Doubts (2)
Clara looked at Erinn with a faintly startled expression — whether from nerves or from being caught off guard by the sudden question, it was hard to say.
"…I never saw Albrecht that way."
A hint of tension crept into Clara's voice.
"…Why are you asking me that?"
Erinn answered her evenly.
"Why so tense? I just got to thinking, and I was curious."
"…Thinking?"
"Yeah."
Erinn went on.
"If you really never superimposed Allen over Albrecht… then what was it that made you fall for him?"
"…"
"Even when he gave you the name Clara, even through all the time he was kind to you… you thought he was Allen."
Erinn spoke as if she couldn't make sense of it.
"No matter how I look at it, every single thing he did that could have won your affection — he did as Allen."
"…"
"But now that you know he was Albrecht, not Allen, you're confessing your feelings for him…"
"…"
"So from where I'm standing… the only conclusion I can reach is that you would have liked him even if he had still been Allen."
Erinn looked at Clara. The Clara she saw made no effort to hide her dismay.
"Clara."
And she asked — to turn the doubt she'd only been turning over in her mind into certainty.
"Did you… fall for him knowing what Allen meant to me?"
"……"
Clara seemed to hesitate for a moment at Erinn's question. But only for a moment. In a quiet voice, she answered.
"……Of course I did."
"…Of course?"
"…Even when I thought he was Allen, I already felt that way about him."
Erinn flinched, her brow knitting. It was a reaction closer to instinct than anything else — separate from her resolve to stay composed no matter what answer she received.
"…Because no man had ever been that good to me."
"……"
"…Erinn, you know better than anyone. Why I…"
Clara said.
"…why I ended up like this."
"……"
She knew. Erinn knew it all too well. The other party members might not, but she already knew what kind of life Clara had lived… because Clara had told her in a previous life.
Of course, Clara wasn't saying this knowing that. She was saying it because Erinn was the one who had recruited her as a companion.
"…I know full well what Allen meant to you. There's no one who doesn't."
"……And knowing that."
Erinn's voice, until now so composed, carried a thread of emotion.
"Knowing that, how could you act the way you did…?"
"But I couldn't help it…!"
"…!"
Erinn saw it. In Clara's eyes as she raised her voice slightly, she glimpsed both apology directed at her and an emotion that felt somehow familiar.
It had to be familiar. It was a feeling Erinn herself had once carried.
"You can't… control someone's heart…"
"…"
"…To be honest, when I heard you were coming back, I got really anxious…"
Clara spoke from the heart.
"When I heard you were suddenly coming back… I was afraid that maybe…"
"…You thought someone would take him from you?"
"……"
Clara gave a small nod. Her fear hadn't been unfounded. Letisia had, in fact, openly confessed her feelings to Albrecht.
If Clara hadn't acted first, there was no telling how things might have turned out.
"……I didn't want to lose him."
Clara spoke her honest feelings.
"…Someone who treats me the way Albrecht does… there might never be another."
Recalling her own past.
Clara had been born a half-dark elf.
Official discrimination had all been abolished, but society still looked poorly on half-bloods. And as if that weren't enough, she was an orphan with no family to protect her.
From early childhood Clara grew up under every kind of prejudice, and at its worst she was treated like garbage — less than human. Fortunately, the director of the orphanage that took her in cared for her with genuine love, but even that did not last long.
Because she took in half-blood children like Clara, the director came under relentless pressure from the residents of the district. They threatened to force the orphanage shut, and death threats against the director herself began to arrive.
In the end the director had no choice but to send the half-blood children away one by one, starting with the oldest — and Clara, too, was cast out onto the streets.
Even so, Clara never resented the director. If anything, she was only grateful that someone had raised her this far when even her own parents had abandoned her.
After that, Clara had to act simply to survive. For a small child with no education and no strength, the easiest thing she could do was pickpocket.
It was a crime, however petty — but a girl fighting just to stay alive had no room to spare for moral scruples. What began as pickpocketing gradually escalated into bolder methods: cracking safes, and worse.
And Clara turned out to have a remarkable talent for thievery. From that point on, her aptitude for the thief's trade began to show. Even working the same hours, she brought in far more than the other pickpockets of the slums.
The people of the slums were never going to leave that kind of money alone. They cleaned out every coin she kept inside the little tent she called home.
Clara was not so naive as to miss so obvious a scheme — but she still had no choice but to let them take it. If she stayed in the tent to guard her money and got into a fight with them, there was no telling how things would end.
Especially given that Clara's looks had drawn attention from a young age. Every time it happened, she would take only a portion of what she had and move on to a new place to live.
She lived that way for roughly two years, starting from the age of eight when she was driven from the orphanage. At the time, it was the only way she knew how to survive.
Then came the single turning point in that life. Clara had been thieving with her usual skill when, the moment she lifted a man's wallet, he spoke to her.
"Quite the little talent, aren't you. Taking my wallet before I even noticed."
"…!?"
"You've got gift."
He had recognized her talent. Catching the hand of the girl who had been about to bolt, he said,
"Rather than living as a common cutpurse, how about becoming a proper thief?"
"Ngh — let go…!"
"It would be a waste to let that talent rot. I'm sorry, but if you refuse this path, I'll make sure you never put it to use anywhere else."
As he spoke, the man pressed a sharp dagger against Clara's forearm. She had seen blades often enough — but what truly terrified her was the gut certainty that she would never be able to escape this man.
That was their first meeting. The meeting with the master who would forge Clara into the formidable operative she was now. Every assassination technique and every hex she used, she had learned from him.
Her already considerable skill at cracking safes and disarming traps was perfected under his guidance as well. In many ways he was a master to whom she owed a great debt, and Clara had gradually come to follow him.
Until things went the way they did.
Clara's master was both the great turning point of her life and her first target for killing. The reason was simple.
Because her master wanted her to kill him. Where Clara had grown steadily healthier, her master had been wasting away. By the time she killed him, he was already beyond the reach of medicine or holy power.
"…No Name."
And so her master chose to burn the last of his soul. To complete the greatest achievement he would leave upon this world.
"Anyone who walks this path… must never hesitate to kill. The moment you do, the one who dies will be you."
He spoke with a killing intent sharp as a drawn blade.
"Kill me, and complete your work."
"……"
Clara said she could not. Her master had always been curt, but he was the first person since the orphanage director to look after her, to teach her something, to care for her. To kill such a person with her own hands — she simply could not do it.
Then her master said,
"In that case… I will cut off your arms and legs and dump you in the slums."
"…!"
"You are something I completed. How I dispose of you is my business."
He gave a short, dry laugh.
"It won't be a pleasant feeling, but it should make for an interesting spectacle. Watching a thief who might have left her name in history reduced by my hand to something that squeals like a pig."
Clara was shocked — and felt revulsion toward her master as well. Given how curt he had always been, it was entirely possible he had never cared for her specially at all.
Of course, she understood now that those words had not been his true feelings. He had only spoken a lie he did not mean, to give her a reason — a reason to move her blade in order to protect herself.
But she had not known that then. Clara had been only fourteen. Mentally immature, with survival her single most urgent concern, she saw a master who said such things as the most dangerous enemy she had ever faced.
Clara stood against him. She brought everything he had taught her to bear.
But the fight ended so easily that even calling it anticlimactic would have been generous. A master whose body was already in ruins had no way to answer a Clara whose talent had fully blossomed.
Clara's dagger slid cleanly through her master's carotid artery — executing the method he had taught her to perfection. With his life about to be snuffed out in a single stroke, her master left her with a final word.
"……Don't… get addicted to blood…"
"Hah… hah…"
"…You… must decide for yourself… whether to kill or not… by your own will…"
And with that last sentence,
"…That is… the difference between a killer who moves for pleasure… and a thief who moves out of necessity……"
his breath stopped.
"……Uh… uuh… haah… hhk…"
Confirming that her master was dead, Clara remained trapped in shock and confusion for some time. Only after two days could she bury him and leave that place behind.
From the moment she killed her master with her own hands, Clara developed a deep distrust of and phobia toward human connection — and her terror of men, the same gender as her master, ran especially deep.
So Clara chose the life of an adventurer. She could work alone, earn money, and never have to settle anywhere. The fools who approached her with ulterior motives based on her appearance, or who tried to ignore her and take what she had, she dealt with thoroughly.
Even after she came of age and rose to the rank of a Slayer-class adventurer, that treatment did not change much — except on the occasions when people who recognized her simply kept their distance.
It was only natural, then, that she came to distrust human relationships and found interacting with others deeply unfamiliar. Add to that the terror born of what had happened with her master, and there was never any real chance that Clara would build a proper human connection.
And of course, that meant there was never anyone who looked out for her, either. Then, in the year she came of age, during those days of adventuring, someone came looking for her.
"Slayer-rank adventurer and thief — Miss No Name."
"……?"
"Ah, that's right. It's a pleasure to meet you."
At the sound of that voice, Clara turned her head and found a small, beautiful young woman. She was a little short, but every mature line of her face made it clear she was a fully grown adult.
Clara looked at her with curious eyes — and the woman, studying her with equal interest, introduced herself.
"I'm Erinn. I've just been named the Hero of the Dern Empire."