At the Northern Fort

"Hyllis!"

When Hilg-papa arrived at Hyllis' side, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her, seeing that she had lost her senses.

(I-Is doing that okay?)

There was a difference in physique and Hyllis was on the small side, so her head was being violently shaken back and forth.

"Hyllis! Calm down! Can you see me!? Oi, Hyllis! Oi!"

"Father! Her head might fall off."

After having Kugalg point that out, Hilg-papa finally stopped his hands.

"Oops."

"Uu……"

Perhaps because she felt dizzy from the shaking, Hyllis was making an ill expression, but the wind had ceased thanks to Hilg-papa's actions.

"Hyllis, are you okay?"

This time, he properly regulated his strength while lowering his volume and gently tapped her cheek.

"Uh…nn……Hil…g?"

"That's right, it's me."

As Hyllis' eyes reflected Hilg-papa, it was apparent that her sanity had returned. Her eyebrows lowered and light had also returned to pea-green eyes that resembled peridot gems.

They were truly beautiful eyes.

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Her blonde hair that had been blown up by the wind was now also calmly resting on her shoulders, with the tips of her hair springing up here and there. It seems that her hair had been like that originally.

"Hyllis, why did you do something like this?"

"I……"

The sight of the topless Hilg-papa facing the lightly dressed Hyllis seemed a bit out of place amidst the snow.

Don't the two of them feel cold?

Perhaps Mother also felt that things were safe now, as she slowly approached Hyllis while still carrying me.

"Have your senses returned?"

"Snowlea……"

When Mother spoke to her, Hyllis raised her head and made a complicated expression.

Anger, sadness, hatred……while it might be true that such emotions were present in her expression, I found a more fitting descriptor of the emotions that Hyllis displayed when facing Mother.

Envy and jealousy.

"The one who came attacking was you, Hyllis. Why did you attack Snowlea? And even the children too……"

Upon hearing Hilg-papa's condemnation, Hyllis hung her head and closed her eyes. Instead of her, the one who started to speak was Mother.

"You are mistaken, Hyllis."

"Mistaken!?"

Hyllis looked at Mother as her face warped with sorrow.

"What mistake are you talking about!? Even though Snowlea made a……child with my Hilg! And two of them too!"

Even as she laid limply from exhaustion, she threw a tantrum and shouted with a girly, high-pitched voice.

"Was it four years? Five? During the short period of time when I was flying around the world, you stole the march on me!"

"Wait, what are you talking about?"

"She does not seem to have any intention of believing anything I say, so you must make things clear with her, Hilg. She mistakenly thinks that Milfiria and 'that black one' are children produced between you and I."

Mother glanced at me and Kugalg in turn and said that to Hilg-papa.

"Why does she have such a misunderstanding?"

"It's not a misunderstanding though, isn't it!? I know! Because Hilg likes Snowlea, and has always been urging her to produce children with him since a long time ago after all. And those two children are almost the same age too! If Hilg and Snowlea were to have children at the same time, then wouldn't it be normal to think that the two of you paired up!?"

"There is no way that I would pair together with such a stuffy person!"

Mother interjected, displeased with what she was hearing.

It seems that Hyllis likes Hilg-papa.

However, Hilg-papa fancies Mother. Hyllis also knew that and had been jealous about it, but this time, with who-knows-what kind of timing, she learned of Kugalg and my existence. Thus, she jumped to the (wrong) conclusion that the two of them had paired up, and her jealousy towards Mother exploded.

"She was the one to first send a letter flying to me."

Mother started to explain the sequence of events.

Father seemed to have lost interest as he closed his eyes but—he couldn't possibly be sleeping at such an important time, where a love triangle had turned into a scene of carnage, right?—I listened to the story properly.

It seemed that the letter that had come flying to Snowlea Mountain prior to me being sent off on the errand was a letter of challenge from Hyllis.

The contents of the letter were-

[You dared to pair with my Hilg! I won't forgive you! Tomorrow, let us decide who Hilg truly belongs to! Wash your neck and wait for me!]

-thus Mother tore up the letter and threw it away, exasperated.

Then, after I had left on my errand, Hyllis had come here and the battle had begun.

I'm sure that Mother had tried to explain things to Hyllis at first, but Hyllis definitely hadn't believed her.

Mother isn't an incredibly patient person herself, so after having Hyllis blow her off, she had enough and started to fight back.

Thus, the two of them had been fighting for about two whole days. No wonder why so much snow has piled up on the ground.

That being said, in the beginning Hyllis did still have her senses, apparently. It was just because the battle lasted so long that she became unable to properly contain her powers and ended up like that.

Looking at her actions of purposefully sending a letter of challenge first and giving Mother a day to prepare, it became apparent that Hyllis hadn't completely lost her sense of reason in the beginning.

"It's not like I wanted to kill Snowlea either. While she is my rival in love, I didn't hate her that much. Because in spite of everything, Snowlea is pretty caring and she even took care of me a bit when I was still young, you know? She took me to see Hyderin."

Hyllis turned her gaze away from Mother as she continued.

"And of course, I didn't have any intentions of killing the two children. Nor did I plan on hurting them. I just wanted to use the fairy to tease them a little. Truly."

It seemed that when Hyllis had arrived at Snowlea Mountain, she realised that I wasn't around and had sent a fairy after me.

"But……"

Hyllis had been explaining with a listless voice, but it was then that she started to choke up as her shoulders trembled.

"But as I started to fight Snowlea……I started to think about a lot of things, like how maybe Hilg likes that long hair, or her pale skin…….uu-"

Transparent tears started to overflow one by one from her large eyes that were decorated with yellow eyeshadow.

"Even when angry, Snowlea is beautiful, and her chest is also bigger than mine……! *sniffle*……"

It may have been rude to the crying Hyllis, but I ended up comparing Mother's bountiful chest to Hyllis' washboard of a chest.

Hyllis is, well……she's slender and dainty……so it can't really be helped. You know.

"When I started to think about those things, I somehow became incredibly sad, and then it grew harder to control my power. But I did think to myself that it'd be bad if I continued on like that, so I tried to hide in Snowlea's den for the time being but……then, I saw that—"

Hyllis' face warped, and all the tears that had been accumulating in the corner of her eyes gushed out all at once.

Then, she turned to Hilg-papa and screamed like a child.

"The stone that I gave Hilg was there—!!"