Kapitel 23: Lonely Tears of Gold

[KIYOMI]

"Uhm… We shall take our leave now," Bazyli said casually and it took everything in Kiyomi not to hurl a couch at him. This was all his doing and he was leaving just like that when her best friend was unconscious on the floor?

Kiyomi felt like she wanted to kill someone.

The life she had been thrust into hadn't been fair for Elif, and her heart broke for her best friend even as Bazyli and his men walked out, but not before leaving a bundle of hundred-dollar bills for the door that they had broken as if it was meant to make it whole again.

Kiyomi didn't even understand what logic they had been working on, but she also had to appreciate the fact that if the crazy psycho the moon goddess had given her didn't come in time…

She would have been forced to kill Bazyli's men in front of Elif, thus turning her best friend's apartment into a graveyard. Funny how that worked when Elif was the only one unconscious on the ground at the moment.

"Elif… Please don't be dead," Kiyomi said as she rushed to her best friend. She could hear Elif's heartbeats but they were too slow. The woman had seen shit that he had never imagined and it was all Kiyomi's fault. Was there ever going to be a way for her to fix this?

"I'm so sorry," Kiyomi whispered defeatedly as she held Elif's head on her lap. She could see the stress markers on her best friend, and she hated that she had just come with more stressors for Elif. She hated everything that had happened but what else could Kiki do?

"You should consider taking her to the hospital before her body gives out," Otaru's voice interrupted Kiyomi's self-blame session, and she growled at him. She didn't need any more of Sakura's theatrics at the moment and frankly, she just wanted to disappear.

Everything had gone wrong one too many times, and Kiyomi wasn't even sure if this was the life that she was meant to be living. She had been a normal doctor on her side of the realm, working at a huge Lycan hospital, but then she just had to have the craziest fate.

Everything had disappeared and she had run to the humans, only to end up hurting the one person who had loved her without caring that she was a beast deep down. Elif had taken a leap of faith in her and now she had hurt her.

"What do you want, Otaru? Come to threaten me and my friend or did you come to kill us? Which one is it this time?" Kiyomi asked defeatedly as she stroked Elif's cheek. She wanted to make things better for her best friend but then she couldn't.

She had tried so desperately and still managed to lose in the process. There was no doubt that Elif was never going to trust her again, which meant that Kiyomi was going to be alone again, in a world that was worse than everything she had endured.

What part of her destiny decided that she was the only one to hurt so badly? How the hell had the moon goddess figured that other than mating her with the devil, she still had to suffer in more than one way?

"I came to heal her and fix this place up... the queen's orders. But I think you might want her to wake up in the hospital instead of the same house that got her jumbled and defeated, all in one day," Otaru said earnestly and Kiyomi sighed.

Everything she had done, had been to survive. Never once had she thought that there would someday come a day when she had to deal with chaos like this. She was in a literal hell and the only person who could save her was probably hating her.

"How sweet of Her Majesty to send her lap dog to clean up after her. What do you want me to say? Thank you? For coming to fix shit that hadn't been broken before I was thrust into her world, or what is it you come to fix?

"What exactly do you want me to say, Otaru? What is it that will make your life better or soothe your ego in ways that make you want to stay in the embrace of fate, huh? Which part of that reality looks okay to you, I would very much like to know.

"Or is this the part where you remind me that I am that mad queen's erasthai and that I have to abide by the laws of a kingdom that spat me out the moment they found out what my family had done without even thinking of how innocent I was?

"Or do you want me to stay here and pity myself so you can have your fun with me?" Kiyomi asked angrily. She had tried to be at her best, but each time it was like she was meant to fail so miserably.

No matter what she had done, and how she had decided to get on the long path, she was always going to be the girl who never had shit to hold on to. The girl who lost more than she thought possible even when she didn't need to lose.

"She cares about you. If she didn't, then she wouldn't have postponed the meeting with the Lycan council to come see where you were. She is not used to having someone she cares about and will deny it, but she truly cares.

"She gets angry when you're far, and hurts when she sees you hurting. She is scared of you rejecting her, and of you thinking differently of her. At the end of the day, she is just a girl whose heart started beating because of you, and she doesn't even know what to do with that.

"She was born in an abusive family and was trained to be the worst of the worst. They took away her humanity and forced her to be what we see today. She was once just a normal girl, but they turned her into the monster everything thinks she is.

"I know I sound dumb defending her, but I have seen her up close. I have watched her fight for the people she cares about, I have seen her move mountains to make sure that everything is alright for the Lycans," Otaru said earnestly and Kiyomi scoffed emptily.

She couldn't believe that this man had come here to give her insights into the woman who wreaked havoc on her life for as long as she could remember. Kiyomi could have stayed home, if the queen had cared enough about her people.

She blamed the queen for everything that she had faced and now that she was mated to that same queen, there was nothing good that Kiyomi expected from the woman and she was slowly learning not to expect anything.

"Aww, poor thing. They took her humanity and left her a shell of what she is now. what do do, eh?" Kiyomi said, her tongue dripping with sarcasm as she looked at the warrior like he had some balls coming at her like this.

Surely Otaru had to have known better, right? But then maybe he wasn't even sure of what he was doing for the queen, so she couldn't blame him. Oh, but Kiyomi hated everything that happened.

"Kiyomi—"

"I don't want to hear her pity stories, Otaru. I'm going to take my friend to the hospital, so leave me be," Kiyomi fumed as she carried Elif gently and portaled to Odanera City Hospital, only for the portal to take her to a different hospital.

Had her portal been manipulated?

Fuck.