Chapter 52: A Dream

Tsukimi Ryuune had a dream.

In the dream, she dreamed she had returned to when she was first reborn into this world.

Back then she was not the young lady of any zaibatsu family.

She was only a child born to an ordinary couple.

Even so, to her it was far better than the family of her past life.

And because she was an only child, the parents of this life loved her very much, and from childhood she had a face people liked.

That may have been the purest, and happiest, stretch of time she had ever lived.

Though at first she could not accept becoming a girl, and it even took her a long time to accept it, once she truly did, she found it was not so bad.

Aside from not being able to date the same sex, the attention she received was truly far more than in the past.

This was not only at home.

Outside, she enjoyed the benefits of being a beautiful girl for the first time.

The most direct of these was that people who treated her well kept appearing around her for no clear reason, yielding to her, indulging her, even offering goodwill of their own accord.

All of it was something she had not dared imagine in the past.

Though everyone who approached her carried some special purpose behind it, more or less, this feeling of being valued was something she truly had not felt in a long time.

In the past she had been someone living on the margins of society.

She had never had this kind of brilliance, standing at the center of the stage, her every move watched.

It made her unconsciously sink a little into a life under that halo, and for a time she forgot that she still had the identity of a god.

In the end, she felt she was already happy enough, and naturally had no need to pursue anything with outside power.

Yet life always faces many accidents.

Happiness is not eternal either.

The cruelty of reality, in the end, forced her to face herself.

She still remembered that the first time she used her divine power was when she was eight.

At that time the whole world was in an economic downturn, and her father Tsukimi Ryuhei’s company was affected along with it.

From then on, she found a thread of change appearing in the happy, perfect atmosphere of the family.

Every night, when her father came home from work, there was no longer a smile on his face.

Her mother began to sigh.

Even the house they lived in was mortgaged away because of bankruptcy, and they had to move into a more crowded apartment.

All of this was seen by Tsukimi Ryuune, only eight.

Though she was only eight, she understood what it all meant.

The happiness she longed for was about to leave her.

It was in that moment that she remembered her identity as a god.

She used her divine power to secretly alter the world, intending to restore things to how they had been.

But because she did not understand the laws by which the world ran, the final result was somewhat unsatisfactory.

So, too lazy to think, she simply cut it short and, at the root, made the Tsukimi family one of the largest zaibatsu families in Japan.

That way, no matter what crisis appeared later, it would be hard to shake their foundation.

But did things end there?

No.

They did not.

She had overlooked the link between cause and effect and human nature.

She thought a simple custom alteration could get her anything she wanted.

The fact was that after she became the young lady of a zaibatsu family, she could no longer feel the happiness and satisfaction of before.

Her father, Tsukimi Ryuhei, held a vast business empire in his hands and had to face all sorts of endless matters every day.

And so, inevitably, his care and company for her grew less and less.

Her mother, Takahashi Rena, sank into lavish, boundless indulgence.

Once the family’s assets had reached an astronomical figure beyond imagining, how to spend the money became a problem.

And so, naturally, she no longer cared for her the way she had before.

What surrounded Tsukimi Ryuune was only cold material things, and kin without feeling.

It was in that moment that she could not help suspecting she had done something wrong.

She had done this for her own happiness.

So why, once the crisis had passed, did happiness only grow farther and farther from her…

She kept thinking, torn over where it had gone wrong, but the result she chose in the end was the same as before.

Since she could give the family money they could never spend, then likewise, wouldn’t it be fine to use divine power to make her parents care about her again?

Holding this simple way of thinking, she used an alteration on people for the first time.

In that moment she still did not understand what this act meant.

She thought she had gained the family she wanted.

But in truth, from the moment she decided to dominate the two of them, what she gained was only two empty shells without a self.

Tsukimi Ryuune did not understand this at the time.

She thought this way she could return to that happy family.

But the result… was only that she possessed two “dolls” playing the roles of parents.

Because she clearly knew in her heart that she had used an alteration, so long as that awareness remained, she could not see the kin before her as her true parents.

More precisely, she could not accept the love they gave her.

Because she understood it was false.

It had been obtained by her forcibly altering and dominating them.

She was not someone who looked only at results.

The unreasonableness in how that love had been born drove deep into her sensitive heart, and she could no longer face the family she had now.

Unless she could hypnotize herself, and force herself to accept all of it.

But she could not…

She did not want to make herself accommodate these mistakes.

She was the god of this world.

There would be a better solution no matter what, so long as… so long as she could find it.

And after this lesson, she never again had the thought of dominating someone she knew.

She wanted to be like an ordinary person, and earn others’ love and regard through her own effort.

Because only that, in her eyes, was real.

And everything that could be gained at will, as she pleased…

Gotten too easily, it naturally would not be treasured or valued.

A plain, unadorned truth, and it still applied after she became a god.

“The world I want…”

She woke from the dream with complicated feelings, looked at the unfamiliar surroundings, and stared blankly for a long while.

“Why did I have this dream again…”

She wrapped herself in the quilt and curled up slightly, trembling.

Deep inside, she was extraordinarily empty.

The power of a god had long since become an invisible shackle to her, making it hard for her to see herself as an ordinary person again, and likewise impossible to return to an ordinary life.

This tangle, unable to go up or come down, had become the root of her heart’s illness.

If only someone could understand her, and guide her.

In the evening, Kagami Yuto finished a day’s work and came home.

Looking at the ajar door of his bedroom, he hesitated, then pushed it open and turned on the light.

As far as his eyes reached, it was no different from when he had left in the morning.

The quilt was still just as neat.

The only thing that felt a little different was a faint fragrance in the air that seemed somewhat familiar to him.

Unfortunately, he could not remember where he had smelled it.