Thank You for Everything
"Kairen... thank you for everything."
"Rhea... don't say that. Please. The surgery is going to go just fine... so don't. Don't say things like that."
"Hehe. I really wanted to go with you, you know. To that floor of the Tower where you can see the stars..."
"...Once the surgery's over, we'll go together."
"And if it... doesn't work?"
"What do you mean, if it doesn't work? You're a genius. People used to say you'd turn the history of magic on its head."
"Oh, please. What good is any of that when all I can do is lie here?"
Rhea laughed. Beyond the infirmary window, the sunset seeped through and settled across her face.
"Kairen, some water?"
"...Yeah."
I lifted the cup and brought it to her lips. She drank in greedy gulps, and half of it spilled, soaking the blanket.
"Ah. I spilled it again."
"...Dummy."
I said it while dabbing the blanket dry with a towel.
Even pressing her lips together took more strength than she had left. Her body was already collapsing from the inside.
"Kairen."
"...Yeah."
"If I die..."
"Don't say that."
"No, listen. If I die, you'll end up serving someone else, won't you?"
"..."
"You have to be good to them too. Okay?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. I didn't even want to imagine a future like that.
"That doesn't mean you get to cheat, though. You just have to treat them well. Got it?"
"...Obviously."
"Pinky swear."
Her wasted little finger wound around mine. Desperately. As if this were the last time.
"...Kairen. Are you crying?"
"I'm not."
"Liar. I can see your nose turning red."
"..."
"Hehe. Crying Kairen is handsome too."
That laugh was quieter than usual. What I had taken, until a moment ago, for nothing more than a lingering cough, I realized too late had at some point begun to take the place of her laughter.
Before long, a healer came in. The surgery was ready. I took Rhea's thin, cold hand — just as I had the first day I ever held it.
After the healer took her away, I was left alone in the corridor outside the operating room. The strength went out of my legs. I leaned my back against the wall, both hands clenched tight together.
Rhea Valentia.
A mage of the necromancy school, and the young lady of the noble house I served.
From the time she was small, her staggering talent had set the Magic Tower buzzing, and I — an orphan taken in as a servant — had stayed glued to her side since childhood, attending her in everything.
A servant falling in love with the master he served.
Cliché, isn't it?
That was how we fell in love, across the gulf of rank.
Rhea was the first one to say the word out loud.
She was fourteen. The year her illness began to show itself in earnest.
When she collapsed without warning in the hallway and I scooped her up, her body was unnaturally light — as if nothing were left of her but bone. I laid her in the infirmary and was drawing the blanket up when she caught my sleeve.
"Kairen."
"Yes."
"I... I like you."
"..."
"I like you. I mean it."
I thought my heart had stopped.
"My lady, I am your—"
"Don't call me that. Call me Rhea."
"...Rhe...a."
"Hehe."
Smiling with that face already gone pale from illness, she looked, strangely enough, like the brightest thing in the world.
"I like you too."
The answer was that simple. It had to be. I had understood this feeling long before she ever did.
But...
Rhea's necromancy ate her body as she grew.
The essence of necromancy is the handling of death. That death, however, was never borrowed from somewhere else. The price was always paid out of the caster themselves.
The greater the talent, the more the magic took — as if her body itself were the material for her craft.
From the time she passed fifteen, she could not take a single step beyond her sickbed.
Talent she had, and that was all. Not a soul worried over a young lady who did nothing but occupy a bed. They assigned her one servant and simply waited for the girl who did nothing but waste food to die.
"Kairen. I walked all the way to the door today."
She had said it so proudly, once. Twelve steps from the bed to the door. That was all. Standing in front of her as her eyes shone because she had done it, I forced a smile onto my face.
"You did great. Tomorrow let's try for the hallway."
Rhea never did walk that hallway.
In the midst of all that neglect I nursed her from morning to night, and in that tiny sickroom we became each other's world — hers, and mine. When we tossed jokes back and forth and giggled ourselves stupid, we could even forget this reality.
Creeeak.
At the sound of the door I lurched to my feet.
"Healer... the surgery... the surgery went well, didn't it...?"
"...I'm sorry."
"Ah... aaaah... AAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!"
The strength went out of my legs. I crumpled to the floor and screamed like a madman.
If this was how it ended, then what were healers even for? How did an incompetent like this, who could not even protect my one small world, have the right to hold that title?
"You useless bastard... Give... give me back my Rhea!!!"
I threw myself at the healer and punched him like a man possessed.
Thud. Thu-ud.
His teeth flew in every direction and blood sprayed. But there was no resentment in his eyes, and no anger either. It was as if he pitied me. As if I were just one more case among the countless he had already seen.
"Gh... GAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"
Please don't look at me like that. I don't want your pity. The only one allowed to pity me is Rhea. The only one allowed to look at me with those tender eyes is Rhea.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I was drawing my fist back to hit him again when something seized me hard from behind, and my body went tumbling.
I looked down at myself. Several translucent hands had hold of me.
Magic. Mana, shaped into the form of physical hands.
"Let go of me!!!!"
"...Please compose yourself. That healer has done nothing wrong."
"Fuck... fuck, I said let go!!"
I thrashed with everything I had. It didn't matter. I couldn't do a thing.
I can't use magic. The only thing I can do is Magic Analysis — a worthless innate ability that lets me observe magic composed of mana and pick apart its structure.
Why worthless? Because I don't have a shred of aptitude for mana. A pearl necklace on a pig, as they say.
Which is why I could offer no resistance at all to the magic pinning me now, and why I had to hang there, caught, as useless as ever.
The crime of swinging a fist at a healer. The crime of a commoner, an orphan, a servant daring to strike someone whose station sat far above his own. Whatever punishment came down, I would have had nothing to say for myself.
But no one dragged me away. As if this had been expected all along, the people around me only looked on with sorry eyes. The relationship between Rhea and me had been famous enough.
"Hh... hhhk... hhhhhk... Rhea..."
I just sat there like that, face buried, and sobbed. It was all an incompetent man like me could do.
When I came back to myself, I was lying in the private room allotted to servants.
The instant I opened my eyes I reached a trembling hand into the empty air. It felt as if Rhea were still there. But that was all. Only the wind brushed my fingers.
I looked around the room, and a small scrap of paper tacked to the wall caught my eye.
To Kairen.
If I make it through the surgery, let's go see the stars together. Promise!
— Rhea
She had written it in secret the night before the surgery. Come all the way to this room without my knowing.
Ah. So that was why she had called another servant last night. She couldn't even sit up, and she had come here while I slept just to put up this one note.
The handwriting was crooked, as if her hand had had no strength left in it. A little star had been doodled onto the word stars.
I pulled the note against my chest.
"Haha..."
This single scrap of paper was everything Rhea had left behind in this world.
The genius who had shaken the Magic Tower? The one who would rewrite the history of necromancy? Nobody remembers any of that. A young lady who died in a sickroom. That is all the world has to say about Rhea.
I am the only one who remembers her.
The way she always spilled half her water. The dimple that only appeared on her left cheek when she smiled. The way she would yank the blanket up to her nose during a scary story and still insist she wasn't scared at all.
I am the only one who knows. The only one who remembers.
And that "I" is nothing. One orphan servant who doesn't amount to a thing.
"Haha..."
If Rhea is gone, there is no reason to live. She was everything I had.
I climbed onto the chair and tied a rope to the ceiling. Then I set my chin in the circle the rope had made.
It was a very simple set of motions. I didn't even break a sweat. Tying the knot was the only part that gave me any trouble, I suppose.
I slipped the note into my clothes.
And I kicked the chair.
"Ghhhk!! Kh... khhk... ghhk..."
The last thought I had before I died?
Ah. I finally get to see Rhea.
"Kh..."
My consciousness receded.
Receded,
and receded—
and was gone.
And then, darkness.
...There was nothing.
No time, no space, no pain. A complete void, without even a place for my voice to echo when I called her name.
How long did I drift in that?
"Nnh..."
"...This voice... it can't be... Rhea...???"
I opened my eyes and looked around. The space was unfamiliar — a ramshackle house of the sort you would find in the back alleys of a poor city.
But no matter how wide I stretched my eyes, Rhea was nowhere to be seen.
"Rhea... Rhea...? Where are you...?"
The voice was ringing from inside my own head.
"What... what the hell is this."
Wait. This is my voice? What is this paper-thin sound coming out of me?
"...?"
I looked down at myself, the way she said...
Hands far smaller and bonier than the ones I remembered. The floor, so much closer now that my eye level had dropped. ...And a small, soft swell at my chest.
"Wh... wha...?"
"U... UAAAAAAAH!!"
And then, darkness once more.