Soul Shard Captor [BL] - Volume 1: Aris the Soother

Chapter 135 - EightMary Incident

The ex-groom and bride stared each other down. And judging by the equally fierce sparks shooting out of their eyes, if one didn't know their identities beforehand, it would be impossible to tell which was the Healer and which was the Enforcer.

"Maery," Levi squeezed between his gritted teeth.

Hearing that word, Noah visibly flinched. And Levi, who had always paid attention to his baby first and everyone and everything else second, instantly shut up and tried to retract his intimidating aura. Tried being the keyword.

Maery, too, didn't wish to upset her baby brother, so she forced a smile. Unfortunately, that smile looked scarier than her frown.

But fortunately for the both of them, Noah's reaction to the word had nothing to do with the tone or facial expression it was spoken in!

No, no, no! There was a very different reason as to why he had always avoided referring to his newly obtained sister by her name!

And that was because...

The mere mention of anything that sounded like Mary or Marie made dread rise up from his very bone marrow! ○|￣|_

It was a mental shadow! A heart demon! It wouldn't even be false to claim that he had PTSD to the words!

Why? 🤔

Heh, remember how the nun that raised him had a special interest in naming female babies Mary?

Alright, perhaps it couldn't be called a "special interest", it's just... what other religious name could she give? Magdalene, the hooker? Eve, the sinner? Lilith, the one who apparently committed an even greater sin because she had been stripped of her title as the first woman and turned into a demon?

And if you are wondering, 'hey, can you even mess something up so badly that you get your first woman title taken away?? It's not like she cheated in... you know... being a woman', let Noah quote two of his fellow brothers who put it in a very eloquent way:

"Must have had a penis down there..." (¬‿¬)

"Na-ah man, hear me out! To stand up to her chauvinistic husband, she definitely... had some balls!"

(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞

Ahem, so uh, it's not that the nun had a special fetish, it's just that she was hellbent on naming babies according to the Holy Scripture. ╮(╯∀╰)╭ And so it took six baby Marys before the nun realized that calling all female babies Mary brought along certain... difficulties.

From then onwards, she changed her policy, deciding that four Marys at a time was the limit, and she would wait for the count to drop before she started naming baby girls Mary again.

And so, when the two of the six Marys were finally adopted and another one just about to be adopted, with much delight, she promptly called the next orphan girl Mary. But then, disaster struck!

That last adoption fell through, and the very next day, twin baby girls arrived at the orphanage. And these two were originally called Mary and Marie by their religious yet nonetheless just-as-dead-as-atheists parents.

The dreaded Mary-count was back to six again!

And then, to add insult to injury, one of the two previously adopted Marys was returned by her new family, who furiously claimed to have been cheated. Apparently, it took them a month to realize that Marie wasn't short for Mario and that the cute little brother they gave to their own kid to play with was actually a handsome little sister.

And then, to put the final nail on the coffin, the second of the two adopted Marys was shipped back because her new parents died in a wildfire caused by a gender reveal party gone wrong...