Chapter 731: Tsukuyomi Part 1

"...Miss Tsukuyomi, is something wrong?" A maid asks as I gaze out the window.

"...Nothing... could you please leave? I want to be alone..." I take in the most grotesque perfection imaginable. Pandora built a kingdom of pure stability, a happy kingdom, with everything of the best and finest quality, one that cares for its citizens and boasts excellent public safety, healthcare, and education.

A strong kingdom that would be the "ideal," but such a kingdom is built on extreme tyranny, laws that can kill you at any second, abstract and subjective laws that allow Pandora and her daughters or people important to her to kill and torture anyone without consequences.

A kingdom that treats people like numbers and only gives civilians good lives so they can be used with maximum efficiency if necessary. Shogo’s milk and tentacle farm itself is an atrocity.

Pandora’s kingdom is a stable dystopian utopia. In terms of rules and reality, it is a complete tyrannical dystopia; in terms of social life, it is a wonderful utopia — all of it with a stability that frustrates me.

Why did Pandora, who is absolute evil, the most malignant being I have ever seen, end up happy? Why did she win? Why did evil triumph, and build a wonderful story for the future?

Even the hero summoning circle was destroyed. There will be no heroes to kill Pandora, there are no threats to her future. She... she won.

"...Why... I don’t understand... w-wasn’t evil supposed to always lose? Why did a disgusting and foul being like Pandora get a perfect life?" I don’t deny her effort. I know she worked hard, anyone close to her knows she planned, executed, and achieved what she wanted through merit.

But does merit for evil hold value? Every day I wake up and realize I have to live in this terrible kingdom all because I got pregnant by Pandora frustrates me deeply as a goddess.

’If Pandora had used all that talent for good... would she have created paradise?’ I hate this. I hate my life here, this "perfect" life where I have servants doing whatever I want, people pampering me, I get everything I ask for, and everyone obeys.

I’m not a hypocrite. I use all of it. But I deeply hate where it came from. Every time someone obeys an order or asks if I want anything else, I remember that all of this came through the blood of billions of innocents.

And from a kingdom that treats everyone as stepping stones for those at the top. It’s the most despicable way to live, and the worst part is being forced into it. I can’t leave. I can’t not ask for things. I can’t run away.

If I try to do anything even slightly removed from a "good life," Pandora shows up. Even happiness is controlled by Pandora. I don’t know if the other girls who are Pandora’s wives and are happy with her realize it.

But even our happiness is something Pandora dictates. If any of them said tomorrow that they don’t want this good life, that they’d rather live a mediocre life on the streets, Pandora would manipulate them.

It’s impossible to tell if it’s love or just possessiveness and obsession, but it’s a fact that Pandora won’t stop trying to give a "perfect" life to those she loves, but she will not accept it if her loved ones try to leave the perfect life she has molded.

Pandora doesn’t love me, but as the mother of her life, I receive this treatment. And when I tried to flee to the moon, Pandora grabbed me and said that if I tried to leave the planet again, she would sever all my limbs.

And she would cut off my head with a portal, keeping me alive but with my head separated from my body, and force me to watch my dismembered body being raped by tentacles every single day.

And it was a terrifying threat, because it was real. She will not forgive me if I try to leave the perfect life she programmed for me to have. So all I can do is look out the window, wishing for a hero capable of killing this monster to be born.

Unfortunately, I don’t see a future where that happens. Pandora didn’t just burn those bridges to the future, she literally paved the future of every living being on this planet. Even her own daughters only have their kingdoms because Pandora allows it and because Pandora uses them to drive the economy of her own kingdom.

’Why... why doesn’t anyone see this complex web of manipulation that encompasses the world?’ I feel crazy for being the only one to notice. Normally, you’d expect that the more webs and threads a manipulation has, the more fragile it becomes.

But Pandora’s is so perfectly crafted that it’s like billions of tangled threads with no beginning, end, or middle to be cut and noticed.

"Do you need something, Tsukuyomi?"

"I already said NO... P-Pandora..." I shout, imagining yet another maid has come to ask if I need something, but I see Pandora leaning against the doorframe, looking at me.

"You gaze out the window a lot. I thought you wanted something. If you want to go for a walk, all you have to do is ask."

"...I-I don’t need anything... I-I’m just getting a little sunlight every day—"

"For a moon goddess, wouldn’t bathing in moonlight make more sense?... I see you have a privileged view." She speaks as she approaches, looking out the window, which, being at a good angle, sees many different sides of the city.

"M-Moonlight is still just a reflection of sunlight."

"Good answer. So why don’t you open the window to take in the sunlight better?" She insinuates with a glance at the window latch. I look at my trembling hands, preferring not to step out of the life she forced me into.

"I-I thought I couldn’t."

"...Hahahaha, really? How cute. You’re not a little puppy waiting for orders. You can open the window. Why would I stop you from doing that?"

"..." I think this is one of the worst parts. She wouldn’t stop me, and I know she wouldn’t. Why forbid something so basic? If she forbade something so basic, her tyranny would become obvious. But by allowing small freedoms like going out without speaking to her, she tricks our minds into thinking we have freedom.

That’s why I prefer not to do it. So I don’t start being fooled into thinking I’m free when I’m not.

"T-There." I open the window now that she "allowed" me to do so.

"How about we have a conversation? You seem lonely. Zephyra was your only friend, but you ended your friendship with her, and now without her here you’ve become lonely again." She speaks while all I can do is wonder what she wants from me.