The Cogwheel Declares (1)
…A day had vanished.
It was a tale he heard only after he had clawed some part of his senses back, and Lee Han blinked.
"A day?"
"Yes."
"…I was asleep that long?"
"No. You were dead."
"What?"
"What?"
"??"
"???"
…Correction. He had not been asleep. By their account, he had been dead.
A man could call it nonsense.
"My heart was stopped for a whole day?"
"Fourteen hours, to be exact!"
"…The hell."
"The butler said it was, strictly speaking, a state of suspended animation."
"……."
Only then did he understand why they had said he was dead. Even so, if a heart failed to beat for more than ten hours, dying was the ordinary end of it, wasn't it? No—it wasn't that he resented being alive. It was the doubt any human being would naturally hold. A doubt.
And, fortunately—
Wooong—.
"…What's this?"
"The butler said it was a gift."
"……Not even the old trick of making a man sick and then handing him the cure. No—kill him, and then give him the medicine…."
Aura—the exclusive province of a superhuman, the pure sum of life itself—had spread through the whole of Lee Han's body. And he knew whose power it was.
Takes after its master. Vicious bastard, this.
The butler's. John Ray Albert's Aura. The sensation was a chill, as if some unidentifiable monstrous life had coiled itself inside his flesh. Yet for all that chill, the Aura was restoring him: the organs, the bones, the muscle that had been beaten to ruin, and the heart above all, which was nothing short of a miracle.
Thump. Thu-thump! Thu-uuump!
Its condition could not have been better. It was as fresh as a sprout struck by rain in the middle of a drought.
What was he supposed to call this?
Marrow Cleansing?
A method by which a peerless master breathed energy into another's body and drove the turbid qi out—and, in the occasional martial tale, a heaven-sent encounter that strengthened the blood and the meridians, or the sinew and the bone. Lee Han's state now was precisely that.
"…So the Aura protected the heart that wasn't beating, and carried the blood along in its place?"
"You may take it so. An enviable thing. A blessing of Aura. When I wanted it, he would never oblige me…."
"Then try dying once. He might even do it for you, sister."
"…Impudent brat."
"The one who calls herself envious of a man who already stood at death's door is the impudent one."
"……That is also true."
"…Since when do you admit things this honestly?"
Isis. Even at the visit of that beautiful woman, so striking for her silver-white hair, Lee Han was not particularly surprised. He had smelled her long before, and in any case the mistress of the room he had been given was that very woman. What was there to be startled by?
Only—
"A message from the butler. He bid me tell you, 'The next time we meet, let us play more amusingly.' Insolent man."
"For the time being… no. Tell him I decline for a good ten years."
"…You are the most insolent of all."
Thwack!
Isis's fan struck Lee Han's head as if it meant to spit fire, but of course the one who hurt was she. He was just growing grateful for the scalp massage when a hollow feeling caught him halfway through.
Play, he calls it. So that's still all I amount to.
His body was perfectly sound. Learning that even this soundness was his opponent's consideration left a strange emptiness in him. And beyond that—
He could have ended me whenever he pleased.
He was angry, even, at himself, whose heart had stopped so emptily. He had worked. He had not skipped a single day of training. He had thought, fighting the strong in his own fashion, that he had grown….
I thought the summit was nearly under my hand. Turns out I was only standing at the start.
Lee Han felt anew how vast the peak he meant to reach truly was.
It was different from the time Baltar had broken him. Baltar, seen one way, had the air of coming down to an awkward level of one's own and playing along. Albert crushed him with overwhelming force, as if to show him exactly how insignificant a wretch he was.
"Too far. And too brutal…."
"Hmph. Of course. They are men who have stood at the summit for decades. And a brat who has lived a bare thirty years—how should he surpass them?"
"…I told you to quit the mind reading."
"It is not mind reading. It was plain to see, so I said it."
"Give me a break."
"How long do you mean to lie so pathetically across a woman's lap, pouring out complaints? Up!"
"…Is this encouragement, or a scolding…."
Lee Han wore a bitter smile at her rebuke and was slowly pushing himself up when—
"?"
…An awkwardness he could not name came over him.
What?
The moment he wondered where it came from, he saw it.
"…My clothes. Wh-why are they like this?"
He was wearing a uniform unlike his usual one. Not just any uniform—the one he hated most.
"Why am I wearing the White Cats' uniform!?"
A white uniform. None other than the Silver Lion Knight Order's ceremonial full dress: white cloth, ornaments dangling everywhere, a needless multitude of buttons, and a cape into the bargain. A childish uniform if ever there was one. It was also the sort Lee Han absolutely refused to wear. Plenty of things hung off it, but the cape, above all, made his skin crawl.
Loathing it so, he looked at once for the culprit who had put it on him.
"Why'd you put this crap on me!"
"Your suspicion runs too far. What use is there in accusing a person when you have no proof?"
"Who else is there but you!"
"…It is a rather precious dress uniform. Ceremonial though it may be, it has a measure of durability."
"I am not asking about the functionality!"
Lee Han spoke without even knowing whether he was being casual or formal, but Isis remained perfectly composed.
Rather—
"It suits you. Why be so ashamed? Wouldn't you say so, Layla?"
"Yes! You look wonderful, Sir Knight!"
"…I'm going to lose my mind."
He could not even bring himself to be angry at the smiling maid, and let the heat drain out of him. When he had settled a little—
"…Then who put these clothes on me?"
"……."
He had asked a question that mattered to him. No answer came. Only an ominous silence hung in the room.
"……."
"…It suits you."
"Hey."
"It was… rather magnificent."
"!??!"
…Lee Han understood, with terrible clarity, that his prospects of ever marrying were finished.
The royal house's final banquet. It was the affair that crowned the end of the Debutante, and a season in which countless lovers were born.
Well. Even granting they had been born….
"I don't want to hear so much as the de in Debutante for a while."
"They're not even beasts, and yet this is just…."
"Haaa…."
The trouble was that those lovers had been born of seeing every sight one ought not to see, and every sight one never wanted to. The girls who had dreamed of a splendid meeting at the Debutante had learned, contrary to every expectation, that the banquet was a festival of beasts.
No. Not even real beasts….
"I don't understand how anyone can do something that obscene in the middle of the garden…."
"They're beasts, aren't they. I suppose they felt like mating."
"Ka-Karin!"
"What? Everyone here already knows everything there is to know."
They say a child, after tasting the bitterness of life, grows up in a breath and is an adult before anyone notices. Getting through this Debutante, the girls had tasted that bitterness properly. The coming-out they had dreamed of had been something out of a fairy tale. Reality had been nothing but a mating ground for beasts.
There were males who rushed them precisely in order to feed them that bitterness. Fortunately—
"I was glad I'd learned self-defense from the instructor."
"But aren't they too weak for men? I really did throw him, and when he went down like a sheet of paper I was the one who got flustered."
"Our circumstances are special. That's probably the average for a noble son."
The chicks of the sword class had tasted the bitterness, but not one of them had been caught by a dirty trick. Drunken nobles, eyes gone mad with the determination to topple a girl even once, had come in droves; every time, the girls had slipped them, by force or by craft. The process had also taught them why the kingdom's noble birth rate surged after a Debutante, and why bastards multiplied and betrothals shattered as a matter of course.
And so, while the girls—every last scrap of fondness for the Debutante fallen clean away—were still grumbling without pause—
A sidelong glance.
"Over there's the same as ever."
"Isn't it because she's been drawing far too much notice lately?"
"…Our bear girl is very angry."
Uneasy, the girls looked toward where their friend stood. Toward the scene that was, just then, in full uproar.
"Lady Jeanne d'Arc. If you don't mind, might you consider meeting our son?"
"No. I would not."
"P-perhaps if you thought it over, even a little, before deciding…."
"He is not to my taste."
"Ah, but we haven't even shown you our son yet."
"I've already heard the rumors in full. The gentleman who got three maids with child—that would be him?"
"…A-a flaw of that degree is hardly a flaw at all…."
"It is a flaw to me. So don't say strange things, madam."
"……Impudent—and from where do you—"
"Is that remark directed at me alone? Or is it House Tristan you are calling impudent, madam?"
"!!"
"Mind your tongue. I am neither your subordinate nor your friend."
"…Th-then I'll take my leave."
"No. You'll apologize before you go. Where are you going?"
"!!?"
"Madam. Do you think the world is so easily handled?"
"Th-that is…."
…A seasoned noblewoman was on the verge of tears.
She was a lady of no small renown even in society, but she was not equal to a girl so blunt, and of such unusual force. It was nothing other than the end due a noblewoman who had charged in believing that a girl who swung a sword even before monsters of considerable size would be an easy mark.
"…Why did she turn so dark?"
"I know, right?"
As the girls read her, Levi was in very low spirits. On an ordinary day she would have let even a rude opponent pass gently, but she was past the point of offering that kindness.
…The first stage of a loathing for nobles, contracted the day before, may have had something to do with it.
But the reason Levi had sunk this low was, more than anything else—
Disgusting.
The air of the royal palace, unpleasant past all measure.
Somewhere…….
It's similar to then.
The monster terror of the year before.
…Feeling the unquiet current of that day, the girl's eyes sank.