Chapter 24: A Tender Man
In every person, there is a lack.
"The funding's been cut again."
"I'll earn it, Director. In return, please—just find us one small room."
"...You, Han?"
For the director, on the verge of losing the orphanage as the subsidies dried up, that lack was money.
"Hey, Nahan. Think I can trust you?"
"You don't have to. But I trust you, Boss."
"...Brat. Knows how to talk, though."
For the boss who had barely scraped past death after his right hand betrayed him, that lack was trust.
"I want to go for a walk."
"I'll carry you. Let's go."
"...Yeah. Thanks, hyung."
For the friend whose rare illness was slowly bleeding the life out of him, that lack was health.
And for Asha Mirabell—emotionless to look at, and in truth softer of heart than anyone—
"She is, without any doubt, among the living."
—what she lacked was Hestia's return.
Asha said nothing.
Slowly, the strength drained from the hand bunched in his collar. Her face stayed as blank as ever. Only time moved through the hush, and even that was enough for Nahan to know.
The Undefeated Hero, Asha Mirabell, was in this moment—
"...Show me the proof."
—more shaken than she had ever been.
Keep it simple.
Ian Red was a fiction and nothing more, invented for Asha alone. Draw close to her, and from here on he could read the movements of the Hero Party; later, she would be a precious wild card in the main quests to save the Imperial Princess and the Hero.
So first, I earn Asha's trust as a free priest who gives, and asks nothing back.
The thought settled. Nahan reached out, slowly, and closed his hand around her pale one.
"First, please calm yourself."
At that tender murmur, Asha's wavering gaze lifted, little by little.
"You may well cross paths with Black Wolf before long, and there is danger in that—and yet here you are, trembling. It worries me so I can hardly bring myself to speak."
Dark crimson hair. Red eyes, faintly alight. A smile warm without end. A man stood there, solid and full-grown, the sort one wanted to lean on before one even knew it.
"No."
But Asha struck his hand aside.
"The proof comes first."
She was no fool, as Gardner was. Every word he had spoken might be true. But assume the worst, and this man, too, might be tied to Black Wolf. And if he was—if he truly belonged to them—she would take his head without a moment's pause.
She had just settled on it, her hand moving toward the holy sword at her hip, when he lifted the very hand she had knocked away, brushed the wound at his neck, and smiled with an awkward gentleness.
"I'm sorry, but there is no proof."
"...The reason?"
"You would know better than I, Hero. For a power granted by the Goddess's baptism, it is hardly anything worth showing off."
Nahan brushed his neck again, as if the touch had bothered him without his quite meaning it to.
"...True enough."
What he had said was fact. Those who received the baptism averaged E-rank. Those who took up the sword became trainees; those who worked magic reached the Third Circle. It was ordinary enough for powers of protection, recovery, and combat to be given in such measure that an F-rank commoner stepped, all at once, into the realm of the superhuman.
As if he had read the thought, Nahan added the rest, a bitter smile on his mouth.
"The one mercy is that the power is as slight as it is undemanding. It needs no mana, no divine power, no aura. And so it is quiet—no sign before it stirs, and no trace once it has passed."
"...And that is why there is no proof?"
"That's right."
Nahan nodded, brushed his neck once more, and let out a sigh.
"Once, my dream was to be a battle priest. I never achieved it. I couldn't bear the thought that I did nothing but waste food, and so I became a free priest."
Asha was silent.
A man who had given up a dream for want of talent.
They said the chance of awakening was vanishingly small. You'd find a needle in the desert sooner.
...Hestia. Had that child not been just the same?
"But it's all right. I wanted to be a battle priest for the sake of the world, and in the end I was able to help you, Hero. Isn't that the same as the dream fulfilled? This, too, must be the will of the Goddess."
Calm, and without a tremor—a living response that could not have surfaced were it anything short of sincerity. Faced with Nahan, who had failed at the limit of his talent and who helped her even so, Asha bit down on her lip before she knew it.
...At this rate, is it not just like my first meeting with that child, Hestia?
Finding Hestia in the man before her, Asha at last drew her suspicious gaze away.
"The location?"
At last, the killing intent left her.
Good. She bit.
Past the first step, Nahan set the bait for the next and let it fall from his tongue as if it weighed nothing.
"My ability confirms only a single thing, and only once—the moment in which someone is alive. An exact location is beyond me. I did succeed, though, in learning one fact that may be of help."
"Speak."
The prologue was over, and the main story already underway. Of the fifteen incidents yet to break, the one pressing at their heels was the first: Persona against Gardner.
Split the Hero Party.
Only then, unlike in the original, could he save Luna, the fourth member of Black Wolf.
He made a show of turning it over, checked the plan once more, and whispered to Asha.
"Tomorrow night. Black Wolf will raid the Gardner Earldom again."
She flinched. A spasm crossed that expressionless face, but Asha asked again as if her expression had never once thought to change.
"You are certain?"
"I glimpsed it while looking in on Lady Hestia—on whether she lived or not. The men holding her said it with their own mouths, so it ought to be certain."
No sooner had Nahan finished than a question rose in Asha's mind.
...Why?
They had murdered the daughter of the house, a child treasured like gold and jade—no. They had kidnapped her. And still they meant to return?
...Don't tell me.
As the guess took shape, a faint killing intent shimmered off her like heat.
"They mean to obtain it, using the hostage as leverage."
"Obtain what?"
"...You are a priest, without greed, so it is only natural you would not know. They will be after House Gardner's first heirloom. The Heavenly Shield."
The Heavenly Shield. An item the original had mentioned only in passing—once a day, reckoned from midnight, able to nullify any attack whatsoever. A transcendent-grade item.
"To covet an object with a human life held hostage. There is no other word for such trash."
"I agree."
So that's where it was.
...I'll have to steal that, too.
Having snapped up a piece of information he had never expected, Nahan edged toward Asha, who was shaking with rage, and brushed at his neck. He caught her unguarded hand as though he hadn't noticed, and whispered through a bright smile.
"I'm sorry the help is so slight."
Only then did Asha come back to herself. Expressionless, she shook her head.
"No. Had it not been for you, I would have known neither that Hestia lives, nor that Black Wolf means to raid that place. When this is finished, I will petition the Empire and see that a reward is granted to you."
"You know already, don't you? Such things are of no use to us. The road ahead of you will be a hard one. Please, put it toward the cost of the journey."
A quiet smile. He carried the cool scent of grass off a field in the early evening—a man one wanted, without knowing why, to lean against.
Her gaze, wandering as if to take him in, met the wound at his neck, darkening to a blackish red.
...Again, all I did was leave a wound. How are you this gentle?
Out of a sorry guilt she had just begun, quietly, to reach.
"Ah."
Only then did Nahan seem to notice the wound—or so he pretended—and he hid it beneath his hand.
"It's all right. I may not look it, but I'm sturdy enough. A wound like this will close before long."
"...I am sorry."
"Please don't be. Had I been you, Hero, I would have done the same. I'm only grateful that you trusted me."
The man smiled again.
...thump.
A faint pulse, from somewhere.
"...?"
Asha felt that something was amiss. But there was, now, truly no time left. Still expressionless, she looked at Nahan and took her leave.
"I will be going."
"Yes, Hero. Please, in my place, teach Black Wolf... those bastards a lesson."
Bastards? Could a priest use a word like that? Asha was flustered in a way that was not like her at all, but Nahan caught it and added, with a stifled laugh.
"I'm a free priest, after all."
"...Is that the way of it."
"That's the way of it."
Tender, and calm—and even so, a man who had found the road that was his, and walked it straight.
"I'll always be here. If anything weighs on you, come by whenever you wish."
"...I shall. Enough. Go back inside."
"No. I'll watch the way you go, to the very end, and go in after."
At the sight of him seeing her off so far, the corner of Asha's mouth twitched, so faintly it might have been imagined.
"Very well. Then I will go."
"Oh—and please, don't get hurt. I think it would hurt me more."
"I will not."
Asha turned and walked. Her face, her steps, the breath she released—all of it was cold. And yet a warm light of sunset settled, faint, across her body.
Perhaps that was why. Recalling the warmth of a moment before, she murmured his name without meaning to.
"...Ian Red."
Let this end well, she hoped, so she might come back to him bearing good news. Still expressionless. Her pace even. And yet, a little—
"Oh—and please, don't get hurt. I think it would hurt me more."
"...What an absurd man."
Her breath had gone warm. If the world were full of none but people like him, Asha thought, there would never have been any need for her to become a Hero. It was a thing of the sunset—the face of a man, steadfast as few are, catching again and again at her feet.
Several hours after Asha had gone, a savage voice rang through the hideout where the members of Black Wolf had gathered.
"You all know of it. House Gardner's first heirloom. The Heavenly Shield."
"Yes, Captain!"
They were sharp with discipline, and burning with resolve. Black Wolf met their eyes one by one, then declared it, his gaze deep as an abyss.
"We take it."
"Yes, Captain!"
A killing intent keen as a drawn blade flickered in the eyes of those who had been given a new objective.
A transcendent-grade artifact.
Transcendent-Grade Artifact
SS-
...Yeah. No way I let this go.
Nahan's mouth was already watering.