I was brutalized and violated over and over again, as Nina was forced to watch.
There wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t scream in agony. It burned. Disgusting terrifying painful hateful.
I had wanted to bite out my own tongue and die on the spot. But, if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to protect Nina.
The act of thinking itself was a mistake.
I desperately tried to coerce myself. Empty my mind, don’t think about anything. Every time I was punched, every time I was forcefully thrust into, I wouldn’t say a word.
“Man, what’s up with her, no matter how much we fuck her she doesn’t even do anything. This shit is boring.”
“Big sis… Big…”
“Say something already! Want another taste, then!? Take it!”
“I would rather you stop there.”
“!”
A bright and cheerful voice, completely out of place in that forest clearing.
Something flared inside that heart of mine back then, that had already begun to grow empty. A carriage pulled up, and that woman appeared from inside.
“Lady Lilith! Hehe, we’ve been waiting for you!”
“Jeez, you guys didn’t listen to what I said before at all, did you? Didn’t I say that Nina would be the most effective thing when it came to big sister Maria?”
Lilith smiled as she looked down on me, the man on top of me still roughly wedged deep inside. Then, she pointed at Nina.
“Toss her in the lake.”
“Kyaa…!”
“What!! Stop it, Lilith!! Please at least let Nina go!!”
“No, dear sister. If I don’t do at least this much, then you won’t play properly with me at all, will you?”
She giggled slightly, hiding her smile with a hand. Ignoring my pleas, two men grabbed Nina by the arm and roughly threw her over the water.
“Ahh!”
“NINA!!”
With a splash, she fell into the lake.
“STOP!! NOOO, NINAAAA!! PLEASE, HELP HER!!”
“Gyahaha! Hey, lookie lookie, big sis, that little one is trying so hard to get back to you. Didn’t you teach her how to swim, hm?”
“Please, I beg you, that girl has poor lungs!! She can’t swim, so I’ll do anything, but please help her!!”
“Oh ho, this is much better! She’s nowhere near as much of a dead fish now! Lady Lilith was right after all!”
“Is that so? Fufu, would you look at that?”
As she saw me frantically thrash about and scream, Lilith’s eyes gleamed, her tongue licking those pretty thin lips.
“Oh, she started crying, what fun! Hey, big sister, did you know? Today is the greatest day in my life!!”
“…I… Please…! I’ll do anything, whatever you want, please just help Nina…!!”
The splashes that had echoed across the lake faded away, silence returning to the night air.
“Ah…”
I couldn’t think. Sadness, anger, despair, and hatred tore through my head.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NINA!!”
“Hey, shaddup!”
No matter how much they beat and kicked me, I never stopped calling Nina’s name.
Eventually, my eyelids swelled shut, my vision became dark. Blood began to flow steadily and I couldn’t feel my fingertips.
But when even my despair faded as my consciousness slipped into the abyss, that flickering flame of hatred and resentment grew ever stronger.
I will never forgive you.
Absolutely unforgivable. Not just Lilith, that detestable woman, but everyone else I hated as well.
– Somehow, one day, I will have my revenge.
“…”
When Maria awoke from that dream and opened her eyes, she found herself in a luxurious carriage.
As her bleary eyes sharpened, she blinked with those long eyelashes and looked down at her body.
She wasn’t in the woods anymore, surrounded by men. Instead, she wore a fine dress.
This Maria wasn’t the same Maria Wenschlee who had been beaten to death on the orders of her younger half-sister.
The girl that was reflected in the window beside her was so beautiful, you could have sworn her features were that of a doll’s.
The same honey coloured hair as ‘Mother’. Big, doe-like eyes. Her face was strong and willful, far different from the face of that girl who had only ever tried to suffer through her torments.
As she looked at herself, Maria sighed softly.
(…Once again, I dreamed of my previous life.)
A dream about the Maria she used to be, the girl who was killed by her half-sister Lilith.
When she woke up from dreams like that, Maria sometimes felt as if she didn’t truly know which person she was. So, closing her eyes, she repeated the words she always told herself.
This Maria is not that woman’s half-sister.
She isn’t a helpless woman, so obsessed with defending her ill young sister that she couldn’t fight back. After being reborn as that woman’s daughter, and finishing her studies abroad for two years, she’s finally ready to carry out her revenge…
“Maria.”
“…”
Suddenly having her name called, she was pulled out of her thoughts.
“We’re nearly at the border to your mother country.”
“…”
Maria frowned, looking at the black-haired young man who sat next to her. She didn’t try to hide her resentment for having her thoughts interrupted like that.
“…So, you’re still here?”
“Aren’t you the awful one? Should you be treating me like this, considering I’m one of the only friends you made in your time abroad?”
“Don’t make jokes. The only reason we are even talking right now is that our interests align, isn’t that right?”
She didn’t need anything like a friend.
What she needed were weapons. Weapons to drag that woman down and devour her, paying her back for all the suffering she had felt in her previous life.
“Haa… You sure are tough.”
That handsome man laughed with a bemused smirk. His smile didn’t make any attempt to hide his villainous nature.
“At the very least, I should thank you for helping me return. I would rather never travel on a carriage prepared by that woman again.”
“Is that because of your memories from your past life?”
“Who knows?”
“…I won’t voice my usual complaints, but…”
That man, the only one who knew about Maria’s rebirth, folded his arms as he leant back into his seat.
“The dead have no need for revenge. You know that, right?”
“…What are you talking about?”
Is he seriously saying something like this now?
If so, how detestable. Maria glared at the man, her beautiful eyes ice cold.
“Nina wouldn’t want you to take revenge like this.”
“…Hoh?”
“If you go around and do the horrible things you’re planning saying ‘It’s for Nina’s sake’, that would be awful. You shouldn’t be doing it for others, but instead only for yourself…”
Maria closed her eyes calmly.
“It is for my sake.”
It had been fifteen years since the previous Maria had died.
Lilith, who gave birth to her child not all that long after Maria’s death, was none the wiser. The fact that her daughter was a reincarnation of the half-sister she had killed.
For fourteen years after being born, Maria had endured.
She had called that despicable woman she hated above all ‘mother’, the man that betrayed her, ‘father’. As she struggled to keep a grip on that maddening rage that bubbled up from her gut, she waited for her opportunity.
(The weak person I used to be is dead.)
She had grown up going through education befitting a princess, obtained both knowledge and connections, gaining allies and influence.
She had prepared herself from the very beginning. Now, she was finally ready.
“It’s time to begin. I will make them all regret ever being born.”
From here on out, she would have her revenge.
(…Retribution.)
She would bring down the hammer of retribution on all the scum who were blissfully living their happily ever after.
I’ll try to be a bit more regular now. Try. Should be more fun to translate now, because let me tell you the previous six chapters weren’t fun.