The One Who Killed the Noisy Wind (1)
The One Who Killed the Noisy Wind (1)
#129
"Memories with my beloved older brother."
Aha. So this was a diary of sorts. And filled with memories of me, no less.
Flutter.
Reading the whole thing looked like it would take too long, so I flipped to a page roughly in the middle and opened it.
Flap!
At the crisp sound of turning paper, Lily, who had been flailing about, went still.
I read it aloud.
"《The Day Do-yun Grilled Meat for Me》.
Today, Do-yun grilled meat for me.
I kept calling him my big sister, so he got annoyed and told me to call him my big brother. He was a strange person. Anyway, Do-yun grilled meat for me in the garden. The meat Do-yun grilled was the most delicious in the world.
It was definitely more delicious than what the royal palace chef in fairy tale books makes.
I had never actually eaten meat prepared by a royal palace chef, but I was certain it was true anyway.
Do-yun laughed, saying I eat a lot. But I liked seeing Do-yun laugh, so I purposely ate even more. My stomach got so full it felt like it would burst, but I was happy because Do-yun stroked my head.
Do-yun's hands are big. Big enough to cover my entire head. I hope Do-yun's hands stay big even when I grow up. Then I can ask him to pat my head forever."
"Oh, how admirable. To have had such thoughts."
Lily, seemingly embarrassed and with tears welling up in her eyes, listened quietly to my recital.
She made no particular move to stop me, so I simply flipped a few more pages and read on.
"《The Day Do-yun Got a Girlfriend》"
I saw Lily flinch and tremble all over.
Oh, so I end up dating someone? At a men-forbidden academy?
Let's read it first.
"It seems Do-yun got a girlfriend.
According to Do-yun, she's an incredibly pretty person. He said she's the prettiest person in the world, or something like that.
I laughed.
It was okay.
I was perfectly fine.
No matter who Do-yun likes, I'm a good girl, so I can congratulate him.
But the fork I was holding broke.
I supposed I had gotten stronger.
Do-yun said his girlfriend has pretty hair, pretty eyes, and a pretty smile.
He said she was the prettiest in the world.
So I asked him.
'Prettier than Lily?'
Do-yun thought for a moment.
He thought.
He thought.
He thought.
He thought for too long.
Then Do-yun finally spoke.
'Our princess is the prettiest in the world.'
I won.
Do-yun said I was the prettiest in the world.
As expected, Do-yun is my wonderful prince.
Even though he sometimes gets lost, can't climb down from trees, eats way too much meat, and says weird things.
But thinking about it again, a problem came up.
Do-yun said I was the prettiest in the world, but he also said his girlfriend was the prettiest in the world.
There should only be one prettiest person in the world.
But now there are two.
I was not very good at math, but I knew it was strange when one became two.
So one of those must be a lie!
Did Do-yun lie?
Either way, it doesn't matter which one was the lie.
If I kill Do-yun's girlfriend, then in the end, won't there be only one prettiest person in the world?
After all, the one marrying Do-yun should be me."
"............"
My voice, as I read Lily's diary aloud, had gradually grown quieter.
"Young lady."
"What."
"Why does your conclusion end up like that?"
"I was young..."
Teasing Lily while she trembled and shivered was far more enjoyable than I'd expected.
"Haha. Did you want to marry me that badly?"
Lily couldn't even refute it and just kept quivering.
"But you didn't actually kill her, right?"
"............"
Young lady, why are you being so terrifying by not answering...
She didn't kill her, right?
"... I didn't kill her."
Phew.
Anyway, it seemed all the stories from her childhood were written like this.
Wasn't it practically an unwritten rule that when they were kids, girls played princess and boys played fight? Even from a gender-equality perspective, I honestly didn't think that was just a stereotype. Some clichés existed because they were true, after all.
Anyway, I figured that as I went further into the diary, there'd be entries written by a more grown-up Lily, so I flipped the book way toward the back.
"《Faced My 20th Birthday》"
Oh.
So she still kept a diary at 20?
"Today is my twentieth birthday.
Guests came from all over and congratulated me.
Mom told me to greet the other Countesses, but I wasn't really happy.
Because turning 20 means the day I have to part with Mom isn't far off. That time might not have come yet, but my heart ached thinking that a letter regarding Mom's lifespan could fly to the Duke's agent any day.
So I slipped out of the banquet hall and headed to the cave in Pale-Green Forest that Do-yun made for me."
The page ended there.
"Your thoughts seem to have deepened quite a bit."
"You've become quite thoughtful."
"Yeah..."
As I stroked the antique-feeling paper, I could feel traces of tears here and there.
"Your love for your mother comes through very clearly."
"Because once I become an adult, I won't know when Mom might pass away."
Without a word, I stroked Lily's head.
"... Don't treat me like a kid."
"I'm doing it because I'm proud of you."
As I stroked her head for a moment, a quiet murmur escaped Lily's lips.
"Now give me back my diary."
"Aw. Can't I read just a little more? This is fun."
"Do you have a voyeuristic streak for reading things other people wrote?"
"I didn't, but looking at this, I think I might be developing one."
"Haa......"
Lily lay down next to me, curled up like a snail.
"Anyway, a cave in Pale-Green Forest. Is that this place, by any chance?"
Lily lifted her head briefly to look outside the cave and murmured softly.
"This isn't a cave, it's a secret base."
"A secret base? The naming sense is godawful."
"To correct you, Do-yun gave it that name. When I was eleven, Do-yun kept spouting weird stuff like, 'Everyone needs their own hideout.'"
"... Did I say that?"
"Yeah, with a super serious face."
Ta-da. I was the culprit!
"So I helped him."
Lily said, looking toward the inside of the cave with a nostalgic face.
In her blue eyes, for just a fleeting moment, the mischievous light of her eleven-year-old self must have flickered. Unless I was mistaken, that is.
"We'd weave branches together and insist they were chairs, argue that a wide, flat rock was a table. On rainy days, we'd hide in here and dry our wet hair, and when we were hungry, we'd share cookies we'd secretly brought."
"......"
"And Do-yun called this place our kingdom."
"I did?"
"Yeah."
Lily narrowed her eyes playfully.
"I'm the princess, and Do-yun was the lost knight."
"Why am I a lost knight instead of a prince?"
"Well, because Do-yun always got lost and became a missing child."
"That's not something you made up, right? Sounds like a lie."
"But he was a knight who could find his way well when coming to his princess."
At those words, I fell silent for a moment.
I looked toward the cave entrance.
A small, shabby hole in the rock. The magnificent scenery spreading out beyond it.
For eleven-year-old Lily and the me who had just passed twenty, this place might really have been a kingdom, a hideout, and the safest place in the world.
"Though, these are memories I don't have..."
As I quietly murmured, Lily tilted her head slightly and asked.
"... The lost memories, shall I return them?"
Come to think of it, I'd even forgotten my original purpose for coming to the future. From the very beginning, I'd come here to retrieve my lost memories, right?
"Have you changed your mind? Saying you'll return them all of a sudden."
"Because now I think even if I return them, Do-yun won't break down."
Would there be side effects—
"Is it something that takes a long time?"
"No, you could get them back in a fleeting instant."
There was no reason to refuse—
"In exchange, you can't only get back specific memories."
"What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Have you ever heard this saying, by chance? Memory belongs to the soul, and life belongs to the flesh."
A phrase I felt like I'd heard before...
"Your soul and body here right now have been eroded by time for far too long. So if you get back the lost memories— you'll also receive the memories of the past thirty years that you haven't experienced, all at once."
In short, even without understanding the principle, it meant I'd be getting a life spoiler for thirty years. To be exact, a life spoiler for twenty-something years? Since she said I'd been asleep for the last few years.
"There's no other way?"
Lily cut me off, speaking with absolute finality.
"Yeah. There isn't."
If an authority on soul magic was shutting it down so definitively... It might be best to decide on this a bit more carefully.
"Can I decide just a little later?"
"Well, suit yourself. I can treat you anytime."
I saw Lily let out a very small sigh— but it probably wasn't that important.
***
***
#130
Lying face down on the bedding, I continued reading Lily's diary. This diary, filled with cute stories, really was worthy of being called a treasure trove.
Lily was just watching me, not seeming to mind at all.
Meaning she had no interest in the diary since I'd already discovered everything.
I felt that was actually more like her.
Flutter—
Was this the end? Having breezed through that long diary, it now seemed like I'd almost reached the final pages.
But wasn't this a bit strange?
Especially the story from after Lily became an adult— aside from the birthday story from earlier, only a few pages were written.
Given that several dozen pages at the back weren't catching on my fingertips— it was only human nature to find that extremely odd.
Look carefully at this.
The paper wasn't stuck together, nor was it torn.
The pages clearly existed, but my fingers just slipped right over them, as if gliding across the surface.
"A barrier? A seal? What's this..."
When I narrowed my eyes, I saw an extremely faint blue pattern imprinted on those back pages.
It was a magical imprint, as fine as thread and as complex as a spiderweb.
Clearly, this wasn't just scribbles.
"Young lady."
"...... Huh?"
She seemed to have dozed off slightly, as Lily's voice came back one beat late.
"There's something like a seal here?"
"Huh?"
Lily's body stiffened rigidly.
Gacha-aaaaah—!!!!
Hidden red page secured.
This was it.
It was in these back pages.
There was something Lily wanted to hide even more than the diary entries up until now.
Looking at the level of the seal, I had a feeling that if I used my Unique Magic, I could probably break it quite easily. Though that was just a hunch.
"Can I break this seal?"
Lily's hand caught my wrist, incredibly quickly.
"No."
"If you say that, it makes me want to break it even more."
There was a very strong grip in Lily's small hand.
A grip filled with desperate sincerity, completely different from the flailing from embarrassment just moments ago.
But no chance!
I immediately began chanting my Unique Magic.
『Unique Magic—Equiva...』
Lily, seemingly realizing she couldn't stop me with force, spoke to me urgently.
"W, wait a sec! Wait...!"
"Hmm?"
"If you break that now, I'll kill myself. I'll really kill myself????"
I knew full well that doing that wouldn't kill you.
What on earth was it? It was probably just some 19+ content or something. Like an account of her first experience. I couldn't understand why she was overreacting like this now.
Lily whispered into my ear, her breath ticklish against my skin.
"Instead, Lily will have sex with you. I saw earlier that your cock got hard."
Did she think I'd fall for such a shallow temptation?
"It's not hard now, though."
Looking at her left eye, it had grown very moist.
Her gaze, a mix of embarrassment and excitement. She brought my fingers to her pussy and kept murmuring.
"Please, pleasee... Do-yun, you want to do it too, right? Lily gets wet fast, so we can do it right now... Please..."
It wasn't that I didn't want to...
But wasn't this a bit too weak as a negotiation condition?
We could have sex later anyway. Besides, hadn't we promised not to do it earlier?
Lily, perhaps reading my thoughts on my face, spoke desperately.
"I-if we have sex and you don't break the seal now..."
"If we do?"
"I-if you still want to see it... Lily will show you herself peeing here..."
For a moment, my mouth opened and closed, trying to say something but losing the words.
"Squatting down in front of Do-yun... showing you everything... letting you watch the warm stuff trickle... out... I'll allow it. If you want, I'll even let you put your cock right into my pussy and make me squirt pee... Please pleasee...♥"
Her soft hand reached down and groped the front of my pants. I didn't particularly stop her. I just neatly folded the diary and set it aside properly.
Negotiation concluded.