Chapter 2

…I also made light of Knights’s newcomers. I cannot so haughtily claim to have protected them.

Just as with the sakura ants, I played with them as if they were toys created for my own satisfaction, and then in the end I left them to die.

Sakura ants…?

Have you forgotten? Well, we were both very young.

Mm… Maybe you really were too weak an’ dumb to really protect anything.

But things turnin’ out the way they did don’t mean the affection you poured into ‘em was a lie.

It ain’t just some hallucination.

I’m sure the passion you shared with us is still there among all the things you’re carryin’ in your arms.

So it ain’t like everything you did was all for nothin’.

……

Thanks to you, Oukawa Kohaku, an’ me too—We were able to live because of what you gave us.

…Oukawa Kohakucchi is a pretty pathetic kid, yanno.

You don’t even know the half of it. Not sure if you still respect the guy nowadays, but your grandfather started actin’ all outta sorts right when he realized he was about to die.

Grandfather…?

Yeah, I think he finally realized as death came knockin’ on his door that everything he’d gained in this life would fall right outta his hands when he died.

You can’t take your status, your honor, your love, anything with you to the afterlife.

An’ when he figured that out, he musta gotten scared all of a sudden. Like he was a frail li’l kid who just woke up from a bad dream.

No one knows if there’s life after death, yanno. But I guess he wanted to make his life there just a li’l better, something he could be proud of—

Your grandfather figured he should rack up some good deeds. An’ so, in order for him to enter the kingdom of heaven, he started to carve away every filthy, sinful thing he had to his name.

“God, O God, please hear my prayers. These wicked, impure things have nothing to do with me.”

“I am pure and innocent. So please, allow me into heaven.”

…Oukawa was the first to be struck down by the delusions of an old man possessed by the fear of his own death an’ wanted so badly to go to heaven.

All of us, really. We’re a filth-covered clan who specializes in dirty work. It’s our duty to drench ourselves in blood, all for the sake of the Suous, for the sake of the main house.

That’s what we were born to do. But we’re humans too… Obviously we don’t wanna be scared, we don’t wanna get covered in dirt, we don’t wanna hurt or kill anyone.

But in spite of all that, we’ve been desperately seein’ our duty through, all for you guys, for your house.

An’ then your grandfather went and called us impure.

So dirty he oughta just throw us away—

……

We were already eatin’ dirt to survive, and then your grandfather up an’ traipsed all over us just to increase the chances of him gettin’ into a heaven we don’t even know exists.

And then, much to our dismay, a long-awaited baby boy was born into the Oukawa clan around that time.

Maybe we’re just unlucky, but our family’s one that has a hard time producing males. So it was a right ol’ coincidence one popped out.

I dunno, maybe it was some fickle whim of the gods.

We mostly had girls, so up ‘til then, there was no other option but to have the first-born girl become the heir of the Oukawa family.

But the Oukawas are a branch off the Suous, and the Suous are an old-fashioned, outdated samurai clan. Obviously, the eldest son is meant to take over as head of the family.

That’s all well an’ good, but by the time that baby boy was born, the old man in charge of the Suou family line already had a few maggots crawlin’ around in his brain.

The only thing he wanted was to prove that he was a pure and righteous person.

And so, when the Oukawas saw that little boy, saw Kohaku, we all made a vow.

We had to protect that cute, precious child from the crazy ol’ coot runnin’ the Suou house.

When his mom, his dad, all his sisters, everyone who knew how dirty and despised we were—When they all held him in their hands…

Kohaku smiled so bright, and in that moment, they resolved themselves.

—We’ll protect this child.

This cute youngest child.

From that day on, the Oukawa family waged war. No one supported us, no one said we were right for it—But it was a fight for our survival, against everyone who hated us as impurities, who persecuted us.

If all the world says you should get rid of the impurities, maybe it’s true.

But yanno, we’re alive too. Even the most pitiful bugs should have the right to life. We should be allowed to want to live.

And no one can deny that we’ve worked damn hard for that end.

……

But he still wanted to stamp us out. First he’d stop payin’ us, then he’d stop protectin’ us—Slowly but surely let us break down an’ starve to death.

And then, if that still wasn’t enough—He might try an’ kill us.

If that happened, his very first target would’ve been the eldest son, the successor of our family. Of course, he’d kill the whole lot of us in the end, but he needed to get rid of the child heir first and foremost.

It’s just a matter of course for y’all’s grandfather; he grew up in that antiquated patriarchy, after all. The women of the house, and all the guys who married in too—They ain’t no threat to him.

But the man who has the Oukawa blood runnin’ in his veins… He’s the root of all evil. He’s gotta be taken down and eliminated.

It was clear as day that that’s what Grandfather thought, so before he could go mad—the Oukawa clan hid the boy. They hid their precious, adorable heir.

In order to hide him from the world, from Grandfather, we locked him up in his home. All so we could claim that kid wasn’t born, that the Oukawas never had any boys.

We had no choice but to insist that a kid named Oukawa Kohaku never even existed.

……