Chapter 181
Dozens of rotten rats had been left to decay for thousands of years—not literally thousands of years, but long enough for their flesh to fall from their bones on its own, long enough for their stench to seep into the clay container until the container itself became part of that smell, long enough for Miara to no longer see them as cooking ingredients but as an heirloom, an inheritance passed down through three generations of Satanists who believed that death was not the end but a seasoning, that decay was not destruction but fermentation, and that the deepest love was often born from the most disgusting things.
"Rats," Miara said without turning around, her voice flat as she began picking up the tiny carcasses one by one and tossing them into the pan that was still releasing black smoke.
"These rats have been with my family for three generations, Absyumura. My great-grandfather was the first to preserve them, and my mother taught me how to stir-fry them with the proper spices."
The sharp sizzling of rat fat melting in the scorching pan filled the room.
It was not a pleasant sound, but it was familiar to Miara, a sound that reminded her of her childhood, of her mother who died when she was still too young to understand that death was permanent, and of her father who was absent from the funeral because he had been on duty somewhere whose name she never knew.
"You told me to watch my mouth, Absyumura?"
Miara laughed again, but this time her laughter was neither cynical nor bitter. It was strange, strange in a way that made Absyumura, still sitting in the living room, feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
"There can be no smoke unless someone starts the fire, my husband. And that fire..."
She flipped the rotten rats in the pan with practiced movements, movements she had learned ever since she was old enough to stand before a stove, the very same movements she used whenever she cooked for her father each time he came home, each time she hoped he would stay longer this time, and each time she was disappointed because he always left again.
"... Was lit by him long ago, ever since we made that decision together, ever since he chose mission after mission instead of coming home. The hatred in my heart will not disappear just because he..."
Her voice trembled here, but she forced herself to continue, refusing to let that tremor grow into something weaker.
"... Was willing to sacrifice his life for the safety of the Satanists. It doesn't buy my forgiveness, Absyumura. It doesn't buy anything. It only proves that he loved his honor—his team, his nation, his rituals—more than his only daughter."
The sixth rat landed in the pan with the same sound as the first, and Miara stirred it with a wooden spoon still coated in black seasoning, stirring far too hard, far too fast, far too angrily for a dish that was meant to be cooked with patience and love.
"This," she said, pointing at the pan with the blackened tip of her spoon.
"This is the punishment a neglectful father deserves. To die somewhere his daughter could never reach. To die with his daughter's name on his lips without ever hearing her say that she would never forgive him, not ever, not even after death, not even after this world ends and begins anew."
Then she let out a long breath, a breath that felt as though she were emptying everything she had buried inside her chest for years, a breath that caused her shoulders to sink while her eyes, which she had forced to remain dry, burned once again, burning the same way they had when she first heard her father's name announced on television.
Absyumura drew a breath that felt like pulling barbed wire from his chest, painful and piercing, yet he forced himself to remain calm because if he lost his composure, no one would remain calm in a room already overheated by rage and the smoke of burnt oil.
He moved his knees, still buried in the mud, trying to rise, trying to stand as straight as possible even though his head still throbbed from the impact and blood continued to run from his forehead down his cheeks already wet with tears.
"Miara," he said, his voice no longer as firm as before, trembling slightly, fragile, because what he was about to say was not an attack but a question, a question whose answer even he was afraid to hear.
"How deep is your hatred for your father? So deep that you can say all of this, so deep that you can call his death a punishment, something he deserved?"
He paused for a moment, swallowing the bitter saliva in his dry throat, and his eyes, swollen from crying only a second earlier, now stared at his wife with an intensity he had never shown throughout their twenty years of marriage, an intensity born from confusion, incomprehension, and the desperate desire to understand something he might never truly comprehend.
"And you speak of morality, Miara. Of a child's love for her father. Have you forgotten..."
His voice rose slightly, not out of anger but despair, because he no longer knew how to make his wife see what he saw.
"... That the man you call neglectful, the man you say deserved to die alone, was the very man who allowed himself to be broken by mission after mission just to make sure his family never went hungry? That after the Satanists succeeded, after this world became ours and famine struck every descendant, he worked tirelessly, without rest, without holidays, without ever saying 'enough,' because he knew that if he stopped, if he took leave, if he chose to come home and simply sit comfortably with his family..."
His voice broke, not because he stumbled over the words, but because he realized his words would never be enough, that numbers and facts and logic could never overcome the wounds that had settled for years inside the heart of a child who believed she had been abandoned.
"Do you think he didn't want to come home, Miara?" Absyumura continued, and now he was finally standing. His trembling legs, weakened by mud, exhaustion, and grief, somehow supported his tall body, though it felt like carrying a mountain he had never asked to move. He took one step toward the kitchen, a single step that felt like a thousand, because the distance between the living room and the kitchen in this small house had never felt so vast before.
"Do you think he enjoyed leaving you every morning? Do you think he never cried inside his car every time he left for another mission, every time he saw you asleep on the sofa because you had stayed up late waiting for him to come home?"
His hand rose, half wanting to reach for Miara's distant shoulder, half wanting to clench into a fist because of anger that had nowhere to go. Between those two impulses, his hand simply hung in the air like something that had lost its purpose.
"You call him neglectful. But look at yourself, Miara. A daughter who speaks these words about her father who has just died, a daughter who laughs at her own father's death instead of mourning him. Is that what you call morality? Is that what you call love?"
To be continued...