The Extra's Regressor Wives

Lathel did not know when he had drifted off.

When awareness slowly returned, morning light had already slipped through a gap in the curtains and drawn a long band across the floor. The room was still very quiet. The chair beside the bed was empty, but the moment he opened his eyes, Lathel could still catch a faint scent lingering near the pillow. It was different from the medicinal smell that usually hung in the room—softer, carrying a cold floral note he had grown used to over the past few days.

Catrina.

He stayed still a while longer, his gaze unconsciously settling on the chair she had occupied all night. He still remembered that, before falling asleep, he had unconsciously caught the hem of Catrina’s dress, unwilling to let her leave a room that had grown too quiet.

Just thinking back on that gesture made him a little uneasy. Until now, Lathel had never taken the initiative to keep a woman at his side like that.

"Finally awake?"

Pandora’s voice arrived just as he was about to sit up, and Lathel immediately frowned. She seemed to have been waiting for this moment for a long time. The instant she saw he was conscious, she let out a little laugh. "You slept better than I expected. A woman sat right next to you staring at you for nearly half the night, and you still managed to sleep until morning."

Lathel froze. His eyes sharpened at once.

Pandora only grew more amused when she caught his reaction. "Want to know what she did?"

He looked at the empty air in front of him, his expression clearly telling her not to talk nonsense.

"Don’t tense up. She didn’t really do anything." Pandora deliberately stressed the word really, then went on at a leisurely pace. "She just leaned down a few times, very close, watched you for a long while, then sat back up. Once she even lifted her hand. There wasn’t much distance left. I almost thought she was about to ’eat’ you then and there."

Lathel shuddered, which only made Pandora laugh harder.

"I’m telling the truth. But in the end she only pulled the blanket back over you and sat down the way she had before." There was a hint of regret in her voice, as if something entertaining had failed to happen. "Looks like this woman may be terrifying, but at least she still knows how to restrain herself."

Lathel rubbed his forehead, unwilling to continue the subject. If Pandora had said those words yesterday, his first reaction would probably have been to glance at the chain on his wrist and watch the door with suspicion. The unease was still there now, but it had lightened a great deal.

Perhaps because of last night.

When he had been most afraid, Catrina had not asked him what he had seen, nor forced him to explain. She had only held him, let him lean against her until his breathing steadied, then sat by the bed until he fell asleep.

Lathel still disliked that she had confined him of her own accord. But he could no longer pretend that everything Catrina did made him uncomfortable.

The moment that thought appeared, other images crowded in.

Bram lying dead beside the carriage. Aldric lying at his feet, with Pandora controlling his body, raising a fist ready to bring it down. Then the village swallowed by a sea of fire, cries for help ringing everywhere, and three hundred and twenty-seven lives turning into light—only to supplement something called fate for Aldric.

Lathel’s hand, resting on the blanket, slowly clenched.

Pandora.

"Mm?"

He was silent for a long time before asking, That day... was I too soft?

The laughter in his head vanished at once.

Pandora did not need to ask what he was referring to. Lathel’s tone was enough. After a brief pause, she asked back, "Do you want the answer that makes you feel better, or the truth?"

Lathel frowned. Don’t tease.

"Then the truth." Pandora did not circle around it. "Yes. You were too soft."

He looked down at his own hands. This time Pandora did not use her usual mocking tone. "I know you’re a good person. People like you are rarer in this rotten world than most of the treasures nobles would throw their lives away to seize. So I have no interest in turning you into a madman who kills anyone who rubs him the wrong way. But being kind does not mean forgiving everyone."

She paused, then continued, "Kindness put in the wrong place only brings suffering to other people."

The little girl who had wanted honey cake appeared in Lathel’s mind again.

Pandora seemed to know what he was thinking, and her voice slowed. "Some people make a mistake and regret it. That kind of person can deserve a second chance. But there are also those who choose to kill, keep killing, and even when they’re spared only think about how to kill better next time. When you pity someone like that, you are not really saving him. You are only shifting the price he should have paid onto the next victim."

Lathel’s brows drew together. Resistance still rose in his chest. But at the time I couldn’t have known he would do something like that.

"That’s right."

The answer came so quickly it startled him a little.

Pandora went on, "Which is why I don’t blame you for those three hundred and twenty-seven people. You weren’t the one who threw fire onto the village, and that insane system doesn’t take orders from you. The one who looked at them and still said, ’Sacrifice them,’ was Aldric. Their lives belong on his head."

Lathel said nothing.

"But now you know what kind of person he is." Pandora’s voice dropped. "If you stand in front of him again, you will no longer be able to use the excuse that you didn’t know."

Sunlight outside the window kept shifting, slow and steady. The room fell quiet once more.

Lathel stared at the patch of light on the floor for a long time. He still could not immediately say that if he met Aldric again, he would certainly be able to take the man’s life with his own hands. Just thinking of killing someone himself brought a very clear resistance.

Pandora did not force him to answer right away.

After a while, she asked, "Do you know why I hate the way so many people use the word kindness?"

Lathel tilted his head slightly.

"Because sometimes they use it as a prettier way to hide the fact that they don’t dare choose."

He frowned at once.

Pandora laughed very softly. "Hard to hear?"

Very hard to hear.

"But you should remember one thing." Her voice turned serious again. "Kindness and cowardice are not the same thing."

Lathel did not argue, so she continued. "A butcher slaughters livestock to feed an entire city. To the animal, he is the one who takes its life. To the families that need food, he is only doing his job. A Judicator can personally execute a criminal, and no one would call her a murderer who slaughters the innocent for it."

He was still frowning, but this time it was not from irritation. He was actually thinking.

"Stand in different positions, and the same action can mean something entirely different. What matters is not whether your hands have ever been stained with blood. What matters is whether, when you do it, you know why you have to—and whether you still understand how heavy a single life is."

That last sentence immediately brought back Aldric’s face as the village burned.

He had smiled.

He had even regretted that there were only three hundred and twenty-seven people.

To Aldric, those people had truly been nothing more than numbers.

Lathel tightened his grip on the blanket and said slowly, inwardly, He is the male lead.

Pandora did not answer.

Why?

He drew a deep breath. The discomfort grew sharper. Why do other people have to be sacrificed to raise a male lead up? If he wants to grow stronger, he can cultivate. If he wants treasures, he can go seize them himself. The people in that village didn’t do anything.

Scene after scene rose in his mind: a mother pulling the blanket over her child, two night watchmen arguing about sleeping in the stables, an old man adding wood to the stove, and children who were still sound asleep when disaster fell.

They were all so ordinary that if he had only read them in a novel, Lathel probably would not have remembered their names.

But last night he had watched them die with his own eyes.

"Perhaps because, in his eyes, they were never people." Pandora said it softly.

Lathel closed his eyes.

"You are different, and that is not a weakness." She paused before adding, "At least not yet."

He opened his eyes.

Pandora went on, "But if one day your kindness becomes the reason you stand still and watch someone else kill, that is when it truly turns into a weakness."

Lathel did not answer.

There was still a great deal of hesitation in him. Even so, the answer reserved for Aldric was no longer the same as before.

At the very least, if Pandora asked him again—

Do you want to kill him?

Lathel was no longer sure he could shake his head at once.

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