Chapter 37 - Little Crisis
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{Author Warning: Gore}
It took Leon another twenty minutes to finally return back home. He had hoped for everything to be fine, but there was one odd thing that he noted when he returned back.
'Wait a minute. Someone is actually awake at this hour? And that window... it belongs to Mother's bedroom! D-Don't tell me that she found out that I am not there in my bedroom and we can to free count every began to freak out in worry?'
'No! I must return back immediately. Maybe mother hasn't arrived there yet? Also, it could be that she woke up just now. No use thinking about it! Let's hurry up already!'
Making up his heart, Leon stealthily made his way toward the desolate open Courtyard area and silently crawled back into his bedroom.
Upon carefully noticing the state of his bed and everything else in the room, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary and looked to be in the exact same way that he had left it at midnight before.
'Fuu... thank God that I made it back in time. Who knows what would have happened otherwise? Thankfully, I made it here in time. From next time onwards, I must be extra careful not to let anyone notice my late-night actions. Otherwise, who knows how they would all react if they found out that I have gotten a wife already and had secretly married behind their backs! Mother would certainly go mad with anger!'
'Well, what happened, happened already. No use in worrying too much about it now. Let's just get some sleep before the sun rises up for the day.'
As Leon changed his clothes to wear something more comfortable for sleeping and laid down on his bed, he found his eyes closed by themselves as exhaustion soon overwhelmed his senses.
'I guess I ordered it tonight with Benica. It was an emergency this time, so it's okay. Let's hope that my waist supports my nightly activities in the future as well... I must train my beautiful wife in many ways in the future... There is just so much left to try out..."
'Also I can't help but feel pity for the System... The poor thing had to just sit sideways while I kept enjoying my married nighttime... Just thinking about it masturbating while crying and listening to our voices... It must have resented me a lot after being tormented to death by me earlier... What a fun life indeed...'
Leon's thoughts began to slow down as drowsiness began to overwhelm him rapidly.
...
He had imagined that he would be able to sleep peacefully at last.
Unfortunately for him though, his luck with sleep had just run out by now.
"... *sniff*... uuu... *hic*... uu..."
Upon hearing the strange sounds around him, the half-asleep Leon sat up immediately and tried to look around his room to locate the source of the weird sound.
'Wait. Did I just imagine that? It sounded very much like someone's crying voice. But there doesn't seem to be anyone in this room. D-Don't tell me that I have finally got... gotten haunted by some Evil spirit or something?! Ah! I knew that they must be a side effect to absorbing that Yin energy. Things like those aren't meant to be played around with so recklessly as I have!'
'Oh no! What if I am cursed already? If I think about it properly, with the common sense of this world, I should visit the Church to resolve this problem. B-But, I can't even visit the Church or any other Light image for Purification or Exorcism! Don't tell me that this thing will keep on haunting me forever like this?!'
A semi-panicked and half-confused expression came upon Leon's face as he couldn't display his usual thought process. Although the Mental and Physical exhaustion weighed heavily on his mind, even then he did his utmost to sense exactly where the weird noises were coming from.
They were so light, quick, and intermittent that it was very hard to tell if it even existed or not. After getting off his bed and searching around his room carefully, Leon finally found the source of the weird noises.
Fortunately for him this time, it wasn't some bad spirit or ghost haunting him, but a very small girl hidden under his bed, in a dark corner.
She was tightly hugging her knees, trying to make herself smaller and smaller.
Although there wasn't much light to see exactly what was happening, he could still tell that the girl had put her head down on her knees and was squatting while curling her trembling body into a ball
The trembling happened non-stop, in a rhythmic pattern, repeating from time to time, making Leon unable to tell if she was really trembling from cold or from crying.
'This girl... it's the one that I rescued earlier in the day. Wait. Wasn't she supposed to sleep in Aunt Paula's room? What is she doing hiding under my bad like this?'
'Then that means... she was the one crying just now. I really don't know whether to be happy that it wasn't a ghost or to be more worried about this girl being here at this hour!'
'But, what should I do now? Should I wake someone up to take care of her? However, Mother asked me to be her Guardian from now on. Then, I must resolve this situation somehow...'
'Aaah! What I don't understand here is that... why do I feel so nervous all of a sudden?! Calm down... It's just a little girl. No pressure. It's no big deal. This girl probably had a rough past before I rescued her earlier. Also, the main concern of mine is that this girl must have suffered unspeakable tragedies before ending up in that shady Auction place.'
'Then, there is no point in bringing up her past anymore. But, if I don't do that, then just how do I solve her situation? I have no idea what her actual circumstances were. Then again, if I actually asked her about those things, her condition even worsen even more! Aaah! Just what do I do now?!'
For a good while, Leon kept pacing around the bed, trying to come up with a solution for the situation. His limited experience with kids certainly didn't help him in this matter he kept pulling his hair out to make a satisfactory decision.
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Amidst the deepest darkness, a little girl kept running to save herself. If she was asked to explain what she was running away from, she just had a simple answer.
Monsters. Scary and Terrifying Monsters.
Wearing human skin, with evil glints in their eyes and malicious smiles on their wicked faces, these Monsters kept chasing after her, trying to tear her apart and eat her up.
"No! I... hah... can't get caught! W-Where did these monsters come from?! Aunt Tanya!! Where are you?? Please, SAVE ME!!"
The little girl kept screaming to prevent herself from getting lost amidst the darkness around her. The darkness was like a cloud that kept slowly rolling toward her, giving her shivers on her body when she looked directly at it.
The little girl felt like if she didn't do her best to get away, the darkness around her would surely consume her completely in the end.
She did her best to try to find a source of light, a ray of hope amidst the total and complete darkness. That light for her was her Aunt Tanya.
From when she could remember, Aunt Tanya had always been around her, taking care of her and being her family.
Although it was said that she had a Mother and Father, she rarely ever saw them and honestly, she couldn't even remember their faces.
Only Aunt Tanya was ever around her. Only Aunt Tanya would bother to sleep together with her, eat with her, teach her various kinds of things or even protect her against other bad children.
Aunt Tanya was the only one who the little girl felt ever truly cared about her.
And now, that protector of hers was nowhere to be found.
As the little girl kept running and running, she finally heard her Aunt's voice from somewhere.
She quickly made her way in that direction, as she felt pursuers following after her.
By now the Monsters behind her and begun to shed away their fake human skins, as their real ugly selves became more and more apparent from their figures, making the little girl even more terrified of them.
Soon, the little girl found who she was looking for. However, the scene she saw made her wish that she should have never followed the voice till here.
Her Aunt Tanya's body was being torn into pieces and was being consumed by the few Monsters around her. The Monsters were eating her Aunt Tanya's body with relish, as they drank her blood and roughly pulled out her organs from her body with their sharp and bloodied fingers.
Next to her Aunt Tanya's body was a decapitated head. Although the body appeared to have long been eaten away, the little girl could faintly identify who that head belong to.
She was the good lady who had helped her escape the Monsters earlier. Unfortunately, both of her possible rescuers were dead now.
Tears kept falling out of the little girl's eyes, as she desperately wanted to get near her Aunt Tanya and save her from any further harm.
However, the scary Monsters eating her Aunt's body completely terrified her. When those Monsters' eyes fell upon her, they quickly discarded the leftover bones and begin approaching her instead.
"N-No! Don't come near me! Why... why did you do that to Aunt Tanya?! S-She was such a good person! You... bad Monsters! Why?!!"
Although the little girl shouted in a very accusatory tone, her little legs kept carrying her far away, towards a different direction from those Monsters instead, as she again began her quest to escape her ultimate fate against the deadly Monsters following behind her.
In the end, though, her little feet slipped somehow as her small body came crashing down onto the ground. From behind the dark trees around her, the Monsters began to slowly approach her, as they extended their blood-soiled hands towards her while licking their dark brown-red tongues in anticipation.
"No... leave me alone... A-Aunt Tanya! SAVE ME!!!"
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Suddenly, the little girl sat up from the bed. She had finally woken up from her fiendish nightmare. Sweat was pouring down her small body as she felt her own body shaking uncontrollably with fear.
The reason underneath her lower pajamas was so wet that it would have normally made her very uncomfortable. However, she couldn't care less about that in her current situation.
As she looked around the dark room, the little girl found someone lying down next to her. An expectant look appeared in her teary eyes as she crawled toward the sleeping person and softly called out,
"A-Aunt Tanya... i-is it... is it really you?"
At the moment when she felt like she had finally gained a small hope, it was quickly trashed into pieces.
Although she couldn't see very well in the darkness, she could still tell that the person's body looked very different from her Aunt Tanya's and smelled very different as well.
'No... T-This isn't Aunt Tanya... Is this...! H-Has the Monster... has it found me already...? Is it going to eat me soon?!!'
The little girl was still half asleep and quickly became alarmed upon her sudden discovery. Without wasting much time, she quickly ran out of the room and began to run around the dark and quiet house, trying to find a place to hide from the fearsome Monsters chasing after her.
At last, she found an empty room with a small bed. Almost instinctually, she crawled underneath the bed and stuck close to a corner, trying her best to hide her little body from being seen.
As the unfamiliar fear of being discovered continued to haunt her fragile mind, she soon lost herself in the sensation of fear and began to act subconsciously, while trying to block out all thoughts about the approaching Monsters.
"Aunt Tanya... *hic*... noo... uuu... *hic*..."
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A/N: Poor child... Sadly, traumas such as this exist even in real life. Be kind to children, everyone.