. The stench of fear and resignation. Her mother, a shadow among shadows, lost forever in that hell of lust and possession.

  "Are you... are you like him?"

  Her voice cracked, but rage held every syllable.

  "Do you collect souls like my father collected bodies?

  "Do you give them pretty necklaces and empty promises while trapping them in your web?

  "Is that the 'better future' you offer? A golden cage full of rivals forced to smile for you!?"

  The pain that pierced my chest was sharper than any sword. Her comparison was a sacrilege, a desecration of everything I had built with Tamamo, with the others… but I understood her horror. I had seen it. I had lived it through her. The shadow of her father.

  "No," I answered, my voice barely a thread, weighed down by the fatigue of more than a thousand battles.

  "Never. Never like him." I took a deep breath, feeling the hot tears return to my eyes.

  "I love you, Nanami."

  "I loved you from the very first day I saw your sad smile behind the golden bars of your imperial cage."

  "You’re the girl who saved me when I was worth nothing, when I was just a soldier among millions."

  Her ghostly form trembled, but the anger didn’t fade.

  She wanted an explanation, not a declaration.

  "I love you from the bottom of my heart, but I can't deny that now that I feel the same way about other girls too."

  "She is my rock, my light in the eternal night. I can’t… I can’t deny what I feel for her. Or what she means to me."

  Nanami drifted a step back, as if my words were darts. Her white kimono fluttered with agitated energy.

  "And the others?" she asked, her voice a blade. "How many more 'lights' shine in your night, César?"

  "There are others," I admitted, not lowering my gaze, even though shame burned through me.

  "Women I met along the way. Who suffered, who fought, who offered me their trust… and their hearts. They’re not possessions."

  "They’re not trapped. They live in my house… our house… because they choose to."

  "Because they find peace there. Because they care for each other like sisters, not rivals."

  It was hard to explain. Almost impossible to someone whose only reference was Orion’s sinister harem.

  "This isn’t… a competition, Nanami."

  An icy silence followed my words. The sadness in Nanami’s eyes mingled with a deep disappointment, with the ghost of a dream fading away. The dream of being the only one. The first. The one who had me when I was worth nothing.

  "Then…" she finally murmured, her voice devoid of all warmth,

  "All you’re offering… is just another place in your collection."

  "A ghost in your harem of lost souls."

  "I was the only one before all of the others, and then when I woke up, now I am the last one!?"

  "Did my faith and trust in you mean nothing?"

  I didn’t know what to say. Anything that came out of my mouth risked sounding like another excuse—or another betrayal.

  I looked at her… my little empress, my first light in a world where everything had turned to ash.

  Her gaze was no longer angry, but heartbreakingly sad.

  As if she had died twice.

  Then I breathed.

  I felt the crack in my chest, the open wound left by seeing her like this.

  And with the firmest voice I could gather, I spoke.

  “Nanami… I don’t want you to suffer because of me anymore. It’s not fair.”

  “What you did for me… no one could ever match it.”

  “But I don’t want you chained to a home you no longer recognize, to a place that brings you pain you never deserved.”

  She slowly lifted her head, surprised.

  “If that’s what you want… you can stay with us—but not as a trapped ghost, not as a yūrei.”

  “Not as an echo of who you once were.”

  “Then… what?”

  “Just give me a little more time,” I said, feeling a crushing weight in every word.

  “I’ll find a body for you. One that’s yours.”

  “One that doesn’t belong to anyone else. A new one—healthy, human.”

  “The one you always deserved.”

  There was a tremor in her form, as if hope hurt more than pain.

  “When we have it…” I continued, clenching my teeth so I wouldn’t break,

  “…you’ll be free. You’ll be able to live like the normal girl you always wanted to be.”

  “You’ll walk through the city, eat ice cream in summer, read silly novels and cry at happy endings.”

  “You’ll have a future—with or without me.”

  And I lowered my gaze, feeling like a shadow of myself.

  “And if… at that moment… you decide you don’t… want to see me again…

  I won’t stop you…”

  I said with a shattered voice, broken, through tears like a hurt and lost child.