Momoko [Judar X Kougyoku]

Maelstrom

It was spring again. The sweet aroma of the blooming flowers and the lovely colors of their dancing petals seemed ironic to me, because we were all preparing to stain the earth with blood.

Oddly enough, the calamity that was our latest excursion into war brought us all closer together. We were all galvanized towards the common purpose we had been groomed for. I may not have liked what that purpose was, but that didn't mean I couldn't take pride in the fact that I was earning my place among the rest of my esteemed family.

It also made it so that Judar was close to me more often, and I definitely didn't mind that at all. He would still disappear for weeks, sometimes months on end to check on the affairs of his dungeons, but he came home just as frequently to keep in contact with my brothers.

Thanks to Judar's efforts, Kouen captured a third dungeon. Our country swelled with pride. He was now the second most prolific metal vessel user in the world.

The first of course, was that man...Sinbad.

Oh how Judar hated Sinbad.

Whenever we managed to get some spare time together, Judar would always need to vent to me about his latest encounter with the great Sinbad.

We would meet in the peach tree grove, just like we always did. He snapped off branches and stripped them of their petals in his frustration, just like he always would.

“That insufferable asshole keeps stealing our metal vessels! He already stole Zepar and had three of them! What the hell does he need more than three for? Now he has Crocell and Furfur too...I need to have a security detail around the rest of my dungeons or something before he steals even more of them. I doubt the Emperor would approve of the manpower needed for that though...dammit! I swear, I'm gonna kill him!”

“Judar-nii, stop doing that to the tree. You're hurting it.”

“Like I care! Sinbad's lucky I'm not doing this to his stupid neck right now!”

I was coming to know this chilling, bloodthirsty side of him more and more.

“Hey Momoko-hime...want to hear a cool story?”

“I'd love to!”

“Do you know how peach and cherry blossoms got their color? They all used to be white, you know.”

“Wow, really? How? Tell me!”

He gave me that eerie smile. The one that sent shivers down my spine.

“It's because...the trees drank people's blood.”

“What? No way...you're lying.”

“It's true...in ancient times when humans discovered the trees, the flowers were beautiful and pure white. They thought it was a gift from the gods. So when someone died, they would bury the body under the tree as an offering. Sometimes they would even make a human sacrifice when they planted new saplings of the tree, just to appease the gods.”

He paused and hungrily tore a bite off the peach he was eating.

“And then...slowly over the years as people did this, the flowers’ petals began to change from white to pink. The more people's bodies they fed to the trees, the more vibrant the color of the petals got. I guess they favored the peach tree, because the flowers are more pink than the cherry tree. They also make larger fruits...do you know why that is, Momoko?”