Friends (4)
The next morning, in the central courtyard of the royal castle, a great brazier stood in the middle of the vast, majestic garden. It was a furnace passed down through generations of the kingdom, and it had never once gone out. Queen Helena Castor read the words inscribed beneath it without expression.
May this nation endure forever, like a lamp that never goes out at the center of the world.
"...Forever."
It was surely a blessing, a wish held by every subject of the realm. But for once, to Helena it sounded like mockery.
This country had once known an age of glory beneath the Little Beast. But did it still? She could not answer. She had reached the point where even she herself could no longer be certain.
She was lost in such thoughts when she heard movement behind her.
Thud.
With a heavy sound, several servants barely managed to set down a mountain of letters before the furnace.
"These are the last of the letters from Her Highness's chambers," one retainer said. "What would you have us do, Your Majesty?"
Helena's gaze drifted slowly toward the countless sheets of paper her daughter had written. Letters piled high enough to reach her waist. She had read every last one of them, without missing a single line.
They were filled with all the words her daughter had never been able to say aloud. Things about her daily life. Things she wanted to do someday. Her longing for her brother. Her guilt over the things she had done. And even her feelings toward the Queen herself.
That woman always tells me it's my fault. She's right. And yet, still — just once, I wish my mother would simply hold me.
A daughter's true heart, which Helena had never once heard with her own ears.
"Burn them," she said in a cold voice. "Leave nothing behind."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The most important thing where the Princess was concerned was the escalation of emotion. To keep the tragedy from repeating itself, nothing could be allowed to stimulate her. Not even the smallest joy.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
More than a hundred letters poured into the flames — along with the dense clusters of words the Princess had written, the contents, the emotions, the hopes contained within them.
Whoosh.
The fire danced without mercy, devouring the endlessly falling paper. Then, just then, one of the letters slipping into the furnace was pushed by the wind and fluttered down at Helena's feet. On the page, a few short words were slowly burning away.
...from your frie—
Helena's face twisted as she watched it burn.
Her daughter's wailing, vivid in her memory, seemed to echo through the wind. Aaah...!! Uuuh!! She could still see it, flickering before her eyes — Elaine sobbing wretchedly as the maid who had dared breathe such a dangerous hope into her was dragged away to be punished. An outpouring of raw emotion from her daughter, a thing Helena had almost never witnessed.
The Queen murmured quietly, as if persuading herself, "This is something that must be done." The tragedy could not be allowed to happen a second time.
The day her beloved son died — the day her daughter's power ran rampant and birthed that tragedy — the Pope had said:
"Though the Lord God bestowed His blessing, the father stood against the great work of the Temple, and so His wrath has descended upon him. But we can soften His anger, Your Majesty. With our prayers and blessings, we can suppress the Princess's power."
The blessing of God. The rampage of a Latent Talent Manifestation.
The two siblings had cherished each other terribly. The Prince and Princess had never once fought, even as children. The Prince always took her pranks in gentle stride, and the Princess, spoiled as she was, adored her brother. Perhaps, just as Escabar had said, it truly had been the wrath of God. Why Elaine, who had always wielded her power freely, had suddenly lost control of it remained a mystery to this day.
But just as the Pope promised, the priests of the Holy Church really had suppressed the Princess's power to a minimum ever since. The reason she had come to believe in God was one thing alone: because the Pope had shown her a way. The only path that could keep this cursed tragedy from ever repeating itself.
And now even that was no longer certain. It had all begun the moment one man appeared.
"The Central Officer..."
The moment the name surfaced, her head began to ache. The man entangled in all of it. The man who had stood against the Pope to his face, and who at the same time was protected by God himself. And the one to whom her daughter had addressed every single letter.
The friend — the one Elaine had called her friend — was the Central Officer, Nathan Kell.
Ever since that immigration officer appeared, everything has twisted out of shape.
Even her own faith. She recalled the strange phenomenon she had witnessed at the trial.
"Th-the Bracelet of Paluba...!"
The intervention of a being who returned holy power to a Saint, and tore it away from the Pope himself.
There had still been no word from the Pope. Like a con man fleeing the moment his scheme unraveled, he had severed contact entirely — even with the priests within the kingdom — maintaining nothing but silence.
Then what, in God's name, am I supposed to believe?
Gazing into the raging flames, Helena sank into the question. If God had taken the side of the Central Officer and the Saint who had excommunicated herself, then what had everything she'd done until now been for? What were all the Pope's words, all his blessings, worth?
A single word flashed through her mind.
Meaningless.
Futile effort. Futile time. Futile feeling. The thought she least wanted to acknowledge crept slowly upward.
Crack.
She clenched her fan hard.
"...There's no turning back now."
But it was already too late. She had tried to kill the Central Officer — that was common knowledge. She could hardly crawl to him now and beg for help, claiming he was God's chosen. Forgiveness was even further out of reach.
The Pope, who had helped her keep the Princess's power suppressed all this time, had vanished. Her husband, Leo Castor, no longer shared her bed. The King had come back to his senses, but for days now he had shut himself away, seeing only his proxy, and the only news that reached her was that he was receiving mountain after mountain of documents from the Intelligence Department.
Everything was tipping over. The peace she had so painstakingly stitched together, the situation she had barely kept from collapsing — it was all being upended. Everything was ominous.
To shake off that creeping dread, she asked her retainer, "What of the Princess?"
My daughter. My only blood. And the child who killed my son.
A priest bowed his head deeply in answer. "We have placed the Blessing of Peace upon her, so she should be fine for the time being."
"Are you certain?"
By now, even she could not easily believe them. But they were the only ones left she could believe at all. A sandcastle built atop a contradiction — that was exactly where Helena stood.
"Place the blessing on Elaine once every two days from now on. Check her emotional state at all times."
Every time she spoke the name, a tangle of emotions rose in her. But all of this is for you. She had to believe that. Otherwise, everything she had done would become meaningless.
That was when it happened.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"
A servant's shout, shaking her already unsteady heart all the more. Helena snapped her fan open and answered in an irritated voice, "What is it?"
But something was wrong. The man's face had gone deathly pale.
"The Princess — Her Highness the Princess...!"
A dreadful premonition. Helena prayed that whatever came next would not be what she feared.
"Her power has begun to rampage again!"
The tragedy was not yet over.
"..."
When Princess Elaine was small, there was one storybook she always begged her brother to read to her. The tale of The Princess and the Dragon.
The princess was locked in a tower, held captive by a dragon.
But then a hero appeared, defeated the wicked dragon, and set the princess free.
Why am I thinking of this now, of all times? Of all moments — the very moment she had finally made up her mind — her brother's storybook had to surface.
Elaine quietly bit her lip. Before long, she heard footsteps approaching.
Creeeak.
The door opened. "Your Highness, it is time for your meal."
Just like yesterday, an unfamiliar maid entered the room with a curt manner. But this time, something was different. Instead of staring at the fireplace, the Princess looked at the maid with cold, lifted eyes.
"...Your Highness?"
She reached out her hand. And grasped at empty air.
CRUNCH.
The maid was instantly seized by an invisible force and lifted into the air.
"Khh... ugh!!" Choked by the throat, the maid thrashed. "P... Princess... please...!!"
Squeeze.
She tightened her grip.
I hate you. She hated them — the ones who treated her like a monster, who never came near her.
I hate myself. Herself, the cause of everything. She despised the self who could do nothing, who couldn't even protect the person most precious to her. She hated the self who had done nothing but cry when her friend, when Hanna, was dragged away.
Mother too. Father too. The pity and affection and hatred that surfaced in their eyes whenever they looked at her — it hurt too much. She wished she had never understood her mother's heart as her mother hurled abuse through her tears. She wished she had never felt her father's heart as he fled into silence.
Brother too. Her brother, who instead of blaming her comforted her to the very end, saying it was all right. She had wanted, more than anything, to protect him. She had believed this power existed for that very purpose. She had failed.
Let everything die.
Her hand trembled. Reality was never like a storybook. No hero came to save anyone, and there was no princess. Only a dragon, locked in its tower, wailing its hatred at the world. And that dragon now longed for freedom — freedom from life and from the world itself, praying for the tower to collapse completely. And its beginning would be this maid.
Squeeze.
Slowly, the grip around the throat tightened further. But then—
"I... it... hurts...!"
The instant her eyes met the maid's — weeping, thrashing — her brother's figure overlapped with the girl before her.
Elaine... your brother... is all right...
"Ngh...!"
Before she knew it, her grip loosened. Thud! The maid dropped from the air to the floor.
"Cough, cough! Haaagh, cough!"
Elaine looked down at her, startled. She had steeled her heart so completely — and yet a revulsion was rising from somewhere deep inside. I... what am I...
Would this be what her brother had wanted? She didn't know. If she did this, would she become someone else entirely? She didn't know.
But it feels like I'm about to cross a river with no way back. The thought came to her all at once. Just one more step from here, and she would become a monster.
...I'm not a monster.
Furious as she was, she was still a person. She wanted to remain a person. And so, instead, Elaine swept her hand to the side. At the same instant, the great door crumpled like paper and hurtled across the room, slamming into the wall.
BANG!
With a thunderous roar, brilliant sunlight poured blindingly into the room. She turned and pointed down the corridor, speaking to the maid.
"Aaah..."
Leave. Before my heart changes.
The maid fled the room in a panic, face white with terror. And then she screamed with everything she had: "Th-the Princess's power is rampaging!!!"
Following that terrified scream, Elaine began to walk. Step. Step. Leaving the dark room she had been confined to for so long, toward the radiant light flooding the corridor. Almost immediately, guards and servants appeared at the far end of the hall.
"Summon the priests!"
"Inform Her Majesty at once! Quickly!"
Panicked voices. They stared at the Princess with faces frozen in shock. And then, one of them made the mistake of saying the thing that should never be said.
"Monster..."
The short word plunged into her like a dagger. "Ah..."
In the moment she heard it, Elaine understood. To these people, she was not a pitiful soul. She was nothing but a monster on a chain.
So that's how it is.
Her heart shifted once more. Away from a human heart, into the heart of a dragon caged in its tower. If that's what you fear — then I'll become it.
She slowly extended her right hand. And clenched it into a fist.
CRACK! CRUNCH!
With a hideous sound, the pillars of the corridor began to crush inward. "My — my goodness...!" "The incantation — the Blessing of Peace isn't working!?" "The castle is coming down! Run, run!!"
The incantations the priests had been so confident in were useless. Elaine had already become coldly burning flame itself.
"Ugh... nn..."
It was all right if no words came. She didn't need to speak anymore. She could simply crush everything and leave — to somewhere no one would ever find her. To a place with neither hope nor despair, and then... to my brother's side...
That was when it happened.
"No, Your Highness!!!"
A woman's voice, resolute yet young, rang in her ears. A familiar voice. "...Ah." She turned her head slowly. And she saw.
"Haa, haa... please, you mustn't..."
Her own personal maid. Unlike her — always emotional, always full of life, always at her side. The girl with the red hair. Hanna Meyer stood there, staring at her, gasping for breath.
And then—
"Princess Elaine."
One more voice. Calm, and heavy with exhaustion. "...It's been a long time."
Her friend. Her only understanding friend. A man with black hair and black eyes.
"The first time since we met at the royal crypt."
The Central Officer stood beside Hanna. He must have sprinted here at full speed — his clothes and hair were in disarray, and his breathing was ragged beyond measure. But it was unmistakably the Nathan Kell she had seen before.
Her two precious people. The two she had thought she would never, ever see again — both standing before her now.
"...Ah."
The strength drained slowly from her hand. The tremors shaking the corridor gradually subsided.
Am I dreaming? She didn't know. If this was a dream, she wished she'd never wake. She wished she could forget the cruel reality and live inside it forever.
The Central Officer spoke.
"Your letters never came, no matter how long I waited. So I came because I was worried."
In this heartless world, there were no heroes.
But there were friends.