Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 298: Left With

A lake somewhere unknown was still. It had been still for so long it had forgotten there was any other way to be.

Its surface was black, deep black, the black of the space between stars, the black of sleep without dreams, the black of water that had never known wind.

No ripples moved across it. No fish broke its surface. No birds flew above it, no insects skimmed its edge, no reeds grew along its shore.

It was a lake that had been made for nothing but to be still, and it was very, very good at it.

The sky above it was pink. Just a mix of white and red. It went on forever since it had no sun to make it. It was just there, endless.

It reflected in the black water, but the reflection was wrong, dimmer, darker, the color of something remembered rather than something seen.

The horizon was a line of deeper pink, a seam where sky and water met and held, and there was no shore, no land, no end to the stillness.

In the middle of the lake, a fluff floated.

It was almost transparent, the color of mist, or perhaps the color of breath on a cold morning. It seemed like it was there and not there at the same time.

It shifted, slow and lazy, its edges curling and uncurling like the petals of a flower that had no intention of blooming. It did not rest on the water, just hovered above it, just separate enough that the black surface below it was undisturbed.

On top of it, lying on her side, was a woman.

Her hair was gold, spilling everywhere. The gold of sunlight through silken honey. It spread across the fluff, tangled, endless, catching the pink light and holding it and letting it go.

She was faceless. So, even though she cried, tears only slid down it, tracing paths that had no eyes to start from, no mouth to tremble, no cheeks to wet.

Behind her was a shape. A man, or something like a man. His face was a vertical mouth, stretching from the top of his forehead to the center of his stomach, a seam of darkness in the shape of him.

It did not move when he spoke, but the words came anyway, soft, rumbling.

"Why are you still sad?" He had asked this question many times and would ask it many times more. "You keep the world intact, like she asked. See?" He gestured at something, somewhere, a direction that was not a direction, a place that was not a place. "They’ll be fine."

The woman’s tears did not stop. Her faceless face turned toward him, and the gold of her hair shifted. The pink light caught in it, and she was beautiful in the way that things are beautiful when they are almost gone.

"Well," she said, and her voice was soft, and her tears did not stop, "this ’fake’ world’s version of the four chosen are still there." She paused. "But their ’real’ world counterpart has left." Her hand moved, a slow wave, a gesture that took in the pink sky, the black water, the still, still lake. "It’s still sad... for everyone."

The man’s vertical mouth did not indicate amusement, but something in his voice softened. "It’s good that they’re sad." His hand settled on her shoulder. "It’s because you preserved their memory."

She turned to him. Her faceless face found his again, and her hand rose, traced the edge of his mouth, the seam of him, the place where his words came from. Her fingers were pale, almost transparent, and they trembled, just a little.

"Burn..." she called.

His hand covered hers, held it against his face. "Yes, Madam?"

"It’s hard," she said, "being a ’god’."

The man’s mouth moved. "You think?"

She laughed.

"Now," he pulled her closer and pointed at the sky. "What do you want the color of the sky to be today?"

The woman hummed, considering.

"Green."

"Alright."

***

Cecilia... was just an eighteen-year-old girl. An eighteen-year-old magic student.

She spent her days in the library, her nights in her dorm, her weekends catching up on readings that no one else had bothered to finish.

She was the top student in the Unique Magic Department, a fact that brought her more isolation than admiration, and she had never, not once, considered that her life might be anything other than what it was.

But one day, something happened. Something she could not explain nor rationalize, nor fit into any of the neat categories her education had prepared her for.

Something possessed her.

What? She did not know. Not at first.

There was just a presence, a weight, perhaps. Some warmth that settled into her bones like she had been cold her whole life and was only now, finally, warm.

It spoke with her voice, moved with her body, lived her life while she watched from somewhere deep inside herself, helpless and fascinated and terrified.

Until this person started to tease the scary delinquent who regularly teased and ’bullied’ her. Eastiel Edengold. The terror of the Athenaeum, the boy who could make professors flinch if he wanted and students scatter, the one person Cecilia had learned, very carefully, to avoid.

And the person inside her, the other Cecilia, teased the hell out of him.

That was when the memory started. It was like water finding its way through stone. Images, feelings, a life that was not her own pressing against the edges of her consciousness.

Apparently, there was a ’real’ world. A different world, where a different version of Cecilia and her three husbands lived.

A world where prophecies were real and dragons walked the earth and the girl who looked like her had saved kingdoms and loved kings and carried the weight of things that should have broken her.

Cecilia, the eighteen-year-old, the top student, the girl who had never been kissed, was flabbergasted.

Her? Husbands? Three of them? And none of them was Arzhen, the boy she had been quietly, hopelessly in love with since forever?

—and—and—aND—

THEFOUROFTHEMHADSEX?!

Her face burned. Her hands flew to her cheeks. The other Cecilia’s memories were not shy, were not quiet, were very, very explicit about the things she had done with those three men.

The ways they had touched her, the sounds she had made, the positions—

She was just a nerd! A top student in the Unique Magic Department!

She spent her weekends reading about theoretical mana flow and her evenings organizing her notes and her nights alone, with no one, with nothing! She was just the girl who had never been wanted!

HOW?!

When she woke up in that villa, surrounded by three handsome boys, she wanted to scream.

Of course, she had been awake the whole time she was possessed. Well... she could choose whether she wanted to be awake or close her eyes tight, which she couldn’t because of how fascinating everything was...

But it was different now. Now she was here, reclaiming her own body, in her life, and these three strangers were looking at her like... like... like...

She finished crying for the grief of those beautiful souls leaving. Her face was still red. Her hands were still shaking.

But when she noticed the three boys had woken up, she wanted to cry for a different reason completely.

They were looking at her, perhaps also not knowing what to do. She knew they were also being possessed. Also inhabited. Also left with memories that were not their own and feelings that did not belong to them and the unique disorientation of being someone else and yourself at the same time.

"Ce..." Arkai Dawnoro cleared his throat. The Student Council President. The most powerful student in the Athenaeum. The boy who had been her good acquaintance, yet also, she knew, was always too far above her to notice.

He was sitting on her bed and he did not know what to say.

Oathran Alicei was examining his hands, turning them over, flexing his fingers. "Hmm," he hummed. "Apparently, I am a dragon in a different world."

His voice was calm, almost detached. "Interesting."

Eastiel was red. Completely red. His face was rose gold, the color of the flush that spread across Cecilia’s own cheeks whenever she thought too hard about the memories that were not hers.

His hands were clasped in his lap, his shoulders rode a bit upwards, and he was looking at her like he wanted to dig a well and jump into it.

"Cecilia..." His voice cracked.

What was she supposed to do? What were any of them supposed to do?

The people who had possessed them were responsible for everything. The engagement, the relationship, the rumors, gossip, uproars, everything!

They had injected their lives into Cecilia’s head, into Arkai’s, into Oathran’s and Eastiel’s, and then they had left. Just left. Like it was nothing. Like they had not changed everything.

Jerks!

"Well." Oathran shrugged easy, almost lazy. He was leaning back on his hands, looking at the ceiling and at the morning light that was filtering through the curtains.

He turned to the three people on the bed who were all, somehow, his.

"Our fathers-in-law are downstairs, you know." He glanced at Cecilia, and there was something in his eyes. Amusement, maybe, or warmth. Perhaps, the steadiness of a man who had spent four hundred years learning to be calm was still left in him even when the real four-hundred-year-old had left

"And the world already sees us as... what, a polycule?"

He leaned forward. His face was close to hers now, close enough that she could see the grey of his eyes.

To him, she was just a girl who would have been a complete stranger, if not for the possession. But fuck it.

"How about we roll with it, Saintess?"

Saintess... she wasn’t one. In this world, she was never one.

And looking at her three sexy, bombastically handsome ’boyfriends’...

...she would never be called a Saintess, EVER!