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Mitsuki looks at her sleeping sister before smiling and closes softly the door, walking towards the kitchen where Nagi is washing the dishes and she hugs her from behind.
“Is she sleeping?” She asks while glancing a little at her.
“Yes, she seems so happy and at ease now.” She replies and holds her ear on her back. “I asked Haruka and the others, at the first, to include her a little bit to let her settle in more but now they search for her on their own.”
“Were you worried?”
“On so many levels… she never cried for so long or like that after our mother’s funeral.” She holds Nagi tighter. “That fucker really messed her up to reduce her in that state.”
“Don’t worry, now she’s doing better, I promise.” She dries her hands and turns to kisses her forehead and holds her back. “She reminds me of us, especially you.”
Mitsuki giggles a little. “I could never forget about our first meet.”
Three years ago.
Mitsuki never liked to be in a gala but here she’s: wearing a formal dress, her hair braided into two short braids and her feet are tortured in her shoes.
I miss Iori so much right now.
She wonders while looking down to her hand pursue. She and Iori had a fight before she comes here about her sister’s ways to overworking herself for her good.
She sees the twins princesses dancing, mainly spinning while holding hands, and laughing together, feeling envious into see two sisters so close and their beautiful relationship, even if they’re so different.
Mitsuki always talks with Tenn, the oldest twin and crown princess, while Riku mainly acts like a child but she knows better than to underestimate the other twin. She saw with her own eyes how the “innocent and ‘dumb’' princess actually is dangerous and bloody thirsty.
“Madam, do you wish some of these?” A female voice reaches her and she turns to see a blonde girl with light blue eyes.
She feels like her world is stopping and her heart beat fast while looking at the girl before her eyes and it seems like it's the same for the other.
She feels like the world is gaining colors too, getting from black and white to beautiful shades of colors, so perfect and warm too.
“What’s yours name?” Mitsuki asks while continuing to look at her.
“Nagi, madame, I’m just a noblewoman.” She replies and offers her free hand. “What’s yours?”
“Mitsuki.” She places her hand on the girl’s one, blushing a little when she kisses the palm with a soft smile and bowing her head.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, madame Mitsuki, truly so.” She smiles while looking at her.
Mitsuki nods and keeps her eyes on her. “Same for me, madame Nagi.”
“May I have the honor to dance with you?” She asks while looking at her.
“Yes, it’d be an honor.”
Nagi brings her to the center of the ballroom and starts to waltz with her, smiling and looking at her for the whole time, never distracting or anything and the same goes for Mitsuki.
They dance until the song ends and they bow towards the other while continuing to smile before going to take something to drink, holding her hand, and taking her on the balcony to have some privacy.
“Where are you from?” Nagi asks while looking at her.
“From Heaven Realm.” She replies and looks at her. “What about you?”
“From here but a village nearby.”
“So… a demon…” She whispers.
“Is it a problem?”
Mitsuki shakes her head immediately. “Obviously no, I danced and I’m talking to you without problem and because I want to.”
Nagi smiles and tugs her close. “It’s the same for me.” She kisses her hand again. “I wanna pass some more time with you, talk and discuss together about whatever you wish for.”
Mitsuki nods and blushes a little. “Can you tell how life is here?” She asks while looking ahead.
“Sure,” She sips on her blood. “here everyone is truly equal, even if I’m a small noblewoman from a small nearby village, they invite and request for my presence here. You may suffer from hunger, the Ruler will ask for your presence and listen to your concerns before giving you a solution or even give you what your asking for without batting an eye.”
“Really? Won’t he ask for a pay back?”
“Obviously but within the limits of the requester.” She creates some constellations from her hands and power. “For example, a poor farmer asks for medicines for her sick wife or daughter, the king will give you and the farmer would repay with his knowledge of grounds and cultivation.”
“No money?”
“Just to nobles that can afford it.” She giggles.
“My my.” She smiles and touch the small star, gasping while continuing to smile when the stars multiply themselves.
“You have a beautiful smile.” She whispers and Mitsuki blushes a little but continues to smile shyly. “Will you stay overnight?”
“I have, tomorrow the Gates will open and I can go back home.”
“Wanna eat breakfast together, I’m a guest myself of the royal family.”
“Sure.”
Mitsuki can’t sleep so she found herself roaming for the hallways and gardens of the palace, humming softly under her breath, while looking around before entering into the maze. She has been here since she was little with her father so she knows this place like her own pocket and she knows that she can find a small river at the end of the maze.
When she reaches it, she takes off her shoes and enters in the fresh and cold water but she smiles and starts to play with it like a small child, wishing to have Iori with her so that they’d talk and have some more time together.
She sits on the side, looking at her feet and sighing softly before sees a firefly.
How pretty…
She thinks while looking flying around and closer to her.
“Hi, little girl, are you lonely too?” She asks while opening her hand and letting it settle down on it. “I’m lonely too… I miss my little sister but sadly we had a fight…” She smiles sadly. “I’m going to make up to her when I go back home, I promise.” The firefly flies on her nose and she giggles. “Is this your way to tell me to not worry?” She asks while looking at it and continuing to smile.
The firefly soon flies away and she stands up again, uncaring for her wet and dirty nightwear, and starts to dance again in the water.
“You’re gonna catch a cold.” Nagi’s voice reaches her and she turns, blushing, and a little embarrassed.
“It isn’t like I’m so naive to it…” She whispers while looking away. “Nevermind… why are you still awake? Aren’t you succeeding in sleeping either?”
“Sadly no, I always try to sleep when I’m away from home but it’s never easily.”
Mitsuki nods and remains surprised when Nagi enters into the river, shivering a little from the cold water and holding on her dress’ edges smiling.
“It’s cold but never something I haven't experienced before.” She smiles while looking at her.
Nagi, under the moonlight, seems to look like an angel and she smiles a little into see that Mitsuki is looking at her before going closer and taking her free hand.
They look at each other before Nagi bends a little and they kiss and Mitsuki feels completely at ease. She knows that it’s wrong, kissing someone that's a demon
and
a girl, her father would have her head if he’d discover this but Mitsuki always liked to go against him.
Nagi is completely a funny person to be around and she wishes for the night to never end or separates from her but everything comes to an end. She turns towards Nagi before going closer and kisses her again, smiling into the kiss, and separating slowly.
“I’ll send letters to you, I’ll wait for your replies…” She whispers while looking at her.
“Can’t wait to read them.” She replies, letting her go with a small sad smile.
“Nee-san!” Iori smiles as soon as she sees her and flies over to hug her.
“Oh Iori, how much I missed you.” She smiles when her sister hugs her and holds her close and kisses her forehead. “How have you been?”
“Very good.” She smiles while looking up to her. “What about you? How it was there? Did they treat you good?”
“Obviously,” She smiles. “it’s so beautiful, whatever our father and they told you about that place it’s all lies. They’re so nice and respectful.” She whispers softly, like it was one of their secrets.
Iori continues to smile and look at her with those starry eyes before Mitsuki takes her hands and flies towards their garden and on their favorite tree together.
Mitsuki brushes her blue raven hair softly before braiding her hair with the most care and attention she always has for her little sister.
Sadly, their mother left their world too soon for the sisters and it happened when Iori was little older than five, just barely out of her toddler years, and she was ten. She remembers how Iori would cry and hold close to her bunny while roaming the castle, searching for their mother, during the day or night and, when Mitsuki would go and put her to bed, she’d cry in her sleep and call for her too.
Mitsuki’s heart truly breaks everytime that Iori would cry but, after a while, she stops crying and just stares at the wall or anything before her with empty and dull eyes.
Growing up, Iori starts to have a certain mature and ‘cold’ aura around herself, to the point that she’d be avoided from her peers and be one of the most brilliant students in all of the school.
For who much Mitsuki tries to not show, she’s both proud and jealous of her sister but now she feels bitter too since Iori is forcing herself so that Mitsuki can find her happiness too and not feel burdened by her role.
Nagi’s messages didn’t take long before they started to come and Mitsuki to send it her letters.
Sadly, Mitsuki knows about the fact that she’s truly risking with her father still so controlling and abusive towards her and her sister but she can’t stop, not matter how dangerous is, from falling more and more in love with the girl.
Mitsuki would attend, to avoid suspicion or too much attentions on her, to meetings and her royals lessons and, when she has some time alone, she’d write and send her letters, play and sing and passes some time with her dear little sister.
But it wouldn’t ever be enough for her father.
She’s entering in her room, smiling while holding the newest letter that Nagi sent to her to her chest, and she stops when she sees her father there.
“And this?” Her father asked one day while he holds and shows to her the letters between her and Nagi. “What are these, Mitsuki?” He asks while looking at her with his cold glare.
Gabriel, the Ruler of the Heaven Realm, her father is always mentioned as the purest among the angels but, for the sisters, is the most abusive and darkest person ever: controlling, violent, verbal abusive and psychologically torture.
She and Iori always tiptoe around him, to not piss him off or something, but she doesn’t feel like she should obey him anymore. Maybe Nagi’s encouragement letters, very few in contrast to the many poems that she sent to her, is the reason too.
She looks at her father, continuing to be shocked, and looks at the papers in his hand.
“Well, Mitsuki, I’m waiting.” He says while looking at her. “What exactly are these things?”
“How… did you found out?” She whispers.
The only ones who knows about her secret exchange with Nagi are her nanny, her most loyal servants and… Iori…
“That isn’t the answer I was looking for.” Her father’s tone starts to show more annoyance. “But-” He steps aside and Mitsuki gasps into see her little sister’s cheek swollen and her busted lip. “Maybe your sister is more prone to be a good and obedient girl.”
“You son of a bitch!” She tries to reach out to her sister, mad that he had the guts to throw his hands on her, but her father stop her with a mental enchantment.
“Well since you won’t answer me, it seems that these are just papers that can be shoved in the fire.” He says while calmly reaching the fireplace and, while Mitsuki yells “Don’t dare!” and begging him to stop, he just shoves it without watching his oldest daughter.
Mitsuki falls on her knees while crying, months of secret exchanges and love poems that made her fall more in love with the demon, burned and reduced into ashes. So easily.
She cries and sniffs while her father just passes by her and let out a ‘filthy thing’ that sounds so wrong and disgusted by her, and Mitsuki just continues to cry on her knees and her head laying low.
After some more seconds, she raises to her feet and drags them to the fireplace, reaching out for what remains of the papers and the letters, looking at them with a dull expression.
“Nee-san…” Iori whispers.
“Why Iori?... Why did you betray me like this?...” She whispers while looking at the papers, not looking at her sister even when she starts to sniffs and cries too.
“I didn’t-” Mitsuki turns to her crying little sister. “He told me… that you were attempted by evil… I wanted to…”
“Iori… I told you about Nagi ‘cause I trusted you…” She says with a completely dull and emotionless face. “Why did you do that to me?...” She whispers.
“I’m sorry…” She whispers and continues to look away.
Mitsuki knows that their father, of course, used the violence on her to make her talk but Mitsuki doesn’t care, she’s hurt and Iori was one of the two persons who did that to her.
Her punishment didn’t take too long before coming, she’s currently in her father’s studio and he’s circling around her with a whip in the hand, completely silent and looking at her with disgust and cold.
“I expected more from you,” He says before whipping her without notice on her back and Mitsuki gasps out from the pain. “since you’re the oldest daughter of mine and Michela’s.” He whips at her again and Mitsuki trembles in pain while standing still. “But now I discover that my own daughter is tempted by the Evil and its worshippers.”
Hit after hit, words after words, and Mitsuki found herself to tremble in pain and with her back burning and, maybe, bloody but she doesn’t give him the satisfaction to see her cry or begging for forgiveness or for him to stop.
“Say that you’ll never repeat again this mistake and I’ll forgive you. Apologize to me and Him for what you did.”
“And what I did, father?” She says while turning to him. “I didn’t nothing wrong, I just fallen in love with her.”
“Her doings are clouding your judgements and your righteous view, Mitsuki, you don’t love her truly.”
“I do.” She looks at him straight in the eyes. “And do you wanna know something more? In the short time I passed in Hell Realm, I saw more happiness and rightness than here. In the ‘Heaven’ Realm.”
He doesn’t reply but slaps her, making her head to turn and falls down, before he switch to a cane and starts to hit her on the head and wings.
When he hits her, hard, on the arm, she cries out and trembles on the ground while he pants and just throw his cane to her and walks out.
Mitsuki doesn’t know for how long she’s been on the ground but she hears the door slammed open and some steps raised to her.
“Nee-san!” Iori says while touching her and Mitsuki flinches from the pain. “I’ll get help!...”
“No…” Mitsuki whispers while, shaking, raises to sit and looks at her. “I need to get some strength and I’ll heal myself…”
Iori looks at her worried and tries to help her to walk towards her room.
Mitsuki lays down with attention and tries to not flinch and cries out from the pain but Iori helps her too.
She tries to heal herself but receives some of powers from her sister too. They still don’t talk to each other, Mitsuki still hurt from Iori’s ‘betrayal’ and Iori a little scared of her, so receiving a help from her, it’s a surprise from her.
“I’m still angry at you…” Her little sister’s head is holding low while she continues to heal her. “But… I’m trying to letting go…”
Iori smiles slightly and Mitsuki just turns her head away.
“Bell…” She whispers and smiles when she sees the little bat.
She opens the window, careful to not be seen, and takes the bat on her hand and inside her room, caressing it, before taking the new letter.
«My dear sunflower, I’m worried about you. It’s been a month since I received your last reply, something happened?
Please, reply to me soon as you can, my soul is with you.
Forever your,
~Nagi.»
Mitsuki immediately takes a paper and pen and starts to write her reply, explaining what happened and why she didn’t replied, before she gave the piece of paper to the bat and let it fly quickly.
Mitsuki limps while entering in the room, her father whipped her again and this time on the back of her legs, and she almost smiles when she sees the bat there.
She takes the letter while caressing the bat and her eye widens to Nagi’s request.
«Run away… with me here.»
She looks towards the door, thinking about Iori, since they restart to get along just recently but she’s tired of her father’s abuses and to be physically abused too so, she just looks at the bat and nods a little.
She writes her reply behind Nagi’s one and sends it quickly to the bat. “Tell her that I’ll be there soon.” She whispers before sending off the bat.
She heals her wounds before starting to pack some of her clothes, steals some foods from the kitchen and taking even some medical things, hiding the bag behind all the long and puffy dresses before waiting the midnight for all of them to be asleep.
When she’s sure that nobody would notice her leaving, she writes quickly a letter of goodbyes to her sister, going in her room to lay it there, kissing her forehead while holding back tears, and going back in her room.
She opens the window, taking a deep breath and then jumps towards the tree before climbing down with carefulness and running towards the stables.
“Sssh… it’s me Opal.” She whispers while taking the horse’s reins, carefully guiding him out of the stables and, wearing her hood of the cloak, she starts to ride towards the gate, first slowly and, once she’s out of ears reach, quickly.
She continues until she reaches the edge of the woods, near the Tree and the gates, and she steps down from Opal.
She smiles while taking off the reins and looking at him, she caresses the long face and nose. “Go, you’re free now.” She whispers before seeing him galloping away.
She smiles sweetly before turning towards the gates and jumps down.
“Hey princess.” She hears while she’s starting to wake up.
She opens, slowly, her eyes and there’s Nagi that looks down to her and smiling.
“Nagi!...” She whispers before reaching her and kissing her.
She can’t believe that she succeeded into leave that place, that was ironically the hell, while she kisses and holds Nagi close to her.
Nagi smiles into the kiss and holds her back, going to lay on the grass, while letting Mitsuki sits on her.
“I can’t believe I’m here…” She whispers while looking at Nagi and slowly removing her dress. “Here with you…”
She continues to kisses Nagi and, for the first time, the lovers got to show their love on the other.
Mitsuki is nervous while walking inside the Hell’s palace, gulping down silently, and following Nagi.
She hears soft giggles and she stops in time before the door slams opens and the twins princesses exit from there, chasing after the other and laughing.
Mitsuki peeks a little inside and see the Ruler shaking his head and rubbing his nose but there’s no trace of annoyance or anger there, just fondness.
“Who’s this Lady Nagi?” He asks when he notices their presence.
“My girlfriend, his Highness.” She replies while bowing slightly and smiling.
“The famous healer?” He looks at Mitsuki. “Do you know that she’s the Heaven Princess?”
“Yes, we’re decided to be together in a relationship.” Nagi becomes serious. “Her Highness Mitsuki was abused in her home.”
“What.” Lucifer’s voice turns cold. “Who’d dare to hurt a princess?”
“My father… your Highness Lucifer.” Mitsuki replies while bowing and looking at him. “I ran away and came here to escape from that place. I came here to ask for a refuge here in your Realm.”
Lucifer is silent while looking at her.
“Who’s there? A newcomer?” A hushed and childish-like voice asks.
Mitsuki turns slightly her attention and sees the princesses, peeking at her from behind the door.
“Sssh Riku, let’s hear what father and them say.” Tenn scolds her a little but smiling.
Mitsuki blushes a little before bowing a little bit more. Since she came in the Hell Realm and to not burden more Nagi, she decided to work as healer and help for free poor people and kids. Not that her cures was truly expensive but she needed to work as well.
“Then, Mitsuki, hope that you can be helpful for me and my people.” Lucifer says and Mitsuki looks at him, completely blow away but she smiles and nods.
“Thank you for the trust.”
Present day.
“The princesses immediately gave me a headaches, especially her highness Riku.” Mitsuki says while smiling and chuckling.
Nagi laughs softly and looks at her. “But, my brother Seto, told me that they’re actually very fond of you. Or her highness Riku wouldn’t trust you with her baby.”
“Yeah.”
They’re now sitting up on their cottage’s porch on their swing and drinking some warm tea while looking at the gardens.
“Tomorrow I have a free day,” Mitsuki turns towards her girlfriend. “let’s take care of our small garden together.” She smiles.
Nagi smiles brightly and kisses her again. “Of course, my little sunflower.”