A Lie with a Soul
Method. Or method acting.
A technique in which the actor sinks thought and feeling wholly into a role, and plays that role as though it were a living person. And that was—
Stage 3 — Method has activated.
You are now Ian Red.
It was the final property of the trait called Acting, and its ultimate effect.
The instant the third stage took hold, the first change to reach him was sincerity. A moment ago he had been facing Asha as a character called the Hero. Now he faced the person herself—Asha Mirabell—with his heart. And I am Ian Red, and at the same time the memories of the one who took this body are still here.
Asha's past, and her future. The sorrow of hers that the tale had rendered in scenes. The hollowed hero who had come, at the last, to a bad ending. As he was now, he was the only person in the world who knew even a part of the woman called Asha Mirabell, and he was a free priest. He alone knew her sorrow. He alone could comfort her in earnest. And so—
"Might I impose, for a moment?"
He—
"No. Forgive me. I will impose."
—was Ian Red.
He went to Asha and drew her in, his hands neither hurried nor slow. Still expressionless, she turned her head as if to see the side of his face, and in that same instant tears spilled from his eyes.
"……Even so, you have to live."
At the heart of the burning village, a girl murmured her father's last words, her face empty of all expression.
Because Asha's past was too pitiful to bear. And because of what followed.
In an ending where neither the incompetent Emperor nor Black Wolf remained, Asha Mirabell sat alone upon a throne slick with blood, and murmured to herself.
"…If I had known the ending would be this, I would have closed my eyes back in that village."
Because he sorrowed for the vast despair, and the hollowness, that she would have suffered all the way to the end if he had not been there.
Even so, he had not meant to go so far as tears. He had only meant to finish the character called Ian Red, and thereby win Asha's trust. …It won't stay under control.
Method. The art of sinking one's own thoughts and feelings completely into a role, and playing that role as though it were a real person. The tears, the arms that had drawn her in, even the heart that truly wished for her happiness—none of them were actions decided upon and then carried out. They had sprung loose the way a hand jerks back from something hot, the way the eyes shut when a fist comes flying at the face.
When the feeling stays level, I can hold it the way I did playing Black Wolf or Yellow Dragon. Ever since the feeling ran high, it hasn't stopped dragging me under. It was as if the soul of a man who had truly lived, a man named Ian Red, had seeped into him and was compelling him to act just so.
"What is this you are doing?"
"……Please, don't cry."
I have to control it. For the moment it was working in his favor. But if Method ever manifested in Black Wolf, or in Yellow Dragon, it could become a catastrophe. …Pull away first. Master the feelings pressing in. Take back command of the body. ……There.
And in the very instant he had learned, through Ian Red, the way to govern Method, and meant to draw back—
Thump.
"…The one who is weeping is you, is it not."
Asha buried her face against his shoulder.
It was a strange thing. Thump. To lean upon a man she had never once seen in her life, and bury her face as though she were only catching her breath. ……Why am I?
From the day her only home, Mirabell, burned and was gone, all the way to now, when she had become the Hero.
"Asha, my lovely daughter. Never. Never trust a single soul. Hide what you feel, and see through them—see what it is they want of you."
"Father!!"
"…Go, now. Even a world this dreadful…. Even so, you must live, mustn't you."
Not for a single moment had she forgotten her father's last words. She had followed them, faithfully, all this way. And yet—
"…Forgive me for this unsightly display."
"It is all right."
"I will step aside at once."
"No. Remain as we are, a moment."
Why, at a few words from this free priest, had she come undone and leaned her body into him? An awkward composure tried to settle over her face. Even so, Asha put the question to no one but herself, and answered it aloud to no one.
Why have I grown so weak? The answer came the moment she asked. ……Is it because of Hestia?
On the road toward the Demon King's castle, word had arrived by carrier pigeon.
"Do not excite yourself. Listen, Valkan."
"Huh? Out of nowhere? Also, I'm hungry. Can't we eat first and talk after?"
"I will make the report first."
She caught a heart that felt ready to gutter out, and opened her mouth the way she always did.
Unknown group, Black Wolf, has attacked the domain of Count Gardner. The wounded are still being counted. Dead: one. Name of the deceased……
Hestia Gardner.
From the instant that name was spoken until this one, the hours she had spent with that child rose in her mind, and not a moment of them paused. Hestia had been a strong child. She had dreamed of being a hero, as the others did, and she had struck the limit she was born with, and despaired.
"They say the chance I will awaken is vanishingly small. Finding a needle in the desert would be faster."
"I see."
"But I am all right. You will do my share as well, Hero. You, and my brother."
Even so she had cheered them, and said that she was fine, and with her two frail fists she had declared it.
"Of course I will not simply stay as I am. I will do my utmost in the field that is mine. And I will keep the Empire well, so that you, Hero, may go forward without worry. Yes. This is……."
Before eyes in which longing and shyness both showed, Asha had nodded, and let the words go.
"I will trust you, and wait."
"…!! Yes!! Yes, Hero!!"
And so, three months after they marched, the girl had become Chief Strategist of the Imperial First Legion. In the incompetent Emperor's stead she culled the enemies within the Empire, and she found the spies of other nations and of the demonkin and laid them upon her own palm. That was the sixth month of the expedition. Four months more passed, and it became the tenth.
"Is that account true, Marin?"
"Yes!! They say the people are dying because of his tyranny!? Let's just turn the army around for a bit and give the Emperor a warning, yeah?!"
Word of the Emperor's tyranny had reached them, and the whole of the hero's party was weighing whether to turn back, and it was then—
"Asha! A letter came from Hestia!"
"And?"
"What do you mean, and, you idiot! Today's isn't to me. She sent it to you!"
"I see."
A letter had come from Hestia.
"I will read it apart, and come back."
"What? Let's read it together!! She's my little sister!!"
"Apart. I will read it, and return."
"Ha! That is so unfair, seriously. I'm not looking. I'm not!"
What the letter contained was not greatly different from what she had already heard from Valkan.
I, as Chief Strategist of the First Legion……
The list of the spies……
I worry, for the people's resentment has risen over certain policies of the imperial court, yet most of the matters are already settled, and much of the discontent has quieted……
Did we not make a promise? That I would keep it well, so that you need not worry.
After the clerical reports, a sentence that seemed to have been written in hesitation, a tremor still left in the hand. Remembering those chestnut eyes, where longing and shyness had lived side by side, Asha let a small laugh escape her.
The girl had been so downcast, calling it a search for a needle in the desert, and in the end she had found the needle that suited her. Because of that, Asha folded her worry away.
"You finished it?"
"Yes. We depart again for the Demon King's castle."
"Huh!? W-wait! You said we'd swing by the capital because of the Emperor's tyranny!"
"Canceled. The original objective takes priority."
She called off the withdrawal and forced the march. Two months more passed, and it was a year. At last they succeeded in crossing the lands of the magical beasts and reaching the territories of the nobles.
And on the next day—
"…Word came that Hestia was dead."
The instant she finished telling it to Ian, Asha bit down on her pale-pink lips. If she had turned back after reading the letter. If she had withdrawn long before, as Marin had said. If, before they ever marched, she had properly pressed the Emperor and bound the realm to discipline. And above all else—
"If only I had never said such a thing to that child, Hestia. That I would trust her, and wait……."
Then that lovely child, so like a mild and gentle autumn, would not have lost her life.
"It is a misfortune that began with me. This time, too, it is a misfortune that spread from me."
She was grief-stricken. Every choice was one she regretted. And still she resented it: this expressionless body, which would not so much as crease its brow.
"If that child were to come back alive…… no. If there were even a one percent chance she still lived, there is nothing I would not try."
In the moment Asha, leaning on Ian's shoulder, let the words fall in a voice that was still level—
"First, allow me to return the letter."
"……Do so."
Nahan, having at last grasped what she lacked, opened his mouth with a solemn face.
"Lady Hestia. She may yet be alive. No. She is alive. I am certain of it."
"…?"
"It will be difficult to believe. But for a moment—"
A savage yank. Nahan's vision lurched. When he came back to himself he was caught by the collar, and Asha, holding him so, murmured.
"A fanatic, were you?"
A vicious killing intent lay over the empty face. The killing intent he had once met in Ruby would have been little more than play beside Asha's. But Nahan—Ian Red—still opened his mouth with that same calm look.
"I am a free man at present, it is true. Even so, I too am a priest baptized by the Goddess. A priest who has received baptism is granted an Authority."
Against Asha's grip, which tightened by the moment, Nahan went on before she could answer.
"The Authority bestowed on me is the power to tell the dead from the living. When I take in hand a thing that person once possessed, I come to know it, of itself."
Still in that same steady manner, smiling gently as though he understood every act of hers, Nahan added one last thing.
"And earlier. When you placed Lady Hestia's letter in my hands, I confirmed it. A revelation came down: she is among the living."
And human beings, as they always do—
"……Is that true?"
—opened their hearts to the one who filled what they lacked.