#074. Mom is too Nice (1)

#074. Mom is too Nice (1)

Clay of Denial.

This was a Doppleganger that stole hearts, projecting the being the opponent most desired and claiming it as its own.

Teresa’s projected subject was…

Ronove from the days when he didn’t betray her, when he whispered sweet nothings.

“What kind of dogshit is this.”

Teresa wrenched her sword free.

Before a side of Ronove she didn’t know could emerge.

Ronove, who had only ever shown her his best.

The innocence of their childhood.

The visage of that purely beautiful boy tormented Teresa’s heart.

*Scrape*

She swung, but failing to sever his neck, only succeeded in cleaving into his shoulder. That was why.

“Are you alright? Did I frighten you too much?”

“Don’t call me with that voice.”

Teresa snarled, fierce.

Like a wounded beast, teetering on the edge.

But her sword only managed to graze Ronove’s cheek.

Unlike that man who had departed with a chilling gaze, disappointed, the Ronove before her held none of the betrayer’s cruelty.

The Ronove of the past, the Ronove Teresa yearned for, was the untainted Ronove who would never betray her.

Perhaps, with *this* Ronove, she could build a happy, betrayal-free marriage.

“Teresa. I understand everything.”

“Don’t look at me with those eyes.”

The hand that gripped Teresa’s sword trembled.

Marbas’s lips curled into a joyful smirk as he watched the tragedy unfold.

Hidden, Ronove himself also watched the scene with cold eyes.

“What in the world are you doing? Doppelganger. Is the failed copy intending to become an even bigger failure?”

It was a bizarre affair.

A doppelganger molded from unholy clay must kill the owner of the memories to secure its identity, devouring their brain to complete its own being.

Teresa’s doppelganger, ＜The Pure Ronove＞, showed no such inclination.

Even cut and wounded by the sword, he approached Teresa.

And then, he took her hand.

*Thwack*

The swordswoman’s hand was seized.

Startled, Teresa instinctively twisted free, drawing her dagger and slashing.

The doppelganger gave a heartbreaking smile.

“Teresa. I’m not about to say something stupid like wanting to return to the past.”

“Then what? You’re nothing but a shadow of a man who deceived me twice over. What more could you dare to demand of me!”

“Protect Ian.”

In that instant, Teresa was stunned by the earnestness in his face.

And so, she was late in realizing.

That the doppelganger had seized the hand holding the dagger with his own.

The dagger, swung in surprise.

That it had plunged toward the doppelganger’s neck without resistance.

The doppelganger who mirrored the pure Ronove, worried about her to the very end and chose death himself.

“Son of a b*tch.”

Teresa wept, furious.

If it was a doppelganger, it should be trying to kill Teresa.

Why did it go and kill itself instead?

“Unacceptable.”

Lonoawe scrapped the doppelganger production plan.

“Impressive. The acting, so convincing it could genuinely deceive a noble lady, ended up not only taking root in the heart of a girl, but overcoming the very instincts of a doppelganger? He failed because he was too capable. A truly unique irony.”

Marbas lightly savored Lonoawe’s misstep and Teresa’s good fortune.

Good, but not quite enough.

The incompletely burned expectations pointed towards the next target.

“The main course starts now.”

Even if it wasn’t entirely her own will, Teresa had killed the pure Lonoawe to save her child.

The dark space that had confined her dissolved, and her vision expanded.

Within that broadened view was her child, Ian.

And the doppelganger that Ian’s heart had projected.

The moment she saw its true form, she froze.

The clay of negation that Ian faced.

Its subject was neither herself, his mother, nor Lonoawe, his father.

It wasn’t anyone from the Teresa Clan.

The subject was a woman no one knew.

A completely unfamiliar person.

“Ian?”

“Mother.”

“Why are you looking that way?”

The unfamiliar woman reacted to Ian calling her “Mother.”

“Mother is right here.”

Across from Teresa.

A woman with beautiful, disheveled dark hair like Lonoawe, with the precarious aura of a sickly rose, reached out her hand.

“Ian. Are you going to abandon me too? Are you going to leave me, like him?”

An unfamiliar woman.

Yet, a familiar past.

Teresa understood at once.

Herself, from the time she abandoned Ian in the alley.

The woman who had cared for Ian, who had grown up so well even when she had failed to be a mother.

The woman who was more qualified to be a mother than someone like her.

‘Ian…’

Teresa’s hand, which had reached out to call her child back, hesitated in the air and then dropped limply.

Teresa had no way of knowing where that woman was now, or what she was doing.

She only knew that Ian had never once mentioned her existence.

‘Come to think of it, Ian changed sometime around then.’

Amidst Teresa’s abuse and abandonment, Ian had been a timid, insecure child, trembling with fear.

He left the house to find something to eat, managing to secure a portion for himself and his younger brother somewhere, but that was it.

Then, one day, out of the blue, the boy started saying things like this:

-You are a mother who cherishes children more than anyone else.

Why did he do that?

Back then, I didn’t understand.

Starved for affection. Expecting me to fill the role of a mother.

Being cursed at while begging. Hearing the taunt of “motherless brat.”

Only vague guesses.

Now, I think I understand.

There was someone who acted as his second mother, someone he could perhaps even call his true mother.

Ian, showing a particularly vulnerable side to the neighborhood women and becoming close to them without hesitation.

There was a reason for Ian’s lax guard.

It wasn’t unfamiliar women he needed to be wary of.

It was the familiar woman waiting for him when he returned home.

Every woman in the world was kind, but only one, his own mother, was cruel.

‘I… I don’t have the right to call myself Ian’s mother.’

Teresa lowered her head.

She couldn’t bring herself to show her face.

She knew because she had experienced it firsthand.

That malevolent clay, projecting the person the other most desired and using her body as a vessel.

The moment this mental doppelganger chose a woman other than his biological mother as its host, Teresa was disqualified as a mother.

‘She would have died or left in Sodom.’

Ian will never be able to meet that woman again.

That’s why he yearned so desperately.

For another mother.

Asking her to be a mother to him.

The maternal love he could have enjoyed even without you.

But that is now unattainable. Please share what I could have had.

Unlike the past, when he could be indifferent because he never possessed it, Ian, having experienced parental affection from a nameless woman in an alley, could no longer be detached from affection.

-You are a mother who cherishes children more than anyone else.

A plea, if anything.

And perhaps.

Just as ‘Pure Ronove’ guarded his own purity until his final moment.

That, too, might be able to act as ‘Ian’s True Mother.’

The ritual of the resurrection of the Lion.

That the ritual might continue forever, without end, making Ian happy.

‘Ian, if that’s what you want, I, you…’

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Her tightly clenched fists were white and numb.

As if atoning for the sins of the past, she simply waited for Ian to leave, for herself to be abandoned.

Their hushed conversation.

A reunion brimming with sentiment.

She wanted to hear none of it.

Perhaps it was a blessing, then.

Her head swam, nausea rose, and a high-pitched whine rang in her ears.

A moment of utter solitude, the only thing she could feel was her own wretched self.

But, Teresa sensed a shift, a change beginning.

A soft tug.

A delicate hand gently pulled at Teresa’s sleeve, urging it down.

Teresa opened her eyes in surprise, finding Ian’s small hand there.

Ian had come to her.

“Why?”

“I’ve come to introduce you.”

“…!”

So that’s it.

Even the name of hope was a lie.

Teresa managed a bitter, defeated smile in the face of this most cruel farewell.

“This is Jang Ye-seo. The mother who took care of me.”

“…Is that so.”

“And this is Teresa. The mother who is taking care of me now.”

“…?”

Ian’s introduction, it wasn’t at all what she had expected.

Not ‘the real mother is this way.’

Not ‘Our home is here from now on.’

Not ‘So, farewell.’

It was nothing like the goodbyes she had imagined.

Confusion registered on both her face, and on the face of the sickly beauty with the unfamiliar name.

“A long time has passed since my mother passed away. I live a good life, not that I have forgotten her, but I live a good life enough not to worry her”

“…!”

“But if you still have regrets, let’s go together. Teresa is a good mother now, too.”

Teresa wept anew.

Ian simply wanted to introduce his proud mothers to each other.

That pure, innocent desire was unbearably painful, and so she wept.

Perhaps it was because of those tears.

Because she would be abandoned, left alone.

A smile bloomed on the lips of the woman who had been lamenting her fears.

“If you’re happy, that’s all that matters.”

The woman pulled a decorative instrument from the wall and turned to Teresa, leveling it at her.

“Take good care of my child. No, *our* child.”

“…I promise. I promise to raise Ian to be happy.”

The doppelganger smiled and ended its own life.