Saintess Irina (9)
After raising her overall combat rating to new heights with the elixirs Irina had offered as tokens of apology, Esmeralda was discharged from the hospital — and immediately requested a private meeting with her.
"Let's have a real, honest talk now, shall we? No Jim around to fawn over, after all."
"So the Hero has stopped hiding her true nature, I see."
"You already knew, didn't you?"
"Hehe."
"……And what about you? How about you stop playing the innocent little saint?"
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, really now."
Does that woman have no conscience at all?
Esmeralda clicked her tongue at Irina's shamelessly thick-skinned attitude.
"Fine. Keep playing the good little girl. I'm curious how long you can keep it up."
"Hero, such nasty words are bad for your emotional well-being."
"……"
Esmeralda barely managed to hold back the torrent of curses rising in her throat.
Still — now that they'd laid their cards on the table, their relationship had grown closer than before, hadn't it? At the very least, there would be no more backstabbing from Irina about turning her into a Holy Relic.
Probably.
Of course, if she actually died, Irina could no doubt fashion some kind of pseudo-Relic out of her corpse. But the fact that the woman no longer intended to kill her — that alone was a genuine relief.
Even if she remained, as ever, an unknowable time bomb.
"So, you and me. Are we friends now?"
"Of course."
"……No, never mind. Forget I asked."
Watching Irina answer without a flicker of expression, Esmeralda's face turned grave.
That was a lie.
Even through the surface-level psychology visible to her eyes, the affirmation had seemed sincere — but she had personally witnessed Irina manipulating her own surface thoughts through brainwashing before. The only things she could trust were her gut instinct, and Irina's usual conduct.
Weighing everything together, she arrived at a single conclusion: Irina was still a bitch who lied as easily as she breathed.
"So then…… what on earth brought about this change of heart?"
Esmeralda had clearly lost that fight. And yet she had survived. Why? Her own theory was that Irina had been hesitating from the very start.
The woman had looked like someone backed to the edge of a cliff. Which was why Esmeralda had planned to beat some sense into her, if that was what it took.
Granted, the one who'd ended up beaten like a dog had been her — but there was every chance Irina had given up of her own accord.
She had wanted someone to stop her. She'd held to a 1-on-1 with Esmeralda even though the combined forces of the Heavenly God Order could have subdued her easily. She'd scattered the groundwork for her own defeat all over the board.
Not that I have any right to call her the loser…… I'd have won too if I'd had that kind of support from the start. Yeah. This was all about resources.
She thought this as she drank down the elixirs Irina had handed over in apology. Esmeralda had never tasted one before — this thing the other woman apparently consumed like it was rice. To think she'd been hoarding something this good all to herself all this time. The unfairness of it was unbearable.
"Why did you let me live?"
"Because I didn't believe the Hero was lying. If a Holy Relic cannot be made from the Hero herself, what would be the point? It would all be for nothing."
"Is that so?"
More or less what she'd expected.
A girl driven back and back until, at the very end, she'd been cornered into denying her own self.
Esmeralda had met plenty of people like that. On her journey, many of the enemies who'd turned against her had been souls mired in exactly such wretched circumstances.
Most of them, even knowing they were wrong, couldn't stop — and so never did, right up to the bitter end. Irina had been different.
It wasn't hard to understand. When it came to the mind, no one could hope to match her.
And yet, even so, there were parts that didn't add up.
"You're looking awfully well, though?"
After being driven to the wall like that — after abandoning everything — Irina looked far too healthy now.
"Do I? Perhaps it's because I've found my answer at last, after such long deliberation."
Irina looked refreshed. And that artlessly innocent expression — the very one Esmeralda would normally have dismissed as an act — somehow felt, for once, utterly genuine. Yes. Like a girl in love.
Then who was the object of that love?
There was no need to ask.
Wait.
The demon spy. Jim.
Esmeralda had assumed all along that Irina harbored a certain fondness for Jim, but this time was different.
This was real.
The real thing. Beyond any excuse or explanation.
The genuine visage of a girl who had fallen in love.
No, no, hold on a second. ……Huh?
Irina's attitude toward Jim had, up to now, been nothing more than fondness. But now it was love.
Her innocent, wide-eyed performance had somehow turned into the truth itself.
And this woman — she does know Jim is a demon, right?
Esmeralda agonized over it. Honestly, judging by how she'd threatened to examine him with holy power back in the hospital room, she clearly knew. And considering how thoroughly she'd seen through Esmeralda's own acting, seeing through Jim's would have been trivial.
Yes — she knew Jim was a demon. But that assumption contained one glaring contradiction.
The woman who calls demons "bugs" is in love with one?
If Irina knew Jim's true identity, none of it fit together.
Her earlier fondness, granted, could be excused. It had essentially been bullying.
But if she had truly known his identity all along, then she must also have known her actions were driving Jim to the very border of death. How brutally she had tortured him with holy power, after all.
Yes — up to now, it had been nothing more than the affection one shows a pet. The delight of stumbling upon a rare animal.
But love? LOOOOVE?
That was a fetish. And not just anyone's — in Irina's case, it couldn't be anything else.
"Um, Irina?"
"Yes!"
"So…… just asking, just in case — you do know what Jim really is, right?"
"Hehe, of course. As if I could fail to know the true nature of the one I love?"
"R-right. Well, we might be understanding things differently, so let me be clear. What is Jim's true identity?"
With a smile as sweet and certain as could be, Irina declared:
"Jim is the Heavenly God. Yes. Right now his memory is surely clouded by that filthy demon blood, but……"
"……"
Looking at Irina as she answered with eyes as hollow and empty as a vacant lot, Esmeralda could not hide her desolation.
She'd known Irina was cornered in any number of ways — but never imagined she'd broken down quite this badly……
Conscienceless, black-hearted bitch that she was!
"I see……"
Esmeralda pitied her. She simply hadn't been able to imagine a person broken to this degree.
"If that's what you believe, then…… well. I suppose there's nothing to be done."
Not now. There was no way Esmeralda could cure Irina's madness as things stood.
Her pain and her wounds ran deeper than the abyss — something as small as an exchange of true feelings was never going to reach them.
Yes. This was her second objective now. A journey that would prove every bit as arduous as felling the Demon King itself.
"Irina."
"Yes."
"I will save you. I swear it."
"I'm sorry?"
"Just remember that I will."
"Uh, um…… understood."
Esmeralda steeled her resolve.
Irina was, for now, her friend. And no longer just a friend — a friend she could speak to with nothing held back.
For Esmeralda, who'd had barely one soul — Tina — she could even call by that name, the feeling was an entirely novel one.
Of course, it remained equally true that Irina differed from a time bomb in name only.
"Then may I ask one thing in return? You do intend to defeat the Demon King, don't you? And until then, you're keeping Jim around as a means of mediating between our factions. Am I wrong?"
"Well…… yes."
Esmeralda wasn't particularly surprised that Irina knew her true intentions. The woman had already anticipated Esmeralda's ability to read surface thoughts, so it stood to reason she also knew why Jim was being dragged around in the first place.
"Then once everything is over — might you hand Jim over to me?"
"……Jim?"
"Yes. Once the Demon King is defeated, the Hero Party will disband anyway. If he's only being kept on to keep Milia in check, surely there'll be no further need of it."
Irina padded in soft circles around Esmeralda, murmuring into her ear. She looked, for all the world, like a cat stalking a mouse — and Esmeralda couldn't help but squirm at the sight.
[Note: That the Hero would spy on another's thoughts at will — I am beginning to suspect she has a voyeurism kink.]
So now she's just flat-out editing the thing.
Esmeralda prayed it wasn't sincere.
There had always been parts that surface psychology alone couldn't interpret — but now even those were out of reach. As for why Irina had revealed that her brainwashing effects applied to Esmeralda as well, the woman was apparently doing exactly as she pleased.
"Hero, let's be honest with each other, shall we? After the Demon King subjugation is over — you were planning to dispose of Jim, weren't you?"
"What do you take me for? So long as he doesn't resist, I intended to let him go — out of consideration for everything we've been through."
"And if he resists?"
"Then what reason would I have to spare a spy bastard who resisted to the very end?"
The reason Esmeralda had kept Jim alive was, simply, that he had never crossed the line. Seducing information out of Irina and Milia from their respective organizations was certainly a punishable offense — but she herself had enabled it, after all.
Though looking at Irina now, the odds were high that most of that information had been doctored too. It had struck her as strange how suspiciously smoothly everything involving the Heavenly God Order kept going.
"In that case, you might as well give him to me."
"If I gave him to you? What would you do with him?"
"Why such sudden interest in what's mine?"
"No, you absolute lunatic—"
Irina was already speaking as though Jim belonged to her, as though he were in her hands already. Watching her, Esmeralda could barely contain her horror.
A smart woman going insane was truly, unfathomably terrifying.
If she really handed Jim over to Irina, wouldn't she end up doing something far too cruel to him?
Then again, there was all that history between them……
But Esmeralda trusted Irina.
Never mind opening up his skull. Never mind draining the blood from his entire body and isolating the demon blood alone. Never mind brainwashing him into becoming an even greater "Heavenly God" than Irina imagined.
Such thoughts did flicker for an instant through Esmeralda's mind.
But one way or another, in the end, Jim would be happy.
He might no longer be the Jim she knew — but if he could be happy, surely that was all that mattered?
"……I'll think about it."
And so, rather than a clear refusal, Esmeralda chose a vague deferral.