On the City Wall (4)
"Haahm..."
A small yawn reached my ears. I turned to look, and there was Aiz, blushing and flustered.
Was she sleepy, perhaps? Thinking about it, she had every reason to be.
She'd been sweating buckets through training since early morning. Her belly was stuffed full of jagamarukun, the sunlight was warm, and the breeze was cool—practically the perfect recipe for spring drowsiness.
And since Aiz was always a heavy sleeper to begin with, this situation was bound to knock her out.
She's still just a kid, after all.
Even watching her with my own eyes, I sometimes forgot. This wasn't the Aiz I knew—she was still a young, unpolished girl.
She was stubborn to a fault, but deep down, the exhaustion had to be getting to her.
Still, if I told her, "If you're tired, why don't you get some sleep?" she wouldn't take me up on it willingly. What to do, what to do.
...Ah.
Come to think of it, there had been a time I'd gone through this exact thing with the Aiz I knew.
Back then, I'd assumed she was just making excuses out of sleepiness. But deep in the Dungeon, that little lie had saved me more times than I could count. Truly, Aiz was amazing.
Something like admiration slipped past my guard, but without noticing it, I made my proposal to the Aiz standing before me.
"Then, shall we do nap training this time?"
"...?"
Aiz's eyes immediately narrowed.
*
Nap Training.
Back when I was Lv.1, it was the training method Aiz had taught me—the art of being able to sleep anywhere.
The Dungeon is a ceaseless chain of dangers. Monsters, of course, but also the terrain, the Dungeon itself, even your own party members can turn on you—it's a world of survival of the fittest. In that place, the only things you can trust are yourself and your companions.
There, the time you spend letting your guard down must be reduced to the absolute minimum. In other words, sleeping time needs to be cut down to the very limit.
The skill to fall asleep in an instant.
The skill to fall asleep anywhere.
The skill to sleep with maximum efficiency.
The skill to react to danger even while asleep.
And even the skill to wake up at precisely the right moment.
Sleep is the time when any living being is at its most defenseless. Only with the most complete preparation possible can you survive inside a Dungeon riddled with deception and treachery.
Especially if you mean to enter the Deep Floors. It's useless for now—but that's exactly why it's best to start preparing early.
Truly, Aiz is remarkable. How did she ever come up with a training method like this?
Hm? Aiz, why are you looking away?
"I see..."
Aiz, who had initially viewed the idea skeptically, seemed convinced by my explanation.
It was supposed to be training she had proposed, you know. Had she suffered through this very thing herself?
"Of course, this training can't be mastered in a day or two. But that's all the more reason to start as soon as possible, right?"
"...Yeah."
With a resolute expression, Aiz accepted it. And then she promptly lay down on the ground and attempted to sleep.
"..."
"..."
A slightly awkward atmosphere settled over us.
Aiz... you're not sleeping...
She certainly looked sleepy... so why couldn't she drift off?
Could it be because of me?
The moment that thought crossed my mind, I almost offered to step aside—but then I realized that leaving wouldn't work if the training was to count.
In the Dungeon, staying close to your companions was the default. Practicing sleeping alongside other people was part of it too.
And yet...
"...I can't do it."
In the end, Aiz was the first to give up.
That came as quite a surprise. I'd expected her to insist on trying until she managed it, one way or another.
"Is it because of me?"
Shake, shake—
Apparently, it wasn't my fault after all.
Then what is it?
Not me. Aiz looked tired, too.
And yet she couldn't fall asleep. Clearly, something was wrong.
Had she come down with insomnia? I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
But... well...
There is always an answer. And when it came to Aiz, I found it even more easily than usual.
*
I'm afraid to fall asleep.
When had she first started thinking that way?
She couldn't remember exactly. There was no single moment she could name—somewhere along the way, the thought had simply become a natural part of her.
That day. The day her beloved parents vanished helplessly before the black wind—ever since then, night had become an object of terror for Aiz.
She was afraid of the dark. Afraid of the cold.
Afraid, above all, of falling asleep.
Afraid that when she woke, everything would be like it was then. Afraid that all of this now was nothing but a dream.
The fear that everyone had died and she alone had been left behind took root in Aiz as an unbearable terror, robbing her of any peaceful sleep.
In the end, the only choice Aiz had found was to drive her body to its absolute limits. That way, she could manage about an hour of sleep a night.
And now...
Even now, she was terribly tired... but regrettably, falling asleep had never come easily to her, and slumber refused to arrive.
It stung a little, knowing she couldn't sleep her fill—but thanks to that, she could train longer, so there was a silver lining.
Of course, she knew that living like this was wrong. She truly knew it—and yet, knowing was all she ever did.
So Aiz, having given up on nap training, moved to ask for a different exercise instead—
"I have a method for that, actually."
The man beat her to it.
"A method?"
It was hard to believe. Aiz had tried plenty of things to help herself sleep.
She'd refused the aid of drugs, but she'd listened to songs, drunk warm milk, tried foods said to invite drowsiness, and any number of other remedies.
But the results had been nonexistent. And yet this man claimed to have a surefire solution—
"Zzz..."
She did.
Before she knew it, Aiz had slipped into a deep sleep, breathing quietly and steadily.
Perhaps it was all the accumulated fatigue, but once she was out, she showed no intention of waking at all.
Some things never change...
Watching Aiz sleeping on his lap, a wave of nostalgia washed over him.
It was no accident that he knew this. When she rested her head on his lap, the Aiz he knew would fall asleep with remarkable ease.
Whether that was true only for him or for others as well, he couldn't say. But at the very least, it had been true for him.
I was always the one getting the lap pillow, so I tried giving one back for once...
He remembered how Aiz had slept like the dead for a full twelve hours afterward. Knowing that, this time would probably be longer rather than shorter.
Not that it matters.
Back then, curfew had made things a bit complicated, but there was nothing like that now.
"..."
He felt a little melancholy. So with his one remaining arm, he gently stroked Aiz's hair.
"Mmm..."
Aiz made a contented sound and squirmed a little. Stroke, stroke—he idly ran his hand over her head, letting the time drift by in a daze.
"Achoo..."
"Ah."
Aiz had sneezed. Was she cold?
The sunlight was warm, but the wind had a chill to it. Had he been too careless?
He immediately shrugged off his coat and draped it over her. Aiz squirmed, hugging the coat close.
By the time Aiz finally woke, the sun had completely set.
*
"Mmmgh..."
"You shouldn't walk with your eyes closed."
Despite having slept for more than half a day, Aiz still looked drowsy.
Was it because she was young? Or was it that she'd been so starved of sleep for so long that even this wasn't enough?
A bittersweet feeling rose in his chest, and he took her hand firmly in his. Aiz looked at him for a moment, and then quietly squeezed his hand back.
Just as he was walking her home—
"..."
He felt someone's gaze. A gaze at once deeply familiar and impossible to get used to.
And it carried a distinctly different air than all the times before. Where it had once been considerably restrained, now it was blatantly, unmistakably direct.
How was he supposed to take this? More to the point—had she been here this whole time?
Come to think of it, Hera had said she would be staying in Orario. Before the Three Great Quests began—that is, right now—it made perfect sense that she'd be here.
"Tch. So I've been made, after all."
As he shielded Aiz behind him and stared toward the spot, two figures emerged from it.
Both were people he knew. Or rather, people he would come to know in the future.
"I knew it already, but seeing you this close confirms it. This kid is stronger than me."
One was a rather small woman—or no, considering her race, enormous.
The dwarf who, according to legend, had captained the Freya Familia before Ottar took the position.
One of the heroines called the Small Giant (Demi Ymir), and the woman who would one day run a restaurant by the name of Hostess of Fertility.
Mia Grand.
"...?"
That was the name. But something was off.
"What is it, runt? Got something on my face?"
"I'm not a runt... no, wait, that's not it."
A lump caught in his throat, only to be blasted away by an even greater shock.
"You... um... wouldn't happen to be named Mia Grand, would you?"
"...Huh? You know me?"
The woman looked taken aback at his words. But he was just as flustered—no, if anything, he was probably the more flustered of the two. Whatever the case, this was simply too much.
The Mia Grand he knew had been a boisterous, rough-and-tumble, positively feral woman.
Her personality, yes—but her appearance too. Setting aside her sheer size, she'd been the very picture of the ideal dwarf.
Thick and solid as a mountain. That was the woman he remembered.
But the person standing before him now?
"What, you're staring holes in me."
"Ah—s-sorry..."
The personality was the same. But the appearance couldn't have been more different.
A beautiful face without a single wrinkle, glossy hair tied up in a single bundle.
A voluptuous chest and a slender figure. A beauty so striking that the word itself felt too small to hold her.
A woman who could only be called the very embodiment of beauty stood before him.
And so he was confused. No—what in the world could have happened to turn that person into this person?!
"You... you're thinking something rude, aren't you?"
"No...?"
Rude? This was just common sense. One hundred out of one hundred, a thousand out of a thousand, ten thousand out of ten thousand—every single person who saw her would think the same thing.
The unbelievable sight before him left his throat tight. He wanted to say something—anything—but the words wouldn't come.
They say that when people are truly shocked, they go speechless. Apparently it was true. Looking at his own mouth, which refused to produce even a single word, he had no choice but to accept it.
No, seriously, wasn't this a bit too much? What on earth happened to her? This wasn't just a matter of staring down the passage of years head-on—this was something else entirely.
"Mia, if you keep blocking the way, I can't get through."
"Ugh, so annoying. Just squeeze your way out on your own. You're ridiculously cramped in there, honestly."
Despite the woman's grumbling, Mia only responded with a lazy, bothered air.
The woman looked mildly vexed, but she seemed to have no intention of persuading Mia. Instead, she stepped out in front of Mia and pulled off the hood she'd been wearing.
Glossy silver hair. Bewitching eyes. Allure that radiated even through clothes that covered her head to toe, an air that seemed designed to ensnare.
An appearance that matched his memories down to the last detail—yet an atmosphere entirely different from the last time he'd seen her.
The Familia that, binding together Zeus and Hera Familia, would one day claim the title of Orario's strongest.
And the Familia that, in a moment of madness, had hurled itself down the road to ruin.
The Familia that held Orario's one and only Lv.7.
Freya Familia.
"Hello, little one."
And the patron goddess they all served.
"Won't you come and speak with me a moment?"
Freya, Goddess of Beauty.
She had appeared before him.