A moment later, Elis came to. Her pupils trembled as she looked at Yohan and Hekaterina.
When Hekaterina saw that look in her eyes and raised her hand again, Elis flinched, showing clear signs of PTSD.
“Hey.”
“What? I didn't do anything.”
“Tsk.”
“...Aish, fine.”
After being warned by Yohan, a chastened Hekaterina backed down. Yohan turned his attention to Elis and Aris.
She was a beauty who looked like what Elesis might have, had she aged gracefully. Considering Aris’s age, Elis had to be at least forty, maybe even in her fifties, making her look unbelievably young.
“My… father, you say.”
“Probably.”
“I see.”
After that one question, Elis fell into thought. She kept her head down for a long time before slowly looking up, her gaze shifting between Yohan and Hekaterina.
“...What is the relationship between you two?”
Having seen Yohan effortlessly subdue Hekaterina, Elis cautiously asked about their connection. Now that it was revealed Hekaterina was a witch, not a human, she couldn't believe someone could handle such a being with just a few words.
Hearing Elis’s question, Yohan glanced at Hekaterina, wondering how to explain. His master’s slave…? A friend? There was no fitting word to describe her.
“I’m his sex slave.”
“...Excuse me?”
“I’m your dad’s sex slave. Why?”
Just then, Hekaterina let out a chuckle and dropped the bombshell. As Yohan’s face soured, Elis found she didn’t entirely believe the young-looking witch’s words.
She did, however, understand that their relationship was just that complicated, and she nodded quietly.
“I see.”
“N-no. It’s not like that…”
“It’s alright. I understand. To think the reason you abandoned us for decades was for a young, big-breasted girl… My late mother would probably rise from her grave.”
Elis’s cutting words struck Yohan with the force of a physical blow, his heart seeming to stop with a thud. He let out a choked breath and opened his mouth to speak to Elis, his daughter.
“That’s not it.”
“What?”
“I—I never abandoned Elesis. Not once.”
At Yohan’s words, Elis’s expression hardened. Never abandoned her? For someone who knew how many long years her mother had suffered in solitude, his claim was utterly incomprehensible.
“Then why—why did you leave us alone for decades? Why did my mother have to live her entire life alone?”
“...That’s.”
“Do you know what she was like at the end? Calling out desperately for a ‘Yohan, Yohan’—a name she barely knew! With no relatives, no husband! All alone!”
Hearing indirectly about Elesis’s final moments, Yohan hung his head, lost for words. Even if it hadn't been his choice, he had no counterargument to the fact that he had left Elesis to die a lonely death.
As Yohan lowered his head, Elis let out a deep sigh, trying to calm her anger. She gulped down some water to quell the fire in her chest, then pounded her fist against her heart as she pressed him.
“Please, just say something! An excuse, anything!”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
“Couldn’t be helped!? Were you too busy playing with a little girl like this for decades to help it!?”
“—It was an accident.”
“...An accident?”
Seeing Elis’s expression freeze at his words, Yohan quickly waved his hands to clear up the misunderstanding.
“I don’t mean that getting you pregnant was an accident. I mean that my inability to see you for decades, my inability to see Elesis, was an accident.”
“What does that…”
“Did Elesis ever resent me? Even once?”
Though he hadn't seen it himself, Yohan was certain she wouldn't have resented him.
After he disappeared, Elesis must have realized that he hadn't abandoned her, but had vanished for some other reason.
She must have simply waited. Waited for him to return, blindly and without question.
“No… she didn’t.”
“That’s because I didn’t abandon her. It was because of an accident that I couldn’t come to her.”
“No, what kind of accident makes you show up only now—!?”
“I was struck by a witch’s magic.”
Although this was a nation founded and ruled by a witch, detailed information about them was still not public knowledge.
The radio and TV constantly warned of the dangers of witches but never explained their magic. Elis, Elesis’s daughter and Aris’s mother, was just an ordinary person—the simple phrase ‘struck by magic’ would be enough to let her imagination run wild.
“I was hit by magic decades ago, and I was only able to wake up today.”
“What does that…”
“Elesis knew that, which is why she didn’t resent me. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise, would it? For Elesis to wait decades for a man who abandoned her.”
Recalling her mother’s personality, Elis instinctively knew Yohan was telling the truth. She realized they hadn't been abandoned, but had been kept apart by circumstances beyond their control.
In that moment, decades of pent-up emotions began to dissolve. Elis wiped at the tears that were unknowingly streaming down her face. But no matter how many times she wiped them away, they continued to fall.
“Ah, ahh—why, why is this happening…?”
“...Come here, my daughter.”
“Ah, ahh—Dad, Dad—Daaaaad…!”
Yohan quietly opened his arms and pulled Elis into an embrace. Held in his arms, Elis wept like a waterfall.
Seeing her mother cry, Aris felt a wave of empathy and joined them, crying in Yohan’s arms as well.
Watching the three of them weep, Hekaterina let out a silent, hollow laugh.
‘What a pathetic display…’
Of course, she didn't say it out loud.
“—That’s how Mother passed away.”
“I see…”
Having been accepted as their father, Yohan heard the story of Elesis’s final days directly from his daughter.
He had heard a brief version from Aris, but there was a world of difference between what a granddaughter said and what a daughter said.
The generation gap meant there were things Aris didn't know that Elis knew all too well.
“Your names, why did she name you like this?”
“Ah, that was Mother… She said she might die, so our names should be similar…”
“...I see.”
Hearing this, Yohan understood why Elis’s and Aris’s names were so similar to Elesis’s.
Elesis had waited for him until the very end. She believed he would return. But she had grown old. Fearing he might not recognize her old, withered self at a glance, she wanted her young daughter and granddaughter, who resembled her, to carry on her name.
So that when he finally returned—he would hear their names and think of Elesis.
And her plan had worked perfectly, succeeding in bringing Yohan all the way here.
“So Elesis was like that, right to the end.”
“...Yes, that’s right. Um—ah, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Ah, no. It’s just a little awkward calling you Dad at my age…”
Watching his daughter laugh, Yohan thought that he felt the same. It was quite strange to have a daughter and granddaughter who were older than him.
It wasn't normal. He had to set things right.
“We should get going.”
“Ah, wait—Dad, we’ll see you again, right?”
“No, probably… there won’t be a next time.”
“What? What do you mean…”
After we finally met, you’re abandoning us again?—That’s what Elis thought, but Yohan’s words meant something else entirely.
Yohan gently stroked Elis’s hair and replied with a grin.
“A child needs their father, right?”
Looking at them now, he thought of Elesis, who must have lived in solitude for countless years while he was gone.
When he thought of the pain she must have endured raising a child alone, without a father, he knew it would be better if it had never happened at all.
“Next time, I’ll be the one to cut the umbilical cord.”
Leaving those words behind, Yohan left the house and headed straight for the Imperial Palace. The palace guards recognized his face and immediately knew he was the guest the Emperor had summoned.
He entered the Imperial Palace grounds and boarded the helicopter that would take him back to his cabin. Leaning against the window, Yohan gazed outside.
The helicopter flew toward the cabin as he burned the image of the city he would never see again into his memory.
“—This is madness.”
“You think so?”
Upon returning to the cabin, Yohan immediately sought out Regina. He needed her power. To return to the past, he desperately needed her help, or Margaret’s.
And—he couldn't ask the now-unstable Margaret for help. If he returned her power and she sent him to the future again, he might never be able to come back.
“The amount of time I can turn back is limited.”
“What if I supplement your magic power?”
“...Even so, I cannot leap across decades. Even with another witch’s magic, a few years at most is all I could manage—.”
“Then that’s enough.”
“Pardon?”
Regina tilted her head. Had he properly understood what she’d said?
But Yohan was already counting on his fingers.
“A few years per person. With ten witches… that’s a few decades, right?”
“Well, that… is correct.”
“Good, then that settles it.”
With the help of ten witches, he could theoretically return to his original past.
Yohan made a list of the ten and realized there was one major obstacle.
‘Makina.’
He would need the Emperor’s help.