https://ncode.syosetu.com/n5562hc/41/
Revenge
“Olive-san! Please snap out of it! I’m Liffy!”
“N-No! You’re wrong! Elm…. You are Elm!”
Olive started swinging my body from side to side while still hugging me. It’s like she’s trying to shake out some kind of evil spirit that’s possessing my body.
For some reason, Olive is overlapping me with her brother. Nothing’s changing even if I desperately try to deny it, so maybe the only way to get through to her is to try playing the part.
“O-Onee-chan?”
“You always called me Onee-sama”
“Onee-sama….please let me go”
Olive obediently released me from my restraints.
“Elm…. your hair has grown out so much….”
Olive rubbed her head against my cheek and looked at me with the most loving eyes. Oh my god this is terrifying. Was it a mistake to play along after all?
“Olive! Open the door!”
I could hear Lily wildly playing with the locked doorknob while raising her voice. I can’t know for sure if that fight was quickly settled or if it just never happened to begin with, but at least this means I will be saved.
When I glanced down at Olive, she was chewing on her thumb frustratingly, as if someone was interrupting an intimate meeting.
“Olive-san, let’s calmly talk this out. I will help you as much as I can.”
“Please don’t talk like that Elm. Even though we’ve been able to meet each other again after so long….”
Watching Olive get progressively mopeyer is starting to irritate me. I’m doing my best here, so please give me something.
Add that to the fact that she interrupted my time together with Lily, and I quickly hit my boiling point.
“Olive-san! Elm is dead. I am Lily Ruhuna. We are not the same person!”
I tried hitting her with the hard truth this time while shaking her shoulders to knock her out of it. I realized way too late that this was a terrible idea. Enraged, Olive let out a scream, and while magically increasing her strength, she wrapped her fingers around my neck to strangle me.
Olive was mumbling something, but I couldn’t really understand her. I couldn’t breathe, and her magic made her too strong for me to push her off. I was about to pass out when I heard a loud bang from the other side of the room. Through blurry eyes I could see Ran and Peony coming through a broken door with Lily in the lead.
“Olive, let Liffy go. That girl is neither your brother nor an enemy. She has nothing to do with you…. so please let her go.”
Lily’s words must have had some persuasive power to them because Olive loosened her grip. Using that gap I was able to shove Olive off of me and crawled away to get some distance.
I can breathe. I tried desperately to regain my breath, but I inhaled too much air at once and started into a coughing fit. But I’m alive, and just knowing that made my whole body tremble.
But Olive wasn’t out of it yet, and an instant later, she was furiously screaming at us all.
“You are all in it together, trying to bully my Elm! Did I not just see Lily-san kicking him in the face!?”
“T-That was a misunderstanding!”
So Olive saw my and Lily’s enjoyment and interpreted it as Lily bullying Elm. Lily is trying to use as few words as possible to deny it without letting the others know what it was that Olive saw.
“Well it matters not. Come Elm, leave these insane people alone and spend your time with me instead.”
Olive pulled on my hand and tried to lead me out of the room. She’s the one who has gone insane, but nobody has bothered to point that out. No, that’s probably for the best. I’d rather not get involved in another one of her furious fits.
Lily is probably the only person here who’d be able to beat Olive in a fight, but she needs to avoid doing anything too serious or else our fun might get exposed. I’m always the one being protected, but this time, it looks like I have to be the one to start the fire.
I used all my strength to shake off Olive’s hand, and when she turned around to look at me, I slapped her in the face as hard as I could. There was a loud crack in the room, and I was surprised at just how much my hand hurt from that.
“Onee-sama, please calm down a little. I told you before, I am not Elm. We don’t look alike at all.”
Olive covered her face with both hands, crouched down where she stood, and released a small scream.
We all stood there in silence, waiting. After a moment, she started mumbling something at no one in particular.
“I know…. I know…. But Elm won’t let me go….”
♠
The others left with Olive calmed down, leaving just me and Lily in the room with her. Obviously worried, Lily touched Olive’s shoulder as she offered her some tea after she had sat down in a chair.
“Thank you. Liffy-san, I apologize for my actions earlier.”
Olive humbly lowered her head towards me.
“Olive-san, I’d say don’t mind it….but that wouldn’t really solve the problem.”
“You are right….”
Olive has been acting weird since this morning. Actually, it’s probably been ever since she saved me from that bush. In a way, it isn’t surprising that something came of it, but I sure would have liked for the situation to have been solved in a better way than this.
“Do me and your younger brother look that much alike? I wouldn’t think we would, but….no, I guess if you really think we do, I have no reason to believe otherwise.”
“You two look nothing alike.”
Olive vehemently denied it.
“Elm had kinder eyes and a softer way of speaking. He also had silky smooth hair that often made me feel jealous of him. We always fought about whether or not he would trade with me.”
Saying it like that feels like you’re implying my eyes are evil, I have a foul mouth, and my hair is rough and dirty. That’s whatever, but Lily nodding her head and agreeing with her really hurts.
Even so, if she can say something sarcastic like this, then that mean’s Olive has regained some of her Olive-ness. Seeing her expression though, I can tell she really means what she is saying which begs the question.
“So…we don’t look alike. Then why did you think I was Elm?”
“When I saw Liffy-san in tatters in that hedge, a few of my childhood memories came back to me. The harbor…wrapped up in that anchor….”
Lily gently hugged Olive from behind to comfort her after she started to cry.
“Olive, you do not need to force yourself. We can save it for another day. For now, let us focus on the first screening.”
“N-No…I want to end this as well….”
Olive seemed to have gained some kind of strength from holding Lily’s hand, and even though she was still crying, she told me what was in her heart.
After her brother Elm drowned in the river, Olive was the one who found the body. She’s also the one who caught and interrogated the other children who had been bullying him.
There were witnesses who had seen Elm being bullied, so even though they were children, there was a chance they would be convicted of a crime. Olive didn’t say it, but it’s probably because Elm was a noble that the case made it to court. If I were the one who had drowned when I was young, the adults would’ve just treated it like an unfortunate accident.
However, the fact he was an aristocrat’s son turned from a blessing to a misfortune. Even though the children who had bullied Elm were brought to a court to face justice, they were given a much lighter sentence than what was being asked.
The reason for this is apparently because the trial was handled by a noble who was hostile to Olive and Elm’s father. The aristocrat claimed to have made a fair judgment based on past judicial precedents and the fact that the victim was a noble was not a good enough reason to treat the crime as particularly heavy.
From a third party point of view, you’d think this as a win for the judicial system. A commoner and noble were treated the same way under the eyes of the law, and a defendant wasn’t treated harsher just because of some nobles collaborating together. But if you are someone who supported Olive and her family even a little, then you would think there is no greater tragedy than this.
Put it all together, and you can see this whole affair as an act of harassment from a grop of hostile nobles. In fact, that is exactly how Olive chose to see it. She made the unprecedented move of inheriting the Elijah family as a woman and has continued to seek revenge on those nobles to this day.
Seeing me almost die was apparently enough to shake free some of the feelings she has kept long buried in her heart. She was going to see everything through in a cold, efficient manner, but she couldn’t keep her cool after seeing a broken person. “I want to see Elm again.” It was hard hearing Olive’s pained voice after she let out her true feelings at the end of her story.
Suddenly, Lily’s words crossed my mind. “People can’t just hate those they should hate right? People’s targets always expand.” Those nobles may have intervened in the trial for their own personal reasons, but as a result, a fair trial was able to be held for those commoners.
If Olive wants revenge, her first targets should be the people who bullied Elm.
“Those bullies you were talking about….I wonder what they’re doing now.”
“It depends on the person. Some of them are living like trash while others have become parents already. It varies.”
Olive was able to give an immediate answer as if she were reading off some prepared script.
“You are well-informed.”
“Well…. there are only four of them, so it was easy keeping track.”
“But there’s only one left. For revenge.”
Olive spun around in her seat and glared at Lily. That gentle, sympathizing face Lily had used to comfort Olive was now long gone. She was back to her usual, bargaining self.
“What….why do you know….”
“Well, I wonder why. Negotiations should come first.”
Experimental Translations 