Arden Feltner (4)
I laid out the whole story for Arden.
Well, calling it the "whole story" was generous—far from everything I told him was true.
The only parts grounded in fact were the background of the Magician's Forest incident and how it was resolved. As for how I'd been able to foresee their ambush, or why I'd known about the Followers' existence in advance—those I simply fabricated on the spot.
Even so, Arden seemed to believe every word. I suppose that was only natural; I'd rehearsed the account dozens, hundreds of times through the night before finally delivering it. More than anything, the reason I'd given for joining the forest expedition through my Field Trip Privilege lined up too neatly with the timing of the attack, which lent my story an air of credibility.
With the telling done, a brief silence settled over us. His eyes, sunken deep in thought, wavered for a while before lifting to meet mine. The line of his face still struck me as oddly slender for a man, and it needled at my attention, but I forced myself to ignore it and held his gaze. I didn't need to ask to know he had something he wanted to say.
"I get why you need my cooperation. But Bell—why me?"
"Why you? What do you mean?"
"I still don't really get it. How you found out I've been hiding my strength, and why you'd tell someone like me—someone you've only known about all this for a short time—something so critical."
A fair question to the core.
I had an answer prepared for this too, so I wasn't particularly flustered. If anything, I'd been waiting for it—delivering this next piece would only deepen his trust in everything else I'd said.
I tipped back the canteen beside me, wet my throat, and opened my mouth.
"I told you I've been tracking the Followers since before I enrolled, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, in the course of that, I also looked into the people believed to have fallen into their hands. And among the names on that list, yours father's came up by chance."
Father.
At that single word, the blue eyes fixed on me grew wider and wider. Exactly the reaction from the original story—not that I could blame him. To this boy, his father had been his only family and his pillar, and the name "Followers"—the ones who'd taken him—was something like the base of his skull, untouchable.
"Dillard Feltner. Am I right?"
"...You really do know everything."
When his father's name left my lips, Arden let out a hollow laugh, as if throwing both hands up in surrender.
"Honestly, I was half in doubt at first. Feltner isn't the only surname out there, after all. But once I factored in the age on the family register, it lined up exactly with academy enrollment season."
"You could make a living as a detective."
I couldn't exactly spit out it's all a load of nonsense to the man marveling at me, so I just gave a vague nod.
"After that, it's simple. Just flip the perspective and ask yourself: if I were Dillard Feltner's child, how would I act?"
"And through that, you figured out I was deliberately erasing my presence while enrolled... I see. That's it."
Arden nodded a couple of times, looking as if a weight had lifted, and his expression brightened. Watching him, I sidled in with a small bit of flattery at the edge of the conversation—one meant to do honor to his late father.
"Oh, and I figured the child who inherited Dillard Feltner's grit couldn't possibly be weak."
"Pfft. Dad would've loved hearing that."
Arden burst out laughing and fiddled with the rim of his canteen. All things considered, I supposed it simply made him happy that someone remembered and acknowledged his father's existence.
"At this point, I don't suppose you need an answer to your second question."
Figuring that much covered every doubt he had, I tossed the remark off casually and drained what was left of my canteen. However much of a pushover this guy was by nature, this answer was a surer bet than playing the sentimental friend card.
"Yeah. You don't have to. Sorry for asking more than I needed to."
"Nothing to apologize for. It was information you needed, given where you stand."
I shrugged at the sight of him apologizing for something that wasn't remotely an apology, then brushed myself off and stood. From the position of someone who needed every usable card he could get, nailing down facts like these—however tedious—was the right move. If he'd gotten suspicious midway through and bolted on his own, I'd have been the one left looking like a fool.
In any case, now that I'd succeeded in winning this guy's heart over, there was no reason to waste more time here. All I wanted was to get back to the dorm and collapse onto that ratty bed of mine, so I figured I'd rinse the sweat off in the showers and head straight back.
"Um... Bell?"
Just as I turned toward the door on the far side of the entrance leading to the showers, Arden's voice stopped me, and I glanced back over my shoulder to meet his eyes.
"What?"
"...Thank you. For trusting me."
Somehow cringe-worthy words came flowing out of him, those eyes gazing at me with an almost tender warmth. Well, no wonder—this was the original protagonist who'd charmed women with every line in the book, and here he was delivering that kind of line without a flicker of change in his expression. Any other girl might have felt her heart flutter. Not me, though. Hearing that sort of thing from another guy just curdles the stomach.
If anything, had this guy actually been a girl, I might have felt a quiet glow of pride—ah, so my favorability did go up a bit. Damn it all.
"Spare me the sappy stuff and just go shower. I feel gross enough to die."
"R-right. Sure. By the way, are the showers here private stalls?"
"Yeah. Private stalls."
Having often relied on the training hall myself, I could answer that with certainty. The Empire's foremost educational institution, after all—most of its shared facilities were optimized for the cadets' convenience. Apparently Arden had never actually come to the training hall before, which was why he hadn't known.
Private or communal, what difference does it make anyway?
He'd always been unusually particular about his privacy, so it somehow suited him—at the same time, the more I looked at him, the more peculiar he seemed. What's a shower, really? Wouldn't it be no trouble at all to use one alongside everyone else? I could understand it if the feeling was I'd rather not be seen even while washing this wretched male body—but still.
Leaving that fleeting question behind, I headed for the showers with Arden, hoping to wash away the bitter taste of the sparring session.
Within the billowing darkness, a blurry human silhouette flickered into view.
Sirius—a man with a robe pulled deep over his head—knelt on one knee before an altar painted entirely in black, his head bowed low. To any observer, it might have looked like a prayer; or like an offering of submission directed at empty air.
For a stretch, stillness reigned.
Then—THUD!
A dull impact erupted from Sirius's abdomen, and his body was flung skyward. It was a shock that felt as though his very organs were being wrung inside out, yet even so, Sirius wiped the blood trickling from his mouth with an utterly impassive gaze.
— Sirius.
A strange voice, impossible to place as either man's or woman's, filled the space. As if mana itself were laced through it, Sirius felt his body bending of its own accord.
"...Yes, Proxy."
— Did our Lord's command seem trivial to you? Or did you take me, the one delivering it, lightly?
"I beg your—"
THUD!
His body, rushing to apologize, was hurled skyward once more with another dull crack. Buffeted this way and that by a force he could not resist, like a tree branch whipped about in a typhoon, it was only much later that Sirius's body crashed down onto the cold floor with a heavy slap.
"Kgh—! Cough! Cough!"
Over the fabric of his robe, torn to ribbons by the impacts, Sirius vomited up a mouthful of blood. Trembling, he dragged his legs beneath him, somehow righted himself, and fell to one knee again.
It was a pitiful sight, through and through. And yet in the eyes of his comrades standing along both walls, watching, there was not a shred of pity. Punishment for failing a command was always brutal—sometimes more wretched than death itself. Better odds, one might say, to have a limb torn off and live to talk about it.
— Unlike Bartel, you are reasonably capable, so I will let it end here. But there will not be a second time.
"Your mercy is... appreciated."
Holding his pose of submission as before, Sirius rolled his eyes toward a shadowed corner of the room. There, a small mound of ash—blackened and burnt—lay piled up. The remains of a comrade who had once carried out the mission alongside him.
— What is the status of the target's location?
The voice resonating from the crystal orb turned this time toward another. At the summons, a tall man stepped forward and spoke, his expression somewhat sour.
"There is no doubt it is within the Academy. However, it appears to have been hidden away with considerable secrecy, so as of now, its precise location is..."
— The Academy. I see.
The one called the Proxy showed a flicker of acknowledgment and sank briefly into silence.
The Blessing of Astesia. For their Lord's complete resurrection, it was indispensable. Her heart yearned to muster their full strength and crush the Academy in a single blow—but the problem was that their own forces had yet to be fully reinforced. The Great War thirty years ago had claimed more than just the ones the imperials called heroes.
"Proxy, might I be permitted to speak?"
— By all means.
When Creed, stepping forward, cautiously raised a hand, permission was granted.
"According to the intelligence we have recently consolidated on this side, the Academy has considerably altered its schedule in the wake of this operation's failure."
— Their schedule. And your point?
"Yes. Among the changes, if we were to exploit the gap of an event called the Exchange Meeting and infiltrate the Academy with a small team, might it not be possible to seize the target?"
A small team.
At those words, the Proxy fell briefly into thought. Hadn't this latest operation failed precisely because their forces proved insufficient—Bartel strutting forward on confidence alone, with Sirius tagging along merely as insurance against the worst? Perhaps that was why the notion of a small team gave her pause. The alternative—dragging a large force into what amounted to the enemy's home ground and bleeding strength for nothing—would be the worst outcome of all.
As she weighed one option against another, a grotesque voice— scarcely believable as anything human—flooded the darkness.
"Kikik! Proxy, ma'am! Send me along with that failure! Kikik!"
— So it's you? Well, in a way, you might indeed be suitable.
Confirming the identity of the volunteer who had stepped up so brazenly, the Proxy gauged his ability and judged there was potential. Few possessed an innate magic so conveniently suited for use around large numbers of people. In some respects, it might even mesh well with the nature of an infiltration mission.
— Very well. You have my leave. Should you find your forces lacking, extract reinforcements freely as you see fit.
"Kikik! I am nothing like that failure!"
The man twisting his arms and legs like a broken marionette as he sneered stirred a primal, instinctive revulsion in anyone who looked at him. Even so, the Proxy merely spat out her final message in that trademark, emotionless tone.
— Good. I trust there will be no second failure.
With those words, the light emanating from the crystal orb died away, and illumination returned from the lamps adorning the ceiling.
Hiss...
A stray breeze, late in arriving through the open window, scattered the mound of ashes that had gathered in the corner, lifting it into the empty air.