by Mamare Touno
“Do you not like cake?”
“……”
Asking if he didn’t like it, as though he hadn’t been able to eat it all because he didn’t like it, was problematic. He’d eaten nine whole pieces. Shiroe thought he’d put up a pretty good fight. Had there been some kind of misunderstanding?
“Or did you not have fun?”
“That wasn’t it at all. Never mind that—I’m sorry. You won’t get to go to the… What was it, the finals?”
“That doesn’t matter. I didn’t care about those. Minori was the one who cared.”
“I see.”
He didn’t understand why Minori would care about an eating contest. Well, if it was necessary, Shiroe thought she’d probably tell him herself. Age-wise, Minori might be fourteen, but she was a thoughtful, responsible girl.
“But…”
“Hm?”
“Were you all right with that cake?”
Akatsuki had turned to look at Shiroe and was watching him steadily. As she stared at him, her striking black eyes gleamed wetly in her small face but conveyed no warmth. Her beauty added a sense of urgency.
“Huh?”
“No, I mean… You were really worked up over the all-you-can-eat free cake, weren’t you? Was three or four pieces enough?”
“I… I wasn’t really there for the cake, either.”
“No?”
“……”
“It’s hard to keep a conversation going with you, my liege.”
“What am I supposed to do about it? And anyway, you’re the one who’s quiet, Akatsuki.”
Akatsuki had never been the talkative type.
When they were alone together, sometimes conversations just died. At first it had made him feel ill at ease, and he’d tried to come up with things to talk about, but by now, he was fine with just being silent like this. Maybe it was because, while Shiroe was fielding paperwork, Akatsuki often stayed in his room, erasing all traces of her presence, telling him she was on bodyguard duty. The way Akatsuki had spoken had been cute, so he’d answered as if he was teasing her, but they’d only recently become able to banter this way.
“That’s not true. I have all sorts of things to talk about.”
“Then give me something.”
“Hm?”
“A topic, I mean.”
Akatsuki scowled and fell silent.
Her gaze wandered unsteadily to the right, then swam back to the left.
Maybe she was at a loss. Had that been mean of him? Just as Shiroe had begun to wonder about that, Akatsuki spoke after a long pause.
“If you do this, it’s fun.”
Akatsuki’s open mouth was a funny shape, and it trembled restlessly, but she touched Shiroe’s forehead with a slender white fingertip.
“That’s fun?”
Akatsuki nodded.
I wonder if this is more Akatsuki-style master-servant role play… I really think she’s got the wrong idea here. Well, I don’t watch period dramas, so I don’t know either, but…
“I see.”
The wind rose, and the treetop swayed in the darkness with a noise like the ocean. The scent of leaves in the midst of cool wind and stillness. Shiroe looked up at his own forehead, which Akatsuki was touching lightly, over and over. As she stroked his forehead, Akatsuki’s lips were set in stubborn concentration. He had no idea what was fun about this, but “fun” was subjective. He thought there was probably no point in asking.
“You’re okay with something like this?”
“It’s your important job, my liege.”
“Is that what it is?”
He’d spent a long time with Akatsuki.
The confusion after the Catastrophe, many battles, the journey to Susukino, the establishment of the Round Table Council, the political affair at the Ancient Court of Eternal Ice, and the conversation with Li Gan. Then the battle for Choushi, and Rundelhaus’s revival.
Akatsuki had stuck with him through all of it, without a single complaint. He thought there had probably been battlefields he couldn’t have gotten through without her support.
Remembering all of that, Shiroe continued to take this adorable abuse from the girl in the charming kimono.
7
She couldn’t breathe.
It was as though the night air had become liquid: Her throat grew tight, hardening, and her blood became a muddy torrent, thundering in her ears.
If you do this, it’s fun.
That’s fun?
The whisper she’d overheard a moment ago was still there.
The sweet nothings from the black-haired girl, who was desperately trying to hide her embarrassment. The voice of her guild master, Shiroe: somewhat perplexed, yet still kind.
Her knees felt as if they’d turned to foam and were about to drain away. Fighting the sensation, Minori made for the kitchen. She was carrying dandelion barley tea, a digestive aid. She’d thought Shiroe might benefit from some, and so had taken a wooden tray up to the terrace. Still holding the tray, Minori walked mechanically.
She couldn’t stay there. She mustn’t watch that scene.
Her mind was chaos, as though it was filled with several thousand bursts of static, and she had no idea what was going on. It was as if her ethics had pushed her into motion, and it was all she could do to just put that place behind her.
The first thing she felt was shock. The next was an overwhelming confusion. She didn’t have any clear question to ask, but doubt kept welling up inside her heart. She wanted to ask. However, she didn’t know who she should ask, or even what to ask.
A feeling of being confused and wanting to be helped filled her chest, then seemed to descend into her abdomen, changing into something heavy and unpleasant.
Almost without being aware of it, Minori had returned to the kitchen. She set the tray on the dining table and sat down in a chair. She really didn’t know why she felt so stunned.
Only, when she’d seen Shiroe and Akatsuki from the door to the third-floor terrace just now, she’d thought there had been something between them. At the very least, Akatsuki’s expression had held special feelings for Shiroe.
When she’d noticed the older girl’s longing—barely visible on the surface, yet still as clear as day—the shock had made Minori recoil as though she’d touched fire without realizing it.
That shock had made her run back here, to shelter.
Even as she sat here, she was disturbed by incoherent thoughts that blustered inside her mind like a sandstorm, and she couldn’t pull together any questions that were remotely like questions.
At a loss, Minori gazed at the tabletop.
Her mind was completely bleached out. It was as if her thoughts had gone numb.
Time passed, quite a lot of it, and the first thought to surface was that Akatsuki was in love with Shiroe.
That’s right. Akatsuki loves Shiroe.
It was a simple fact.
Today was sunny.
Autumn followed summer.
The guild house was covered in green.
It was a natural fact, just as clear as those, with no room for doubt.
It was a terribly obvious thing, but just murmuring it in her heart resurrected the shock she’d felt earlier, and the sandstorm threatened to cover her mind. That brief fact—only a few words—was broken down into phrases, drawn out, sliced up, grew crumpled and messy, and if she let her guard down, she felt she would be unable to grasp its meaning inside her mind.
Minori collected the scattered fragments of her thoughts and twisted them together, taking several deep, deep breaths.
The unpleasant feeling between her chest and her stomach seemed to have acquired a physical form, and she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. Even her heartbeat seemed to be suppressed, and she could feel her temperature falling.
In the midst of the anxiety of not being able to breathe the way she wanted to, and from an uneasiness as though her spine was being slowly skewered from behind, Minori finally came face-to-f
ace with it:
I love Shiroe, too.
This was the first love she’d known, and it didn’t taste faintly of lemons.
It was dark and painful right from the beginning, and it smelled like burnt iron.
All the joints in her body loosened, shaking as if they’d fly apart every which way. In the midst of this, Minori confronted something about which nothing could be done. She hadn’t felt so powerless since the night Touya spent in the Intensive Care Unit.
She was only sitting there, but she felt as if she might scream something and break into a run; it hurt to restrain herself. She’d been raised with Touya, her twin, and while she’d helped her little brother, whose legs wouldn’t work anymore, even she’d come to think she had a calm, responsible personality.
She’d never known she could have feelings so intense she couldn’t handle them.
I love Shiroe.
Just thinking it made pain run through her, as though her heart were being crushed by steel claws. It was far too fearless; it seemed almost as if she’d forgotten her own place. It was the pain of her terror at her own conceit.
However, it was also true that a speck of sweetness had crept into the pain somehow.
The sweetness wasn’t a premonition of happiness, the idea that she might be united with Shiroe.
It was more like the tempting compulsion to confirm the heat of the blood that flowed from a wound, even though you knew touching the wound would hurt. The lure of the stinging wound was a degenerate one, but even so, it was the sweetness of the pain of the first love she’d known.
Minori couldn’t think of a single reason why Shiroe would choose her, but she could think of dozens—or even hundreds—of reasons why he wouldn’t.
For that reason, the sweetness might have been given to Minori as an anesthetic.
The age difference. The difference in their talents. The difference in their business abilities. The difference in their combat capabilities. Her own immaturity. Her timidity. Her wretchedness. Even in terms of appearance, she was mediocrity itself compared to Akatsuki… In short, Minori was a perfectly ordinary middle schooler, nothing more.
Then there was her own ugliness, which she’d just discovered.
Minori had thought this when Akatsuki touched Shiroe:
Not fair.
That’s my place.
There had been no reason for it. It had been simple selfishness. When it came right down to it, it had only been a false accusation. Of course it had been. Akatsuki was free to fall in love with somebody, too.
Even so, Minori had thought Not fair because, somewhere in her heart, she’d thought of Shiroe as hers.
When she’d been Hamelin’s captive, during that long, painful, lightless time, Shiroe had encouraged her. Shiroe had rescued her from her captivity. She’d idolized him as the star she should aim for and had tried to follow in his footsteps. That was what Shiroe was, and on some level, Minori had thought of him as hers.
I thought Shiroe would always be there… I thought he’d always be my teacher.
What arrogance.
The thought of her own contemptible ugliness made Minori feel as though her insides were smeared with mud. Viscous flames were slowly roasting her from the inside, as if heavy oil had been set on fire. The pain made her want to thrash around, but even if she screamed, it wouldn’t help.
It hurt. She hated it.
And what was more, the realization that she’d had these emotions hidden inside made her dizzy.
The impudence of thinking of Shiroe as hers, of all things, as if she had some sort of right of ownership to him… She hated that conceited self so much she wanted to kill it. More than anything, she was appalled by her own unconscious arrogance, the arrogance that she hadn’t even realized existed until just a moment ago.
“Not fair”…? Why would I… That’s just—
A long time passed.
In the darkness, Minori continued to breathe, bearing up under pain that felt like she was being slowly ground down or ripped apart. As always, the air was clammy and heavy, as painful as a lump of sand.
For such a long time she didn’t know how many hours had passed, Minori sat motionless, facing the pain inside herself.
“Minori?”
The kitchen grew bright: Touya had come in with a Bug Light Lamp. Minori hadn’t noticed her little brother until he was right beside her. For a moment, she thought he was some sort of illusion, and she stared at him with a foolish expression.
“Minori, what? Geez, your face…”
Touya had taken a hand towel out of his pack, and he roughly wiped Minori’s face with it. When he caught her nose through the towel, and it snuffled when he wiggled it back and forth, Minori finally realized she’d been crying.
“Touya…”
“What is it, huh?”
“Touya.”
“Yeah?”
Touya sat down on the chair next to Minori, loosened the straps on his leather armor, then dropped it and his pack with a thud. He was his usual self, the little brother Minori was so proud of. In spite of his blunt attitude, she could tell he was worried about her.
Her own arrogance, which she’d just discovered: She knew she had no right to be jealous, but no matter how much she told herself that, she couldn’t control the emotion. At the sight of her brother’s familiar profile, that jealousy subsided, just a little.
“Touya, listen. I…”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think I like Shiroe.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, you do. You like him.”
Touya spoke without even turning to face Minori; he was using a belt to bind up the armor he’d taken off. His tone was so natural he might have been talking about the weather.
“Huh? What? Why are you reacting like that?”
“You’ve been crazy about Teacher Shiroe for ages, Minori.”
“For ages? Have I?”
Had she really been? She might have been. She had been. …Minori downshifted through three stages straight to depression. To Touya, this pain might be old news as well. Still, even so, when Touya was there with her, she felt as though the pain—a pain as if she were chewing sand—had faded a little.
“That’s a problem.”
“Why?”
At Minori’s voice, Touya looked her way for the first time. Lit by the faint white light of the lamp, he looked more grown-up than usual.
“‘Why’? Why would you ask me…?”
“It’s not giving you trouble, Minori. Is it? You don’t have a problem. It just hurts.”
Her heart leapt.
Those words pierced Minori.
It felt as if he’d seen right through her.
She remembered the finger Akatsuki had gently stretched out—her fingertip had touched Shiroe’s forehead as if she were trying to hold herself back but couldn’t quite manage it. Minori sensed that she was jealous of that fingertip.
The feeling wasn’t the least bit right, but even so, she couldn’t stop herself, and the ugliness just kept piling up.
That bitterness, and the pain, really did hurt.
Even so, she didn’t want to throw them away or leave them behind. She’d first noticed her feelings for Shiroe within that pain, and they bloomed sweetly inside Minori.
“Is that…okay?”
“There’s no help for it, is there?”
Maybe there was no help for it, Minori thought.
She wasn’t looking for an excuse for herself. It was her heart, trying to find something she could still use in the midst of her darkness and pain. In all the thick, muddy ugliness, her heart was longing for something that hadn’t rotted away, something that had value.
Minori drew a deep breath, the way Shiroe had showed her, and strained her ears, listening to the distant noises.
Shiroe…
She remembered Shiroe.
The words he’d said. The look in his eyes, behind his round glasses.
The way he chose his words carefully when he answered her questions. The way he looked when he unrolled a map and explained something to her.
The slightly troubled gesture he used to adjust his glasses.
The obstinate way he pursed his lips. His pale, determined profile.
The strength in his voice when he’d agreed: Leave it to me.
In Minori’s mind’s eye, transformed into a devastated wasteland by chaos and pain, those memories alone glowed with bright, vibrant color.
So as not to make a lie of it. So that she wouldn’t betray it. She wanted to exchange all the gray noise for that brightness.
In the kitchen, where Minori and Touya sat, a murmur that was like the breath of the town echoed very, very far away. After she’d spent a long time in the flickering light of the Bug Light Lamp, Minori gave a small nod.
“You’re right. It isn’t…a problem. It just hurts. That’s all—I haven’t lost anything, and nothing’s bad, and I haven’t done anything. …That’s right. I haven’t managed to do one single thing yet.”
The first feelings she’d known weren’t pastel-colored sugar candy.
They were like leaping flames or flowing blood, in the midst of darkness and cries of pain like rough static, and they had a brightness that cut her when she touched them. There was so much contrast in the feelings hidden in her heart that they made her dizzy, but even so, Minori smiled at her brother, just a little. The tears that ran down her cheeks hadn’t dried, but she had no intention of denying those tears.
There was no use in holding on to this pain when she hadn’t managed to do anything, Minori thought. Since they hadn’t begun, she told herself, they hadn’t ended, and she gave up.
She hadn’t repaid Shiroe at all, hadn’t caught up to him in anything. That meant her pain and suffering was only natural.
Minori got through the long night with Touya’s help.
It was the first night to temper that blade of blue steel, but Minori was well aware that it wouldn’t be the last.
1
The cold autumn air made the sky clear. Dazzlingly bright stars twinkled in Akiba’s night sky.
In the world of Elder Tales, there were more stars than there had been in the old world, and they were brighter. No one knew if this was because the air was clean or if it was due to the game’s art design, but in this other world, the nights were ornamented with stars.
