F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I'll be Queen, and I'm not a narcissist!!!!!-Chapter 212: A True Encounter Made from the Heart

"Esther... I thought we were going to... I don’t know, somewhere more... how do I put it..." I look around. We’re in a cemetery, there’s no other word for it. She brought me to a cemetery.

"Evelyn, you told me to do something from the heart. You can’t judge without experiencing it. Follow me." She takes my hand, pulling me from the carriage into the cemetery, guiding me along the stone pathway.

"This place looks abandoned..." I see spiderwebs on the graves, and there’s no sign anything living has been through here in less than a few months.

Esther guides me to the center of the cemetery, where there’s a tree with bizarre things carved into it. There are drawings of dismembered bodies, dead people, weapons, and hundreds of words written, all different ways of saying "Die" or "Death." It’s kind of disturbing.

’What the hell is this place? S-She’s not planning to get rid of me, is she?!’ I look around, realizing the tree itself was meant to be a tomb, because there’s a stone structure on the ground, but someone opened it and expanded the size.

Inside the tomb, there’s a table with a simple candle and two covered trays, showing this is where our date will be, beneath this creepy tree.

"Sit down." She pulls out a chair for me after stepping into the tomb. I take a deep breath and step into the tomb, sitting in the chair. She goes to the other side of the table and smiles at me.

"You can open the tray." She opens hers as I open mine. Inside both is the same meal: some kind of purple and black meat. It seems to be the flesh of some kind of monster. The smell is good, somewhat sweet and mild.

’Just meat?...’ There’s nothing else. For the two of us, there’s only this piece of meat. Esther picks up a fork and knife and starts cutting her meat in silence while I do the same.

’The flavor...’ I chew a piece, and the taste makes my tail whip the ground in discomfort. It’s extremely bitter. It’s also tough like rubber and has a disgusting texture, like trying to bite into a block of fat.

"Haaa..." I sigh. The date really is as bad as I expected it would be. It’s not like I was expecting something grand, but still, all her choices have been strange.

"What do you think of the meat?" she asks with a smile, putting a piece in her mouth.

"Horrible. It’s bitter, tough, and rubbery. Besides, it feels like I’m biting into a piece of fat..." I’m honest with her. What’s the point of lying? I bet her dish is horrible too.

"Hahaha, what a perfect description. This meat really is crap. I deeply hate it."

"...?" Now I’m confused. If she hates it, why did she want to use this meat for our date?

"...I think it’s time we talked... You said you wanted a date that came from the heart, that you didn’t want me to ask someone or use a book as a dating manual... and you said it didn’t matter if the date was bad, as long as it was from the heart..."

"So I’m giving you a piece of my past." When she says that, I’m surprised.

’That’s it... Esther’s past...’ I know a lot about the history of all the romantic targets, except Esther. Because she always lied to Grace. Who would have thought that one day I’d know the truth.

"This place... is the place I came to in my childhood, the first time I discovered the truth of the world..." She begins to tell.

"I... wasn’t very composed or stable. It was so painful for me that I ran away from the castle, running and running aimlessly in a random direction... after running for a long time, I stumbled upon this abandoned cemetery..."

"I was filled with... so much hatred and disgust for the world... that I wrote my feelings on this tree we’re under now." She speaks as I look up, understanding that those sinister carvings on the tree were made by Esther as a child.

"I stayed here for several days. By chance, there was a monster nearby. I killed that monster and fried its meat... it’s this same meat we’re eating... it’s disgusting... but it was the first thing I ate after discovering the truth..."

"Evelyn... my curse doesn’t just reveal the fact that this world is controlled and watched by something greater..." She pokes the plate with a sad look.

"The truth of the world is everything... I see the principle that governs everything. Knowing that everyone in this world is entertainment for something greater was just the tip of the iceberg..." She looks at me with a strange look.

"This world, our ancestors, the reason Hikishin exist, and what our existences serve, I gained fragments of all that... and I hated it... no one was meant to receive such terrible information in childhood..."

"That’s why I reached such extreme conclusions as global genocide... I didn’t bring you here to justify myself, or to say I’m right. I brought you here to show you that I love you so much I’m showing you the most vulnerable part of my life..."

"Because to me... you are the only one like me. Someone who is forced to live a lie they know but cannot change." When she says that, I bite my lips.

She’s right. Right that I live a lie I know and cannot change, all because of "Evelyn" who made me reincarnate here. By an irony of fate, even with different pains, Esther and I really are similar.

"Esther... you... must have been really cute as a child..." I say something strange. Esther looks at me confused before laughing softly.

"Cute, huh... maybe I was... I... really don’t remember much of the past before I started hating everything and everyone... my hatred blurred a lot of what I was in the past... I think I became too indifferent to everything." Esther has a tear on her face.

’...’ I stay silent, watching. Esther isn’t just a bloodthirsty monster. She is someone who suffered in her own way, and although she chose a horrible and extreme path that has no justification, I still understand her.

’If... I had remembered everything from the beginning... would I be a cruel, bloodthirsty monster?’ If I had known from the start that I was a reincarnated person, I wonder how I would have changed, if I would have become someone violent and bloodthirsty.

"You know, it seems almost like an irony of fate, but we’re kind of two girls broken by life, with secret problems, who somehow ended up together. Maybe it’s a concrete fact that we should end up together in the end of everything?" I speak, trying to break the mood.

"Interesting view of our relationship. So what do you think is our future, Evelyn?" Her question catches me by surprise.

"A bad future... full of pain... and wrong decisions..." With that answer, her gaze darkens slightly, growing colder.

"I see... seems like we can’t lie to reality, huh?" She and I, who are in this game, this act that everything between us is great, are now, with this date, putting everything on the table.

"I guess so..." I murmur.

"Is it because I’m a Ghoul and you’re a dragon? Or is it because we’re two people with horrible personalities full of problems?" Her question touches on something complex, because I don’t know.

"I think it’s... because you are a terrible person no matter how much you try to be good to me, and because I am a cowardly hypocrite who can’t overcome guilt so I try to pass it on to others." I give a cold, objective analysis of reality.

"Hahaha, yes... you are a cowardly hypocrite, and I am a genocidal sociopath. It’s obvious everything will go wrong someday..." She grabs the knife and stabs it hard into the piece of meat.

"Do you really believe we can’t change?" That question of hers puts me in a difficult spot, but the answer is only one.

"People like us don’t change..."

"You’re right, Evelyn... you’re right... people like us lost the chance to change... maybe if it was when we were between 5 and 13 years old we could have been different, but now both of us have consolidated ideologies."

"And they are opposing ideologies that don’t work together. To win in what we want, we will have to crush each other’s dreams." She stands up, approaching me.

"Are you enjoying the date?" She looks directly into my eyes as she asks the question, her beautiful red eyes that still scare me, the black sclera of her eyes that give her that strange air.

"Very much... it’s good to see you being honest. A cemetery, huh? Great choice. A place where we can bury the truth after speaking it, and go back to acting out there until everything collapses..." She takes my hand, lifting me from the chair while holding my waist.

"Could you grant me the honor of a small dance?"

"Without music?" I question, raising an eyebrow.

"Music is an attribute fools use to give false meaning to movement. The real act of dancing doesn’t need music, because the very act of the body’s movement gives symbolic meaning to the dance."

"And what’s the meaning of us dancing now?" I ask, smiling.

"Think of it as the last dance between our truths. The last time we will be brutally honest with each other... Evelyn, I want to devour you, in every way you can imagine." She licks her lips as she opens my hand, intertwining her fingers with mine, squeezing my waist tightly to pull me closer to her.

"...Esther... I... want to have you all to myself for all eternity. I want you to never be able to focus your thoughts on anyone but me, and for me to be your eternal treasure just as our love is one of my treasures..." We both speak our ugly desires to each other.

As she begins to move, our dance is messy, with wrong steps and me stepping on her feet. The silence of the environment, lit by a single candle and the moon, is strange, but also very calm and pleasant.

The gentle cold of the cemetery, combined with Esther’s warmth, makes me close my eyes and follow her steps, our movements having to be careful because of the little space inside the grave.

And what feels like an eternity passes in a second, with drops of sweat running down my body from the constant movement over several minutes until we finish the dance.

With her leaning me completely back as she holds my waist and extends my hand forward, I feel her hot breath as she bites my neck, a strong bite that makes me groan in pain, but I accept it with closed eyes.

Because in this moment, both of our ugly desires are being fulfilled. A true moment between the two of us before we have to go back to pretending everything is fine.