Chapter 20

“Ugh, honestly. What a spiteful Bishop.”

Inside a dim prison cell—one that had been remodeled into a lavish living space—Heidemarie was enjoying a game of chess today as well.

However, unusually, her opponent was not Gilbert.

Sunk deep into a high-quality sofa was a young man around thirty years of age with auburn hair. He had round, hazel eyes and a defiant mouth; when he smirked, his face took on the look of a mischievous boy.

“Don’t go thinking your reign will last forever, Marie.”

“Oh, hush. You’re just so greedy for a win, Horst.”

The man who shrugged at a sulking Heidemarie was known among their circle by the nickname 【Greed】—Horst Engler.

Considering he had been captured for buying up slaves and criminals to conduct repeated human experiments since his youth, his intellect was clearly sharp; he was mercilessly cornering the usually undefeated Heidemarie.

“This is quite the predicament. Putting the Knights aside, even my lovely black Queen is in danger.”

“…You’re probably aware of this, but if you hadn’t obsessed over the movements of that Queen, you would have won easily, wouldn’t you?”

“But where’s the fun in that?”

Faced with her puzzled reply, Horst pulled back his chin as if exasperated.

“Is there anything in chess that takes priority over winning or losing?”

“A little boy who only knows how to want things wouldn’t understand aesthetics.”

As Heidemarie spoke with a bewitching confidence, she exuded an intensity that an average man could never rival. Perhaps feeling a bit frustrated, Horst threw up his hands in a “fine, fine” gesture.

“I’ll never understand the way you think anyway. Like the mind of a cruel mother who could just kick out such a cute little sister so easily.”

“Oh?”

Heidemarie, who had been resting a slender finger against her lips in thought, looked up at those words. She narrowed her eyes like a cat.

“So you were sulking after all. Was the reason you locked yourself in the lab for so long because you didn’t want to speak to me?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No. It’s quite sweet.”

Because a big brother who cherishes his little sister is simply wonderful.

The phrase spun from her perfectly shaped lips carried a sound as sweet as sugar candy.

Horst Engler.

Also known as the “Mad Boy Doctor.”

Born as the illegitimate son of a wealthy merchant family, he was famous as a psychopath who used his wealth and intellect to conduct a series of human experiments.

However, few knew that the motive behind those experiments lay with his younger sister, who had fallen into a coma after being attacked by thugs.

His sister—kidnapped and broken the moment he looked away.

To maintain the beating of her heart, he combined the magic stones that barely circulated at the time with medical techniques he developed himself. To explore the functions of the brain that governed consciousness, he spent his days doing nothing but opening the skulls of others.

Had he acted as a doctor, and had his subjects been limited to the deceased or the guilty, his actions might have been overlooked.

But once he tracked down the culprit who had attacked his sister—a man of noble birth—and ravaged the man’s brain, Horst’s experiments were branded as “crimes.”

In his case, he probably could have escaped if he wanted to. He could have used the power of money or used his secretly accumulated medical technology as a bargaining chip.

But he didn’t.

Because one day, quite abruptly, his sister breathed her last as the magic stone reached the end of its life.

He didn’t want anything anymore.

Not a brilliant future, not even life itself.

It was Heidemarie who spoke to him one day as he lay chained in a dungeon, refusing even water.

—Really? You, who once encroached upon the domain of God in your hunger for knowledge and life… has that greed truly burned itself out?

Grabbing the arm of Horst, who only looked at her in silence, Heidemarie made him touch her belly.

—Look. Right here.

In here, right now… a new life is growing.

Perhaps he could not have brought the dead back to life.

But a miracle equal to it—the creation of existence from nothingness—was happening right here.

She had gently embraced Horst, who was still only a boy then, and whispered in a voice like that of the Holy Mother.

—Deep down, you wanted to make amends, didn’t you? You simply wanted to nurture and cherish something.

…Very well. I shall grant that wish.

You may raise this child with me.

To say he was “allowed” to raise the child was a phrase of supreme arrogance, imposing what was essentially labor upon him. Yet, in that moment, Horst felt it with his entire being.

He felt forgiven.

He remembered shedding tears for the first time in years when he later took control of the prison, assisted with Heidemarie’s labor, and delivered the infant himself.

A divine feat that human technology, no matter how much it was layered, could never reach.

Birth. Life itself.

His “little sister,” who entered this world with a booming cry, was overflowing with a dazzling strength.

“Honestly, though, I didn’t expect you to become quite this overprotective,” Heidemarie sighed as she looked at the chessboard.

“What are you talking about? I’ve only ever provided my precious ‘sister’ with the absolute minimum necessary protection,” Horst shot back instantly. Not only that, he lowered his brow in sincere worry.

“Oh, Elma. I hope she hasn’t caught a cold. She’s surprisingly clumsy at times; I hope she hasn’t tripped and scraped her knee. I should have given her more anesthesia to take with her.”

“Really now. Are you trying to make me give you a tactless lecture about not treating a scraped knee with anesthesia?”

“What if a ‘nasty bug’ tries to get close to her? I tried to tweak the refractive index of her glasses so she’d look quite plain, but… I definitely should have rigged her with poison needles for self-defense. I’m full of regret. Maybe I should go out there and exterminate them?”

“I said, really.”

This was Elma—a girl who had taken down a dragon in a single blow and kept even the most ill-mannered prisoners in line. If there were a man bold enough to woo her, he would have to be a rather “high-quality bug.” In fact, as a mother, Heidemarie hoped her fifteen-year-old daughter would experience at least one romance.

As Horst let out a pained, soulful sigh, Heidemarie shrugged her slender shoulders.

“Goodness. Why is the love a brother has for his sister always so stifling? Elma isn’t a baby who can only say ‘goo-goo’ anymore, you know.”

“From my perspective, she basically is. And you say ‘from a brother,’ but if you look at Envy’s example, you’d realize that ‘stifling’ isn’t limited to one gender.”

As he made his sharp retort, Heidemarie pressed her hand to her chest with exaggerated shock.

“Oh, heavens, Horst. Are you suggesting Envy is a woman?”

“Well, they certainly aren’t a man.”

“They aren’t a woman either.”

“But they do call themselves ‘The Prison’s Best Woman.’ We have to respect their wishes.”

“My, ‘The Prison’s Best’?”

Heidemarie pouted her lips as if she had been slighted again. “That person… they’re always trying to provoke me like that.”

“It’s not even a contest you should bother entering.”

“But whenever I hear about a battle over womanhood, I simply can’t ignore it.”

“I know. And I also know that Elma is always the one who gets caught in the crossfire.”

For instance: how to apply makeup. How to choose clothes.

How to tie one’s hair, how to judge perfumes, how to sing.

The competition over who could better embody feminine beauty had, as Elma grew, somehow mutated into a contest of “who could raise Elma to be a more charming woman.”

Thanks to that, Elma was forced into “image changes” almost daily—one day a seductive harlot, the next a pure-hearted saint with a modest smile. As the one watching from the sidelines, Horst had been worried sick. Likely, even Elma herself couldn’t figure out which direction she was supposed to form her own character in.

As Horst muttered a “poor thing,” the beautiful former harlot tilted her head elegantly.

“But thanks to that, I believe she’s grown into a woman who could enchant even the prince of a great nation in a single instant.”

“Marie, what exactly did you want your daughter to become? Don’t give my precious sister such weird lessons,” Horst interjected with a deadpan stare.

The fact that every single resident of this prison believed they were “the only person with common sense” made them truly beyond saving.

“Oh?”

Heidemarie blinked her long eyelashes as if she had been asked something truly unexpected. Then, gently stroking the Black Queen standing on the board with her finger, she let a thin smile play on her lips.

“That’s obvious. I wanted to make her a ‘normal girl’.”