A Duel of Convictions
Among the officers of Yeoro, numbers were assigned. Among the rank-and-file members, letters of the alphabet.
The characters themselves carried no deeper meaning. They were nothing more than code names by which to call one another.
Even so, a few members insisted on reading significance into whatever mark they had been given, and treated it as something special.
Take Dante, Yeoro’s Number Seven.
Seven is a lucky number, isn’t it?
Which means I’ve brought luck—no, fate itself—over to my side.
That was the utterly baseless logic by which he had packed the meaning of “fate” into the number seven. Not that it stopped him from envying Number Four for supposedly holding the number of death, either.
In any case, the occasional oddball made a point of elevating their letter—and Yeoro’s U, Meris Herus, was one of them.
She, however, had another peculiarity. She was not fixated on her own U at all. She was obsessed with the letter M.
The reason Meris became so devoted to M stretched all the way back thirteen years.
She had been nine years old then—a perfectly ordinary little girl raised in the remote noble household of the Herus family, fond of dolls and flowers.
Until one day.
While walking the grounds of the estate, she happened upon a scene of soldiers stripped to the waist, training.
Muscle that looked as if it were alive and breathing. Every tiny fiber of it preaching its own strength and grandeur. The way those muscles shifted and reshaped themselves with every change of stance—how intoxicating it all was.
From that day on, Meris disposed of every doll in her room. Into the empty space they left behind, piece after piece of training equipment began to move in.
What you needed to survive in this harsh world was not some worthless doll.
Only strength—and above all, muscle—was the whole of this world, and its one true principle.
And so Meris came to revere muscle with all her heart.
But there is always such a thing as going too far.
Excessive muscle training transformed the young lady of a noble house into a hulking monster who could thrash a thousand men three times over without breaking a sweat.
Unable to bear the sight of her any longer, Lady Heris issued a decree: if Meris would not stop training her muscles, she was to leave the house.
Meris heard those words and cried out that the time had come at last to show her muscle to the world—then walked straight out of the domain.
Lady Heris sent the order of knights after her to drag her back, but muscle refined to that degree might as well have been magic. Before the overwhelming power Meris’s body unleashed, the knights of the Heris estate were crushed without mercy.
Still refusing to give up, Lady Heris put out a nationwide wanted notice for her daughter. Meris spent the years that followed roaming the world, locked in endless struggle against knights and mercenaries of every stripe.
Word of that muscle eventually reached Yeoro’s ears. When they offered her an excellent environment for muscle training, she joined without a second’s hesitation.
After entering Yeoro, Meris was able to live a life that satisfied her in its own way. Between the equipment in the training hall and the missions she was occasionally assigned, the place was superb for building muscle.
There was only one thing that did not sit well with her: the letter assigned to her was U.
Meris was the sort of person who took muscle seriously. Naturally, she had assumed the letter that would come to her would be the M of Muscle.
But the seat of M was already occupied by someone else, and the letter finally allotted to Meris was U.
Once a letter was assigned, barring special circumstances, it stayed with you until the end.
And so Meris went on living in Yeoro with a quiet grudge against the letter U—until, by chance, the member who had held M died.
What a windfall.
She was already smiling to herself, thinking how quickly she would go to the Master and request that her letter be changed to M.
What she heard instead was a bolt from the blue.
A child who has already received the letter M is on their way to the Fortress.
The moment those words reached her, Meris was seized by a rage so sharp her teeth nearly ground themselves to powder.
How long have I waited to claim that letter!
Fine. First I’ll see who you even are.
Yeoro’s letters were filled by whoever claimed a vacancy when one opened. Meris knew perfectly well that the newcomer receiving M this time was pure coincidence.
But if—if someone without beautiful muscle, someone who has no right to it, is allowed to hold M—that, I will never forgive!
After that, Meris waited and waited for the new M to arrive. And today, at last, in the Fortress training hall, she laid eyes on the new M.
*
This is… disorienting.
There was a time people used to say they couldn’t tell whether I was a boy or a girl, either. But the woman—no, man?—standing in front of me now was genderless in a completely different sense of the word.
It isn’t that I hold some conservative view that women shouldn’t have muscle, or that a man’s voice shouldn’t be pretty. But this is a bit much, isn’t it?
A frame bulkier than the guy in that manga who goes around yelling Ora ora, paired with a voice of exquisite softness—looking at this person made my head go blank for a second.
Honestly, gender might not even be the issue. It felt more like this person had simply given up on being human.
“So you’re the new M?”
“Yes. I’m M.”
She—he?—seemed dissatisfied with my answer. She hauled me to my feet and began looking me over from head to toe.
Yesterday the Master did the same thing. Why does everyone keep scanning me like this?
Yeoro can’t possibly be a lolicon voyeur organization…
“Damn it. A brat like this is M?!”
BOOM!
Still looking at me, she roared in fury and drove a fist into the wall beside her.
I genuinely wondered whether a human fist was even capable of making a sound like that—but her rage, oddly enough, also put me somewhat at ease.
Oh. So she’s more normal than I thought.
I’d assumed I was the only one who found it strange that a child like me had walked into an organization like this. But watching this person get angry over the fact that a kid my age had joined Yeoro… maybe the world wasn’t quite as deranged as I’d feared.
Whew. And here I thought I was the only sane one left.
“A lousy brat like this is M…! Of all things, M…! I will never accept this!”
…Or not?
Is this one also a complete lunatic?
“Hey, brat. Do you even know what meaning is held in that M of yours?”
“Meaning?”
The meaning of M, all of a sudden?
Why ask something like that?
What M stands for is basic common knowledge. Why spring a common-sense quiz on me out of nowhere?
Obviously it’s the M of Maid.
That was why, when I’d heard that Mumyeong’s letter had been M back in the days as a regular member, I had felt the hand of fate. That the most beautiful, most intoxicating M in the world was my letter—after the prospect of making Mumyeong into a maid, it was the most satisfying thing of all.
“The meaning of M. Why would you ask something as elementary as that?”
“Ho. Common knowledge, is it? My apologies, then. If you treat the meaning of M as common knowledge, you may not be quite as ignorant as I assumed.”
“Hm? Don’t tell me there are people who don’t even know what M means?”
“Ah, yes. Sadly, this world is crawling with such ignorant fools.”
How could this be…!
A world stuffed full of idiots who don’t know what M means…!
A violent wave of dizziness hit me. I staggered, barely managed to lean against the wall, and somehow kept myself upright.
“So. It hit you hard, I take it. I understand the feeling.”
“How… how can anyone not know the meaning of M? How can people be in their right minds and not know that sacred, beautiful, perfect meaning?”
“Still—meeting a sage who shares my conviction like this is a relief. Let us at least cherish the meaning of M between ourselves.”
“Yes. You’re absolutely right. Even if it’s only us, we ought to carry that meaning deep in our hearts.”
“Yes—exactly. That—”
“—perfect word…”
“Muscle…”
“Maid…”
“Hm?”
“Huh?”
Wait. What did that person just say?
The meaning of M is… what?
Muscle…?
“Y-You’re joking… right…?”
“No… You’re the one making a joke right now…”
“No, hold on. Common sense—when you hear M, isn’t the first word that comes to mind maid? That noble, beautiful bearing, that devotion toward others—that is the word that fits M more than any other.”
“No. When you hear M, common sense says the first word that comes to mind is muscle. A beautiful body that symbolizes strength, the intoxicating play of muscle in motion—it holds a beauty beyond any work of art in this world.”
Ah. I see.
So that’s how it is…
This person was someone who held that kind of conviction…?
I believe it is wrong to deny and trample another person’s convictions. Every individual’s beliefs have their own worth.
But not that one.
The Maid Soul raging inside me will not permit it.
That conviction… is a conviction that can never, ever be mixed with the truth that is my Maid Soul…!
“Your conviction. Words alone will never break it, will they.”
“Yes. And the same is true of yours.”
I have a conviction I cannot yield. So does this person. And two convictions that should never have met have just collided.
“Then there’s no help for it.”
“Yes. There’s no help for it.”
Strong and weak—in this place, right now, those words are useless. Because the conviction that wins and remains here is the one believed in more firmly than the other.
“Come. A duel.”
“Come. A duel.”
A contest from which neither of us can back down begins now.
A duel in which only unshakable conviction can claim victory.
And the one that will survive that duel… will be my Maid Soul.
A Maid Soul that stands tall even in a life-or-death struggle of convictions…
Ahh… this is truly… truly… magnificent…❤