Lupin Doesn't Know a Woman's Heart
Form Four of the Shadowless Sword Style: Swift Advance.
Swift Advance—the name means to charge in clean and bright—could be broken down into three beats. Take a drawing stance. Close in at high speed with your footwork. Draw, and drive the cut straight through in the same motion. The only disappointing part was that no afterimage of lightning lingered where she had passed. Something like that, maybe?
Why Lupin couldn't pull off a feat of that sort could be explained across the hundreds of pages published by Elysium's aura researchers, but a heaping serving piled that high is something not even an aura Master bothers to read, so it shall be omitted.
What mattered was that Swift Advance was simple, plain, and easy to copy. For Lupin, who hated anything difficult or complicated, no form could have suited her better. It was brisk on top of that. One cut, and the enemy's head was off before they could even fight back! If that wasn't the ultimate one-button win, what was?
Unless, of course, you reached the point of melting shaped aura into the blade and cutting what ordinarily cannot be cut. A fast sword bets on speed rather than destructive power, and its ceiling arrives soon enough. But to Lupin a blade was nothing more than a foothold—something for granting pigeons the ability to detect. So long as no one alive could match her speed, she would keep wringing Swift Advance dry until somebody finally shut her down. Easy, fast, and cool.
As if to prove it, Yegor failed to land a single proper swing through the entire hunt.
"Incredible speed. There's no keeping up with that."
Before he could even open with a technique, the boar he had marked was split in two. The ones that survived decided some crazy bitch had shown up, abandoned their territory, and fled in a gasping scramble.
Lupin gave a stylish flick, shaking the blood from the single-edged sword her master had granted her. She had misjudged the distance and sheared off a few branches with the tip, but she sold it as though she had meant to.
"Ah... I've cut down something trivial yet again."
"I always regretted never seeing the Shadowless Sword Style in person, what with the Administrator retiring, but I never thought I'd end up experiencing it like this. Truly, the speed is almost too much for the eyes to follow."
"Hey. Praise me all you want, you're not getting anything out of it. Just haul the boars."
Savoring the win, Lupin went down to a nearby stream and washed the boar blood off every inch of her. She had said it would be a quick rinse. Yegor laughed when she climbed into the water and started rolling in it outright. The way she bathed was a perfect mash of a little sister five years younger and a little brother seven years younger.
"Much better than earlier. Back then even we were so awkward it was a disaster."
"...Were we?"
Lupin was not the sort who lived by looking backward. The one thing even she looked back on was treasure chests—which chest had sat in which unhinged spot, what absurd thing had happened while she was opening one. Every oddity connected to them, she remembered. The reason her memory had drawn so close to a pigeon's? Memories of treasure chests occupied an absurd share of the whole. After she entered the world of Elysium, that share climbed higher still. No games, no smartphone, no streaming: treasure chests were the only fun she had. Food existed, yes, but let a week of withdrawal pass and her sense of taste vanished on the spot, so these days calling it entertainment was generous.
Yegor shouldered two boars and put the question to her.
"Still, this feels like too much meat to bring back. What do you think? Three women. They won't eat much."
Lupin, whose appetite alone still belonged to a strapping man, frowned. Her sense of taste was still alive.
"I'll eat whatever's left, so don't worry. N."
"N? I don't even know if that much meat will fit in a body that small."
"Just don't pass out when you see it."
As if the awkwardness had never happened, the man and the former man knocked shoulders on the walk back to the rally point. The heights didn't match. Lupin's shoulder struck Yegor's ribs, and Yegor's shoulder struck Lupin's head.
Red, who had finished scouting first and was waiting at the rally point, asked in a snap of irritation.
"You two. Where have you been?"
Boar hunting was the finest way to bleed off tension. Awkwardness forgotten, Lupin answered soaked to the skin, brighter than usual.
"Oh, the two of us went and worked up a sweat!"
It was the same line she had used on the two women who worked the hall, back before a mimic swallowed her.
Live in a group long enough, and a person has to hide their feelings more often than not. As those group-chat disaster clips drifting around the internet demonstrate, a sentence fired without reading the room has a way of becoming the blow that finishes a community off.
Red seethed for a long while before reason barely clawed its way back.
"How could this happen.... Yegor's really too much, isn't he?"
"Calm down. They just went boar hunting and came back."
"And I'm supposed to believe that?! They were both soaked to the skin. They didn't actually go and have a round, the way she said?"
"Tami. It's Yegor. He isn't the type to suddenly jump a woman. And whether that round was that kind of round......"
"Then that bitch jumped him. I knew I didn't like her from the first look."
In any case, that was why Red had been concealing her heart for a long time. She had the full backing of her dearest friend, Lyudmila, but the situation had not improved. She plotted this way and that, drafting operation after operation to bring him down, and not one of them had ever landed. Eggs thrown at a rock, over and over—except the eggs refused to break, and only her heart came away bruised.
"Calm down. Even if something had happened, a normal woman would have no reason to say it that openly."
"...You think so?"
"Yes. Settle down, Tami. You only met her today. Yegor's a man of sense. We both acknowledged that."
"Haa... fine."
Tamara set her jaw, swearing she would hit Yegor even harder at tomorrow's training. Two years of pure, one-sided devotion already, and the further it went, the more Yegor seemed to find her difficult, widening the distance. These days she could hardly even picture what she was supposed to do.
"I deliberately changed my clothes. Changed the way I talk... I did everything I could......"
"Calm down. It's not as if Yegor wants to be that way. Maybe you came on too strong?"
"Too strong? Me?"
Lupin's harness played up her chest so aggressively it was hard to believe the thing was even tactical, and her hips were so big the pants did more than cling—they published every line of her lower body. The one saving grace was that the shirt wasn't sheer. Even that grace had just walked in wringing wet. Red wore the Imperial Alliance's standard knight uniform, cut much like riding clothes so it wouldn't foul the path of a sword, and its cling to the body was not so different from Lupin's. The difference, if one had to name it....
Blue's gaze drifted, helpless, toward Red's flat chest.
"H-hey. Where are you looking?!"
On the very day Lupin turned Kair into a smashed watermelon at the Association branch, her chest—pinned tight by the harness—had still flung itself around whenever she moved hard. Had she invested in charm, or in a honey trap, she might long since have been collecting confessions from men left and right. But those two Growth Values had already been shut off at the source, and that was the end of it. Which was why only women were left to hold a serious symposium on those stupidly huge tits.
"Right. She's the one who's too much."
"See? Too much, right? I think so too! Way too much!"
By the standards of Red, who ran closer to a cliff face, Lupin was a cheat player. Why else would Red have chosen throwing knives as her main weapon? A small ribcage, narrow shoulders, and arms thin as sticks—a three-part combo that made a heavy real sword hard to swing. And yet Lupin had an upper body much like Red's with something utterly impossible bolted onto it. A violation of the laws of physics. An abnormality, a mutant, fit for divine judgment.
"Damn it. This is annoying. If I lose him like this, how am I supposed to report it upstairs?"
"First, calm down. It's not as if he's been stolen yet."
Upstairs? A report?
Why are they so worked up?
Lupin, who had killed her presence completely and was eavesdropping on every word, tilted her head. She hadn't the faintest idea that this elevated conversation had started because of her.
"Two years of laying groundwork, and if I lose him... ugh. Just thinking about being dragged before the Arctic Commissioner is horrifying."
"Then we can't let you get dragged off. Should we just ask her outright? Whether she has feelings for Yegor."
Red had her sights set on Yegor. It wasn't simply that he was a man she liked. Wound through it was a purpose both political and secret, one Lupin knew nothing about: Yegor's aura. Shaped aura manifested through the sword, and yet specialized for defense rather than attack—that was what had caught their superior's eye. Not that Lupin had any way of knowing. She had only come to fetch them because the food was nearly ready and they still hadn't appeared, and the air between them was grim, and she did not possess the courage to step between serious women and announce that dinner was done.
"Judging by how she acts, she's a fox. Ask her like that and she won't answer."
Blue, who had been thinking it over, gasped, clapped a hand over her mouth, and held her breath.
"Wait."
"What?"
"Her—could she be a Sub-Rounds the Alliance sent?"
"Sub-Rounds? Oh, come on. There's no way she's already caught on. Do you know how careful we've been about security?"
"You never know. We keep quietly skimming off the decent adventurers, so the Alliance has every reason to be annoyed. It is their land."
Ugh, they just keep talking about things only they understand!
With no other choice, Lupin trudged back to where Yegor was. Nearer the campfire, the smell of pork hit like a blow, fierce enough to summon every wild animal in the district.
Thump. The seat Red always claimed was seized by a Lupin who wasn't thinking about anything at all.
"This smell is insane. Hey, you rest a minute. I'll run the barbecue."
"Before that, try the piece I set aside. See if the seasoning's right."
"Where...... Mm! Mmm~! Mmm."
Both the sear and the seasoning were perfect. How had he drawn out this much savor with almost nothing to cook with? The gods really were unfair. ...No. Factor in the masochism, and the balance felt just about right.
"That's not the skill of someone who's only done this once or twice. The others don't cook?"
"They have absolutely no talent for it. Once they made poison-mushroom soup, and the rest of us were out cold for two whole days."
"Pfft. Yeah, they did look like they couldn't cook."
Rustle. Rustle. Past the brush, Red—late getting back—was caught in Blue's grip, pouring out a thick, ugly killing intent.
"That's for real?!"
"Hey, hey. Hold it. Hold it...!"
