A Special Guest (1)
Immediately after my parents died on the same day at the very same hour, I felt the unmistakable presence of multiple people lingering nearby.
Their gazes pierced like needles set into their sockets rather than eyes, sharp and prickling against my skin. It was only after several seasons had passed that I finally realized who they were.
My parents had always believed the reigning Empress had condemned them to rot, leaving them to drag out a shameful existence as punishment. But that conviction was only half the truth. In reality, they had never once left us unattended.
Fallen though he was, my father remained the sole surviving legitimate scion of the imperial dynasty, and my mother was the one who had borne me, the heir to his blood. Should any noble house harbor treasonous ambitions and seek us out to conspire for the throne, it would become an existential calamity for the empire.
And so, they set their subordinates upon us in relentless surveillance. They vetted and crushed every remote possibility before we could ever harbor irreverent thoughts, guiding us toward a quiet demise—pinned face-down in the gutter.
Yet even now, with my mind unburdened, two questions still puzzle me: No matter how fitting a humiliation it was meant to be, why did they endure the risk and waste the manpower to keep us alive in the first place? And if they were so determined to keep us alive, why did they turn a blind eye to our murders? Those answers eluded me until the moment I incapacitated every last one of their watchers.
It had been a mistake. I should have at least pretended to seek vengeance for my parents. But until the watchers fled, I merely sat motionless inside our dilapidated shack like an empty shell.
The debt collector's corpse. My father's corpse. Even the unknown remains of my mother, crushed beneath the wheels of a carriage—my head was overrun by the dead of that single day. A blank slate devoid of grief or guilt, the only thought I could muster was a foolish question: What do I do now?
How does one earn money?
How do you cook food?
What am I supposed to do starting today?
They were peaceful musings. Perhaps because I was an ignorant simpleton with no understanding of the world. What audacity made me presume that tomorrow would bring the same ordinary routine as today?
Far off in the distance, shouts boomed louder than the lungs of the Imperial Guard, rattling the very air.
"Where is the Child of the Deposed Emperor?!"
"Gold to whoever finds him!"
"An imperial decree—a title of nobility for his capture alive!"
The slums stirred violently at this bolt from the blue. Beyond the cracked windowpane, the eyes of a man who had been staring holes into me filled with a murky, grasping greed. Blind to the corpses strewn around, he strode inside and reached for me.
"Come now, little boy. Won't you come with mister? It'll only take a moment..."
Beneath that facade of gentleness, his clutching hand aimed not for my fingers, but to clamp down hard on my shoulder. Even a child's instinct could read the foul intent behind it. I choked his windpipe with black mist, kicked away from the only home I had known, and ran blindly into the open.
"Found him! The Child of the Deposed Emperor!"
"To think he was holed up in that house the whole time...!"
"It's our fault for not checking sooner. After him, quickly!"
Some cursed in exasperation, demanding to know what kind of child lingers at the scene where people were slaughtered.
How could I have known? I had no idea.
I had been born to parents whom people reviled with foul, grating curses. Yet even if the world pointed fingers at them, that man and woman were the family who raised me, a creaking, precarious fence that shielded me. So I did not know what was good or what was evil. No one had ever taught a child condemned by the world how he ought to walk upon this earth.
Even as I sprinted through the narrow, filthy alleys, I couldn't comprehend why I was running. It felt as though, on a day of celebration like this, the despised family had to die in its entirety just for everyone else to be happy.
Clack, tap, thud!
A man clad in a pitch-black uniform closed the distance with startling agility. He leaped forward, drawing not his blade, but his scabbard. The chilling aura rolling off him gave me my very first visceral taste of mortal peril.
Whoosh!
"Ugh... what is this...?!"
I scattered black mist across his face, blinding him. Stripped of his sight, his footing faltered and he pitched forward.
Clang!
The scabbard struck the masonry with a crisp ring. Slipping past disaster by a hair's breadth, I ran on without pause. Oddly enough, I wasn't out of breath. Having never run for so long in my life, I only discovered the limits of my own stamina today.
"You will not escape me, Child of the Deposed Emperor!"
His physique was as sturdy as if forged of iron plate. Recovering his balance and sight in an instant, he was right back on my heels.
"I see now. Bestowing a title of nobility just to capture a mere child... I thought Her Imperial Majesty was overreacting, but the folly was mine."
Each stride he took accelerated. The cold wind bit into my cheeks like arrows. In the next instant, his scabbard flashed once more.
"Physical prowess far beyond any child your age, coupled with an incomprehensible power. Letting you slip away would surely breed a monstrous disaster. Therefore..."
A ruthless tearing of the air bore down on me.
"Today, you shall receive His Majesty's judgment."
His strike was too vicious for me to dodge in time.
I felt myself floating weightlessly. Until the breath burst from my lungs, I couldn't even register what had happened. Only when thick dust enveloped me did I realize I had been slammed into a stone wall.
"Cough, cough!"
As I clutched the bruised impact point, footsteps approached from beyond the cloud of dust. Step, step. Slow and measured. Gone was the razor-sharp tension and desperation we had shared moments ago. It was the stride of a man entirely certain of his victory.
"Now then, come quietly to face the judgment of the new imperial house..."
His tone resembled an adult placating a child throwing a tantrum, but the words held no mercy. It was the haughty cadence of someone absolute in his superiority.
Absolute carelessness. Seizing the opening was the work of an instant.
Rustle.
I manipulated the black mist, carving out a blade proportioned to a child's grip. The ethereal vapor hardened into physical form, honing a razor edge. The dust still veiled our vision; to take the chance, I needed total concentration.
Step.
When he finally halted right before me, the moment for counterattack arrived. With the black dagger I had forged, I slashed diagonally across his face.
Slash, rip!
"Gah, a... Aaargh!"
A delayed scream, coming only after his mind caught up to the reality of the blow. While he collapsed onto one knee, I darted away.
Sounds of pursuit echoed behind me, but they didn't last long. I found it strange back then, but in hindsight, his men must have held him back to treat his wound.
"Haa... haa..."
And so I ran and ran, fleeing the Capital with no destination in mind. The vast sky and the sprawling earth seemed to point fingers at me, branding me an outcast. Without knowing where to turn or what to do, I had become free.
A new connection found me three years later, on the anniversary of my parents' deaths.
"Damn it... insane... to think I'd be humiliated like this by a mere brat...!"
Those were the grumblings of the man who had tried to kidnap me. He hadn't recognized me as the Child of the Deposed Emperor; he had simply noticed a kid with striking features wandering alone and approached with the intention of turning a quick profit.
"Are you gonna kill me...? Huh?"
"I don't know."
"What kind of brat is this...?"
Of course you should kill me, even the captive man must have thought. But when faced with threats directed at myself, my sense of hatred remained shockingly numb.
"..."
Perhaps growing up bathed in hatred had dulled me to it. If anyone had ever shown me affection, it was only my mother—even if half of that affection was twisted with stubborn obsession.
Just then, the man desperately reading my face spoke up.
"...Hey, kid."
"Yeah."
"How about you and me strike a deal?"
A deal. Faced with such a weighty term, I kept quiet. Taking my silence as assent, he babbled on.
"You probably don't know this, but you're not meant to be scrounging around in filth like this. With your skills, you could be raking in money by the cartload."
Money!
I still kept the coin purse my mother had left behind. The coins inside hadn't decreased by one. I kept it because it was something she had treasured. She must have loved it because it was indispensable to survival. If so, might I understand what she had felt if I had lots of money, too?
"Ha, haha. Curious about what comes next, aren't you?"
Apparently my interest showed. Excited, he pressed his advantage.
"I can teach you. I'll make sure you live like a king, with nothing to envy in this world. So please... spare me. I'm Roderick. I'm pretty well-known in our line of work..."
A pitiful gaze locked onto me, heavy with desperation. My curiosity piqued, I nodded. At that, the man wept tears of relief as if grasping a lifeline.
"Fuck... I really thought I was a goner..."
"What do I do now?" I asked, trampling on his sentiment without hesitation.
As if stating the obvious, he pulled a hood low over my head.
"First, let's get you a mask. Your face is far too memorable to leave out in the open."
He gave the exact same assessment my mother once had. Accepting his advice, I hid my face from that day forward.
· · ·
From that day on, Roderick introduced me to all manner of underworld outfits. It was then I learned that an entirely separate world existed, thick with society's dregs. In that sense, Roderick faithfully performed the duties of a teacher.
We crushed criminal syndicates, rallied outlaws on the run, and recruited people with unique talents. As one incident was buried beneath another, remarkable changes took shape in our daily lives.
With the changing seasons came a roof to keep out the bitter wind, and human warmth lingered by my side. A life where I no longer had to worry about today's meal blossomed like cherry trees flowering ahead of their time. By then, I had somehow come to reign over a bizarre organization masquerading as a mercenary company.
Dragging people who had been buried in the dark into the light was no simple endeavor, but in the end, we had pulled it off.
That was certainly how it was supposed to be...
"...Roderick."
"Wait, don't say a word. I'm beyond bewildered myself right now—I'm downright dumbfounded."
"No, Roderick."
"Please, I'm begging you. If you confirm it out loud right now, there'll be no turning back."
"..."
"Crazy bastards... Do they still think they're lowlife flesh peddlers? Even for excessive loyalty, this is completely fucked. Unless they're actively trying to get all our heads chopped off!"
"Roderick. As I thought, this is..."
"Just wait right here and don't do a damn thing. Let me go slit those idiots' throats first."
"...Go ahead."
I quietly let Roderick storm off fuming. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say I never had any intention of stopping him. It had been an awfully long time since my entire world had gone so starkly white with shock.
"Ugh, who... who is that? Where am I...?"
A girl's sob brushed against my ears, making my head spin. Only then did I raise my gaze to look directly at her.
Just like in the past.
A girl whose vision was sealed beneath a tightly wrapped blindfold. How wonderful it would have been if that were all.
"Um... excuse me...?"
A natural elegance that coarse, cheap clothing could never conceal defined her very presence. Hair black as crushed obsidian framed her features. And even with her eyes hidden beneath the cloth, their color was unmistakable to my memory.
Why...
Faced with such an impossible dilemma for the first time in years, a sigh slipped past my lips on its own.
Why in the world is the Imperial Palace's precious jewel here...?
The little girl who had paraded through the Capital on the day of my parents' deaths.
She who had waved with the happiest face in the world had now, swept in by some bizarre wind, arrived right here.