The Sparring Match (2)
"W-what... what did you say?"
"I am asking whether you enjoyed your little game of apostle of justice."
"Wh-what do you mean, me?!"
"Am I wrong?"
"Punishing the wicked as they deserve. Rescuing those tormented by the wicked. Holding justice as an absolute standard and never bending one's will to anyone."
"Is that not exactly what Your Highness has done?"
At his sneering words, the Princess had no reply to give. For just as he said, it described her own conduct perfectly.
"Your Highness."
"What is it now..."
"On what grounds, may I ask, do you call me a villain?"
"...?"
Her silence lasted only a moment. With an incredulous scoff, the Princess picked the argument back up.
"The rumors that spread from you, the conduct I have witnessed with my own eyes, the testimony of every student around you!!"
"With this much evidence, you still attempt to wriggle free? Truly remarkable."
"And so I ask again—how does any of that make me a bad person?"
Judging the conversation beyond saving, the Princess hurled a spell straight at him to force an opening—but he evaded it with room to spare and simply carried on.
"The rumors circulating through the Academy. I know them all too well."
"If you know them, then...!!"
"But do you know why I did those things?"
She did not. She had never even tried to learn. Everyone denounced him as a villain, and a man like that was obviously a villain—no closer look required.
"And if I had a legitimate reason for tormenting her?"
"...."
"If there was a reason I cycled through women?"
"...Don't spout nonsense."
"If there was a reason I drank from broad daylight?"
"She may have been my mortal enemy for life,"
"every one of those women may have been a siren circling nothing but my money,"
"or might there not have been something so heartbreaking that I drank to forget it?"
"...It's all sophistry."
"Quite right. It is nonsense."
The Princess's fury flared anew at how readily he admitted it—but—
"And yet... why did you falter?"
Why had she hesitated? To that question, the Princess had no answer. Because some part of her had thought that, just maybe, it might be true.
"Shall I answer for you?"
"It is because you investigated none of it. You branded me a villain and forced your justice upon me."
"If I truly had such a reason, what would you have done then?"
"With what, I wonder, would you have made restitution to me?"
"To me—the one who walked out of his house and crashed into that miserable state of affairs, where every mouth cursed my name."
The man who had spoken so calmly, standing in place until now, slowly began to close the distance to the Princess.
One step. Two steps. Three.
When Jenison finally stood directly before her, he met her eyes and spoke, putting weight into every single word.
"Your Highness."
"I would ask that you at least consider a villain's circumstances."
His voice was astonishingly cold. Chilling.
From childhood, the Princess had been revered by all—it had simply been the natural order of things. Whatever she said, she was loved for it. Everything she wished for, she obtained; anything she attempted, she achieved. Not once in her life had anyone ever met her with hostility this direct.
The Princess—kind and docile a child, to put it generously; sheltered and fragile, to put it honestly—could not withstand that skin-crawling, bone-deep hostility. Her legs gave out beneath her, and she crumpled where she stood.
Watching her collapse, Jenison slowly turned away, his face an astonishingly cold blank.
And so Jenison emerged from the great cloud of smoke and declared his abstention to the professor who had been overseeing the match.
"May I hear your reason for abstaining?"
"Her Highness blocked, with trivial ease, an attack into which I had poured every last drop of my mana."
"Hmm... you do look worn enough to say so, I'll grant you that."
Jenison raised no objection to being told to rest at the infirmary. He left the sparring grounds at an unhurried pace and walked there—and behind him, in the arena now swept clean of smoke, a massive iron sphere still held its great rounded shape; the scars of the duel gaped, burst open, all across the grounds; and at the very center of it all, the Princess could be seen struggling to force her legs beneath her.
It had been draining. Still, after being told all that, surely she would understand.
That the world was not made only of happy people like you. That some longed, more than anyone, for a single slice of bread to share with family. That some were handed scorn by everyone instead of love.
If she kept only that in mind, and mended her habit of forcing her opinions on others, she would face no real trouble even in the matter of the succession. The Princess was a person of exactly that much talent and diligence.
The words she had spat at me were more than enough to anger me—but considering how much pride ran in her blood, I could not entirely fail to understand. Hadn't I myself once brimmed with confidence, calling myself a duke's son?
Still, my mood refused to improve. But dwelling on it would only be my own loss, so I resolved to hurry up and forget the whole thing.
Grumbling to myself like that, I stepped into the infirmary—and found a pair of eyes already fixed on me.
If the Emperor was the most exalted man in the Empire, then the person standing before me might well be called its most sacred. A woman clothed in white vestments, a cross pendant at her throat. Auburn hair that caught the crimson of the setting sky as if to herald the day's end, glowing beautifully. Golden eyes that shone brilliantly, as if to proclaim a divinity beyond anyone else's. A figure that her habit did not conceal but rather set into sharper relief. A woman whom none in the Empire would dare treat lightly—the messenger of God.
The Saintess, Hildegard.
At the sight of me, the Saintess's face promptly twisted into the expression of someone who had seen a thing she wished she hadn't.
"Why have you come here?"
"The professor told me to rest."
"...Are you... speaking politely to me?"
"I am nothing more than a commoner now. How could I possibly presume to speak casually to the Saintess?"
As if gooseflesh had genuinely risen, she ran her hands up both arms, wore the look of someone confronted with something deeply unnatural, and opened her mouth again.
"Hearing it from you, I feel chills crawling over my entire body..."
"Thank you for the compliment."
"It was not a compliment!!"
Having no further will to keep the conversation alive, I flung myself onto one of the infirmary beds to rest.
Or I tried to. If only the Saintess hadn't seized me and shaken me—
"You!! I asked why you came here!!"
"...My mana ran dry. So I came."
"Mana depletion? Let me have a look at you, then."
"There is no need for the Saintess to concern herself with me."
"I would like nothing more, but I have to record what symptoms you came in with. Otherwise the physician in charge will be left in a difficult position."
"...Fair enough. Come to think of it, why are you here at all? You are a student, are you not?"
"The professor in charge of the infirmary was called away briefly on personal business. She left the post with me for a time, since I am capable of administering treatment."
"...So she foisted the work onto you."
"Foist? What's a foist? Are you saying she hit you with one?"
"No, she did not..."
I turned away once more and tried to lie down, but the Saintess kept tugging at my arm.
"Why do you keep doing this?"
"...What have you been doing to yourself?"
"Pardon?"
"From your left shoulder inward, you are scorched—little by little?"
"Oh... is that the holy power?"
"That is not the point!! What in the world did you do to get like that?!"
How ought I to answer? That I had felt the threat of electrocution from Her Highness's spell, so I severed my own arm and slipped past the moment I would have been fried? And then remade the arm and attached it back on?
Forget it. I'd be written off as a lunatic, guaranteed.
"It is nothing you need to know."
"What sort of answer is that!! Let us treat it first—"
"It is quite all right."
"...Are you mad? Does it not hurt?"
Mad, she says. If any other soul heard her flinging about such crude language, what would they even do?
"Even looking as I do, I can endure pain of this degree."
"That is precisely saying you are not fine!! Give me your arm, this instant."
Why, though. I had said I was fine. The Saintess's endless pestering was beginning to grate on me, so I answered pointedly, deliberately curt.
"Saintess. You dislike me, do you not?"
"...."
"You need not trouble yourself over a person you dislike."
"...."
"If I simply lie still like this, everything mends on its own. I have always lived this way."
"...."
"In return, I would ask that you permit me the loan of this infirmary bed... Saintess?"
Her expression was a delicate thing. Somewhere in it flickered anger, yet she swallowed her words; she regarded me with a face that seemed to find me pitiable, then squeezed her eyes shut once more.
"The Lord commanded that we love even the criminal as our own neighbor."
"...."
"I do think you a bad person. That will not change."
"...."
"But no matter who they may be, I will step forward and heal them."
"Because that is what the One I serve desires, and the road I must walk."
"So—your hand, please."
Upright. More upright than anyone, earnest, and radiant for it. That, no doubt, was why they had acclaimed her Saintess—she walked the road before her according to her own convictions, of her own will. It was the one quality shared by every striking person I had ever known, the common thread of those praised by generations long after them.
"...You will surely... become a good person, Saintess."
With those words and a faint smile, I extended my hand to her—as though granting leave to begin the treatment.
I waited, and waited, but no treatment followed—
"Sa...Saintess?"
"Ah—ah!! Yes!!"
"What is the matter?"
"...So you are capable of wearing an expression like that, after all..."
"...?"
Then warmth came flooding through our clasped hands, and the searing agony that had throbbed and throbbed vanished between one heartbeat and the next.
Having offered the Saintess my thanks, I let my spent body sink at last into the long, long pull of sleep.