Lamenting Chris

CHRISTINA GREYRAT WAS OUT OF CONTROL.

“No, no, no, no, no!”

Her beloved Arus and Aisha had both suddenly left home. Without even telling her, to boot. Normally, if the two of them were going to leave, they needed to first ask Chris if she wanted to accompany them. And if she did, they had to take her along. Obviously, if she said no, they couldn’t force her to go anywhere. If she couldn’t go, well, they shouldn’t be going anywhere they couldn’t take her in the first place.

Chris’s demands were absolute. She deserved that level of respect.

That being said, she was weak. It wasn’t as though she could punish anyone should they ignore her demands. All she could do was roll around on the floor, scream, and flap her arms and legs in protest.

Upon waking one morning, Chris had discovered both Arus and Aisha were nowhere to be found. She went searching for the pair. After she was unable to find them anywhere, she asked her mommies where they’d gone.

When she’d been told the pair wouldn’t be coming home for a while, she’d immediately flopped on the floor and begun to scream. The little girl smacked the floor with furious backhanded chops, but it didn’t move an inch.

Her daddy and mommies calmed her down and fussed over her until she stopped crying. But Arus and Aisha still didn’t come home.

Chris loved her family. She loved Arus and Aisha. After Lucy left home, Chris gave her big brother Arus the honorable position of fixing up her hair nicely. Aisha would also do Chris’s hair without having to be asked, and she did it better than anyone else.

Aisha in particular tended to fold whenever Chris asked her for something, so Chris really loved her.

Arus only occasionally yielded to Chris’s whims—something she wasn’t terribly fond of—but he’d always protected her when they went out together, and he’d always carried her when she was tired. That was why she loved him. He was also really dashing. And reliable. A big brother that reliable and dashing was hard to come by, so it was no exaggeration to say she super-duper loved Arus.

He was also much more reliable than Sieg. Sieg had always been willing to hear Chris out, so she loved him, but he wasn’t cool and dashing in the way Arus was. She still loved him, though. A passing grade, so to speak.

Enough about Sieg.

In the face of Arus’s and Aisha’s disappearance, Chris had nowhere to direct her pent-up anger. But upon realizing that they wouldn’t be home for some time, she stopped crying.

Instead, every day she asked her mommies, “Are they coming home today?”

Whenever she was told they weren’t, she asked, “When?”

Nobody would give her an answer, which was unthinkable! They had a responsibility to answer any and all of Chris’s questions.

Despite her mommies saying, “They’ll be home eventually,” they still hadn’t returned. To Chris, “eventually” meant at the very most thirty minutes, not multiple days!

Fortunately, she wasn’t home all of the time. Upon turning seven, she’d started to attend school with Lily.

At school, Chris played the perfect young lady and well-behaved honor student, so she couldn’t have a tantrum there. That was just how she believed she should act. On the flip side, all her frustration was released when she came home from school.

“Arrrrrrgh!”

She yanked Byt’s vines, pulled Leo’s fur, and punched Dillo’s hard parts. All three of them always treated her with care, even when she had her tantrums. But her mommies got angry with her when they saw what she was doing.

Red Mama got especially upset. “Can’t you see they don’t like it?! Why would you behave like this?!”

“But, I…”

Chris had no follow-up to those mumbled words because she was simply venting her frustrations, and she knew that if she told Red Mama that, she’d get angrier. Chris stayed quiet even though, to her, venting her frustrations was a valid reason.

“Do this instead!” Red Mama said.

Whenever Chris threw a tantrum, Red Mama always reacted the same way: She’d hand her a wooden sword and tell her to practice.

Chris was a little girl who dreamed of becoming a princess. She didn’t want to swing a wooden sword.

“Okay,” Chris grumbled.

She knew it was meaningless to roll around on the floor and throw a tantrum against Red Mama. Her other mommies would eventually fold and say something like I suppose it’s fine, but Red Mama was different. She would fold her arms and look down on her, waiting until Chris stopped crying. So Chris no longer bothered.

“Hiyaaaaah!”

Instead, Chris threw her all into sword training. She continued until she ran out of the strength and stamina to throw a tantrum.

Days like these would undoubtedly continue until Arus and Aisha returned home.

About the Author

About the Author
Rifujin na Magonote

Resides in Gifu Prefecture. Loves fighting games and cream puffs. Inspired by other published works on the website Let’s Be Novelists, they created the web novel Mushoku Tensei in 2012. In 2022, the 26th and final volume of the main series was released, and from 2023, they began Mushoku Tensei: Redundant Reincarnation, a collection of stories set after the main series.

“I feel like I’ve finished the homework I’ve had sitting for ten years,” said the author.