Like Laughter in the Rain, Like Tears

Lang Ei.

My second wife. A tiger beastwoman — and not just any tiger, but a white tiger of exceptional power.

The beastmen’s innate ability is physical enhancement. Magic can strengthen the body of any race, of course, but the beastmen’s efficiency with it is in a class of its own. In pure close-quarters combat, they competed with anyone in Karakas for the top spot.

And among all the beastmen, Lang Ei stood unchallenged at the peak.

Dark elves, by contrast, were weak. In terms of raw fighting strength, they sat near the bottom alongside humans.

Yet here she was — dropping out of nowhere to put herself between me and the Queen of Assassins.

“Your Majesty.”

The other dark elves tensed and called out in warning.

They didn’t need to know the full situation to understand the math. With the force they had here, fighting Lang Ei was a losing proposition.

But the Queen of Assassins looked like she hadn’t heard a word.

“Get in my way, Lang Ei, and I’ll kill you too.”

“……Why are you this angry?”

Lang Ei tilted her head, genuinely puzzled.

I’d been watching from behind her, and I had a question of my own.

“Where did you even come from?”

I’d anticipated Iselen making contact. I’d sent word through Albert that I wanted to meet.

But Lang Ei had literally fallen from the sky.

Lang Ei paused for a beat, then answered.

“The party — I was too late. I didn’t recognize the mask.”

“That’s an odd answer to give. Wait — you’ve been following me around this whole time?”

The party she meant was the Kedrik affair.

The way she said it, she’d been trailing me from before that.

Lang Ei glanced back at me briefly.

That face — the kind of handsome, striking beauty that turned heads regardless of who was looking — was perfectly blank, but……

“Are you feeling a little guilty right now?”

“……Mmm.”

She let the syllable trail off and looked away.

Lang Ei turned her gaze back to the front.

“Iselen. Pull your people back. These are the grounds where our comrades rest — blood should never be shed here. And beyond this place, I will not allow harm to come to the son of Librata. Not here, not anywhere.”

“I told you to move.”

“I won’t.”

A standoff, taut as a pulled wire.

But in a straight fight with this force, the Queen of Assassins was the one at a disadvantage.

“……”

The Queen of Assassins fixed her gaze on me.

The blazing fire in her eyes went out — and what was left was cold. Ice-cold.

Those eyes told me plainly: the moment an opening appeared, she would kill me.

“This isn’t like you, Iselen. Find your reason and talk it through.”

Lang Ei, entirely missing the subtext, offered the most tone-deaf suggestion imaginable.

The Queen of Assassins shook her head.

“Lang Ei. You saved Orca once — I’ll acknowledge that debt and withdraw. Consider us even.”

“It wasn’t me who saved Orca. That was Rigen Librata.”

“……”

The Queen of Assassins ignored it and turned away.

She already knew it was me who saved Orca, obviously. Bringing up the debt was nothing more than a face-saving measure — a reason to fall back in front of her subordinates.

Lang Ei, of course, had not caught any of that.

She never had been good at this sort of thing.

The Queen of Assassins and her dark elves withdrew.

Even so, Lang Ei stayed rigid, not relaxing her guard. She swept her eyes left and right like a predator tracking every corner of its territory, her tiger ears rotating and pricking at the dark.

“The rain’s blunted your sense of smell anyway. You can stand down.”

“……”

Lang Ei turned to look at me in silence.

A beautiful white tiger, standing motionless in the downpour.

Those gold eyes fixed on me — and then, abruptly, she said,

“I just happened to be passing by. I wasn’t following you.”

“……That’s what you worked up to after all that time?”

“If I had been following you, it would have been to protect the children.”

Lang Ei at baseline was a straightforward creature. In tension or in combat, she simplified further — mental processing stripped down to fast and direct, intuition and instinct cranked to their peak. Which meant she couldn’t really hedge or lie.

“……”

Even so, her manner didn’t change.

A soaked white tiger, casting furtive glances in my direction.

Objectively, it was almost pitiable.

“……Oh, what is it.”

You show up like that, out of nowhere, and then look at me like that.

Then Lisera spoke.

“Mother Lang Ei, thank you for coming. But the road home might not be safe.”

“Iselen has already withdrawn……”

“Would you walk back with us?”

Lisera cut in before she could finish, speaking quickly.

Lang Ei hesitated and shot a glance at me.

“……Oh, for — you’re going to stand there getting rained on. Go buy an umbrella first.”

An empress, of all things, wandering around alone and in the rain without so much as an umbrella.

She’d always had that tendency — never one for looking after herself. I’d ended up keeping track of things for her.

Lisera said promptly,

“Go get an umbrella first, then wait for us outside. We’ll walk home together.”

“Understood.”

Thud — thud — CRACK!

Three strides and Lang Ei was already airborne, clearing the tiled rooftop in a single leap.

Gone in an instant.

I shook my head slowly.

“What on earth is she doing.”

Lisera smiled and said,

“I think she’s embarrassed to face Father.”

“……Hm.”

Ah. I’d almost forgotten.

I smiled and turned to Lisera.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“……”

I denied it!

Lisera had already worked it all out, and I just denied it!

But something had pricked at me — some vague guilt — and the denial had come out before I could stop it.

It was like buying a three-million-won graphics card and telling your wife you got it secondhand for a hundred and fifty thousand, then standing right next to her while she searches the price online.

“Father.”

“……Ah, no. You keep saying strange things. I genuinely have no idea what you mean.”

Lisera stared at me.

A long, steady stare.

“Forget-me-nots.”

“What?”

“The flowers you brought today — I asked you to pick something Father liked. You chose forget-me-nots.”

I answered on reflex.

“Well, sure, but — I cut some forget-me-nots from the Librata estate grounds before. So naturally I thought——”

“The shelter.”

“Pardon?”

“How did you know where the hidden shelter was in Royal Class? Apparently even the empresses barely knew about it. But you knew its exact location and told me to take cover there.”

Lisera said it quietly.

“Afterward I heard that even if the carriage had derailed, anyone inside that shelter would have been safe.”

“……Ah, well. Royal Class is Royal Class — obviously they’d have some kind of emergency passage, a safe zone built in somewhere. That’s just common sense——”

“And just now?”

“……What?”

“It’s raining. So how is it that I haven’t been touched by a single drop? You steadied me twice with both hands. How were you managing the umbrella?”

“Ah, I had it wedged between my neck and shoulder.”

“Father used to show me something wonderful once — he made objects float in the air and told me it was a secret.”

Lisera exhaled.

“If you keep denying it, I’m going to be upset.”

“……Fine. Yes. I used telekinesis.”

I surrendered.

Even with both hands raised, Lisera pressed on, calm and unhurried.

“More than anything else, Father — the way you talk. You just sound like him. Do you know how many people speak to me or to Mother this casually? With this much ease?”

“Plenty of people talk casually. Humans don’t bow and scrape to everyone.”

Among the long-lived races, going by age would mean a human bowing to every other species they met.

So Karakas ran more on a read-the-room basis.

Though even accounting for that, I had to admit I pushed it a bit.

Lisera kept going.

“Facing down the Queen of Assassins the way you did — do you think that’s something ordinary courage can manage? Most people can’t even form words in front of her.”

“Ah, ah — I did use formal speech sometimes. Occasionally.”

“Your formal speech is so transparently halfhearted it practically announces itself. Or it shows up exactly when you’re feeling guilty. Like right now.”

“…Well. If you say so.”

My voice had gone small.

“……Fine. I’m Sirik. Sirik Karakas — reborn a hundred years later as Rigen Librata. I don’t know how or why it happened, so don’t ask.”

“Why do you keep struggling with it?”

“Because……”

I swallowed.

Lisera couldn’t see. That was the thing sitting at the back of my throat.

What kind of father was I, really.

“……Because I’m sorry.”

“For my eyes?”

I answered with a slow exhale.

Lisera’s sight was coming back, she’d said — but there had been a long stretch of darkness before that. Just thinking about it made something in my chest go tight.

As I shook my head, something caught my eye at the edge of the cemetery.

The baby’s breath bouquet. The one Iselen had brought.

“One moment.”

The flowers weren’t to blame.

I reached out with telekinesis and pulled the bouquet across the wet ground, then set it at the base of the grave marker.

It was strange, leaving flowers at my own grave. But there was something right about it too.

I straightened up and said, without quite meaning to organize my thoughts first,

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t even know where to start.”

“No, no. My eyes are absolutely not your fault. That was my own choice.”

“Even so. If I’d lived longer, none of this would have——”

“Dad.”

Lisera called me the way she used to when she was small.

I went quiet. When I looked up, she said, gently,

“Losing my sight wasn’t a good thing. I won’t pretend the pain wasn’t real. But right now — I’m grateful for it.”

“What?”

In the dark and rain.

Lisera smiled, full and open.

“Because I couldn’t see — I was able to recognize you faster than anyone else.”

“……”

People rely on what their eyes tell them. I could talk like Sirik, act like Sirik, and someone looking at this face would still only see a strange young man — never the Emperor reborn.

But Lisera.

Lisera, without her sight, had been freed of that first impression. She’d read me on nothing but voice and motion and the shape of who I was.

And so she had known first.

That I had come back.

“Dad.”

Lisera was smiling when she said it.

My daughter was smiling — and her eyes were filling with tears.

“Yeah. Sera.”

I lifted the umbrella with telekinesis and took Lisera in both arms.

“It’s me. I came back, Sera.”

“Dad.”

Lisera let out a soft, quiet cry.

“……I thought it was a dream. Back then.”

When I’d put her to sleep at the Librata estate, I’d stroked her hair in the dark and whispered to her — the way I used to when she was a child.

I ran a hand gently over my daughter’s head now.

“Somehow, remarkably, it wasn’t a dream. I seem to have racked up enough sins that there’s still work left to do.”

“Yes. But right now……”

Lisera broke into tears.

“Just that you came back is enough. So — so I want to smile.”

The sound of crying, woven through the sound of rain.

I held Lisera and let my thoughts settle.

The plan to bring the Queen of Assassins over had failed — and now she was an enemy.

The terrorists clearly had some connection to the Seven Sin God, one way or another.

The political road ahead was going to be messier and more complicated than ever.

But right now.

“Thank you for welcoming me back.”

Right now, my daughter was happy to see me.

And that was enough.

That was everything.

Through the rain, a beautiful woman walked in a near-run.

Like she was fleeing something.

Like she only wanted to put distance between herself and everything she’d just left.

“Your Majesty.”

Subordinates moved to hold an umbrella over her and she ignored them, walking and walking until she stopped abruptly beneath a large tree.

“……I’ll have to kill Rigen Librata.”

“Pardon?”

Everyone froze.

The situation back there — hadn’t it been about securing Lisera? A threat, nothing more?

Rigen Librata was the name of the hour.

Special officer of the Railway Military Police, the man credited with resolving the latest incident — the imperial military, the Central Police, and the Noble Assembly had all been angling for contact with him through every channel available.

On top of that, the Third Princess and Fourth Princess were already in his orbit, and now the Second Empress Lang Ei had come to his defense personally.

The more reckless voices were already floating the idea that he was a candidate for the second Emperor.

And now the dark elves were going to kill a rising star like that?

What possible benefit did that serve?

“Understood.”

But the dark elves obeyed without a second’s hesitation.

The Queen of Assassins’ command was absolute. All for all — the Queen of Assassins always made the right call. If she said to kill Rigen Librata, then killing Rigen Librata was what was best for the dark elves.

Iselen leaned against the tree and shook her head.

“No — I’ll kill him myself. Bring him to me alive.”

“……Pardon?”

Capture a human operating at fourth rank alive? That was twice as difficult as killing him.

Through the sound of the rain, Iselen said it in pieces, one fragment at a time.

“We can’t move on this directly. There are plenty of people among the twelve houses who’d like to see Librata removed. Find them. Confirm their intentions. Keep it quiet.”

“……Yes. Understood. We’ll look into it.”

“Cut off Orca’s intelligence network.”

“Yes. Then, should we——”

Iselen shook her head.

“I need a moment to think. Everyone withdraw.”

“……”

It was just a tree. The rain still came down hard.

And the Queen hadn’t even taken an umbrella.

But an order was an order. The dark elves withdrew.

Alone now, Iselen leaned against the tree and stared at the ground.

Rain falling. Thoughts in chaos.

And beneath both — a rage that was burning her alive from the inside.

For dark elves, who lived and moved as one, revealing their family name to another was an act of singular weight. To do so across racial lines was rarer still.

And for a Queen’s name to be spoken — that was something beyond reckoning in secrecy.

Lagriz.

Only one man had ever had the right to say it.

And that man was gone.

So how had that name come out of that boy’s mouth?

“……”

Orca. Her foolish young son had gone and spilled it, completely taken in.

She wanted to chide him for his carelessness — but a sharper feeling was cutting through her, one she couldn’t contain.

The shame of it.

The instant Rigen Librata had spoken that name — Lagriz — her heart had lurched.

The years of sitting in the Emperor’s lap while he held her close, whispering.

The years of him pulling her in from behind, pressing his lips to her cheek.

Happy memories, flooding back all at once.

Running through her from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, a shiver — and then her breath had gone short.

“……I won’t forgive it.”

That her heart had raced for a man who was not him — the shame of it made her want to bite through her own tongue.

But a clan leader couldn’t very well take her own life.

So the other party would have to die instead.

That was the only way to wash this humiliation clean.

“Without fail. Without fail……”

She would take him alive. She would make him endure every torment she could devise. And then she would kill him.

Every command the Queen of Assassins had ever given was for the dark elves as a whole. For all of them. But this one — this was different.

Pure spite. Personal.

She had decided to kill Rigen out of nothing but wounded feeling.

Having made that resolution, Iselen pressed herself against the tree and bent forward.

Eyes closed tight.

She trusted the sound of the rain to cover her.

“Sirik — I can’t anymore……”

The rain took her voice.

And her crying.

So that no one else would ever hear it.