by Akira Kareno
She didn’t think these leprechauns would treat him the same as the rest of society. But even if they didn’t act that way, it was possible they would respond similarly. The girls were beings meant to fight against the Seventeen Beasts, weapons that were exhausted in those battles. The responsibility for creating this fate of theirs, if they traced it all the way back, lay with the emnetwiht.
And yet. If it was something she could prevent—she didn’t want the kids to reject him.
She didn’t want to destroy this place, where that young man somehow managed a smile despite the fact that there was no home for him left in this world.
Nygglatho was sure he didn’t wish for something like that. He’d tried to learn the truth about the faeries and had revealed the truth about himself. Nygglatho didn’t want his decisions to go to waste. That was why she brought up the past. Still, that didn’t mean her desire not to give up had disappeared.
She knew how selfish it was, but somehow, she wanted the children to stay by Willem’s side, as they always had—
She stopped in her tracks.
An uneasy sensation tickled the back of her neck.
No.
Such a thing couldn’t be happening now, not with this timing. But at the same time, she also thought it was something they’d do.
Quickly, about-face. She rushed toward the infirmary.
Just as she approached the corner in the corridor—
“Willie! We heard the story! You were destroyed?”
She heard carefree voices.
She stumbled forward.
“Wow, emnetwiht are a lot like us!”
“Very interesting. I hope you’ll tell us stories about your time.”
“U-um, I don’t know how to say this very well, but please cheer up.”
The infirmary was crowded with faeries.
They were crowded around the bed of a patient with serious injuries who’d been on the verge of death just moments earlier, and they were making quite a ruckus.
“…”
Nygglatho stood absently in front of the door for about ten seconds.
Another five seconds to smile at how ridiculous her worries had been. Honestly, she could have easily imagined things ending up this way; what had she been so afraid of?
She was so happy to see the girls all trying to encourage Willem each in her own way and took another two seconds to wipe the smile off her face.
A full seven seconds to take a deep breath and switch modes.
“Girls?”
The lot of them froze in place.
With the creaky sound of a rusty screw, they all turned their heads to look at her.
“The patient is very tired right now and is resting. You need to be quiet. Bad children that don’t listen…”
Slowly, calmly, a smile spread across her face like a tear in fabric.
“…know what happens to them, don’t they?”
It didn’t even take ten seconds. The girls pushed out of the room and sprinted down the hall.
“Wow, sure is quiet now.” Ithea peeked out from behind her.
“If you’re going to be noisy, then I’ll chase you away, too.”
“Nya-ha-ha, I’d prefer you didn’t.” She smiled lightly, a vague expression on her face making it difficult to tell if she was serious or joking. “But there’s something I want to check with the dying man here. You think you can let me do that?”
“…What do you want to ask?”
Before Nygglatho could say anything, Willem responded.
Nygglatho wouldn’t be able to interject now. “Thanks,” Ithea said with her usual smile, slipping into the room and sitting down in a small chair situated by the side of the bed.
“First, let me just reconfirm: You’re emnetwiht, right?”
“I guess at some point, we started being called that. When I lived on the surface, we didn’t go out of our way to give our race a special name. We were just people, and any other race was treated as a monstrosity.”
“Barbarous times, they were.”
“Well, I won’t deny that… So what are you getting at?”
Ithea smiled complacently.
“…So why would such a great emnetwiht bother with us?” she asked, her expression suddenly growing serious, her voice low. “We’re grateful for you, Second Enchantments Officer. But after hearing what you really are, I’m completely lost again as to why you’d use up all your energy in a place like this. Fighting with Chtholly when you’re in such a tattered state just puts your life at risk. It’s kind of weird that you’d do that much without a real reason, y’know?”
“Of course I want to be nice to girls.”
“…That’s a little straightforward.” Ithea’s expression softened, and she scratched her cheek with the tip of her finger. “Sure, biologists say it’s natural for a male of a species to be kind toward its female counterparts, but I think you know, right? This is just appearance for us.”
Leprechauns were all female.
She didn’t know why, but it was a truth she couldn’t do anything about. At the very least, she hadn’t found any exceptions.
Strictly speaking, they weren’t life-forms, but “things” that multiplied naturally, so there was no inherent liability to not having males. Therefore, no one thought it was much of a problem, but to put it another way:
“All of us are girls, so it’s like we don’t have a sex in the first place. We’re basically slugs.”
“I don’t get it.” Willem snorted with a smile. “The molding unit at the Capital Puppeteering Troupe would get so mad if they heard that.”
“Huh? Sure, I guess, but I don’t know who that is.”
“…Then, I guess, it’s like this. You like kittens?”
“Huh? Well, I guess as much as anyone else.”
“You want to keep them safe?”
“Sure, as much as anyone else.”
“That’s basically it.”
“Wait…I don’t get what you mean.”
Willem thought for a moment.
“This is something I heard long ago. Things that have adorable outward appearances don’t just spring up randomly. They have an innate nature that wants to be loved, protected, cherished, so they develop that way.
“So whether animal or person, that’s why kids are cute, regardless of race. They desperately hope that they’re something people want to protect…understand?”
“…Are you saying we’re the same?”
“You’re irregular beings. Your origins are souls that could take on whatever aberrant form they wanted, but instead, you’re born not only as children but as little girls. Does that convince you?”
“So you’re a big ol’ softy to your whole race, huh—? When we take into account your taste in young girls, Officer, then it all makes sense.”
“Hey, come on, where’d you get that from?!”
The two laughed together.
What was that? Nygglatho wondered.
She felt miserable, fretting over what it was that made her worry so much.
In the end, neither the faeries nor Willem himself had considered what she’d been concerned about earlier as deeply as Nygglatho had expected; it was terribly egocentric of her. Everyone only ever acted according to their own logic and standards.
To put it simply, they were just a herd of idiots.
And idiots were idiots because they couldn’t become sharp that quickly.
They were idiots because they could laugh so freely.
Ohhh, I love you all so much.
For some reason, everyone got incredibly frightened when she said things like that out loud, so she settled on yelling it in her heart.
3. The Stray Girl and the Flying Lizard
…What am I doing?
Chtholly Nota Seniorious ran. She flew from her living quarters known as the warehouse, ran through the forest, ran through the port, and with no more land to run on, she sprouted wings from her back and flew.
She didn’t kno
w why. But she had to.
She mostly understood what Willem had wanted to convey through that (what Chtholly considered) sham fight. That had been a mistake. And she couldn’t handle it.
Comparing the current Guard’s deployable firepower and the strength of the group to Timere, whose attack was imminent, it was impossible to guarantee victory. That was why she had to be ready to be a sacrifice in order to temporarily raise the bar on their power. That was the current situation.
But there was another solution: Raise the standard of firepower itself.
They’d known all along that they were not using the dug weapons to their fullest potential. They were complicated creations made so long ago, after all, and even if they weren’t, their capabilities had naturally deteriorated. Not only that, but none of them came with an instruction manual, so the users had to feel out how to activate them by trial and error, bypassing the user authentication with dummies—in other words, using faeries to get by. For all their efforts, they just barely managed to force the weapons to activate.
It was obvious. Once someone who knew how they were meant to be used showed up, the whole situation changed.
It was time to reevaluate their forces. They could once again place their two choices on the scales: “Victory at the expense of countless lives” and “Certain victory with the least amount of sacrifices.”
It would be the same as recognizing their fights had been misguided up to that point.
It would be the same as rubbing their noses in the fact that everyone they had lost until now had been no more than pointless victims.
It would be the same as determining her resolve, as someone prepared for her own death and fully aware that she would be lost along the way just like all who’d gone before her, was in itself worthless.
“This isn’t…funny…”
Six months ago.
The day they’d predicted an attack by an especially large Timere.
The moment they’d announced they had no other recourse but to push the leprechaun Chtholly Nota Seniorious into overdrive.
“But I was so scared…”
Of course she didn’t want to die.
Once she knew her time was limited, she’d started thinking of things she wanted to do.
Even so, she’d cried and cried, putting on a strong face day after day.
“I was finally ready…”
Not even a month ago, she’d decided she wouldn’t cry anymore, but now, she couldn’t help the tears clouding her eyes.
No, I’m not gonna cry now. The more she forced herself, the less she could hold back the welling tears on the brink of spilling over.
“Gh, nghhh…!”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She stopped flapping her wings.
Her flight turned into a free fall. The wind howled in her ears.
Below her was a thick sea of white clouds.
Perfect, she thought.
She’d get soaked if she flew through the clouds. Then no one would be able to tell she’d been crying. She simply let her body drop.
Chtholly entered the clouds.
Clouds are essentially thick fog in high places. Though they looked like cotton, they felt like nothing, and though she had dived in, she didn’t make a splash. What was there was simply a whiteness that filled her vision and a dampness—a void of nothingness in the sky.
“Oh—”
—no, she thought.
She’d forgotten a crucial detail.
It was autumn. Winter was nearing.
Once her whole body was wet, it became terribly cold.
“Shoot…”
Whether bird or faerie, physical strength is incredibly important during flight. The cold was rapidly stealing her strength. Even more alarming, there were no conveniently placed floating stones for her to rest on.
Should she fly to the nearest island?
Or just go back the way she came?
Neither were totally impossible. But when she thought about getting home, the former wasn’t very realistic. Then, of course, she had no other option but to go the way she came, but she genuinely hesitated to act.
What should she do?
Her body shivered, falling backward through the clouds, and she weighed her choices. Though there was only one conclusion, she forced the conflict brewing inside her, as though she didn’t want to do it.
While that was happening—
“Hmm…?”
—a black shadow suddenly emerged in a corner of her whitened vision.
Five minutes later.
The Winged Guard patrol airship Barocupot, inside the small war room on the second deck.
It was cramped.
Incredibly cramped.
It was, of course, the small war room and consequently not very big. However, it was a war room and had to be large enough to fit a certain number of people. There were only two occupants now.
So why did she feel so cramped?
The answer was simple. One of the two was a giant lizardfolk, easily twice Chtholly’s height. Double her height meant double her weight, and his intensity was eight times as great. The room felt much smaller.
After she scrubbed her head with a borrowed towel, Chtholly looked up at the lizardfolk’s face.
“…I’m sorry for intruding so suddenly, First Officer Limeskin. I saw you flying nearby, I just…”
“I do not mind. The hermitage of wind is alwaysss open to the warrior,” the lizardfolk said as he placed a warm cup of medicinal tea onto the table.
There was a surreal humor in the way he hunched over, gently holding the small cup like a toy.
“Thank you.”
She took the cup and brought it to her lips.
It was hot. And bitter. Her body involuntarily stiffened as a prickly sensation tickled the tip of her tongue.
“However, I do wonder whhhy you were flying through the cloudss in thisss ssseasson. Not to mention, you have a very important fight before you. What happened?”
“Urgh…”
She faltered.
She hesitated. She wavered. She thought. Then she opened her mouth.
“About that fight… It would be bad to say that I am afraid of dying just before it, wouldn’t it?”
“Hmm?”
The lizardfolk raised an eyebrow, or so it looked. He, of course, didn’t have eyebrows, so it was just her imagination.
“It’s…Willem, Second Enchantments Officer Willem.”
“Hmm.”
Chtholly knew. Second Enchantments Officer Willem Kmetsch currently stationed at the faerie warehouse was a soldier who only existed on paper, nothing but a rank. But nonetheless, he was a soldier who definitely existed in military documents. And his direct superior on paper was the giant lizardfolk that sat before her—First Officer Limeskin.
“He said he has a different way of fighting than the one we’ve always used. He actually showed me a bit of it. I couldn’t make out what he did very well, but it made me understand something very clearly. It would certainly have a higher chance of victory, be more effective, and…is much more correct than our way.”
“Oh…?”
She dropped her gaze into the cup.
“I don’t want to accept this. I don’t want to believe that all my sisters before me were wrong and didn’t have to die. That was why I wasn’t going to listen to him. I didn’t have any time left anyhow. I was going to prove it on the battlefield. I thought I had to protect the way my sisters fought, to prove that they were right. But…”
“Were you afraid?”
She couldn’t nod straightaway.
Limeskin was very particular about the word warrior. Perhaps it was characteristic of the lizardfolk race. Chtholly didn’t understand the details of his strict definition, but apparently, she was recognized as a warrior in accordance with his own standards.
If she nodded now, he would probably be disappointed in her.
He might see it as her losing courage and throwing away her qualifications
to be a warrior.
But even so…
“…Yes.”
She could not lie.
“Kh-kh-kh, I sssee.”
Suddenly—
The lizardfolk opened his mouth wide. The rasping clang that sounded like a ceramic bell being whirled about surged from the depths of his throat.
“…Huh? Huh?”
An odd, loud voice reverberated far above her head.
“I sssee. Thiss meanss we musst apologizze to the man. Though hiss battlefield differesss from oursss, he iss undoubtedly a warrior himssself.”
It took her a while to realize he was laughing.
“Wh-why? Why do you think that? We’re the ones fighting!”
“To fight againsst the Beasstsss is our war. But that iss not Willem’ss war. What he iss trying to contend with iss the wind inssside of you.”
“…The wind?”
“The identity of what you call ‘resssolve.’ Perhapsss it is eassier to underssstand if I call it ‘resssignation’?”
Blood rushed to her head.
She drank down the entire cup of medicinal tea. Her insides grew hot as though she was being roasted.
What on earth do they boil to make something like this? Why would the cold-blooded lizardfolk make something like this anyway? Several absurd questions came to mind, but Chtholly shoved them all into the corner of her thoughts. Now was not the time to be dwelling on such things.
“Why—?”
Her heart felt lighter. It also felt like a hole had opened inside it, but that probably didn’t make much of a difference.
“First Officer, you knew I never had the qualifications to be a warrior, didn’t you? You are quite adept at flattery, after all… I was being quite serious.”
“What are you talking about? Like the ssun sssetting in the north, it iss unthinkable for the proud ssscaled people to sspeak liesss.”
“But didn’t you just say I was resigned?”
“Resssignation and resssolve are, in essence, the sssame thing. Both indicate the abandonment of sssomething important for the ssake of one’sss goalss.”
—That’s…
That line of thinking jumbled the sacred and the abominable into one.
“Isn’t resolve supposed to be, like, something much more important?”
