The conservatory had oficially descended into a theater of the absurd. Jee-shahn,
fixed on the idea of the "Cold Mountain of Myth" in the West, began to march toward
the balcony with a relentless, slow-motion gait. He wasn't walking alone, however.
Mina, Liana, Jasmine, and Yuna were anchored to his waist and legs, their weight
turning them into a literal human sled that Jee-shahn dragged across the polished
marble floor with every agonizing step.
Seeing that sheer desperation wasn't working, Mina and Liana decided to play their
ultimate card: their Mermaid heritage. Their legs shimmered and shifted into long,
iridescent tails of silver and violet, and they began to use their siren-like beauty to try
and "enchant" the Monster. They draped themselves over his path, their scales
glittering under the afternoon sun as they struck poses of divine, oceanic elegance.
"Master," Liana purred, her voice a melodic ripple. "Does the cold of a mountain really
compare to the warm embrace of the deep sea?"
Jee-shahn didn't even look down. He simply stepped on Liana's tail as if it were a
common rug, his face a mask of profound indiference to her "mermaid beauty".
"You're slippery," he muttered, his azure eyes hooded and bored. "And your scales
are scratching the floor. It's making a very annoying 'scritch' sound."
The doors burst open as the High Priest rushed in, his face pale with news of a
disaster. He stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw dropping as he took in the sight: his
four daughters—the pride of the Suiseiryu Empire—were tangled in a pile on the floor,
being dragged toward the balcony by a boy in shell-patterned socks.
"Jee-shahn! Son-in-law!" the High Priest shouted, trying to regain his dignity despite
the chaos. "The Seven Sins have arrived! They have possessed the army of the Gilded
Coast! That Duke you crushed into a marble... his father has unleashed a darkness we
cannot contain!"
Jee-shahn didn't stop walking. "The Duke was noisy. His father is noisy. The Sins are
noisy," he drawled, his voice heavy with the desire for a nap. "I am leaving. The West
is quiet. This conversation is not."
The High Priest, seeing his daughters' tears and the Monster's departure, finally lost
his last shred of royal composure. He lunged forward, throwing his arms around
Jee-shahn's waist and joining the human sled. "You cannot leave! If you leave my
daughter now, it is a mark of eternal shame upon my house! Don't you love her at
all?!"Jee-shahn paused for a single, terrifying second. He looked back at the High Priest,
the four weeping sisters, and the three brothers who were now peeking through the
door in shock.
"Love her?" Jee-shahn's voice dropped into a cold, flat vibration. "Your daughter
kidnapped me in the first place. I was having a perfectly good nap on a boat, and now
I'm being used as a tugboat for an entire royal family. The 'shame' here is that I
haven't turned this palace into a library yet."
With a final, weary huf, Jee-shahn continued his trek toward the balcony, dragging
the High Priest and the four sisters behind him like a train of noisy, desperate
luggage.