Ex1. Their Blood Ties Do Not Refuse Carnal Desire
Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/54/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA
Warm tea passed through Liza’s throat, and she let out a languid breath.
An unremarkable day. An unremarkable afternoon.
Lilina had gone out shopping. Liz was playing outside with friends.
In short, Liza had time on her hands.
Even so, an hour spent slowly, alone, had become a rare luxury in a life where Lilina was nearly always at her side.
She had decided, an hour ago, to do something she could only do now.
“Haa … Lilina, I wish you would come home soon.”
A melancholy sigh escaped her.
In the end, loneliness had won. She had done nothing at all.
She lifted her left hand idly before her eyes and looked at the ring on her fourth finger.
A paired ring Lilina had given her some two years before.
Marriage, as an institution, no longer existed in this world. What remained was a bond close to husband and wife, called being “mates joined in soul.”
Liza and her own daughter, Lilina, were those mates now.
The ring on her fourth finger was the proof.
Her husband’s wedding band had once occupied that place. She had thrown it away when she bound herself to Lilina, and she no longer remembered where it had gone.
She had no interest in remembering.
“I should have gone with you. Then I wouldn’t be this lonely. Isn’t that so, Lilina?”
She touched the ring with the fingertips of her right hand, fondly. Color rose in her cheeks. Her eyes grew wet.
She was so thoroughly drowned in Lilina that merely looking at the ring, and calling up her beloved’s face, was enough to send her into a daze.
Though Lilina was her own child—or rather, perhaps because she was her own child, the blood between them only drove the feeling deeper.
“I’m home!”
The voice came from the entrance.
Liza’s heart leapt.
She hurried toward Lilina the way a newly married wife might run to a husband returning from work.
Then she gathered her daughter—arms full of vegetables—into a fierce embrace.
“Welcome home. I’ve been waiting.”
“Mama, that’s a little tight.”
“I couldn’t help it. I never imagined being apart would hurt this much.”
Faced with a mother who clung like a child, Lilina wore a wry smile.
She had never shown this childishness in front of her former husband.
Somewhere under the surface, it seemed, she had always wanted to be spoiled by the person she loved.
That nature had only come into the open before Lilina—who was, at once, both lover and daughter, the two affections multiplied into one being.
“It was only a little while. Mama, you really do love me, don’t you.”
“Of course I do. From the time you were in my womb until now, there has never been a single moment I did not love you. As long as I have you, Lilina, I need nothing else.”
Hearing that much, Lilina did not mind.
Her hand went, of its own accord, to Liza’s head. They held each other tightly while she stroked her mother’s hair.
For a while they remained like that, taking in the reunion as if it were a marvel.