The Knight Chews Over His Defeat (6)
In all, the words had dug under his skin twice.
Once, at the part about being weak. The second time, at that slick little deceit which claimed that being strong was the end of it. Provocation, and trickery. It would have been stranger if his blood hadn't risen—but the man across from him was an Aura User, and there was no arguing the point.
Having no strength is the crime….
He had spoken nothing but the plain truth.
And yet the remark that followed made him forget he had been needled at all. For a moment, his mind simply went empty.
Had anyone else said a thing like that, he would have written them off as a swindler. Unfortunately, the man in front of him was the genuine article, and still in his prime. A Superhuman who actually existed. In the kingdom—no, looking out over the whole vast continent—there were five true Superhumans at the very most, if that. No one alive would shrug those words aside.
And so Lee Han thought it over.
Hoh? Will you look at this fellow.
Inwardly, Baltar was impressed. Suppose there were a thousand knights, the ordinary run of them, and that same offer were put to every one. All thousand would have answered with the same violent heat.
"I want to become one!"
But this one thought. To anyone else it would have looked like a man with a full belly putting on airs, the sort of scene that invited sneers about not knowing his place. Baltar knew better. There was no one as constantly starving as this fellow, and no one who saw himself so clearly. The reason for that hesitation was not hard to guess.
Sure enough.
"…You're not saying I can become one. You're asking if I want to. That isn't even wordplay…."
"Heh heh. Quite so. One must catch the drift of the words."
As expected. Unlike that face of his, he was not a simple man. He knew how to use his head.
"This isn't even toying with a man…."
Baltar had asked whether he wanted to become a Superhuman. But those words were not you can become a Superhuman. They sat closer to care to try? Wordplay, in other words.
"It is not wordplay. Today I saw in you the possibility of becoming a Superhuman, and I meant to teach you the method."
Lee Han said nothing.
"You have the makings. Truly. In your case, by the odds…."
A flick of one finger.
"—you might survive it. About one chance in a hundred."
Baltar crooked his index finger as he said it, and a chill knifed through Lee Han. The sensation of a man about to slip into an abyss he must never approach. Before he knew it, he had taken a step back. Baltar paid no mind to the pallor on his face. Beaming, he went on.
"Half a year ago, the chance that you might attempt an Aura User's path and live through it was zero. Not even a hundredth of one percent. Now it is different. You have come to wield Intent, and that means you have met one of the lowest conditions for becoming an Aura User."
"One percent. To other ears it would be nothing but a faint possibility. But that a one percent should have come into being at all means there is a chance of becoming a Superhuman. How tremendous a thing! Heh heh!"
"…First I'm hearing of it. Didn't know one percent was that tremendous."
"But of course!"
He had not meant it as praise. Baltar, however, was already nodding hard, as if it truly were something tremendous, and Lee Han lost whatever he had been about to say. In the same moment, without meaning to, he understood.
So that's why there are so few Superhumans.
He still did not know the way up. But listening to Baltar, he felt it. This was a height a man could climb only by staking his life, and that was why the number was so brutally small.
…If I'd said I was going to try, this old man would've bet my life without a second thought, wouldn't he…?
One well-chosen word, the old saying went, could clear a debt of a thousand nyang. He felt as if his had just saved his neck. He let out a long breath.
Right. A man thinks, and then he talks.
It was a profound mercy that he had not done as he usually did, and let the words out with his brain left behind. Lee Han sighed in relief.
One last drop fell, as if to bless a man who had died and come back. The rain tapered off, and sunlight broke through. The fires were mostly beaten down, and he could feel people creeping nearer, little by little. For the moment, with Baltar here and himself here, they did not seem ready to close the distance. He was being treated, start to finish, as a dangerous man.
They're not wrong.
Even he would not have wanted to walk up on monsters who turned ramparts and earth inside out. Perfectly understandable. And so—
"I'll go on ahead. People'll be uncomfortable if I stay."
"Quite considerate of you."
"It's not consideration. It's called reading the room. You pick up some tact too, old man."
"…Still not a manner on you."
They sniped at each other to the very end. Grumbling, Lee Han was about to leave without a moment's hesitation when Baltar spoke again.
"Hmm. You truly have no mind to try? Break through that one chance in a hundred, and you can become an Aura User."
He stopped.
"…I thought that talk was finished."
"You finished it to suit yourself. Remember that my offer still stands."
This once, he knew the old man was not teasing him, and not toying with him. Baltar truly wanted him to take the challenge.
"Whatever power one reaches for, a price follows. And the chip one must bet to obtain the strength men call Superhuman is not effort. It is a single coin. One's life. A rather inexpensive price, would you not say?"
"Ha! That's a madman's Equivalent Exchange."
Honestly, he was a little tempted. He could gain strength. He would not have to taste defeat. He could become strong. Temptation after temptation brushed him, drew the hunger up, and pressed him on. Cross the line. Hadn't that resolve been sitting ready in him all along?
But.
"…No. Not now. At least, not now."
"Hmm?"
"Truth is, there was one thing I wanted to ask you today, old man. It's a shabby sort of question, so I was going to swallow it."
"What is it?"
Baltar told him a shabby question was welcome; he might ask whatever he liked, as if he had no intention of scorning him for it. And so Lee Han asked.
"You're strong. No—Baltar Grace is strong. So why don't you step forward, even when the kingdom's in crisis?"
For the first time, Baltar looked as if the words had stopped in his mouth. He said nothing. Lee Han saw it, and kept going anyway.
"See? A shabby question. Just whining about why you won't help."
"…No. It is a doubt one may quite naturally hold."
Baltar denied it. A question a man was fully entitled to ask.
"Hmm. And why do you suppose I withhold my help?"
"A question for a question?"
"Answer it, and see."
"…Well. There's more than one thing."
Lee Han set a few of his guesses on the table.
"From where you stand, a mess like this might not even feel like a crisis of the kingdom. Strategy, a campaign, a scheme—whatever the tool, a Superhuman who can crush all of it by strength alone might look at what the kingdom faces now and see nothing worth the name. But the Baltar I know loafs around like he doesn't care, and he still isn't a man with no sense of duty. …And even so, I haven't seen you step in very often."
Killing the Ghost King had been about the whole of it. The one moment the kingdom had truly nearly vanished.
"But there's something I can't make sense of. The war with Britannia."
If Baltar had only set his mind to it, the unification front in the South three years ago could never have dragged on for years. Had he taken the field himself, the war would have ended long before. And yet he had not stepped forward—a knight who had been Britannia's match for a very long time. It was not a choice that suited him.
"Old age, and leaving the work to your juniors—that excuse doesn't even stand up. You said it with your own mouth. You reached Aura User at forty-five. A man in the full of his strength. The great late king was still alive in those days, too. And even so, you took your hands off Britannia the moment you'd killed the famed general Hannibal. I'm supposed to believe that was chance?"
What poured out without a pause for breath was inference, closing little by little on the answer by speaking aloud everything he had found strange until now. Perhaps only Lee Han could have managed it: a man who had dealt with Baltar in the flesh, and felt an Aura User's strength on his own body. And the one person who could tell him whether that inference was true or false stood directly in front of him.
"……Truly. Unlike that face of yours, your head turns quickly, doesn't it?"
Baltar let the surprise show, and nothing else. Surprise, with a little bitterness folded into it.
His footsteps were unhurried.
He did not walk as he had on the way to the Royal Castle. Lee Han went at an easy pace. Any other day he would never have strolled like this; he would at least have run, and called it a warm-up. He was not in the mood. No—to correct himself, his head was a little crowded.
Feels like I learned far too much I didn't need to know.
Even so, he had gotten what he wanted. The tightness in his chest had loosened a great deal, and he had learned what he had wanted to learn. On top of that, he had pocketed a reward he had not expected.
There was a click. A shabby dagger. So much rust lay on it that a careless draw might have seen the thing crumble like sand, and yet Lee Han put the rusted blade away as if it were precious. A growth event. In the way Taechang would have put it, he seemed to have come away with a ticket for a second class change.
It was plainly a good thing. A glad thing. Even so—
"Hoooo…."
What rose in him was less gladness than hesitation. Hesitation over whether the road under his feet was the right one.
No. Is this a worthless thing to chew on?
How to put it. He had not even won a lottery, and already he was fretting over the days that came after the prize. It was not even funny.
"I really am a fool."
"I wonder. I don't think you're a fool, Sir Knight."
"A man who worries over things that haven't even happened yet is a damned idiot. That's all."
"Hmm. Is that worry for your own sake? Or a worry you're turning over because of other people?"
"Me, I can just take care of myself. So that part's fine. It's only—there are an awful lot of people it snags on, you see? ……Huh?"
Lee Han looked beside him.
A moment ago that spot had been empty. Now a pretty maid stood there, braids well suited to her, watching him with a bright, clear smile. Layla Winter.
"…Miss Maid?"
"Yeees!"
"Er—since when have you been standing there?"
"Ever since you sighed, Sir Knight! I even spoke to you. Hehe."
"R-right. So you did…."
He was thrown. She had come up beside him as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and he had held a whole conversation without ever sensing she was there. A mystery, whichever way he turned it. She, for her part, did not care in the slightest whether he was flustered.
"Hehe. As for me, I really do like a knight who's that tenderhearted!"
"You could live selfishly enough if you wanted, and still you keep trying to live like a person. Someone who knows how to care for others is a fine person. My parents said that, too."
"…D-did they."
"Yes. So, Sir Knight—even if you live like a fool, even if you live unwisely, I'll be on your side. I like those clumsy parts of you, too!"
"Hm? Why is your face getting so red? Are you hurting somewhere?"
"……Because of you."
"Hm?"
Few women in the world would declare that they liked someone so boldly, and with a face that utterly untroubled. A brightness that made every one of his worries look useless.
"Hehe."
A clean scent of soap reached him on the wind. She came over at a trot and took his hand, as if she meant to leave him no room at all for a dark thought.
If he had followed his heart, Lee Han would have spilled out question after question. Why she had been there. Whether she had overheard him and Baltar. He could not say about anyone else, but with her it would not have been strange if she had heard every word. He wanted to know what she thought. And yet—
"…Have you eaten?"
"No!"
What left his mouth had nothing at all to do with the knot in his head.
"Then let's eat out, for a change. Anything you feel like?"
"Mmm. A whole roast pig?"
"……Specific. I like that."
Because being with her, here and now, comforted him more than anything else could have.
Carefully, he closed his hand around hers and held on. This was enough. In place of everything he had not said, he kept one small resolve: that whatever came, he would not let go of this warm hand. A small resolve. A large one.
The wind blew. Cool, but not cold. Only cool.
…It was autumn.