The Zodiac Empire

Chapter 24 ~ Moment of Peace

Authors Notes: Really sorry for the crazy late update! I've just been really busy, and I could never get comfortable with what I had with this chapter until now. Hopefully it's not too bad. 

A pre-teen girl with golden hair lay on her stomach in the corner of the room, the dim early morning sunlight shining through the windows. She was in pain from head to toe, but she smiled as she drew on a piece of paper. This would work; it had to.

"There!" It hurt just to lift her arms, but she held her work up with pride. It was a drawing of herself, and a younger girl, as well as a younger boy, all hugging a masked man. The four of them all wore big grins, and at the top of the paper she wrote "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!" She completed her work by folding it up like a card.

The girl sat against the wall, patiently letting the hours tick by until the door finally opened. A masked man stepped through the door.

"You may return to your room now. If something like this ever happens again, expect the consequence to be much worse," his voice was cold and unsettling, like hearing the hiss of a snake in a cramped space.

The girl hesitated to get up. She took a deep breath and meekly walked up to him, eyes at her feet. She handed him the card.

She felt him raise an eyebrow.

"H-Ha-H..." she stammered, choking on the words, "Happy birthday...!"

He took the card out of her hands.

A silent minute passed by, her heart threatening to rip free from her chest. Unable to take the anticipation of waiting for his response any longer, she looked up.

She was swept off her feet by the back of his hand crashing into her cheek. She whimpered, struggling onto her hands and knees, only to be met with horror was he ripped her card in half.

Cosena felt like someone had dumped a bucket of acid over her brain. Where was she? She couldn't make out anything with her blurred vision. She felt too weak to move a muscle, so she lay still. Once her vision was cleared up, she could tell that she was in her room in Zart's house.

Her eyes spotted an empty bottle on the floor. "Ah, that's right..." she muttered. She stayed up late and drank too much again.

Cosena pulled her sweaty shirt off. She had fallen asleep in her clothes, and she kept her vent closed because Naito liked to turn the A/C on at absurdly low temperatures during the night. The room stank of her own must and she could smell last night's drink in her breath. "I need a shower..." she muttered. That was, if she could find the energy to get out of bed.

After taking a few minutes to let the pain in her head settle down a little, Cosena rolled off the bed and used the table to pull herself to her feet. She reached into the bag of mints and plopped a handful into her mouth. It made her gag, that foul minty taste. How could mint possibly be Naito's favorite flavor of sweets? That boy needed to get his taste buds checked out. After slipping out of the rest of her sweaty clothes, Cosena pulled on her bathrobe and went into the bathroom, where she set up a hot bath.

Her dream came back to her.

She doubled over the toilet as the bile rose in her stomach, but she failed to throw up. "That wasn't him...it's not him...that monster is not my father..." she repeated to herself as she sat there on her knees, her hands trembling. That was right. Her father died sixteen years ago, and he was never coming back. That's what she learned that day.