Flowers Are Beautiful!
Moonlight flooded the mountain peak.
A river of red liquid wound through flowers that had been trampled flat, their life already gone. It almost looked as if the crimson stream were trying to revive the dying blooms.
As if that would dye them red! Crystal flowers, maybe.
People with enormous holes punched through their bodies lay limp in a friendly little heap. From a certain angle, it almost looked like a mountain…
See? As long as you have friendship and love between people, you can do anything! They even made a mountain.
And perched on top of it was a man who looked like he would be good at cooking, calmly sharpening an enormous blade.
Every time he ran the whetstone along a sword the size of a human torso, a soft shhk… shhk… rang out through the quiet.
The blade, shaped like a Chinese cleaver scaled up to monstrous proportions, caught the moonlight and flashed with murderous brilliance.
The man did not so much as glance our way. He just kept scraping the edge a little longer.
Someone swallowed hard. The sound carried.
He was strong. Everyone present felt it in their bones.
Stronger than Hongryeon at this point in time? Whatever the case, there was no question he was absurdly powerful.
Apparently finished, he tossed the whetstone aside without care, lifted the sword, and settled it across his shoulder with a solid thunk.
His frame was not particularly large. If anything he was on the slender side, so when that greatsword came to rest on his shoulder it pressed down slightly, and even from here I could almost feel the weight of the blade.
Quiet eyes flicked over us. He smacked his lips once and spoke.
“Tsk. Thought we were done.”
Then he glanced down beside him and addressed someone.
“Hey. I’m lazy. You do it.”
“Sir? Yes, sir!”
The stiff, nervous reply came from a man who scrambled upright.
Oh. So there was one more person over there.
He had been lying face-down among the piled corpses, so I had assumed no one else was around.
Having to do push-ups next to a mountain of bodies… what a pitiful life.
I was nodding in sympathy for the man’s circumstances when Cecilia, standing beside me, narrowed her eyes and murmured,
“Huh? That man…”
Hm? Who was he supposed to be…
I narrowed my eyes the same way and looked at the man who had just risen from his prone position. Surprisingly, I knew that face.
Kaide, an officer of Bind!
Or should I call him Bind’s traitor now? That he was a traitor was only my guess, really.
Either way, it did not matter much.
What mattered was that right now he was eating into the time I could have spent going home and daydreaming about my meeting with Hongryeon!
My grip tightened hard around the dagger.
Kaide came creaking toward us with an expression that looked vaguely terrified.
That hair dyed so thick it hurt to look at was already getting on my nerves.
What was Kaide’s ability again? I remembered it being pretty useless…
Bzzzt—!
Suddenly Kaide’s body started crackling and flashing. Wow! Wow!
I know that one! It’s the electric hamster from the pocket-monster show!
Any second now he would yell Kai—deeee! and shoot electricity, right? My heart started pounding wildly.
Getting to watch a scene I only ever saw in childhood cartoons play out in real life—of course I was excited…!
“Dieeeeee!”
Bzzzzzzzzzt—!
The line was a little different from what I had imagined, but that was a minor detail.
Our electric monster Kaide had actually fired electricity!
The fact that everyone dodged lightly and no one got hurt was also an extremely minor detail.
The spearman who had avoided the attack shot forward at high speed and drove his spear into Kaide.
Sadly it was not a fatal blow, but Kaide took a small wound on one arm, bled, and staggered back.
“Damn it!”
Spitting the curse, Kaide fumbled something out of his pocket.
What is that? A needle?
“…A syringe?”
Ah. A syringe. Cecilia murmuring it beside me let me figure it out.
Ever since we reached the summit my head had started going fuzzy again, so… mmm.
Annoying.
My brain was already tired of judging things.
That was just my condition, though. Our electric-hamster gentleman did not seem the sort of kind soul who would care about that.
Men like that are never popular!
Kaide drove the syringe roughly into his own thigh with a wet thunk and injected whatever drug was inside into his body.
The electricity around him began pouring out with far more ferocious intensity than before.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt—!
Crackling with tremendous force, Kaide’s electricity started destroying everything near him.
“Urrrrrgh!”
His eyes rolled back and he twisted his body wildly. Embarrassed, maybe?
Then he began shuddering as if in a seizure. Amazingly, every time he did, the electricity grew stronger and the surrounding flowers…
“The flowers are burning!”
Even trampled underfoot and crushed, flowers are still beautiful.
Because even after falling they refuse to give up and keep trying to stand again.
And in this very moment, Kaide had burned even those flowers to ash.
A guy who does not understand the beauty of flowers…!
“Revenge of the flowers!”
On behalf of the dead blooms, I would show Kaide the true beauty of flowers.
The flowers he had so mercilessly slaughtered were pushing me forward right now.
Crrrack—!
My tears of sorrow began to harden around Kaide.
No matter how powerful the electricity, it seemed impossible to shatter crystal with electricity alone; the crystal vines that started covering his body only scorched a little.
Thorns of crystal vine sank into Kaide’s flesh.
“Gyaaaaaaah!”
Kaide howled like a beast trapped in a cage.
A beast of a man… not really my type.
…No, wait.
The moment I remembered what had happened with Adele at the hot spring, my face went hot.
Beastly might… also be a preference. It probably just depends on who the other person is.
What if Tania were beastly?
I pictured Tania with cat ears sprouting from her head, growling “Kwaaang!” at me.
Ah, just imagining it is adorable. I want to tease her until she teeters on the edge of tears.
What would a beautiful girl’s tears taste like? I have been a little scared to try my own, so I still have not.
I definitely have to try next time.
I flicked my fingers lightly and a single tear shot out, diving straight into the wound the thorns had opened.
Tears that had not yet crystallized apparently did not feel like much; Kaide just kept howling.
Don’t worry, Kaide. On behalf of the flowers that died, I will teach you how beautiful they are.
Learning the beauty of flowers directly from a girl as beautiful as a flower herself—could anything be more romantic?
I might be too kind for my own good. Sigh… if someone ends up misunderstanding and thinking I like them, that would be a problem.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaah!”
As the thorns sank deeper, Kaide screamed louder.
The tear should be reaching the neck area about now.
I snapped my fingers—click!—and Kaide’s thrashing body went still with a dull thunk.
For a man who could look at flowers with both eyes and still not understand their beauty, it seemed best to carve the beautiful parts of flowers directly into his head.
In a supreme act of consideration, I made countless flowers bloom inside his mind.
Kaide seemed moved; tears streamed from his eyes.
He had apparently forgotten how to swallow, because drool and snot were streaming too.
They were a little red… well, some people just have red tears and spit, right?
Look at that! Even rolling his eyes back in pure delight.
A bit messy, but what can you do? The problem is that flowers are simply too beautiful.
Now for the final moment!
Having thoroughly learned the beauty of flowers, he himself would become one.
I clapped my hands once—clap!—and Kaide’s head burst like a balloon—pop!
In its place a beautiful red flower bloomed.
That should have made it perfectly clear how beautiful flowers are, right?
I was smiling brightly when the rest of the party stared at me with ashen faces. Why?
But luck was with me; at least one person here was willing to smile with me.
“Hahahahahahahaha!”
The chef uncle sitting atop the bleeding people, honing the edge of his giant Chinese cleaver!
Right now he was the only one laughing along with me.
He must be the person who understands the beauty of flowers second only to me. Seeing him enjoy it this much made growing the flower worthwhile.
While I was feeling proud, the chef uncle sprang to his feet and came down, stepping on the fallen bodies.
Every step made a wet splat, splat.
The man who had descended from the mountain of flesh grinned brightly at me.
“So it’s you! That famous witch everyone’s talking about these days!”
Witch?! I am a beauty. …Come to think of it, witch is fine too. Witches these days are drawn ridiculously pretty.
“Hahahahahahaha! I like you!”
He laughed heartily a few more times, then lifted the Chinese cleaver from his shoulder.
Why is that cleaver so huge? It would probably be great for cutting meat, though.
I blinked at the overwhelming size of the blade—and the chef uncle vanished completely.
Then Cecilia’s urgent voice rang out beside me.
“Elysia!”
Did she miss me that much? Honestly, Cecilia. How do you plan to live without me!
The next instant, the vanished chef uncle closed in with almost oppressive speed and swung the Chinese cleaver.
The razor edge sliced through my pure-white, pretty side as cleanly as tofu.
Shhhhk—!
Pretty scarlet blood sprayed.
I felt the warm touch of blood on my cheek.
Darkness crashed in and swallowed my vision,
and like a machine whose power had been cut, my consciousness snapped off with a dull click.