Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Cecilia thought it would be another cafe. Or perhaps a rented-out fancy restaurant with just the two of them, the staff cleared away, the ambiance carefully curated to maximize his control over the situation.

That was how Arzhen operated. Every environment was a stage, every detail orchestrated to remind her of his wealth, his power, his ability to shape the world to his whims.

But apparently, Arzhen brought her on a walk in the park.

The late afternoon sun hung low and golden in the summer sky, its rays filtering through the canopy of old oaks and maples that lined the winding gravel paths.

The air was warm but not oppressive, carrying the scent of freshly cut grass and the distant, sweet fragrance of honeysuckle blooming along the wrought-iron fences.

Children’s laughter echoed from a playground somewhere beyond the treeline, bright and careless, punctuated by the rhythmic squeak of swings.

A pair of elderly werebeasts, a fox and a badger, their silvered fur catching the light, sat on a bench near the pond, feeding breadcrumbs to a small army of ducks that quacked and jostled for position.

The pond itself was a mirror of gold and green, its surface rippling gently as a breeze passed through, sending a shower of pale petals drifting down from a nearby cherry tree that had no business still blooming this late in the season but had apparently decided to be beautiful anyway.

Joggers passed in intermittent pairs, and somewhere a busker was playing a violin, the notes drifting through the warm air like dandelion seeds. It was, by any measure, an ordinary summer evening in an ordinary city park.

It was the last place Cecilia had expected him to bring her.

"I don’t know what kind of date you like," Arzhen said, his hands tucked into the pockets of his dark suit trousers, his pace matching hers carefully. "But I figured after the last time, I need to show you that you can leave at any time."

He paused, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. "Saw the videos. You can fly."

Cecilia didn’t react. Her face remained still, her eyes fixed on the gravel path ahead. The cherry tree petals continued their slow, dreamy descent around them, catching in her hair, on her shoulders, in the folds of her navy dress.

This was an open space. A public space. It was true that Cecilia could get away easier from him here.

But... this felt strange. Wrong.

Arzhen never did small talk with her. Not the Arzhen she had known, the husband who had ignored her at dinner tables and dismissed her at parties.

He had only ever spoken to her in commands and criticisms and cold, clipped sentences.

Small talk required a kind of casual intimacy, a willingness to be ordinary with someone, and Arzhen had never been ordinary with her.

No. He actually had been. Once.

The last year of their marriage in the real world, after she had offered him the Meleth Flower that could separate their bond without killing her.

After she had shown him that she was willing to separate from him, something in him had shifted. He had become gentler. More approachable.

He had started asking her about her day. He had started remembering her tea preferences. He had started looking at her, sometimes, with... something. She wasn’t quite sure what.

But this... this felt even more than those times. This felt somehow more genuine. More sincere. The Arzhen walking beside her now, through this golden summer park, was not performing gentleness.

He was simply being gentle.

"I didn’t actually... recall everything that happened the last time we met," Arzhen said.

Ah.

So that time in the cafe, the screaming, the desperate confessions, the way he had called her Saintess... it had been the Arzhen from the real world after all. Bleeding through. Possessing this body with words and feelings that belonged to another timeline entirely.

"I must’ve said things I didn’t mean," he said.

Perhaps the opposite. He had said things only the real him would say. Things even the real him didn’t know he would say.

"Forgive me, Cecilia." Arzhen stopped walking, turning to face her directly. The golden light caught his face, softening the sharp lines of his jaw, deepening the subtle color of his eyes. "Not just... for the last time we met. It’s... it’s for... everything else too."

Cecilia looked at him straight back. She saw his dark eyes reflecting her and only her. The park kept the distant laughter, the violin, the rustle of leaves, but it all felt very far away.

"I think I said I love you the last time we met," he said. "That’s the only phrase I remember saying at all."

Cecilia nodded. "You did."

"Maybe because that’s the only thing I truly meant to say?" Arzhen smiled sadly. Like a smile that knew it was too late.

"Even if you mean it, it means nothing to me anymore," Cecilia answered.

"I know." He sighed. "Just... you don’t have to rush how you decide on putting meanings on it, alright? We have... time."

"There’s no time like that anymore." Cecilia’s voice was firm now, and this time, it was final.

"Cecilia, I just want you to imagine it." Arzhen stepped closer, his hands now pulled out of his pockets, his posture unthreatening. Open. Vulnerable in a way she had never seen him. "Imagine if Ruby didn’t exist from the start. Imagine I never met her."

Cecilia frowned.

"Imagine... imagine my mother never—" He stopped, his jaw tightening. "Imagine I never had a mother."

In a world without Ruby? Without Elara, who had shaped him into the man he became, who had whispered poison in his ear from the moment he was old enough to understand, who had taught him that love was ownership and control was care and vulnerability was weakness?

In a world where he had never been given a standard to compare Cecilia against, a perfect saintess to hold up as everything his wife was not?

"Imagine it was only us," Arzhen whispered.

Maybe.

Maybe in that world, they would meet for the first time without prejudice.

That day in the forest, where bandits had attacked her carriage, where she had been alone and afraid and certain she was going to die—

And Arzhen, not the Arzhen she knew, but a different Arzhen, an Arzhen who had never been poisoned, had saved her.

She could see it. The memory surfaced unbidden, from a version of events that had happened, but different, and yet felt more real than the park around her.

His arms around her, lifting her from the wreckage. His heartbeat drumming against her ear as he ran. His voice, gentle, "Saintess—are you alright?"

"Who are you...?"

"I am... Arzhen of the Vasilievs. You might’ve heard of my father."

His father was a good man. Everyone knew that. Anton Vasiliev, the mighty tiger king, who had built the family empire on honor and integrity, those fierce, unwavering protection of those who could not protect themselves. His son must have been the same. His son must have been—

"Cecilia..."

She blinked. The park returned. The cherry petals. The golden light. The man standing before her, his dark suit and gentle eyes blurring with the ghost of a different Arzhen, a better Arzhen, an Arzhen who had never existed.

"...what if there’s no Ruby between us? There’s no my mother either. Just... us, learning to love each other?"

After all, he had gotten rid of them.

His mother was in the basement, her nerves severed, her vocal cords deconstructed. Ruby was cut off, abandoned, left to fend for herself in a world that no longer had a Vasiliev safety net to catch her.

He had removed them both from the equation. He had done what she would never ask him to do. He had chosen her.

"Then everything would be different, right?"