(Chastity Reversed) The Legitimate Wife War: How I, a Harem-Hater, Ended Up Creating an Ultra-Eccentric Harem with a Villainess, a Sadistic Beauty Teacher, a Scheming Classmate... etc. - Chapter 146.1 - Starting Over

“You recognized me right away… Then with that understood, let me ask: what are you doing… Mother?”

Unusually, truly unusually, Kazari-san was letting anger seep into her words.

Kazari-san, who never showed emotions.

“…M-Mother, you said… th-then, after all, you are—”

Karen-san’s eyes sparkled with expectation, while Kazari-san continued to gaze at her with cold eyes.

“I’m taking the knife. Please don’t resist. If you do resist—you understand without me saying it, don’t you?”

Without much resistance, Kazari-san swiftly confiscated the knife.

Karen-san was so shaken that she didn’t even care that the knife had been taken.

“Y-you…”

“Kazari-san called… Mother toward Mother… What does that mean?”

“Tachibana-san!”

Like Karen-san, Tachibana-san was in her own state of shock.

“…Kazari…? What are you saying? That’s wrong. This child’s name isn’t Kazari.”

“Not… Kazari-san?”

So that’s it.

When she entered the NAZ Agency, she said she changed her name so her identity wouldn’t be discovered.

Ayaka-san was called White and such too.

So because she was working in Japan, she made it that kind of name?

“It’s Rinka. Tachibana Rinka. Did you forget? She’s your real older sister!”

“Real older sister… Rin…ka? Onee…chan?”

Tachibana-san couldn’t hide her shock that Kazari-san was her real sister.

Whether it was happiness or surprise, her emotions seemed lost.

“Th-then, my dream… wasn’t wrong?”

I leaned my back against the concrete wall and sat down.

But I didn’t take my eyes off the situation in front of me.

My head was spinning. I desperately made my mind work to organize the situation.

Kazari-san’s real name.

“Tachibana Rinka… that’s her name.”

Kazari-san is Tachibana-san’s older sister, huh.

Of course I was surprised, but… strangely enough, part of me was convinced.

I’d sometimes felt something gentle in the way Kazari-san looked at Tachibana-san.

Thinking back now, when Kazari-san learned about Tachibana-san’s abuse, she was the most emotionally stirred—so that’s why. Of course she couldn’t stay calm knowing her real younger sister was still being abused by her parents.

“Until now I couldn’t remember Rinka at all. …No, maybe I sealed the memory myself. But… I always felt something off, I was always unsettled. After fainting, finally, finally. I was finally able to remember you! Hey, Rinka!”

Karen-san’s face beamed with a joyful smile.

But even seeing that, Kazari-san didn’t budge.

“…”

“But… why? Wh-why didn’t you contact me if you were alive? We worried about you so much!”

“When I entered the NAZ Agency, the parent-child ties were severed. That was the contract I joined the NAZ Agency under. However, I did send letters about once a year… though from the looks of it, they didn’t reach you.”

“Parent-child ties are severed, you say… Such a thing! Then we can start over from now on as much as we want. And this time Father is supposed to come back too. So from here on, all four of us…”

“That future will never come.”

“…Eh?”

Kazari-san’s words were harsher than ever.

There was a coldness unthinkable for words to a real mother—so much so that you’d doubt whether she really was her biological mother.

A reunion of parent and child after so long—there was no such warmth at all.

“Our father in name, Tachibana Hirotaka, has officially died. The NAZ Agency has confirmed this too. …I believe you saw his corpse as well.”

“Dead…? That can’t be, because—”

“—Did you hear his voice? …Tachibana Hirotaka’s voice?”

“Y-yes. I properly heard that person’s voice—”

“—It’s synthesized. It’s not his real voice, not his actual voice. Nowadays, with a few sound sources from the past, recreating a voice isn’t difficult at all.”

“That can’t be! Because they said, they said they’d return him, return Hirotaka-san to us!”

“It’s an expedient. They just said that to make you their pawns… You’ve changed, haven’t you?”

“Changed…? Me?”

Kazari-san’s eyes looked a bit sad.

“I remember the old you being kinder, with more backbone. …At least you weren’t someone who would abuse your daughter.”

“Rinka is right, I may have changed! But that was to get my family back! I couldn’t survive without doing this!”

“That may be so…”

…Though I’m the last person who should say this after not noticing for so long, Kazari-san added with self-mockery.

“You protected your mind by changing that way. I may not have the right to say this. Even though it was to protect, I was the one sold of my own accord. …But you said earlier, didn’t you? [We have to share pain.] That means sharing my pain, right? …If so… I never wanted such a thing even one bit… I just wanted you to live happily, peacefully. That was all.”

“Such a thing!!”

“Back then, I was still small too. I couldn’t notice the subtleties of people’s, my parents’ hearts. I consider that my mistake. But at that time, I chose to be sold to the NAZ Agency myself. Do you know why? I thought if I alone went to the NAZ Agency, we’d get money, repay the debt, and everyone except me could live happily. That’s not all. This is awkward to say about myself, but I was fairly talented. So I wouldn’t die, and I thought I could manage somehow, so I made that choice myself and went.”

“…”

“There were flaws. I hurt Father’s last pride, I didn’t consider Mother’s psychological burden. In the end, that became the cause of the family’s collapse. Father left home and died, and you—though you probably don’t realize it yourself—became mentally ill. Tracing it back, there’s some responsibility on my part too.”

“That’s not true! Back then, thanks to you, you don’t need to feel bad about it at all.”

“…”

“And… me, mentally ill? …What are you saying?”

“The old you would stroke your daughter but never hit her. You would love her, but never treat your daughter as a tool because Father needed to return, because it was necessary. You would scold her thinking of her sake, but you weren’t someone who would confine her and give corporal punishment. …You were someone who would explain with words.”

With words…

So what Tachibana-san said earlier about [I want you to say it with words]—that was from real experience, from Karen-san doing that for her in the past?

“Even now I… such a thing… is a lie.”

“Why don’t you look at your own daughter? How do you appear in Mizuri’s eyes?”