An Offer She Couldn't Refuse
Ara was a variety game streamer whose main focus was VR titles.
The reason she had come all the way to Italy with a full set of broadcast gear, a trip that seemed to have nothing to do with her usual content, was simple enough.
A European vacation. She wanted to live out the romantic dream she had always imagined—and, at the same time, break free of the rigid, game-only pattern her streams had fallen into.
Boarding a plane for the first time and touching down at the airport in Rome went fine.
True, years of war had left the city unrecognizable; the postcard Europe she had hoped for was nowhere in sight. Even so, she told herself it was all right. Rome was not the only city in Italy. She would book a room, spend a single day looking around, then move on to some other tourist spot where the ancient buildings still stood intact.
That had been the plan, at least—
"Huh?! W-wait a second!"
By the time she felt something off about the left pocket where her wallet had been, it was already far too late. She patted the strangely light fabric and caught a blurry human silhouette melting away into the crowd.
People said that when you panic hard enough, the words just vanish.
Back in Korea it might have been different, but this was the middle of Italy, half a world away. No foreigner here was going to understand Korean.
So what was she supposed to do?
What was the Italian word for thief? Should she look it up? Or try English? Wait—what was it in English again?
By the time she finished searching, the guy would already be gone. Was it already too late? Should she just report it to the police?
Without the tickets that had been in that wallet, she couldn't even take the bus to her lodging—
Staring at the chat did nothing. The viewers had no more idea how to fix this than she did.
She shoved desperately through the crowd, but her target was an Awakened. Catching him was never going to happen.
Just as her vision started to go white—
THOOM—!
A massive boom, and then a voice as pretty as an angel's rang out.
"Hmm..."
Perched on a rooftop, I looked down over the packed streets. The Vatican had only just been restored, so downtown Rome was ridiculously crowded.
The thief had probably counted on exactly that.
In 2050 even ordinary non-Awakened people carried a little mana. Picking one person's mana out of a throng like this was something even the street cameras couldn't manage.
"Well, those are just machines..."
Unfortunately for the thief, my eyes were nowhere near that crude.
This was the authority of an S-rank boss that should have been humanity's nightmare. If a cheap trick like that could fool me, I'd already be buried somewhere in Siberia.
"Hup—"
I drew a light breath and opened my eyes. Beneath the currents of mana that made up the world, I saw a frantic ash-gray wind darting away.
Size and speed of the ability... roughly D-rank? Light enough that a simple warm-up would do.
The moment I decided, I kicked off and rode the wind. My vision flipped; less than a second later I was diving into the crowd.
Inside stopped time I pulled the wind to me. The instant I seized the back of the fleeing vagrant's hood, the wind particles that had been scattered exploded with a clattering roar.
Time stretched to its limit snapped back. The startled man flooded his mana. Ash-gray power pulsed, ready to whip up a storm. So he was a D-rank Awakened after all?
"Hup...!"
"Airflow Convergence"
⟨ Airflow Convergence ⟩
I forced the swirling ash-gray wind into the palm of my hand and bound it there. The experience of having his mana refuse to obey seemed brand-new to him; panic flooded his face.
Just to show him, I released the mana I had locked inside my grip.
"Rising Air Current"
⟨ Rising Air Current ⟩
FWOOM—!
The atmosphere itself detonated with a sound that shook the heart. The rampaging mana scattered helplessly into the sky, and horror painted the man's face.
Stealing and controlling another person's mana was a technique reserved for the strong. The moment he realized resistance was impossible, he yanked a knife from his pocket and sliced his own hood free.
For a wind-attribute Awakened, the motion was impressively quick. Against anyone else he might have slipped the net even after being caught.
"Where do you think you're running?"
But his opponent happened to be me—the Sword Saint, rated the strongest in one-on-one combat among all Awakened. That cheap little stunt had been transparent to my eyes for ages.
Annoyed by the act, I grabbed the fleeing man and slammed him straight into the ground.
To him the world must have flipped upside down. He hit the pavement before he could even think of resisting and blacked out without a fight.
When I lifted my head, a familiar face was staring back at me.
Brown hair, a long lean figure—exactly the same girl I had met inside the VR world about two weeks earlier. Ara.
The instant I recognized her, instinct made me hesitate.
Normally I would have handed the wallet over without a second thought. Something else put the brakes on first.
If I walked over like this, my face would end up on camera.
"..."
Of course, connecting the me of the VR world to the me standing here wouldn't be easy. We had been speaking Italian right up until a moment ago.
Besides, the fact that I and "SwordMaster" were the same person was information I didn't really mind leaking.
Worst case, some gallery post titled "Ju-ttak's real-life photo drop whoa" would appear. Nothing major would come of it.
What worried me wasn't the identities "SwordMaster" or "Lee Haneul." It was the one hidden a layer deeper: the Sword Saint, Serena Eustania.
"Hold on..."
So I murmured under my breath and took a single step back.
The old me would have simply fled the scene without a word.
If I were still the girl who believed her Sword Saint identity would only earn the viewers' hatred, if I were still the Haneul who had never understood everyone's true feelings, I would have done anything to keep the secret.
"...No. Things are different now."
But that was no longer true. Last night's conversation had let me reset my mindset.
The identity was going public in a few weeks anyway. There was no longer any reason to hide it. No matter how hard the viewers tried to piece things together, I would be the one releasing the information first.
And more than that—I was no longer someone to be hated. The viewers would like me. That confidence held me up.
What if the family of someone who died because of me was mixed in among the viewers?
"Come on, no way..."
It was only a stream with around four hundred people. Even if the world was small and a lot of people had died... there was no chance someone like that would be watching a broadcast like this.
I crushed the creeping doubt and walked toward the still-dazed Ara. Watching her stare blankly at me while talking to her chat was so funny it almost hurt.
Maybe that was why.
The trolling instinct I had forgotten for the last few days woke up on its own.
"Lady? Señorita? Hmm, what do they call people in Italy at times like this?"
"Uh, eh? You're... Korean?"
"Not Korean, but I can speak Korean."
I gave a deliberately vague answer and smiled. The way she frantically swung the camera away told me my face had been in the shot until just now.
"Ah, I don't mind being filmed, though?"
Sword Saint, usurper of authorities—at the end of the day I was just a girl who happened to be pretty good with a sword.
The only hearts I could read were the ones that told me what sword technique an opponent would use next. The hearts of viewers on the other side of a screen? Completely beyond me.
So I wanted to learn from a professional. And a streamer with thirty-five hundred viewers like Ara seemed like a decent candidate.
"This is your wallet, right?"
"Ah, yes... thank you so much!"
Ara bowed her head and checked the wallet. Between the cards sticking out I spotted a single ticket.
Naples. The heart of southern Italy, a city that still held traces of ancient Italy.
"Heading to Naples?"
"H-how did you know that?! Are you... actually an angel?"
"Pfft."
Now I finally understood why the viewers loved teasing her. Was it rude of me to think that?
I wiped the useless thought away and continued.
"Nothing like that. It was written on the ticket."
"Ah... aah..."
Ara flushed with embarrassment. I could almost hear the viewers roasting her on the invisible stream screen.
"As it happens, I was planning to leave for Naples tomorrow myself."
Nothing beats running into a fellow countryman in a foreign land. Even I, who had already grown used to the Vatican, felt that happy to see Ara—so she had to feel the same.
On top of that I had caught the pickpocket and recovered her wallet. Saying it myself felt a little awkward, but I was also cute enough that appearing on stream wouldn't be a bad look at all.
So I offered her a proposal she had no reason to refuse.
"If... if it's all right with you, would you like to go together?"
"S-sure!"
She nodded again and again. We exchanged contacts and agreed to meet right here at six the next morning.
For some reason, I started looking forward to tomorrow.