Have you ever soothed a crying child?
As you know, it is hardly an easy task. Children who have not yet matured mentally are strongly ruled by emotion. More than that, they often do not understand why they themselves are crying.
From one perspective, perhaps that is only natural.
Even adults frequently fail to recognize their own true feelings. One could hardly expect infants who had scarcely collided with the world to be more composed than that.
That was why soothing a crying child required patience.
Until the overflowing flood of emotion subsided somewhat, one had to remain beside the child and, above all, make them understand that someone was there to take their side.
Just like now.
“Hhk, ngh, waaaaaaaah……”
Once her crying began, it showed no sign of stopping.
I was speaking of my flesh and blood. She had once been called ‘Greed,’ a being who brought death and terror as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Yet who was this frail girl shedding tears in my arms now?
She was merely a child who had not advanced a single step beyond her early years.
No—more accurately, perhaps it would be right to say she had been ‘nailed’ there. It was not as…