A Friend (3)
How much time had passed?
"..."
"..."
Outside the meeting room, the Five Senses Officers and I stood together in complete silence, watching the divine radiance pour out from within.
A long while passed before Erzena — wrapped in golden light — finally pushed open the door and stepped out with a strained expression.
"How is she?"
"Hannah is all right. Thankfully it wasn't anything critical, and every wound has been healed. But..." Erzena cast a troubled glance back into the room. "I don't think she's slept in at least two days. So for now, I've let her rest."
"At least that's one weight off my shoulders. Thank you, Erzena."
I let out a breath of relief.
Hannah.
The girl who had staggered into the administration office covered in wounds had pressed a scrap of paper into the Smell Officer's hand before collapsing.
A single line.
[Please help my friend.]
Words that only I could understand.
Friend.
For me, that word had never been a familiar one. There had never been anyone worth calling by it, either.
But recently, someone had appeared — someone who proclaimed herself my friend and sent letters across the distance.
Princess Elaine Castor...
Ominous. A feeling of the ground tilting beneath my feet.
It was then that the Smell Officer, who had been sitting motionless in his seat at last, rose and spoke.
"...Then I suppose it's time someone explained what this is."
He set down what he had been clutching in his enormous hand, laying it on the desk.
What emerged was paper that had once been a letter — torn to ribbons, with only the shabbiest of fragments surviving.
[From your friend.]
I stared down at it, tangled in emotion.
Ominous premonitions always had a damned way of proving themselves right. That the letter had been torn apart was proof positive that someone had found it utterly intolerable.
Or someone destroyed it preemptively, so as not to be caught.
Either way, one thing was certain: the princess had been sending her letters in secret, without a soul's permission.
And the identity of that someone was not difficult to guess.
The Queen...
Helena Castor.
The same old, stubborn cursed connection had surfaced once more.
"Central Officer. What on earth happened to drive a child like that here without sleeping for two nights straight?" the Smell Officer demanded, his voice unable to hide the frustration and anger churning beneath it. "Who is this 'friend' written here?"
Elaine Castor. The woman I had met in the royal crypt, who had been sending letters ever since that day.
My head screamed the answer.
But my mouth said otherwise.
"...I cannot say."
Hannah's arrival here was anything but a light matter. The state she'd been beaten into, and two days of travel from the royal castle to the Southern Border without a moment's rest — there had to be a grave reason behind it all.
Above all, the possibility that something had happened to Princess Elaine herself.
It was agonizing.
I want to say it. Right now, this instant. I wanted to spew out this feeling, this sensation, this whole situation and be rid of it.
But the other party was the Queen. The royal family itself.
"This isn't something that just goes away because we all play dumb, you know."
"..."
As of now, the Five Senses Officers and Erzena had no idea who the letters in my possession had come from. If I declared, in the middle of this, that the matter involved the royal family, it could drag even them into a mess. After all, the reason I alone had been summoned to the last trial was precisely because the Five Senses had known nothing. I could not hand them a lever to seize this time either.
So the only words available to me were:
"I cannot say."
"Goddamn it, Central Officer! You saw the girl's face with your own eyes! What kind of sons of bitches reduce a child to that?!" the Smell Officer shouted, his frustration boiling over.
I understood.
Werewolves, with their powerful familial bonds and pack instincts, regarded children as objects of absolute protection. Layer his temperament on top of that, and it was entirely believable that he would rage this hard over something that was none of his own affair.
It was then that the Touch Officer stepped forward.
"There will be a reason the Central Officer isn't speaking. This is no moment to let emotion take the wheel."
"Hey, Touch Officer—!"
"I know exactly how you feel. A child was brutalized by someone and came all this way — of course you're furious. And the fact that she came looking for the Central Officer directly means this is no small matter, either."
She, too, was evidently in a foul mood; her tentacles kept twisting and lashing against the floor, one after another.
"Smell Officer. You know what?"
"What?"
She pointed calmly at the meeting room and spoke with quiet certainty.
"Those clothes the girl is wearing. They're what a maidservant of the royal castle wears."
Silence.
"..."
"..."
With nothing more than those few words, everyone in the administration office grasped exactly what they meant.
"...Fuck. So the royal castle's good for is pulling this kind of shit?"
"I can't confirm it. But even so, that doesn't make this our business to meddle in." She voiced the ice-cold reality out loud. "There is only one reason a maid is punished that brutally inside the castle. Defiance of orders."
"That girl crossed someone. And someone high up, at that."
She had pinned down the situation with perfect precision. Slowly, the Touch Officer turned her head to look at me.
"And the person she calls her 'friend' — by now, they'll be in very serious trouble. Isn't that right, Central Officer?"
Even though I had spoken no truth, the Touch Officer had dug up a clue that brushed right up against it. The moment our eyes met, she gave the faintest nod.
A small act of consideration. Don't tell us who directly. But at least give us the acknowledgment — let us guess the rest ourselves.
"...That is correct. By my judgment, this... friend of hers is most likely being oppressed as we speak."
Given the Queen's temperament, she had undoubtedly poured another flood of abuse and every manner of twisted words upon the princess.
At my words, the Smell Officer shot up from his seat.
"Then let's go to the royal castle right now!"
"No."
"Why not this time?!" The werewolf snapped, bristling at the flat refusal.
It was the Touch Officer's calm voice that answered.
"On what pretext does an immigration officer go to the royal castle — urgently, no less — and do what, exactly?"
"To save her friend, obviously—"
"Is that a pretext weighty enough to justify abandoning your immigration duties?"
"..."
She drove the conclusion home like a wedge.
"We need a pretext, Smell Officer. The word of a dismissed maid, on its own, falls far short. And besides — this is the Central Officer's matter. It is not ours to interfere with."
A cruel truth, if there ever was one.
She was right. Those who serve at the border must remain at the border. Unless the matter was extraordinary, a trip to the royal castle was something to be avoided. And no matter how furious any of us were, this was not a matter for the Five Senses to involve themselves in.
Unable to bear it any longer, Erzena stepped forward.
"Then I'll go and see for myself. I'm not an immigration officer, so I bear no responsibility on that side — it should be fine."
This time, it was I who raised a hand.
"Not permitted. You are currently under temporary asylum, and the Order has yet to ascertain your whereabouts."
"But—"
"And if you show yourself at the royal castle, the Queen's people will carry word of it straight back to the Pope."
Then the cornered Pope would scramble, by any means necessary, to diminish the influence of the former Saintess. With still no word of Mohaim and the holy army having reached their destination, I could not recklessly expose her.
"..."
"..."
Silence crept back over us once more.
We had no pretext. No grounds to go to the royal castle at all.
And even if we went — what were we supposed to say once we were there?
It was the Taste Officer who muttered a lament at that realization.
"Just when we thought we'd finally seen the last of incidents and accidents, something this dreadful happens..."
Incidents and accidents.
In an instant, the word burrowed deep into my brain.
"Incidents and accidents..."
Accidents.
A word with a familiar face. And with it, someone's voice came dredging up out of distant memory.
"Pull this one off, and I'll count it as day 297. What do you say?"
"I'll grab the Saintess by the scruff of her neck and have her shipped to the Northern Border within a single day."
My conversation with the Minister.
"...One thing. We do have a pretext."
"What? We do?"
A promise I had forgotten completely, buried under far too many things. I said it aloud, briefly, to the group of them blinking at me.
"The zero-accident record."
"The zero-accident record? What does that have to do with—"
The Five Senses Officers repeated the word as though hearing it for the first time in their lives. And then, almost in the same breath, they understood.
"Ah...!"
"Of course... the zero-accident record!"
"Erzena, how long have you been here with us now?"
"Pardon? Um, let's see... it's nearly a week, isn't it?"
At the flustered answer, the Five Senses Officers immediately set their minds grinding.
"And it's been over three days since the holy army left the border — no incidents since!"
"It's a promise made with the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself. Hardly a trivial one."
"But can this really count as accident-free? There was a mountain of work after the entry refusal, you know."
At that last remark, everyone frowned.
"That may be, but..."
The answer came from me.
"That doesn't matter."
"What?"
"Whether it truly qualifies as accident-free is for the Minister to decide. All we have to do is go and ask."
Whether the record was genuine was not the important thing right now. What mattered was that I had a 300-day zero-accident performance bonus to claim. And matters concerning such a reward required visiting the royal castle in person, documents in hand. Anything involving money could never be settled by remote communication or contactless transaction.
In person. I myself had to go to the royal castle.
I had my pretext.
Realizing it, the Five Senses Officers finally let relief soften their expressions.
"In the meantime, I'll find some way to meet the prin... my friend."
"And what will you do when you get there?"
At those words, I fell silent for a moment.
What would I do, once I was there? I honestly didn't know.
But the words she always wrote at the very end of her letters kept lingering in my head.
[From your friend.]
I bit down hard on my lip without meaning to.
"I have to do something."
I grabbed my coat at once.
"Wake Hannah. She can sleep in the carriage."
There was no room left for hesitation.
Crackle. Crackle.
Now and then, the sound of the fireplace burning reached through the hush of the room. In that warm darkness, Elaine sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, utterly still, watching the flames dance above the logs.
The room had changed beyond all recognition from only days before. The hundreds upon thousands of sheets of letter paper were gone, and pen and paper alike had been confiscated from the desk. What remained was a chair, a desk, and a bed — nothing more. An empty, hollow space wrapped itself around Elaine on every side.
How much time had slipped by?
Is it day? Is it night? Or... am I even still alive?
She didn't know. Since Hannah and the letters had vanished, Elaine had done nothing but stare at the fireplace, casting herself again and again into that endless silence.
And then — the door creaked.
"Your meal, Your Highness."
A maid she had never seen before let herself in and laid out fine dishes upon the desk, one by one.
Clink. Clink.
Without the slightest movement, Elaine kept her eyes fixed on the fireplace, ignoring the woman entirely. The maid, apparently expecting no answer anyway, offered a courteous bow and quietly closed the door behind her.
The door clicked shut, and silence returned.
Within it, the princess found herself recalling her mother's words from days before.
"The Central Officer...? A friend?"
Why was it that a word which had felt so warm when written on paper could sound so utterly cold, falling from the Queen's lips?
Her gaze drifted down to her forearm. There, blessing after blessing — every phrase painted on by brush after brush — glistened in the firelight.
These were the words of the priests who had come with her mother that day.
"It appears that Your Highness's Latent Talent Manifestation links intense emotion directly to a power beyond your control."
"Above all, what you require at this moment is the exclusion of emotion. Merely calming yourself will not suffice."
"We shall place the Blessing of Peace upon you. Layered several times deep, it will preserve your composure no matter what may happen, for some time to come."
It's all my fault.
She remembered. Hannah's thin wrists seized by the priests, dragged away out of the room. How, even as she screamed that she was sorry, that they must let her go, this accursed mouth of hers released nothing but breath.
It's all my fault.
She rubbed at her forearm with her hand.
Hard. Harder still. Until the skin flushed red and swelled and began to sting — forcibly scrubbing away these detestable, stomach-turning inscriptions of blessing.
It's all... my fault.
Everyone had said so. Everyone except Hannah.
It's all my fault.
Everyone had looked at her that way. Everyone except the Central Officer, Nathan Kell.
It's all my fault.
Did her brother think so too?
She didn't know. She didn't know.
She wailed somewhere deep in her chest, calling her brother's name, calling Nathan's name, calling Hannah's name, searching for an answer that would not come.
"Ah...!! Ughhhh...!!!"
But cruelly, the words never came. And grief that is suppressed and crushed and left to fester has a way of curdling into something else entirely.
For the first time, a new emotion took root in the princess's heart.
All of it...
The hand gripping her crimson-swollen arm tightened.
...I wish it would all just die.
Green eyes stared, unblinking, at the small flames dancing in the hearth. A fierce blaze — the same raging fire that had burned in King Rio — began, little by little, to kindle in her heart.
Those who are raised on sorrow and pain can see the world through nothing but sorrow and pain. With even her sole means of reaching out — her letters — stolen from her, nothing remained by which she could answer the world but that.
A low tremor ran through the room, growing, deepening. This was no blessing of any god. It was only a power near to a curse — a force made for unmaking everything it touched.
And if this is my power and my curse...
Then why, why must I be the one to endure this sorrow?
The fireplace gave her the answer.
With a roar, the flames surged up over the logs.