The Boy Hasn't Left Yet
The boy was still not gone.
"Awakening Aura on the very doorstep of death — what a promising young man."
The old man had watched the entire battle between Dorothy and Gul from the rooftop. Known as an Elder even within Yata, he found himself admiring the mad killing intent and raw talent of the boy who had finally brought Dorothy down at the cost of his own body.
Across more than seventy long years, the old man had watched countless strongmen and geniuses grow, and even to those seasoned eyes, Gul was a talent worth noting.
"Dorothy had it coming, truly. Her ruin was in craving something bigger than her own vessel, with no sense of her measure."
Conversely, he shook his head coldly at his granddaughter Dorothy — the girl of his own bloodline who had fallen to sheer stubbornness and carelessness despite holding the advantage in every respect.
"Now what am I to do with this... hmm?"
As the Elder stood between the collapsed boy and girl, pondering how to clean up the mess, he detected footsteps and impatient voices approaching from a distance.
"Something's going on over there!"
"The window's shattered!"
"And there's blood!"
"Duchy guards, or Serfe's men, most likely. No helping it, then."
Taking the lives of the pursuers who would soon arrive would be no trouble at all for the Elder. But from that moment on, he himself — and Yata, narrowly speaking Serfe, and broadly speaking the Rung Duchy — would find themselves locked in unavoidable hostility.
The Rung Duchy was a fairly important stronghold for Yata's operations within the empire, and unwilling to lose that relationship, the Elder hoisted his fallen granddaughter over his shoulder without hesitation.
Just as he cleared the fence and made to slip away from Karma's estate —
Clang. With the sound of metal striking metal, Dorothy's chain coiled around his ankle.
Needless to say, Dorothy, the chain's owner, was unconscious — so it was not Dorothy who had swung the chain just now.
"Won't you stand still... there?"
The voice that followed was so faint he had to strain to hear it at all. The Elder replied flatly, but beneath the night sky's cover, bewilderment had settled onto his face.
"...How remarkable. Still conscious at that state of ruin."
"Where do you think you're going, old man... you're never taking that woman either... never..."
Krrk—
There was a faint, but real, strength in the arm pulling the chain, and it squeezed down harder around the Elder's ankle.
"So it isn't mere bluster... truly astonishing. Wounded and bleeding that badly, and still he has strength left. Simply awakening Aura couldn't account for this much. Could he have already grasped a Trait as well?"
"...?"
"Well, it hardly matters either way. Listen, boy. I'll release this, and we will hunt neither you nor that girl any longer."
"...You expect me to believe that? You think I'm insane?"
"This fight was already this child's defeat. She lost once — no, twice, three times. To seek revenge after that would win her not dignity, but nothing but shame. I will acknowledge our defeat and our failure cleanly."
Having sworn that Yata would wash its hands of Gul and Serfe entirely, the Elder flexed the strength in his leg once —
Ka-chang. The chains wrapped around his ankle crumbled to pieces, as if rusted through and rotten.
"!?"
"If I so wished, within one minute I could kill not only you but every soul in that building."
The Elder meant to bend his will through sheer overwhelming disparity in power. It was an absurd claim — but recalling the strange technique that had just erased the chains, it was by no means an empty bluff, so Gul could do nothing but swallow his spit in silence.
"You seem sharp enough that I needn't say it twice, but do not speak of us. If Serfe learns of our existence and attacks, we would end up fighting you all over again. As far as the world knows, the intruder died by your hand. Where is the corpse, you ask... yes, just so."
Rummaging beneath the robe that concealed his whole body, the Elder drew a single scroll from his breast, tore it, and hurled it toward the fence.
KWAAM—
The torn scroll flashed briefly, then detonated on the spot, and the fence collapsed.
"You can claim the intruder self-destructed and left not a single trace of a body."
"..."
Gul merely kept biting his lip, glaring at the Elder as if seething — offering no reply, no further attack. Judging this to mean the boy had accepted his proposal, the Elder crossed the ruined fence and vanished into the darkness.
Even accounting for the grass, not a single footprint remained where the Elder had passed, Dorothy slung over his shoulder.
Monster. That was the last thought Gul had before his consciousness gave out completely.
"Haht!?"
"...You awake?"
The moment I registered faint light filtering through my closed eyelids, I recalled the fight from before I lost consciousness and scrambled upright — but the scene that met my open eyes was nothing like the one before they'd shut.
At the sound of a voice beside me, I turned my head to find Karma sitting there with a darker face than usual, picking at an apple from a tray.
"..."
Grrrumble. Where was I? What day was it? What had happened after I blacked out? My head was packed full of questions — but it seems instinct trumps reason where people are concerned, because before any of those curiosities could surface, my stomach growled first.
"...Eat. Go on, eat."
Karma, looking completely worn out, shook his head and handed over the whole tray of apples. I reached for one — and only then realized my arm was wrapped in bandages from shoulder to fingertip.
No, it wasn't just my arm. Something firm was compressing my chest too, and in short, my entire body was swathed in bandages.
Thankfully, whatever anesthesia they'd pumped into me was strong, because I could barely feel any pain. Setting aside the question of how I'd ended up in this state, I moved my jaw and bit into the apple.
Crunch. Whoever had peeled them had chosen good ones — the sound alone was so crisp it was practically refreshing.
"Is this the hospital?"
"Yeah. The same one you were admitted to on your first day."
No wonder the scenery through the window didn't look like anything visible from the estate.
"...How long was I out?"
"About a day. You seem to remember things fine, so talk. What the hell happened? Dorothy's vanished without a trace."
"Ah, well, you see..."
The moment I tried to recount everything from that day, a hazy memory surfaced — that stretch between my first blackout and the moment I fully went dark, when my body had moved as if I were drunk, entirely without my will.
That old bastard...
The monster of an elder who had turned Dorothy's chains to powder — whether by applying that power she'd called Aura, or through some entirely different ability, I couldn't say.
Recalling the warning that old man had left behind, I fell silent for a moment, then finally opened my mouth under the weight of Karma's expectant gaze.
"Dorothy was an assassin. Apparently she was a killer hired by whoever Grizzly was working for."
"...I see."
Karma looked fairly shaken, but we'd already had this conversation once, and the evidence left no room for doubt, so he said nothing more about it.
"I couldn't press for details myself, but I think it was her who took out Grizzly too."
"...Never mind why Grizzly was killed. Why was she still coming after Perry even after her employer was dead?"
"No idea. She wouldn't answer that much."
Any vague excuse I invented would show, and it would only rouse suspicion — so I chose to plead ignorance and stay silent. Logically speaking, it would be stranger for an assassin to explain her own thoughts and contracts just because someone asked, so Karma accepted it readily enough.
"So what happened to Dorothy, then? No body showed up — did she escape?"
"No, she's dead. I managed to cut her down, but she must not have wanted to leave any evidence — she crushed some scroll in her hand and her whole body just... blew apart. I don't remember anything after that."
"An explosion scroll...! She was carrying something like that?"
It left a filthy taste in my mouth, playing puppet to that old man's script — but with no better lie available, I used exactly what he'd provided, and Karma believed my story without a flicker of doubt.
To cook up a cover story that fast. Apparently there was some truth to the saying that age brings wisdom.
"Anyway, good work. Can we consider the people after Perry dealt with, then? Or is there some backer behind Dorothy too?"
Finally, Karma voiced the question he'd been holding back all along, and once again, I went silent.
There was no question that an organization called Yata stood behind Dorothy.
That old man had seemed to be some kind of Yata executive. Should I tell Karma about this?
Honestly, I didn't know how much power Serfe really commanded.
But if a place like Yata had more veterans of that old man's caliber, then Serfe — however numerous its ranks — would be butchered in return.
That old man had radiated power on that level.
"No, there's no one else. At least, that's how it looked to me."
I held nothing against Serfe — but they were the ones guarding my parents right now, so they needed protecting.
"...All right. I'll trust you."
Karma didn't seem to take that last answer entirely at face value, but he seemed to understand I had no reason to do anything to their disadvantage, and let it go.
"Anyway, rest. I'll talk to Perry."
"...No, it's fine. I'll go ask the doctor to take this off."
"What? You're in the ICU ward — the doctor said you need at least a month of—"
Snap.
Karma moved to stop me from getting up — but when I shattered the bandages wrapped around my arm with the Aura I'd learned only yesterday, he shut his mouth.
"I'd better... leave the chest ones on."
Honestly, when the blade had punctured my lung, I'd assumed it was all over — but since I was alive, I suppose the doctor really did know his trade after all.
"...What the hell is with that man, seriously."
"..."
Meanwhile, Perry, who had remained behind at the estate, spent the entire day in the depths of gloom.
"Young miss?! Young miss! Please open the door — at least eat something!"
"You'll make yourself ill like this!"
The servants fretted and fussed through the door, but every time they did, Perry burrowed deeper beneath her blankets.
The reason she had suddenly shut herself in her room was that, overnight, both of the servants at her side had vanished at the same time.
Dorothy, Gul, where did you go...?
Ever since her tenth birthday, Dorothy had woken her every single morning, brushed her hair, and brought her delicious tea.
And her bodyguard — the one who never spared her a glance, who was sometimes infuriating, yet whom she couldn't bring herself to hate.
The moment those two — the people she trusted most in this house after her father, the only ones she truly thought of as her people — disappeared all at once, Perry had succumbed to loneliness and hollow ache and shut herself away.
Daddy won't even tell me anything.
The night before, it had been her father, not Dorothy, who woke her. Gul, who always stood there as if it were the most natural thing in the world by the time she rose, was nowhere to be seen. When she asked where he was, Karma dodged the question — and that kindness, which she read as him shutting her out, only carved the wound deeper.
She didn't know it, but Perry's current state was the spitting image of the worthless young miss who could do nothing alone — the very one Dorothy had berated her for being.
Could it be... they've grown tired of me...?
Dorothy didn't know this either, but Perry was painfully aware of her own position.
They got sick of me — useless, nothing but a nuisance making demands — and that's why they left...? They both got sick of me and just... threw me away...?
Even though she was the one in the superior position, the one who gave the two of them their orders, the fact that she could read their departure as abandonment showed just how deeply she had come to depend on them.
"...Unless maybe the two of them fell for each other... no, that can't be it..."
She was still green in the ways of the world, but the ways of love between men and women she knew. And so, spiraling through one anxious thought after another, Perry eventually arrived at the delusion that Dorothy and Gul had fallen in love and abandoned her.
...
Just as her guilt and longing toward the two of them began to curdle into some unidentifiable sense of betrayal —
Knock, knock.
"Not eating!"
The door had been knocked so many times she was sick of the sound, and Perry snapped at it, already stewing in her restless delusions —
Creeeak—
"Wh-what?!"
The firmly locked door began to force itself open, ignoring the lock's restraint entirely.
Crunch. The iron bar wedged between wall and door bent like a twig, and through the widening gap came a voice:
"My apologies for being late, young miss. I'm told Dorothy had to quit because of some trouble back home. She had a great deal of packing to do, so I helped her — there was truly so much of it that it took me a full day."
"...Gul!"
Through the door that had been physically un-locked strode the very person she had been aching for all day long — her bodyguard, more insufferable than anyone.
"Y-you weren't leaving?"
"? Why would I leave? Protecting you until you enter the Academy is my job, young miss."
"R-right? You're not going anywhere, are you? You'll stay by my side forever?"
"Not forever — only until you enter the Academy..."
"Whatever! Until then IS forever, isn't it? Say it!"
"...Yes. That's correct."
"You'd better keep your word! Never leave me behind! If you ever pull this again, I won't forgive you — ever!"
"Understood. Now then — your state is unbecoming, young miss. With Dorothy gone we'll need to hire new servants, but until then, you may consider me filling in... First, let's get you washed up, and then something to eat."
"I-I know that already! Out! Get out! I'm going to change!"
Having finally registered her own appearance, Perry wiped away the tear stains streaked dark around her eyes and fled to the washroom, consumed by embarrassment.
Her face burned as red as a boiled beet — but for all that, the corners of her mouth had turned upward.