Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Arzhen couldn’t remember anything that happened in the cafe that day.

He had woken up in the hospital with a headache that split his skull and a tongue that felt too thick for his mouth. Everyone said something about a violent rampage.

But he...

He remembered the cafe. He remembered Cecilia walking in. He remembered standing up. He remembered opening his mouth to speak.

And then—nothing. A wall of static. A muffled roaring that might have been his own voice or might have been the sound of his sanity cracking. The rest was gone. Erased. Swallowed by whatever madness had seized him in those lost hours.

But although every single coherent thought had left him, disappeared from his mind like smoke through fingers—his feelings... stayed.

They stayed in his chest when he woke. They stayed in his bones when he rose from the hospital bed. They stayed in the hollow space behind his ribs when he returned to this empty, cold, dark living room and sat in his armchair and watched the rain.

They had not left him for a single moment.

He wanted her back.

It was less a thought and more a pulse. It was beneath his skin that beat in time with his heart. He wanted her back. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to see her face. He wanted to feel her hand on his chest, wanted to return back when she still looked at him like he was worth looking at.

He wanted to go back. He wanted to undo. He wanted to reach into the past and tear out every cruel word he had ever spoken, every cold shoulder he had ever turned, every moment he had chosen his mother’s poison over his wife’s love.

It hurt so bad.

His heart.

It felt like it had been ripped apart.

Ripped. Torn out of his chest by claws he couldn’t see, leaving a wound that wouldn’t close. A hollow, a pain that radiated outward into every limb and every breath and every empty room he walked through.

He had never felt anything like this. He had never allowed himself to feel anything like this. And now it was all he could feel.

"One more thing."

Igor stopped in his tracks. "Yes?"

"That thing Cecilia asked me to investigate years ago..."

Igor racked his brain, his brow furrowing in the darkness. His master’s voice had been so flat all evening, so empty, so cold, that this sudden shift caught him off guard.

Cecilia. A request. Had she ever made one? Even if she had, Igor knew his master had never taken it seriously.

Arzhen had never taken anything about Cecilia seriously. Not her work, not her faith, not her quiet love. Any request she had made would have been dismissed and buried and forgotten the moment it left her lips.

So why was he bringing it up now?

"What... to investigate, sir...?"

***

Angela’s home was not a mansion, but a sprawling, sunlit apartment on the top floor of a restored heritage building.

The windows were tall and arched, letting in the gray afternoon light despite the rain, and every surface seemed to hold something soft.

Velvet cushions, wool throws, the gentle glow of salt lamps tucked into corners... The air smelled like vanilla and fresh laundry and something herbal brewing in a teapot on the coffee table.

Cecilia had followed her sisters here in a daze, still processing the revelations, still feeling the phantom pressure of Ivy and Isla’s arms around her shoulders.

Eastiel had gone to update Arkai and Oathran, leaving her in the care of the twins with a kiss to her temple and a promise to return. It was fine. It was more than fine. She was meeting her sisters’ families. She was being welcomed into a world she hadn’t known existed twenty-four hours ago.

Then Angela walked into the room.

She was beautiful in a sharp, deliberate way. Long black hair that fell like ink down her back, violet eyes that caught the lamplight and held it, nails manicured to elegant points and painted a deep wine red. Her silk robe was swaying around her ankles as she approached the sitting area.

"Oh, you guys just let yourself in, huh? I should’ve expected that. I’ll change my security code tonight!" she said with irritation.

But that was when—

Cecilia saw the baby bump.

She audibly gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide. For a long moment, she simply stared at the curve of Angela’s belly.

Silence.

Everything vanished into the vacuum of Cecilia’s shock.

Ivy and Isla exchanged a glance. Their blue eyes flicked between their newly-found sister and their sister-in-law, and twin frowns creased twin brows.

"Are you okay?" Ivy asked, her voice careful.

"Could it be..." Isla tilted her head, her gaze sharpening. "Did you know... each other?"

Angela herself looked bewildered. Her violet eyes swept across the room. The twins on the sofa, her brother Damon standing by the window with his arms crossed, and finally, back to the strange blonde woman who was staring at her belly like it was a bomb about to go off.

"No." Angela shook her head slowly, her long black hair swaying with the motion. "I-I believe this is the first time we’ve met." She offered a polite, if confused, smile. "Nice to meet you, Lesser Goddess—"

"Bitch, are you pregnant?" Cecilia blurted out.

The room went very, very quiet.

"Excuse me?" Angela’s frown deepened. Her manicured hand moved instinctively to cover her belly, and her posture shifted. No longer polite and welcoming, but guarded. Protective.

Cecilia didn’t notice. She was already moving, crossing the space between them in three quick strides, her own pregnant belly leading the way like a ship’s prow—

"Oh my Godddddddddd babygirllllllllllll—" She grasped Angela by both shoulders, her fingers curling into the silk of her robe. "—are we fucking twinning right now?! Oh my Godddddd GIGIIIIIIIIII—"

"AAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

The squeal that erupted from Cecilia’s throat was part laugh, part scream, and entirely unhinged. It echoed off the high ceilings and rattled the salt lamps and made Damon choke on his own breath from across the room.

Angela stood frozen in her grip, her violet eyes darting toward the twins, toward Damon, toward anyone who might explain what in the ever-loving hell was happening.

Her expression was of confused politeness. She had just been called a bitch by the Goddess and then immediately embraced and was trying very, very hard to keep up.

Of course she didn’t understand. In this world, they had never met before.

But Cecilia had always been her best friend. In another life. In another world. In a school romance scenario where Angela had been her confidante. In the real world, even more a sister than a best friend—

"WHY did nOBODY TELL ME Gigi is FUCKING PREGNANT TOO? We should’ve gone on a PREGNANT DATE together, THIS SUCKS!"

She was still gripping Angela by the shoulders, her belly pressed close to Angela’s belly, the two baby bumps almost touching through layers of silk and cotton. It was, objectively, an adorable image. It was also, objectively, insane.

"G-Goddess..." Damon raised a tentative hand. "She didn’t even tell me until after that dam incident..."

"CHEAT!" Cecilia pointed at Angela.

"Two stuffed hot ovens in a room... baked egg and roasted bun on the way..." Isla observed from the sofa, her chin resting on her palm, her blue eyes sparkling with barely contained delight.

"It’s giving doomed yuri," Ivy added, nodding sagely as though she had just delivered a profound philosophical insight.

"Stop saying that or her three boyfriends will kill me for bringing her here..." Damon pinched the bridge of his nose.

Angela, still trapped in Cecilia’s grip, finally found her voice. "I... I don’t understand what’s happening right now..."

"You don’t need to understand, babygirl." Cecilia pulled back just enough to look her in the eye, her expression shifting from manic excitement to something tender. "You just need to accept that we’re best friends now. Okay? Okay."

"Okay...?" Angela squeaked.

S-suddenly best friend with... the Lesser Goddess...?