To his surprise, the moment Fisher had caught Moli, an eerie and excited smile appeared on her face, as if everything was going according to her plan.
Her cheeks were flush, and her massive tail suddenly coiled up, hurling Fisher violently toward the bed.
Her strength was immense, like that of a giant orca crushing down on you, and Fisher was caught off guard and pinned beneath her.
Looking up, under the glow of the light, Moli’s black pupils sparkled with a dangerous and enticing brilliance,
"...Hey, Mr. Fischer, come back to the sea with me, I’ll take good care of you for the rest of your life. There’s no use in running away, oh, if you try to escape, I’ll knock you out and drag you back again and again..."
Fisher was momentarily stunned, shocked by the words that Moli suddenly blurted out. He hadn’t fully recovered when the dangerous expression on the girl’s face before him stiffened, suddenly switching back to her usual demeanor. A faint blue in her eyes suddenly emerged, and sitting atop Fisher, her complexion began to turn frighteningly red.
Her lips were trembling, and her hand, still resting on Fisher, was so hot she quickly withdrew it, flustered, waving her hands and saying,
"Just... that just now wasn’t... It wasn’t me... I definitely didn’t think about knocking Mr. Fischer out and dragging him back to the sea, definitely not!"
Moli was so embarrassed she was almost steaming, her entire face was as red as an apple, and even her speech became unclear,
"Because Mr. Fischer can’t breathe underwater, how could I... could I think like that... I just..."
"...You should get up first."
Upon hearing Fisher’s reminder, she realized where she was sitting on him.
Startled, she quickly leapt off Fisher, but in doing so, her head struck a hard corner of the nearby sofa, causing her so much pain she clutched her own head, while her tail gently slapped the floor, causing layers of Reinforcement magic to shimmer from the ground.
Moli, holding her head, buried her little face in her knees. Only after hearing Fischer’s words did she slightly lift her head, revealing a pair of tearful, sparkling eyes looking at Fischer, and then he could hear her soft voice coming through,
"That... just now wasn’t me... Mr. Fischer, can you forget it? Forget about what just happened..."
Goodness, the sillier Moli was in emphasizing that those weren’t her own thoughts, the more Fischer felt that those were indeed her heartfelt desires.
It seemed her mother was right; whether it was a curse or a blessing, both were part of her body, an embodiment of her innermost thoughts, not a second personality or new ideas – these were Moli’s thoughts.
In battle, the fear that arose from terror led to the Rejection of those monsters, and so the curse would take over and strike them all down in Moli’s place.
Fischer finally understood where Moli’s problem lay. Fortunately, he hadn’t told Moli that he could breathe underwater; otherwise, as she hadn’t yet fully mastered the balanced state, if he had been searching for clues in the Healing Room and the blackened state Moli had ambushed him from behind and knocked him out, it wouldn’t be fun to wake up and find himself in the Sea Trench.
Fisher gestured with one finger towards Moli, his expression serious as he spoke,
"Moli, I know the reason you can’t balance. You’ve been using the wrong method all these years; you’ve always tried to achieve balance by suppressing the curse to make it as level as the Blessing. But how can you contain something when both the curse and the Blessing are part of you?"
Moli’s heart had always been tied to both the Blessing and the curse; her timid and delicate thoughts made her very considerate of others while neglecting herself. That adorable understanding made her gentle and kind, but this did not mean she did not have her own desires.
When she wanted to eat something, she would worry about bothering others; when she wanted to resist those terrifying monsters, she was concerned about revealing her demi-human identity; when she wanted to knock Fischer out and drag him back to the sea, she would always carefully hide her true thoughts.
She couldn’t do it herself; the more she repressed, the stronger the curse became because she needed the curse to overcome her own body’s constraints and fulfill her wishes.
From start to finish, she’d been mistaken; it wasn’t ideas brought by the curse, but her own true desires.
"Suppressing the immense curse is pointless; you need to make the power of the Blessing stronger, to grow it to a scale equal to the curse. You should practice what you normally think on your own; you can’t hide and give the right to act to the curse, letting it replace you. You are yourself."
Moli wasn’t foolish, with just a hint or two from Fischer and she could figure out the crux of it. She pursed her lips, then after struggling for quite some time, she suddenly closed her eyes, raised her head, and said to Fischer somewhat loudly,
"Then... then I don’t want Mr. Fischer to be my teacher anymore..."
Fischer raised an eyebrow, not immediately understanding where her train of thought had leaped. Before he could ask, Moli blurted out a flurry of words in panic,
"Not.. It’s not that Mr. Fischer’s teachings are bad... I’ve learned a lot from Mr. Fischer, whether it’s about Magic or human affairs, or your help to me, I’m all grateful to you. But... but I don’t want you to take care of me just because you see me as a student, as a child who hasn’t grown up yet..."