The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'
Chapter 51 - They Say Romantic Comedy Equals Epic Tragedy Plus... Wait-

Chapter 51: Chapter 51 - They Say Romantic Comedy Equals Epic Tragedy Plus... Wait-

A wavy haired brunette poked her head out of the entry hall and looked at her fiance sitting up in the stands, before tucking her back onto the nearby wall. She was extremely glad that Qat looked to be perfectly fine... and extremely ashamed at the amount of overreaction she had been having. Elua took a deep breath to calm her further racing thoughts.

’Okay, she’s fine. She’s just... sitting there. Probably watching someone’s late training or a match. Not kidnapped, not hurt, not...’

She shook her head and tapped the back of her skull against the wall, realizing how ridiculous her fears had been in a region like this. She almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. Almost.

’I was thousands of years old. I’ve faced Defier threats. Had *disagreements* with other Demi-gods. And here I am, panicking this bad over my target of affections not leaving a note of explanation.’

The reborn cultivator straightened out her clothes one more time and put on her best ’everything is normal’ facade. She wanted to act natural, like the girl didn’t just antagonize half the Yecine family when looking for her. With a ’carefree’ skip in her step, the brunette turned up the ramp and approached the blonde.

"Hey there, darling~ Fancy seeing you here. Were you enjoying a show?"

Qatrand turned, her pigeon blue eyes meeting Elua’s mint ones. There was a flicker of... something in her gaze. Concern? Suspicion? But her spirit at least did what it always does, and those reaching tendrils kept the small girl *stable*.

"El? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, you know, I just thought I’d take an evening stroll and ended up here. Funny how that happens, right?"

The heiress let out a ’nervous giggle’ that sounded forced even to her own ears. The swordswoman furrowed her brow, thinking that she must have wanted her to notice. Especially with the rest of what she was seeing.

"Your hair is a mess. Did something happen?"

The brunette’s facade cracked its ’normal’ just a little while she pat all around her head.

"What? No, no, everything’s fine! Completely fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine? It’s not like it got that way because I’ve been running all over town looking for you in a panic or anything!"

She clamped her mouth shut with puffed cheeks and wide eyes. She’d said too much. Her plan to ’play it cool’ was absolutely failing! Her fiance’s concerned expression softened, a mix of confusion and affection. The tendrils of her spirit touched and was informed of the slowly receding ’fear’ in the Goltbred.

"El... did you think something had happened to me?"

The brunette’s shoulders slumped, her constructed normalcy fully crumbled. She didn’t let go of the facade, but it was no longer trying to act like it was okay.

"I... maybe? You left without saying anything and I just... I got worried. Really worried. Irrationally worried, apparently."

Qat reached out, taking the girl’s soft hand in her own covered in thickened skin.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t think-"

Elua squeezed her hand, letting out a shaky breath and interrupting the girl’s apology.

"No, I’m sorry. I overreacted. Massively. You’re an adult, you don’t need to report your every move to me. I just... sometimes I forget that not everything between us is a potential disaster."

The taller of them tugged on her arm and brought her to sit in between her thighs. She decided to wait a bit to say anything else and give the other girl time to calm down. As they sat together, Elua leaned into the Yecine’s incredibly comforting presence... and she wondered how she was going to explain the family-related chaos she’d left in her wake.

"I’d been thinking about the note left on your door, but I’d come back to see you anyway. They told me you went out with your mother, so I decided to wait."

The mint eyed young miss gratefully accepted the slight change of topic!

"Yes. I let her meet with my merchant underling that she originally introduced me to... and explained a lot of what I’d been doing in secret with my side-jobs."

She had never once used the term ’boss’ to describe her relationship when speaking to Qat alone. Now that she had literally sat on him, it had downgraded from ’partner’ to ’underling’. The swordswoman was perplexed at this difference and wondered if it was someone new. She had been told even more details than Yatrel over the course of so many ’after dinner walks’.

Back then, learning that El was so good with sigils had been something she felt was amazing. It was still incredible, but became another thing that had been so easily explained by her past life in hindsight. She wondered what someone else-

"What did she think about it all?"

The girl in her arms turned her head from side to side against the swordswoman’s chest.

"As usual she didn’t admonish me much for keeping quiet. It was learning that I gave to a local cultivator orphanage that really made her react."

"...You only mentioned the cultivator one? What about the three for mortals in our region? Why not tell her about all of them?"

The usually cute acting girl whose face she couldn’t see sighed.

"Because then I’d feel like explaining why it was such a big deal to me... and because my mother was an orphan doesn’t seem like enough. Part of me would feel compelled to talk about that aspect of my last life with her."

After answering Elua found herself hugged tighter for a few seconds.

"I appreciate that you think of me first to tell everything to - but is trusting your parents so bad?"

The brunette bit back her first response. She knew that the Yecine meant the Goltbred couple specifically and not parents in general. However, it would nicely relate to explaining some of her behavior this evening if she told one story in particular. She moved her palms on top of the black clothed knees and gripped just a little.

"Please don’t take this the wrong way, but do you completely trust your father now? Family isn’t... something that I see as unconditionally good, Qat. Both because I grew up in that first life mostly on my own and because of what I’ve seen some of them do to each other."

Pigeon blue eyes ticked over to a spot in the distance while her mind went much further away, towards her home.

"I... okay, I’ll be completely honest here and tell you that the first place I thought to look was at your estate. Your father was the one to come out and tell me that you were not there and we may have shared certain thinly-veiled words regarding what he did. I was still very upset for... reasons other than just that he had spoken those things to you."

The pair of eyes closed and tendrils of spirit latched more comfortingly around the small girl she was holding - and who was gripping her knees with more force than she probably thought. Hearing that her fiancee had argued with the man was...

’Not as surprising as I expected.’

"It’s not a great excuse, but I want you to understand why... I was so panicked. Coming back to learn you were there but then gone without me knowing reminded me of a situation that I went through once before. It..."

The reborn cultivator had been dreading having to ever tell the girl this or any other old story on this topic. It was rare that someone with the kind of qualities she liked in a partner didn’t show a lot of interest in the tales... and usually it was because it made them feel negative thoughts.

’They want to know, but they don’t want to know.’

"Before I speak, have you yet rationalized what it means that I had lived for so long, Qat? In regards to... finding someone I was interested in?"

A somewhat nice and somewhat uncomfortable reaction came from those vague words spoken in monotone. The emotion known as jealousy sounded out in the spirit of the one being questioned.

"Yes, I... expect that with thousands of years I am not... the first person you loved."

"Correct. There’s really no pleasant way to say it, but your wording was very diplomatic. I see that this makes you uncomfortable. Does it assure you at all to know that I am just as faithful to the one I love as the mother that bore me in this life?"

Listless mint eyes found those of her beloved after carefully twisting her neck and back in the awkward position. She refused to let go of those knees!

"No other will ever be in my heart than the person that means the most to me. The memories of others are there, but lingering affection does not exist. Which is exactly why it is so easy to insert you, the love I have from now until it is somehow taken from me, into a bad scenario of the past and lose every piece of calm that I need to seem normal."

Qatrand understandably did not know what to say to this. It wasn’t something that could just be understood or sympathized with when you are ’going on seventeen’ years old and have only ever understood something as ’love’ for a very small portion of that time.

However, it wasn’t like Elua’s other partners and potential partners in the past actually understood how she was able to just disconnect the supposedly intense feelings from the person either. More than one even accused her of never having been in love with them at all - including the person from the example she was about to share.

"My recent rise to Breacher was also likely a factor in my subconscious that linked me towards this memory, as it was around that same cultivation realm that it happened. The one that had been the target of my interest was lured away by her patriarch claiming a false emergency. She always left notes, but that time she didn’t because it was a supposed crisis and went missing for weeks."

The illusionist had spent that long searching false trails, only to meet the one she loved again without any recognition of her person. The memories of their burgeoning relationship had been selectively excised. It was not something her spiritualism could fix.

"I discovered that the man had used that time to finalize his control over the last member of his family. You see, he had become a Defier and felt that his Memory Astralism was *meant* to puppet the purpose and feelings of those connected to him by blood. His goal was to build a dynasty that would stand the test of the ages."

While the older teenager was still conflicted about hearing of a dead relationship her future wife had, the story itself was enthralling! Her spirit poked at the teller with obvious ’interest’ in the continuation.

"Did it?"

Elua turned her face away and stopped holding onto the knees of her husband-wife. She crossed her arms over the stubborn hold that her ’fortress’ kept across her stomach and leaned back once more. It didn’t seem like she needed to keep herself ready to create physical distance... should she have not taken any part of the conversation well.

"Like most ambitious people, his plans lasted until he overreached. He may have been stronger than me at the time, but he was not stronger than everyone... nor was his family. They were all dead before I could even desire to return for revenge."

That intention *would* have included the woman who had ended up rejecting Elua entirely by falling prey to another’s machinations...

’I think it would be better for our relationship not to ever tell her *that* kind of thing about me.’