When Zihark arrived, he saw Kai'Sa just as she roared and obliterated the monster.
It was the first time he had ever seen her this angry.
Something had definitely happened.
She did not react to his approach. Only when he placed a hand on her shoulder did she turn her head slightly.
Kai'Sa removed her helmet, and in the glow of the dying flames, he saw the loneliness written all over her face.
"Zihark, why was the first person I met willing to run from me even if it meant dying? Am I really more frightening than death?"
Kai'Sa never hid anything from Zihark. From that one sentence alone, he could already guess most of what had happened.
He removed his own helmet and gently stroked her rough, unruly hair, trying to comfort her. "Of course not. If that were true, how would I still be alive?"
Unfortunately, the joke did not work.
Kai'Sa lowered his arm and draped it around her neck like a scarf, staring blankly at the burning skeleton as she told him everything from beginning to end.
...
By the time she finished, the grievance in her heart had grown so overwhelming that even with all her restraint, she could no longer hold back the sadness. A quiet sob escaped her.
After sorting through the whole story, Zihark gave her a different answer from before.
"You can save him from a monster. You can't stop him from making his own choice."
He sighed. When death was staring someone in the face, how many people could really stay rational?
To that man, the threat Kai'Sa gave off was no different from any other Void creature. She did not mean it that way, but every move she made looked to him like another step toward killing him.
And words alone proved nothing. If she could not prove she was not a Void creature, then in his eyes, she was one.
And until now, Void creatures had always been evil. No exceptions.
"How he chose was his own business," Kai'Sa said, "but I still think the problem was me. If the one who saved him had been human, would he have made the same choice? Obviously not."
She lowered her head, and her dark violet hair fell forward and hid her face.
Once someone started doubting themselves, if they were not pulled back in time, it could go on and on until they sank completely into self-rejection, cutting themselves off from the whole world.
If Zihark had not been here, Kai'Sa might have endured the pain, endured it again, and finally grown used to it. She might have borne it alone until she settled into a stronger, slightly more positive personality.
But now she had Zihark.
She showed him all her weakness, and she had run into a human much too early, at exactly the wrong time.
If Zihark failed to guide these negative emotions and let them build up inside Kai'Sa's still immature mind, then she might end up developing a personality even worse than the one she would have formed if she had borne everything alone.
The best possibility was that, after seeing human ignorance for what it was, she would treasure Zihark even more as the only person who truly understood her.
The worst possibility was that her bad impression of humans would root itself so deeply that one day she would return all the hurt she had suffered, and more.
Zihark could accept Kai'Sa changing from innocent to cold. At least she would never turn cold toward him. But a warped, dark personality... that was something to avoid if possible.
He wanted her to have ordinary happiness too, not become someone who took pleasure in harming others.
Of course, she might also become the girl from the original path: the so-called monster girl who silently bore infamy while continuing to protect people.
The butterfly was beating its wings. Every moment changed fate a little more.
No matter what, Zihark knew he had to make a change too, while he could still guide things in roughly the direction he wanted.
So he followed her own line of thought and asked, "Then here's the question. How is an ordinary little girl supposed to save a grown man from monsters and send him safely back to the surface? If she had that kind of ability, what would she still be doing underground?"
Kai'Sa had no answer. To begin with, an ordinary little girl would never have survived down here at all.
There was no answer to that question.
Quietly, she said, "Maybe this really is my fate."
But even as she said it, she did not truly accept it.
No one accepted a fate like that willingly.
She still felt wronged. Still felt miserable.
"Did I do something unforgivable? Why am I being treated like this?"
Her crying leaked out through clenched teeth, and she crashed into Zihark's chest, pouring out all the hurt in her heart.
"Not every victim can understand another victim. Not every misunderstanding gets cleared up. You can't keep looking at this with a child's way of thinking."
Zihark began the real work of easing her mind.
The belief that if you had done nothing wrong, then surely people would forgive you, was the kind of thinking only children still protected from the uglier parts of life could have. Kai'Sa had seen terror and death, but in matters of human nature and social ugliness, she was still a blank sheet of paper.
"You save people because you want to preserve your own humanity. You don't want this skin to devour who you are. But most people are ignorant and stubborn. They choose not to see the girl beneath the shell, because understanding you would be too difficult, too troublesome. They see the monster part first, so they decide you're a monster. That's easier for them."
Humans were complicated and contradictory creatures. They were always trying to simplify complicated things, even when doing so twisted their meaning beyond recognition.
How were they supposed to understand a girl who had become a monster?
Was she a girl, or a monster?
A monster, of course. How could a normal girl ever become one?
"They'd rather believe a person whose insides have been corrupted by the Void than believe a Void creature with a human heart. That's why I say people are ignorant and stubborn."
As he spoke, Zihark rubbed the edge where the voidskin at Kai'Sa's neck met her human skin, clearly implying something.
"That's why I've been trying to figure out how to separate this skin from you. Once you return to the surface as an ordinary human girl, all those prejudices will vanish as if they never existed."
"But then I'd just be replacing myself with a version of me that nobody argues with. Would that still be the complete me...?" Kai'Sa lowered her head and took a deep breath. She was greedy in a very human way. She wanted people to understand all of her, everything she had lived through and everything she had become.
Still, Zihark could feel that some of her doubt had eased, so he kept guiding her gently.
"You're always you. You just get to choose which you people are allowed to see. Use their prejudice against them. By then they'll think, How could such a good girl possibly be a monster?"
He knew she longed for full acceptance from ordinary humans, so he added, "And if you ever meet truly reliable people and make them your friends, then even if they see the whole of you, they'll still accept you."
"Would they be like you?" Kai'Sa lifted her head, her dark violet eyes fixed on him.
"No. You only get one boyfriend."
Zihark frowned slightly, but at last Kai'Sa relaxed. A smile bloomed across her face, and she leaned forward to peck him lightly on the cheek.
"Mm. Thank you for thinking this through for me."
The two of them finally pulled apart. Then Kai'Sa noticed the dagger in Zihark's hand, thought for a moment, and said,
"Zihark, help me cut my hair short."
[End of chapter]