A Desperate Struggle
Time passed once more.
A month had gone by since she took in the child called Luna.
Mother watched her the way she watched all the other children, and her impression settled into a single phrase.
A stupid child.
"Mom!"
"……Luna."
Perhaps she had never been loved, not once since the day she was born. Offer her water, a meal, a bed laid out for the night, and she would come pressing her cheek against you.
"I told you not to wander wherever you please. You won't like it, but go back inside."
"Ah! Right, right!"
"……?"
A long creak. The clank of a lock.
"There. Is this all right now?"
"……All right."
An innocent child, who obeyed her every word as if it were absolute.
Where the other children did nothing but cry, Luna was always bright. Was that why?
"Mom! You want this?"
"That's a bug."
"Yeah! It's all crunchy and good! Oh, but it's a secret from the other kids…! I'm only giving it to you because you're Mom, and I had to really work up the nerve…!!"
"……I'll pass."
"Ah! Then I'll eat it!"
Whenever Mother was with Luna, she felt the single thread of goodness she had clung to until the very end grow a little clearer. And it was more than a feeling. Little by little, what she did began to change.
"Tell the children for me. At the auction tomorrow, they must not cry. No matter what."
"Okay!"
"…No. I'll tell them myself."
"Okay, okay! Only the kids say they're scared to death every time you tell them to smile!"
"……Then I'll change the way I speak, too."
"Okay, okay, okay! Mom's the best!"
Words she had only ever spat out cold, she softened, and whispered to the children instead. And she gave them a clearer road, one they might use to flee the worst of what awaited them.
"If you are sold at the auction, and the noble who buys you shows any sign of meaning you harm, then run when the moment is right. Put in a named request with the mercenary alliance, The One."
Mother knew. Doing this would not erase the sins she had already committed, nor the sins she had yet to commit. The children would die all the same. Only a vanishing few would ever stumble their way into the hands of a decent noble. The rest would be sacrificed horribly, each according to the purpose of whoever had bought them. Someday she would pay for it, and the pain would grow worse than death.
Even so.
"Smile brightly. That's how you live."
Better to live like this than to live doing nothing at all.
And Mother's expectations proved correct.
"One million gold."
"…Sold to Number One. The purpose?"
"The same as just now."
The killings of Guest Number One — who bid on any child that did nothing but cry, and then put them to death — grew worse with every passing day.
"Me!! A hundred thousand gold!!"
"A hundred and ten!!"
"Damn it, you're paying a hundred and ten thousand for scarred goods?"
"So what! Long as the face isn't scarred, that's plenty!! Hey, over here!! A hundred and fifty thousand!!"
The corrupt nobles bought the orphans too, so long as there was no great defect, and before long the children who had been sold came back to the wasteland as corpses.
Luna had been leading Mother back toward goodness, and for that very reason the pain cut deeper.
How many children died today? Five? No — eight? Their names. I have to remember. What were their names?
Only now did the scales, so long tipped wholly toward Selena's life, settle into balance. Every one of them had been a child as young as Selena — no, far younger. Each had had a dream, and had boasted so proudly of how they would achieve it. Tell them the way to survive, and still the odds were abysmal.
……So I knew. So long as I remain here, doing this, the children will keep on dying.
"…Urk!!"
Only then, facing her sins head-on, did Mother begin to retch.
To keep Selena alive, how many lives have I sold off? How many more will I have to sell before she can open her eyes? And even if you do wake—
"I'm gonna be a strong mercenary, just like Mom!"
Will I be able to treat you the way I used to?
With a short, sharp crack, whatever had only just managed to knit itself together shattered to pieces.
Yes. This is the sort of person I was from the start. Someone who will walk any road gladly, so long as the people I love can be safe.
"……Because I'm Mom."
The mask clicked back into place, and Mother wept for a long time. And even as she wept, she tried, and tried again — so that someday, even if she hid herself inside the mask, she would cry no more. Because she was someone who had no right to.
A few days later.
"Huh……? Mom?"
"Come with me. Luna."
"H-huh?! W-wait, what are you doing to my face!?"
"It's better than dying."
Mother, returned once more to what she had been, carved a scar into Luna's face. This way, at least, she would not be sold off to trash and made to suffer something cruel.
Every day, she drove the words home — in a voice a little gentler than the one she used with the other children, and cold all the same.
"Smile brightly. That's how you live."
"There. Try smiling a little more."
"Brighter. Smile until it feels like your mouth might split."
"That's how you live."
"Don't tremble. That's how you live."
"When it gets too hard, put on the mask and cry."
"Try, and try again."
"Until someday you can smile even with the mask on."
She did everything she could to keep Luna alive, trying and trying again. It was the only way. The only way that might save both Selena and Luna — the only way Mother had found, by compromise.
And so she agonized.
……If the day ever comes when I have to choose only one of them, Selena or Luna. What am I supposed to do?
Amid that worry and that fear, trembling through every moment and barely scraping through each day—
"…That day, too, you came to this place just as you have now, Black Wolf, and wiped it out."
"And I—"
"Thanks to you, I kept them both."
The lingering thoughts of Mother (S−) take form and manifest before you.
Mental World — Troupe — Loss is recreated.
Troupe — Loss.
True to that name, the figures who had filled the place vanished. The world returned. Amid the tattered tents and the choking dust, only Mother and Nahan remained.
Step. Step. Step.
Mother, her form restored along with the mental world, came toward him on dry, lifeless feet. Nahan, still on his guard, moved a hand to his waist before he knew it — but she lifted both hands and shook her head.
"I'm not stupid enough to fight a monster like you. In a few dozen seconds even these thoughts of mine will be gone, so don't bare your fangs at me."
A flat voice. She had pressed her feelings down until, perhaps, they were gone entirely; her words and her movements were blunt. And precisely because of that, he could tell they were true.
In the end Nahan took his hand from the sword hilt and looked at her.
"Why show me this?"
"A desperate struggle."
She answered shortly, then swept a hand through the empty air before her eyes. A portion of space tore, and the scenery beyond the mental world showed through: Mother, clutching his ankle; Lactea, shaking with rage; Luna, still collapsed where she had fallen. He didn't know the reason, but of one thing he was certain. Time had stopped.
Mother set her hand lightly upon the Luna reflected there and murmured.
"Such a pitiful child. Thrown away in this place the moment she was born. A child who has never once been properly loved."
The eyes beyond the mask glinted for an instant.
"She trailed after me, saying I'd saved her. But the one who was truly saved was me. Maybe that's why I tried all the harder to protect her."
The hand resting on the image fidgeted, as if groping after some warmth, but the surface only rippled like water. No warmth reached her.
Nahan watched her and asked, blunt.
"So. The point?"
"The point?"
"You called it a desperate struggle."
"Ah. Forgive me. When I look at Luna, I get so happy I lose myself."
Only then did she draw her eyes from Luna. She came to him and sank to her knees.
"I want you to let her live."
Nahan considered that flat tone for a moment, then asked quietly in return.
"Didn't you say you were going to vanish anyway?"
"…Hm?"
?
"……Ah."
Only then seeming to notice the misunderstanding, Mother looked up at him and let out a thin little laugh.
"I was speaking of Luna."
?
Nahan answered at once.
"I never meant to kill her."
The only one he had meant to deal with was Mother.
"Yes. So it would seem."
The tension left her at last. She tipped a little to one side and sat at her ease.
"Different from the Black Wolf I faced before……. If anything, this puts me more at ease."
The moment she murmured it—
A fragment of the past has been mentioned.
A portion of Black Wolf's Memory is restored.
A blue window rose, and at the same time a part of the mental world crumbled away in a soft patter of falling pieces. The same was true of Mother. She looked down at her own hand as it grew faint, let out a sigh, and murmured.
"Shameless of me, to do nothing but ask — but please. Teach her what an ordinary life is."
"An ordinary life?"
"Yes. Not trembling through each day for fear of death. Not forcing a smile just to stay alive. An ordinary life, in the plainest sense of the words."
It was not hard to tell that she meant Luna.
"She needn't do anything dangerous. Let her make friends. Let her fall in love. Let her bear a child and raise it, and live happily with all of them…. Teach her that such a thing is an ordinary life. And……"
Her fading fingers closed, hard. She hesitated a long while before she forced the words out.
"I……"
That I never loved you, Luna.
"I am nothing but a vicious criminal. Not someone you ought to be fond of."
A heavy silence settled beneath the mask as Mother forced a smile into place — and Nahan turned his head, just slightly, and looked past her back.
"So she says. Luna?"
The next moment—
"……Mom."
"…!"
Within Mother's hand as it turned transparent, a thin thread of light glittered.