The Knight Converses with the Butler (4)
…Even if his will to fight snapped here, not a soul would have had the right to curse him for it.
The strong, the clever, those sure of their speed and those sure of their toughness—none of them could have endured a pain against which resistance itself was useless. A physical blow, at least, a man might try to block. This was no physical blow. It was an attack made of Intent.
Lee Han would have sworn the five minutes he had suffered were an eternity. And so, this very instant—
Chwak!
"……."
"Heh heh. I know full well this is discourteous, but I was quite certain you would surrender. It seems I was wrong."
"And if I surrendered, were you actually going to go easy on me?"
"Heh heh."
"…Goddamn it."
He had known it would be like this.
When he once let slip that he had sparred with Albert, Baltar had asked in what sounded like perfect earnest, You fought that eccentric? Hmm… and how is it you are still alive? The look on his face might as well have been, Why is a corpse speaking? Death, to him, was the only sensible result. Lee Han had bristled, thrown himself in, and been broken all over again.
…But now he understood why Baltar had worn that look.
Which was why the rest had stayed with him.
"I cannot say what change of heart moved him to spare a wretch like you. Even so, mind yourself the next time."
"What next time? I'm not picking that fight again."
"No one knows what life will bring. So, a little advice. Should the day come when you face that eccentric again, I would not recommend surrender. Nor running."
"Why?"
"Because he does not let a toy go until he himself is satisfied."
"…?"
"He is the sort who plays with a toy until it breaks. Only a guess, this, but the reason that eccentric left you alive is likely that you had not yet even qualified as a toy. Grow sturdy. If you cannot become a toy solid enough to last until he is satisfied, then perhaps…"
"…you will be taking tomorrow morning's meal in Avalon."
…At the time he had written the warning off as spite dressed up with exaggeration. Now that the moment was on him, he understood.
Because he had learned Gyeong and tempered himself without mercy. Because he had reached the point where he could endure the man's attacks and thrash against them. Because he had survived that Intent called Pain…. Every one of those sensations was teaching him what manner of man John Ray Albert was.
This man isn't a knight. He isn't a warrior, and he isn't an assassin either.
If one had to put a name to him, he was something close to a researcher. And not the sort who sat at a desk and chair to study—the sort whose itch was only scratched by testing a thing himself….
"…Butler. By any chance, have you ever gone to the jungle, gathered poisons, and tried them on your own body?"
"Hmm? However did you know? When I was about thirty, I went to the jungle of the West and caught no end of venomous creatures."
"Couldn't get them in the South, I take it?"
"Not so. I could have obtained them in the South through the merchant companies, but I wanted to meet the venomous things that live on their own ground. I was curious about the places they inhabit, about what they eat in order to live, and about the manner in which they kill. Looking back, it is all a fond memory."
"…I knew it."
A mad researcher. Lee Han looked ready to cry at how precisely his own judgment had struck home.
Even so….
Treat me like a toy, will you!
He set a fierce will to fight alight against the researcher who took him for a toy, and then—
Wooooooong!
He set a star into the blade.
Fwaaaaaah!
It was ignorance without a scrap of creativity. He had only drawn the sword; the headlong charge was the same as ever.
And yet.
Paaat—!
The blade, as though it held the Milky Way, seemed to have fastened wings to his back, and in doing so became every excuse a man could need for lacking creativity.
"Oho. Well, well!"
Drrrrrk! The chains of Aura came alive once more and fell upon Lee Han, moving with the grotesque coil of living snakes. A reaper's chains, without presence, without scent, without so much as a breath of energy. In truth he failed to dodge this time as well, and came within a hair of being drawn and quartered.
Kwang!
Starlight burst, and the chains were knocked aside.
Chwaaaak.
"…Damn it!"
Even so, his body was driven a long way back. He had stopped the force inside the chains, but he had not canceled it, and so he was simply shoved along. He had thought he might land at least a little of a counter. That he could not even manage that left him fit to choke on his own temper, and as the curses climbed into his mouth—
"Now this is interesting."
Albert's eyes shone.
Surviving the impact of the chains was nothing to marvel at. What startled him was the manner in which the man had blocked chains that gave off no presence at all.
The force field born of that blade, as if sword qi had been compressed upon itself, is raising a zone around him.
The starlit edge looked like nothing more than compressed Sword Qi given weight, but in truth it was no different from a catalyst, throwing off a force field in real time across a radius of a meter and a half around the one who wielded it. It resembled a mage's mana barrier. There was no great defensive strength in it, and yet it perceived even attacks that could not be seen, which made it more useful than a Mana Barrier.
And the reason he rated it above a mage's work? Obvious. Albert's own chains pierced even a mana barrier as if it were nothing, and ran a throat or a heart straight through.
Having judged the starlight to be of considerable use, Albert presently spoke.
"Is this how it is done?"
Wooooong!
"…Star Ki."
"Star Ki? Not a bad name. Then shall we call the thing set into the blade a Sword Star? Hmm. Though it is not to my taste. The power does not seem bad, but unlike Sir Lee Han, I have applied no particular insight, so the color is murky and the thing is hopelessly incomplete. Dear me. It does nothing but devour energy to no purpose."
Piiit….
Albert scattered the Star Ki gathered at his fingertip.
"Difficult. Which is to say it was not made by simply cramming Aura into it. Baltar, that one, would draw it out more efficiently than I, but I have not Baltar's knack, so I shall find it hard."
"…He did it in a single breath, for what it's worth."
"As I thought? This is why I envy people with a knack. A dullard has no recourse but effort. Dear me."
"…Butler. Don't go around saying things like that."
"?"
"That's the kind of talk that gets you stabbed in the street. …No. The other man would be the one put to death. Say it wherever you like."
"??"
"…Why does a face that doesn't understand a damn thing make me this angry?"
With his fury packed into the charge, Lee Han hurled himself in again.
And if those who knew him well had seen it, they would have rendered this verdict.
…Now he knew how the other side felt.
Kwang! Kwaaaang! Kwakwakwakwang—!!
The place where the two men fought was a barren plain, far from Lee Han's house. Not a plant, not an animal—nothing at all.
…And yet every time they collided, the shudder in the earth grew worse, and the wild things living in the mountains curled in on themselves as one, terrified by that shudder and by the force pouring off the pair of them. Had there been a village nearby, it would have been a calamity. Hearts stopping dead beneath their fighting spirit would have surprised no one. Their battle was destructive to that degree, and fierce.
…Of course.
"Aaaaaaaah!"
Only one of them was fighting as if he meant to live or die by it.
He unleashed a ferocious Lion's Roar, swung the blade, and fought the chains. At a glance the pounding looked entirely one-sided, but their conditions told a plainer difference still.
Kwaang!!
The knight who met the chains was flung far off again and tumbled across the dirt. He could not have looked more like a beggar. The butler remained as neat as he had begun—not a grain of dust upon him—wearing a face that could only belong to a man toying with a knight.
"!!"
The knight had no space even to be furious. He had to kill as much of the impact as a breakfall would allow. He was rolling across the ground at eighty kilometers an hour; a man might wonder what good a breakfall could possibly do.
Paat—.
And yet the moment he was up he had his center again, and he charged the butler, swinging without rest a blade wrapped in Sword Star. In the past, three minutes of it had drained his mental strength without end. Fifteen minutes had passed now, and still the knight was raising it. It ought to have been the passage that showed how much stronger he had grown against his former self. Unfortunately—
"That time was not bad. Even so, your knack is poor."
"So I'm a dullard, is that it?! You looking for a fight?!"
"Oh dear. You are far too severe in your judgment of yourself."
"Aaaaaaah!"
…However far he came, a gap that no amount of progress could close stood there in plain sight.
The knight's cry could no longer be told for a roar or a scream. And yet, if anything changed the longer they fought, it was this: the butler's hands grew faster, and the knight's sword grew ever sharper. From a certain moment the knight began to adapt to the butler's movements, and with every adaptation the butler added one more percent of his full strength.
It was astonishing. Knights who had lived through the age of the Martial God would have known that simply drawing the sincerity out of the butler—out of that mad researcher—was, in itself, a marvel.
That was how long the knight had fought the butler. Had the number been heard, every voice would have said the same thing.
An achievement.
Simply to have endured more than forty minutes against the butler was an achievement the knight had piled up.
And to the knight who had piled it up, the butler spoke.
"…Well then. Have you learned everything you wished to know?"
"……."
"You did say you wanted a conversation, did you not? I find myself wondering whether the conversation was to your satisfaction."
He put into words the reason they had fought, as if to ask whether this violent conversation had yielded what was wanted.
The knight….
"No. Not at all."
"Hmm. Then has being beaten all this while not been entirely without meaning?"
"…I am regretting it with great violence at this very moment."
"……."
"If you're going to laugh, then laugh, damn it! A conversation of the body can go to hell. I had a perfectly good mouth, and I still went and did something this moronic…."
"Ahahaha!"
"…Laugh. Go on and laugh. I know I'm a moron."
"A-are you trying to laugh me to death? Hahaha!"
The butler broke into laughter at last. It was probably the first time he had ever laughed with his whole heart. The thing was that absurd. The beginning had been grand, and the ending was a clown's.
Even so, this too was an achievement of a sort. He had made the butler laugh in earnest.
"Haa……. How pleasant."
The butler meant it. Never before had he faced an opponent like this. He had not felt such a thing even when he met the Martial God. Fighting Baltar had never been a pleasure. His meeting with the Sword Duke had not been bad, and yet it had not been delightful either.
…And the same was true of the woman he served.
The Princess was outstanding. That did not make her amusing. If anything, she was dull.
Too obvious. They were bound by nothing more than a contract. The butler had never once felt a human fondness for the Princess. No—to correct himself, it was the same with anyone at all. There had never been a single case of the butler feeling fond of a human being.
And yet….
Not bad. Not bad at all.
This knight was different. Fondness stirred. Ordinary toys broke when handled in this fashion. The knight had not broken, and again and again he provoked the man and made him merry. Was it because the person called a knight was himself a merry sort? No. That could not serve as a reason.
If the butler felt fond of him, it was probably this.
He comes at me in earnest. No aim, and no desire. Only with everything he has.
A pure ardor. The man was hopelessly rough-hewn, and he hated whatever felt stifling. But there was a consideration in him, and a gentleness, that did not force anything upon others merely because he himself was stifled.
…Where did a man like this come from?
Even while an ill wind drifted over the kingdom and the South, and everyone else was steeping in greed to seize power, here was a consistent knight who lived not a whit changed from the day of their first meeting.
A fighter.
One who fights. One who, set amid unreasonable circumstances, chooses to go forward rather than to flee. In the butler's eyes, the sight of a knight living a life that did not know surrender—that chose instead to thrash and struggle—was blinding. Brighter even than the Light of Radiance, which in the days of his youth had been his everything…! Radiant, and hot, and it made a person glad.
And so it was a pity.
It would have been good to meet him when I was young.
A small regret, and the knowledge that little time remained. Albert pressed down a regret that came from the heart. If they went on playing without end, the knight would break at last, and that was not what he wanted. So the butler chose a close befitting this meeting.
"…Sir Lee Han."
"What."
"It was a splendid conversation."
"?"
He had decided to bestow an ending.
"I cannot speak for Sir Lee Han, but I feel that I, at least, have shared a sufficiently splendid conversation. Allow me to leave you a gift before I go."
"??"
"Whether this gift will work upon Sir Lee Han for the better, I do not rightly know. And yet I have a feeling that if it is Sir Lee Han, it will be all right. Even so, one piece of advice, if I may…."
"……."
"Butler?"
"……."
…The butler said nothing at all. He simply remained as he was.
And yet something was wrong.
He swayed.
"………."
…Why wouldn't his body move?
And why was he—
Thud!
……falling?
"……."
"You need not resist. Close your eyes, and be at ease."
……Softly.
Lee Han's eyes began to close. No strength could be felt in his body at all; his mind only grew fainter. He tried, somehow, to rise, but against that resolve—
What is this? Why is it so comfortable?
A sensation as frightening as a thing could be, and as peaceful. Within it he lost his hold by degrees, and so—
Thump—.
……he quietly closed his eyes.
On a fresh day in spring.
Sadly, a certain knight of thirty years stopped breathing.
The name of the knight who closed his eyes in the bright prime of youth was Ihan Turtle, and so he di—
"…Hk!"
—and lived.
"Oh, you're awake."
"……."
"Hehe. Stay lying down a little longer. You died and came back—no, your heart stopped and then started again—so your body will still be a bit uncomfortable."
"……Maid?"
"Yes. I'm right here."
"……."
"You still haven't come to yourself. Sleep a little more. You'll be all right then."
"……."
……Without a thought of resistance, he laid his head in the maid's lap. Simply dazed. She only patted him with a gentle hand and smiled without a word, and he only stared at her, dazed. Soon his eyes rolled through the work of recognizing what lay around him, and the space that held the two of them seemed strangely splendid.
"I'm glad you didn't end up an imbecile. They said if it had been anyone else, even surviving would have meant being an imbecile, no question."
"……."
"Mmm, would you rather eat before anything else? There's a banquet going on outside, so they say there's heaps of food!"
"…A ban—quet?"
"Yes, a banquet."
"……."
"Ah, this is the Royal Castle. The Princess said we should use this room!"
"……."
"Mmm. Normally you would have reacted somehow, but there's no reaction at all?"
"……."
"At a time like this…. Oh! I think Jenny, my friend among the maids, mentioned it. When a man has no energy, or when he's angry, you're supposed to say this!"
"……."
"…Would you like to touch my chest?"
"……."
"Sir Knight?"
"……Maid."
"Mm?"
"…A strange friend is someone you cut off, and quickly."
"??"
……Struck dumb, the knight came back to his senses.
It was absolutely not because temptation had flashed through him for an instant and shocked him awake.
…Truly.