May the Road You Walk Not Be Cold
"……May the road you walk not be cold. That is my prayer."
I had spent nearly all my time confined to this room. I never knew Delphine had a corner like this in her. I hadn't imagined she would bare her possessiveness this openly.
Luna followed Delphine into the room. There was still a bandage stuck to her knee. She'd said she fell, hadn't she. It must be from back then.
"Selene, are you all right? You're looking better than yesterday."
Luna smiled brightly, but I only nodded instead of answering. Mostly because I didn't have the strength.
Delphine locked the door. Then she offered Luna a chair, set slightly off from the bed. It was a spot where I could hear everything clearly.
"There's still no progress on the investigation. The mana reaction in the abandoned village has no identifiable source. Arisugawa's testimony hasn't changed either."
"……I see."
Luna stole a glance at me, then whispered to Delphine. "What about you? Are you still saying you don't believe her?"
Talking about the person concerned while the person concerned is sitting right there. Honestly, it's hilarious.
Delphine looked at me once and answered flatly. "Yeah. She's holding to her silence."
I clutched the blanket tighter.
Investigators don't brief like this, normally. I'm the victim here—so why are they discussing my story in front of me?
This is for my benefit. They want me to hear it.
"Still, don't push her too hard. She's been through a shock—if we just wait a little……"
"No."
Delphine cut her off. "She's not someone waiting would change. If she intended to talk, she would have already."
So in the end, she has no intention of believing me when I say I know nothing.
And she'd seen through the fact that I planned to carry this secret to my grave, too.
Luna shut her mouth, looking uncomfortable. Silence settled over the room. That was when I spoke first.
"By the way—why aren't you pressing me for answers?"
Truthfully, I was grateful not to be interrogated. Lying constantly was exhausting, and I worried plenty about slipping up. But it didn't add up.
I was the victim, and at the same time the most crucial lead in the case.
There was no reason to avoid suspecting me just because I'd been through an ordeal. If something smelled off, digging into it was the normal thing to do.
Even if it earned resentment, pressing me was the right call. And yet she wasn't going to?
Both of them looked at me. Luna's mouth hung slightly open; Delphine stared at me without moving a muscle.
"Ah—because you're the victim! I thought we shouldn't force you to relive it……"
"We're not pressing because there's no need to."
Delphine sliced clean through Luna's words. "……Is that so?"
"Mom has no intention of opening her mouth right now. Forcing it would only make both our throats hurt for nothing."
"I've told you everything. I was attacked, and I never saw the attacker. I lost consciousness—how would I have seen anything?"
"Right. You saw nothing at all, did you, Mother."
Delphine looked straight into my eyes. "There's no need to push you now. Time is on our side."
Luna laughed awkwardly and took a step back.
I let it go, too. "……Fine. If you're that certain, I won't say anything more."
She's my daughter, and she scares me.
Luna glanced at me once, then bowed carefully. "Selene, please rest well and take care of yourself. Call for us anytime if you need anything."
I only nodded.
Delphine saw Luna out and closed the door. Click, click. The sound of the lock. Now it was truly just the two of us.
Delphine walked over to me and sat down close at the edge of the bed. She laid a hand on the blanket. A cool warmth seeped through.
"Luna is too kind. Kind to the point of foolishness—she doesn't belong in dirty business like this."
"True. I thought one big incident was finally over, and now she's been dragged into another."
"And whose fault is that?"
She tilted her head to one side. Her hair slid smoothly over one shoulder. "By now, do you have some grasp of the situation you're in, Mother?"
I curled the corners of my mouth upward. "What is there to grasp? My pretty little girl wants to be alone with me, just the two of us."
In an instant, Delphine's eyes went cold. It felt as if the warmth had been snuffed out along with them. "……Pretty little girl."
She repeated my words exactly as I'd said them. "Did you think you could get past me with talk like that?"
"I wasn't trying to get past anything. It's just the truth."
Delphine withdrew the hand she'd rested on the blanket. She picked up the pitcher from the nightstand and filled a cup. The trickle of water sounded unusually loud in the room. "Dressing you, bathing you—I'll be the one to do it. Your bandages too."
"That's a bit much……"
"Why is that?"
Delphine held out the cup. "You'd hate a stranger's hands even more, wouldn't you?"
I took it and drank a mouthful. As I drank, I thought: the one who hates strangers isn't me. It's her.
"Delphine."
"Yes?"
"Are you really confining me?"
Delphine tilted her head slightly, genuinely puzzled. "I'm nursing you."
Nursing, she says. Does she truly believe that?
When I handed the cup back, she set it on the nightstand and perched on the bed. Closer than before. Her knee touched my leg.
"Mother."
"What."
"I'm not angry."
Liar.
"Your lying, your not trusting me—I understand all of it. You must have your own reasons, Mother."
Delphine took my hand. She slid her fingers between mine, lacing them. Her grip was strong. "So you don't have to say anything. Truly."
"I've been saying everything, all along."
I tried to pull my hand free. It wouldn't come.
"Delphine, that hurts."
"Does it?"
She released the pressure at once. Then she pressed the back of my hand against her own cheek. "I'm sorry. I haven't been sleeping well lately."
It did seem true that she hadn't been sleeping. The skin beneath her eyes was dark.
"……Get some sleep, then."
"I can't sleep, I'm too worried about you."
Delphine laid me down on the bed. This time it was her arm that wound around my waist. "……Sleep. When it's time for your medicine, I'll wake you."
I closed my eyes.
Even with them closed, sleep was a long time coming.
"Doctor. I'll need your cooperation."
When Dimitria said that, I thought: so it's come, as I knew it would. Yes—my turn had arrived, too.
"So now you suspect me too?"
"Don't misunderstand. Everyone goes through this. It's procedure."
I nodded, outwardly compliant. But there was one thing I wanted to confirm.
"Do you really think the culprit is inside?"
"I hope it's not an inside job either. But principles are principles."
Dimitria drew one steadying breath and got straight to the point. "When the incident happened, where were you, and what were you doing?"
"In my office. Working."
"At that late hour?"
"Yes. There was some leftover paperwork from an old case that still needed organizing. I stayed at my desk the whole time dealing with it."
Dimitria gave a small nod. "Alone the entire time?"
"At first."
"Who saw you during that window?"
I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them. Feigning the effort of recall.
"The first was Luna. She said I was working late and offered to make me coffee—I refused. I remember sending her off, telling her to hurry back and get some sleep herself."
"And next?"
"Half an hour or so later, Ellis came by. She'd baked a cake and asked me to share it, but I had no appetite, so I turned her down too."
Dimitria tapped the desk with the end of her ballpoint pen. Tap, tap.
"Then when did you finish and leave the office?"
"I never did finish. Arisugawa came carrying the unconscious Selene, and I left the office to help with that."
Dimitria flipped through other documents, cross-checking them against the record. Then she let out a long, deflated sigh.
"Luna. Ellis. Their testimony matches his word for word, down to the last syllable."
She set her pen down audibly and looked at me. "Honestly speaking, there's no one in our organization with a motive to kill Selene. No one with the capability, either. In the end, it must have been an outside attack."
"I think so too."
I hadn't known the net Selene had woven would be this airtight.
Dimitria folded her arms and furrowed her brow. "Did Selene truly never see the culprit? Truly?"
I paused, then spoke. "She said she never saw her attacker. It could be the truth."
"Someone as strong as Selene? Impossible."
"The scene was chaos, start to finish. It would have been an ambush. She's said as much herself."
Dimitria scrubbed a hand down her face and muttered, "Who on earth would dare……"
Leaning back in her chair, she looked exhausted. "Haah. I thought one crisis was behind us, and now I feel like we've sunk into deeper mire. I'd better be ready to deploy again at any moment."
I kept my true thoughts buried and agreed flatly.
"I think so too."
Even now, when I think of that night, my hands go numb.
It was the moment I strangled Selene.
The trembling in my hands had stopped entirely. Beyond the taut silk cord, her pulse grew fainter…… fainter…… and then it stopped. Her body went slack and melted into my arms.
Unable to breathe, I loosened the cord, slowly.
"……"
As her upper body pitched forward, I bent my knees to catch her and gathered her into my embrace.
The woman who had always stood so proud. The woman who had always led from the front. And now she was so light.
"Selene……"
I turned her face toward me and cupped her cheek. I cradled the back of her head with my palm so her neck wouldn't loll.
Her eyes were closed. I had feared they might not close, so it was a relief. Her lashes rested downward in gentle arcs, casting small shadows. Her lips were still red, parted just slightly, a thin line of saliva trailing from the corner.
There was a mark on her throat—the path the silk cord had traveled. A red line circled once around her nape and vanished behind her ear.
Other than that—
Her sleeping face was so beautiful it brought me to tears.
"……"
The cord lay fallen on the floor. I couldn't bring myself to pick it up.
She had finally set her burden down.
She had returned, at last, to the place she was meant to be.
That was what she had wanted. The way she gazed out the window night after night, the way she drank alone now and then out of loneliness—all of it must have been for this moment. This was something to rejoice in.
I had done it for her. It was the only thing I could do for her.
The hand cupping her cheek was shaking. I clenched it to stop the trembling, and it only shook harder.
I touched her throat. Warmth still lingered there. I could feel it slipping out through my palm, bit by bit.
Something fell onto her eye. Onto her lashes.
Only then did I understand. It had fallen from my own eyes.
"……I'm sorry."
I wiped at them with my sleeve. They kept falling no matter how I wiped, so eventually I just let them.
No one knew.
Everyone said Selene was strong. That no matter what happened, she'd stand at the front, never crumble, worry for others before herself. So we leaned on her without a second thought. We clung to her.
No one ever asked how heavy the burden she carried truly was.
Only I knew. And knowing, I pretended not to.
That was the way Selene wanted it. It was that way to the very end. Even as I looped the cord with my own hands, Selene simply closed her eyes and waited, still as stillness. She never even said thank you. She must have known that if she did, I would never have been able to go through with it.
I brushed the hair from her forehead, sweeping it to the side. No matter how many times I smoothed it, it kept slipping back down.
"……May the road you walk not be cold. That is my prayer."
The body in my arms felt lighter than it had moments before—impossibly, impossibly lighter, though there was no way it truly was.
I pressed my forehead to hers.
"Selene……"