Dear Star, Please Let Me Be a Righteous Thief Again Today
Lupin marched up to the halberd standing ramrod-straight, determined to claim her spoils. A third of the shaft was buried fast in the ground, but where there was a leaping gorilla, there was a flying Lupin above her. In a flash she hoisted the plainly monstrous weapon in one hand, settled it across her shoulder, and Yegor muttered under his breath.
"Didn't know you were stronger than my big sister."
"Your sister? …Emelin?"
"Yeah. That golden gorilla you sent flying is my big sister."
Lupin looked at Emelin, knocked out cold where she'd been driven into the wall. She was a wreck, but she wasn't dead.
She wasn't dead….
Lupin's pupils wavered for a moment.
"You really should've mentioned something like that a little earlier."
"There was no time to explain. The moment my sister gets going, she starts by demolishing at least one building, and most of the buildings on the Prime Minister's estate are historical landmarks. Stopping her came first."
"Hmm. Fair. That tracks. I nearly had a heart attack earlier, watching her plant aura blades in the ground like she was setting trees. I thought the whole district was about to come down."
Yegor asked it as if something didn't add up. From where he stood, Lupin's instincts were accurate to a chilling degree.
"…You felt that?"
"Huh? No, I mean. Just—yeah. A little. I had a bad feeling. Ground collapsing, buildings collapsing, crash, crash, crash."
Lupin was reacting like someone who had already seen Emelin's finishing move once before, and for good reason: before the possession, she had — uncharacteristically — watched the woman's promotional video. She'd already cleaned out every treasure chest in the games she was playing, so she'd spent months twiddling her thumbs and waiting on Elysium's release. What else was she supposed to do? Keeping her sanity intact long enough to go looking up a PV had been a minor miracle in itself.
Since the subject had come up, there was something Lupin wanted to know too.
"Hey. What was that earlier, anyway? When aura armor and an aura blade hit each other, they normally cancel out and vanish, right?"
Yegor went quiet. There were things he couldn't say. Lupin caught the look on his face, scowled, and pressed him.
"Hey. Your sister being Emelin is already out in the open, so what are you still trying to hide? Just say it."
But even as she said it, turning the thought over, something felt off. Emelin was his older sister? Did that mean Yegor was royalty too? She started groping back through memories tied to treasure chests, and sure enough, one of them snagged — back when she was playing through Elysium's tutorial.
Emelin showed up to help a Dimensional Drifter who was having a miserable time with a magical beast latched onto an ankle. She said she was looking for a youngest brother who'd run away from home and held out a sketched portrait, and in it was a man with strikingly distinct features. Lupin had no reason to remember a man's face, so the image had slipped away on its own. Looking at it now, it was Yegor to the life. The reason she'd remembered at all was ridiculous: during the cutscene a treasure chest had been sitting square behind Emelin's back, and she'd remembered the rest as a bonus.
"Wait. The youngest brother Emelin was looking for was you?"
The question left Yegor just as dumbfounded.
"I knew my sister was looking for me. You didn't know it was me?"
"Uh…… It could happen, right? I was never good at remembering faces."
"You say that so proudly."
"Somebody told me being quick to forget is a strength too. Can't remember who, but it's a strength."
Besides, remembering faces wasn't the problem. What Yegor had told her had turned out to be a lie.
"So the ten little siblings were a sob story after all? If you're the youngest, there can't be any more siblings under you."
An ordinary person might have thought, Did my possession tangle causality? or Did the Emperor's nether regions suddenly get their vigor back, and did he work his wife and concubines half to death? Lupin had no idea about any of that. She was just annoyed that she'd fallen for Yegor's emotional pitch. The nerve of him, pretending to earn money for his little siblings! She'd even bought a cake so she could go play with them. A hundred and fifty candles! Or was it two hundred? Anyway!
Yegor, however, had his reasons.
"I'm sorry. There are circumstances I can't speak of."
"Again? Circumstances again?"
"It's true that I'm the youngest, and it's also true that I need a great many gold coins for ten younger siblings. That includes why my aura and my sister's canceled each other out. I can't tell you any of it for certain right now. I'm sorry."
Lupin rolled her eyes.
"Then that Arimang place. Aronang? If we go there, you can tell me?"
"Avignon."
"Right, right. There."
"Then, yes."
What's even the difference? They gonna make me sign a confidentiality oath or something? Slap a curse on me out of nowhere — the moment you step outside and breathe a word of anything you saw or heard here, you're cursed to have every stitch of clothing ripped off you. Whatever. What good would knowing do me right now? It's not even about a treasure chest.
Lupin waved it off. Eh, forget it. Yegor ducked his head, looking cornered.
"I'll tell you when the time comes. I can't say it now."
"Ugh. Seriously. What kind of man has this many secrets."
"It isn't simply a personal matter. It concerns the Empire — and beyond that, the North Country. It can't be helped."
Put it like that, and Lupin, who'd just been mouthing off about men and their secrets, was the one who came out looking unreasonable. Trust the smart ones to turn a person around without even seeming to try. Grumbling, she started toward the palace, Lightning Sword in her left hand and the halberd across her right shoulder.
"Yeah, yeah. Handle your world-shaking problems however you like. Let's hurry up and find His Grace the Archduke. We've got to make the report if we're ever getting into the Holy Ark."
Yegor reached out and stopped her. His other hand pointed at Emelin, half blended into the wall.
"And my sister?"
"You can bring her."
From Lupin's point of view it was obvious. Both her hands were full, so Yegor — whose weren't — could just carry her. Perfect. But Yegor had been hauled off by Emelin more than once, and he was reluctant to go anywhere near her. She looked unconscious now, yet the instant he got her on his back or over a shoulder, a hand sheathed in her Steel Body might snap shut around his throat. Then it would be forced repatriation all over again, and Yegor had no intention of going home yet.
"I'd rather not get close. Better if you take her."
"Can't we just leave her here? We can ask those knights over there."
"She's still my sister. I can't help worrying."
Ugh. What a pain. Seriously.
With no other choice, Lupin handed him the halberd she'd been holding in her right hand.
"It's my loot, so guard it properly."
"It isn't… loot, is it? We're only bringing it for the report."
"True, but it'd be a problem if you grabbed it and ran."
"Why would I do that? I've got no intention of going back with my sister. I'll keep traveling with you."
Hearing that as he took the halberd left Lupin oddly reassured. The Horo Ring on her left ring finger was still hiding its secret, and until that secret came to light, Yegor had to stay at her side if Vatslava was going to be safe. She could use him as a knowledge vending machine while she was at it.
"Well, there's a contract term, so as your employer I do like the sound of that. Why? Got a reason you don't want to go home? How old are you, anyway, running away and throwing a tantrum about never going back?"
"Twenty-five this year."
"Oh. Then from now on, the two of us are—"
Best-friend material. She was about to say it, then remembered that she wasn't twenty-five anymore. By Elysium's count she was five, and once you added the years of her previous life she was older than twenty-five.
"—gonna talk casual."
"…You already were."
"Anyway, casual it is. Let's go."
With a heave, Lupin slung Emelin over her shoulder. Yegor watched and asked,
"Is that all it takes?"
"All what takes? You gonna answer everything just because I ask? This isn't even that."
"…Right. Never mind."
Yegor was grateful to her for no good reason he could name. His identity had more or less come out by accident, and the air around her said she was letting it pass without a word. He'd been sure that the moment she realized he was a prince, she'd throw him out of the party — and look at this. He'd even drawn the line himself, telling her there were secrets left that he couldn't share. Not only was she letting him keep adventuring at her side, she was the one tearing the wall down first, talking like they ought to stay close. The trouble was that Yegor had almost never told anyone he was grateful. Saying it outright was beyond him. Mumbling it in a small voice was as far as he got.
"…Thanks."
The thanks never quite reached her. A tremendous impact hit out of nowhere.
BOOM!
And not just once.
Boom. Boom. BOOM!
Great shocks swept the ground one after another. Lupin swayed, fighting for her balance, jabbed a finger at the halberd hanging off Yegor's shoulder, and shouted.
"Aaaaaah! Don't tell me it's because somebody unqualified just yanked out Excalibur!"
Yegor ignored her and took the lead toward the source of the shock. Sheepish, Lupin followed. The two of them reached the palace bridge joining the grand hall to the dance hall — and in that instant—
CRASH!
The palace wall blew apart, and a whip shot from the blast, snaking up into the sky. It danced through one spiraling turn. Then it clamped onto the railing of a stretch of palace that hadn't fallen yet, hooked like a grapnel, and flung a small veiled girl out into the open.
"Klein?"
Shrine Maiden Klein. She was on the move with a person dangling from her hand, and of all people, the one dangling was—
"His Excellency the Prime Minister too?!"
Maybe it was because the Holy Ark was right in front of her, but Lupin's thoughts spun hard and fast and landed on one conclusion: this was bad.
"His Excellency the Prime Minister was meant to test your qualifications one last time, through conversation……."
Dmitri had said he would help her enter the Holy Ark. He had never said he would open it himself. No matter how thoroughly she put Emelin down, without the Prime Minister's final approval there was no Holy Ark. And now the Prime Minister had been kidnapped by Klein? At this rate the Holy Ark might slip right through her fingers.
Lupin hurled Emelin at Yegor.
"Ghk—! Wait, what are you doing!"
"We've got to chase them!"
Clad in her winged robe, Lupin leapt into the sky. A moment later her fury-choked shout boomed across the dark night.
