The Knights' Night Outing (1)
"Dad's off to work. I'll be back."
"Dad, you're leaving already?"
"Aww, but you said you'd play with us today."
"Tch..."
They were at an age when all they wanted was to play, and the fussing came out small. The man who had come to bear the name of Dad scratched at his cheek, at a loss.
He was sorry. These past few days had been so busy that he seemed to have given the children no attention at all.
Then—
"You little rascals. Dad isn't going out to play. He's going to work. Are you going to keep whining?"
Reinforcements arrived at just the right moment, and the children's fussing was put down.
"Honey..."
"You have to be firm too. Ahem! You listen to your dad! ...Like that."
"I just feel bad for the kids, that's all..."
"Oh, you can play with them next time. Ah, that's right. The streets have been uneasy lately, so be careful. I saw in the paper that the royal house and the temple are fighting again."
"...I know, I know."
"Once is enough! Now hurry up and get to work!"
"...All right."
Listening to his wife's scolding, half encouragement and half nag, the man smiled bitterly and set off down the road to work, for his lovely angel, that steadfast ally of his, and for the three baby angels God had sent them.
An ordinary man, called by many names: Dad, husband, head of the house. Yes—a father of the sort one might see anywhere swung his feet with vigor and stepped out into the world again today.
The day awaiting him at work would surely be grinding and hard. Even so, the man could endure it.
And no wonder. After all, he was—
...a dad.
"So the lot of you went and scratched that girl raw, did you? Red was impressed. Said you really know how to get under someone's skin."
"Pardon?"
"Hayes Roche. You went to see her, didn't you."
"Ah. That."
Derek laughed, awkward. Thinking back on it now, what he and the other two had done seemed altogether too much.
"Hmm..."
"Something's strange."
"Something is strange."
"...What is wrong with these lunatics."
They—Derek included, along with Lady Irene and Young Master Roen—surely hadn't promised one another anything, and yet by chance all three had gone to see Hayes, widely known as a spy of the temple, or an apostate.
Unlike the day before, she had withered past all recognition. In the dark of the room she bared her teeth and growled, like a beast. She must have suffered every torture and interrogation Inquisitor Pierre could devise, and still her spirit had not broken. She showed a ferocity to rival any butcher-fiend, teeth bared, enough that any able-bodied man might have taken fright and stepped back.
They, however, did not care in the slightest whether she was a beast or mad with rabies.
"Was she always like this?"
"...I'm certain she wasn't this sort of person."
"Where did it all go wrong?"
"You wretches—do you even know who I am?!"
That savage presence did not work on them in the least. If anything, they only tilted their heads, as if appraising some rare animal in a cage. What they had in common was this: they were studying Hayes Roche, sizing her up, or simply watching.
At last, when the observation had run its course—
"Haaa..."
They showed their disappointment all at once. It was the look of people who had hoped for a panda and found, instead, some person wearing a panda's mask.
Inevitably—
"...This isn't the one."
"AAAAAAAGH!!"
Whether it was stress or a rage that had sickened her from the inside, Hayes Roche's eyes shot bloodshot, and she screamed until they rolled white. They had managed what even the Inquisitor's vicious torture and questioning could not, and the three of them only cocked their heads, quite regardless of whether she shrieked herself raw.
...It had happened exactly half a day ago.
"Your news travels quickly."
"Red was impressed."
"Ahem..."
The boy cleared his throat as if ashamed, and Lee Han shrugged. He hadn't said it to scold anyone, but it seemed to have pricked Taechang's conscience. Lee Han snorted, then turned the subject.
"So why'd you come alone? Weren't you with them?"
"...Ah, those two? Both of them were busy. Young Master Roen went to the Lionel estate, and Lady Irene was all but dragged off to the Galahad estate. She nearly came to direct harm, so His Grace the Duke seems to be looking after her a great deal."
"......You're still using titles? I thought you'd gotten close."
They were comrades who had fought together at the Magic Tower. How was the relationship still this unchanged?
"I-I can't help it.... I did end up in a cooperative relationship with Young Master Roen, but it's only cooperation. We aren't particularly close, and things with Lady Irene are nothing but awkward."
"Not even a little camaraderie?"
"It doesn't seem to be forming."
"...Proud of that, are you."
"M-more importantly, Hayes Roche's identity has been confirmed. Her real name is Susan. She's a woman driven out of some mountain village eight years ago."
"There he goes, changing the subject..."
Lee Han considered teasing Taechang a little more for the hasty pivot, then decided to let it pass in the face of something interesting.
"Driven out of her hometown?"
"Yes. They say she was the village chief's daughter, and that her cruelty was severe. The villagers suffered a great deal as well. After the chief died of old age, the people banded together and cast her out of the village."
The confession draught, brewed to the Inquisition's special recipe, was clearly something formidable. The incident had barely happened, and already the background check was finished.
"Not long after she was driven out, she nursed a grudge against the villagers who had cast her off, set the place on fire, and fled. Soldiers caught her soon after for arson, but then, on the way to the Tunnels, she vanished...."
"The radicals snatched her?"
"In effect, yes."
The story after that was typical. Besides the woman named Susan, countless others had been kidnapped. Into them someone had put a duke's factor and a Dream Fiend's factor, obtained from who knew where, and Susan was one of the women who survived the side effects. And the Susan who lived—
"We believe she underwent something like brainwashing. The content was, 'I am a special person, and one day I will become this country's noble lady, and its Saint.'"
"...And that's how Susan became Hayes Roche?"
"The forged identity was honestly spectacular. If you hadn't been there, Instructor, she would have entered the Academy with no one knowing she was a spy the temple had manufactured. And if things had gone according to the temple's plan, what a wreck she might have made of the kingdom...."
The mere imagining of it chilled him. Taechang muttered as if he were laying it on, and Lee Han took him to task for the exaggeration.
"You're exaggerating."
"It isn't exaggeration, and it isn't flattery. I'm stating only the facts. You stopped a fracture in Pendragon, Instructor. Well... it does seem you've been dragged into a nuisance because of it...."
Lee Han said nothing.
"...Do you hate it that much?"
"Wouldn't you? At this rate I'm about to end up a clown."
Lee Han clicked his tongue, hard.
A day ago—that is, after hearing old Raphael speak of an Indulgence—he had been forced to feel that he'd been had. The moment he heard that the temple itself meant to promote him, a fierce revulsion had struck. And no wonder.
"I was living quietly just fine...."
Didn't famous people say it all the time? That they wanted plenty of money, and a life that drew no attention at all. Lee Han, likewise, had not the slightest wish to become famous the way attention hounds did. He was an introvert, damn it. And so, with that quiet life about to end at the temple's hands, the displeasure rose of its own accord—and toward the bastard who had set this board...
"I'd like to see his face, at least."
All he could do was grind his teeth.
"...You believe there is an individual who did this, Instructor? Not an organization?"
"Incompetents who can't do anything but peddle God couldn't be this clever."
Derek was silent.
"There'll be one. I'm sure of it. A brain, giving orders to those incompetents."
By his guess, someone very clever, and very persistent.
"A Jeong Dojeon, maybe. Or a Han Myeonghoe."
"...What's the difference?"
"One's a thinker and a revolutionary, out to turn a country over. The other's an ambitious man who wouldn't hesitate to bite even a king, if it served his own power."
"......You seem to rate him awfully high."
"I have to. I can't read this bastard's next move."
No reply came.
"Can't even read it by instinct. The man doesn't hesitate at all."
Not someone who brooded for a long time before spinning a plot, but someone used to improvising his schemes. Which was why he overturned the board before Lee Han or anyone else could even step onto it.
And so—
"Maybe I ought to flip it on impulse, too."
"How?"
"Easy. It's nothing else...."
"I ask only on the off chance, but you aren't thinking something like, 'The day I receive the Indulgence, I'll smash every last temple bastard and just emigrate,' are you?"
Lee Han said nothing.
Blink. Blink.
"......I'm going to lose my mind."
Faced with eyes as innocent as Why not?—no, the eyes of a beast—Lee Han's assistant instructor, Damian Paulet, felt his blood pressure about to climb. Of course. Just like this man.
"...Hah. Instructor, an Indulgence is not simply a thing that lets you commit a crime and be forgiven. It is a kind of symbol. Actually use one, and heaven will punish you. Truly."
"Yeah?"
"Because an Indulgence is made from a Sacred Relic—that is, from the remains or possessions of those who were called saints. Receiving one is nothing more than a matter of honor, and it is no exaggeration to say there has never been a case of one actually being used."
"They made it to be used, didn't they?"
"Even so, you must not! It is a Sacred Relic! A Sacred Relic! Merely keeping one has the power to turn aside most curses, hexes, and magic. It even bears the name a spare life, and you still want to use it?"
"Yep."
"...Could you think for a moment before you answer?"
"......Yep. Thought about it. Seems fine to use."
"You thought for five seconds! Five seconds!!"
Toy with Damian Paulet the way he did on any other day, and the young man raged like a berserker. Hammer swinging, he came on, and Lee Han put him down with ease. It took a minute longer than usual to subdue him, which was proof enough that Damian's skill had certainly improved.
"D-damn it...!"
From the standpoint of a man who had failed to land even a single blow, no amount of improvement was anything but infuriating. Damian panted and fumed, still sprawled on the floor, and then, abruptly—
"...Instructor, I know you rather well. No. It would be more accurate to say I was forced to."
"...?"
"I know you feel little sense of belonging to Pendragon. Lately, what with my classmates around, you seem to have settled your heart a little. Even so, you are the sort who might throw all of it away and vanish like the wind at any moment, and no one would find it strange."
"Your eye's gotten pretty good."
"Damn it all, it's an eye I had to grow by force, just to survive under you!"
"Hmm."
"Hah! Anyway, what I mean to say is this. You may go about things believing you can leave this country whenever you please, but my classmates, and the others, need you. Please use that thick head of yours, attempt something that resembles thought, and then decide. Damn it!"
"...You giving advice, or throwing a fit?"
"I hate myself for saying this, so do me the kindness of overlooking it, damn it all!"
As expected. This one wasn't in his right mind either....
Lee Han shook his head, clicked his tongue, and turned lightly away, carrying his steps toward the house.
...And yet.
"...Kid's grown."
A smile was playing at his lips. Pride, at a boy who had grown.
I'm not of a mind to leave either, you brat.
Unlike the past, something called attachment had stuck to him. But not wanting to leave did not stop the world from driving him into a corner.
And so...
Creeeak.
...Ought he not play a slightly bolder move himself?
From a corner of his chest of drawers, Lee Han drew out a single black mask. He had promised himself he would never take it out again....
"Just this once. Just this once."
He gathered both hands around the black mask and prayed with a devout air. He was a man who offered no prayer to God, and so, instead—
Praying to the Spring Fairy, with whom he shared a thin thread of fate, Lee Han put the mask on.
A skill one had gone to the trouble of learning ought to be used at a time like this.