An Honest Conversation (1)
Albrecht could not easily accept the situation he found himself in.
Then again, anyone would have felt the same.
The party members he had thought were already out of his life were sitting in his house, the atmosphere between them painfully awkward.
Ser-Aria, Freya, Letisia… and Erinn.
Faces he had, in some small way, missed now surrounded him. And…
“…”
Clara was clinging to Albrecht’s side. At the sight of it, Letisia’s ears shot straight up.
“C-Clara! Get away from him!”
“…No.”
Clara only pressed herself closer, making a show of it. She even linked her arm through his.
Albrecht found the gesture secretly pleasing, yet he knew it was completely unsuited to the moment. It would only stir up more trouble.
“Uh… Clara.”
Still, he could not bring himself to push her away with any real force.
Clara’s bold act only moments earlier had left him barely able to lift his head. Just looking at her brought back the sensation of that touch, and keeping his composure was already hard enough.
“We need to talk first, so just for a little while…”
“…Okay.”
Letisia let out a hollow laugh of pure disbelief. The shock of it hit her hard—when she had asked, Clara had ignored her completely, yet the moment Albrecht carefully made the same request, she agreed at once.
“C-Clara won’t even listen to me…”
The blow landed even harder because Letisia had always looked after Clara more than anyone. Clara, a little startled, answered.
“…B-but Letisia told me to get away.”
“Of course you should get away! Grown adults clinging to each other like that is even more…!”
“…It’s improper!”
Freya picked up right where Letisia left off. She leaned her full chest forward as if scolding Albrecht himself.
“An unmarried man and woman engaging in such lewd physical contact…!”
“…”
To Albrecht’s eyes, the truly lewd one was Freya—those enormous breasts, the upper chest, the underarms, and the bare back she left completely exposed.
More than that, he had heard people say relations before marriage were forbidden, but this was the first time he had ever heard anyone claim that kissing itself was off-limits. The sheer absurdity of it left him speechless.
“…Freya’s the lewd one. And you’re a Saintess.”
“…What?”
“…You always go around half-naked.”
“I-if we’re going to put it that way, Clara’s not much better…! If she just takes off that shawl cape the way she has now…”
“…That’s why she keeps it on.”
“……”
It was hard to argue with that, so Freya had nothing left to say. Clara, however, calmly dropped another fact bomb.
“…And Freya walks around like that because she wants to show it off. So I don’t think you have any right to talk.”
“Ugh…!”
Faced with the shameless Clara who fought purely with facts, Freya could not manage a single word.
“Puhaha! Clara’s got a point!”
“A-Aria!”
Ser-Aria piled on as well, siding with Clara and turning on Freya, so of course Freya’s face flushed red.
Watching Ser-Aria, Letisia felt a fresh wave of disbelief.
Whose side is Aria even on…?
She was a precious comrade, yet there were times when Letisia simply could not understand her.
Meanwhile Albrecht watched Clara methodically dismantling people with calm facts and felt a small jolt of surprise. He had just seen an unexpected side of her. A laugh rose in his throat, but he swallowed it—Freya would definitely get angry if he laughed now.
“…That’s enough, both of you.”
It was Erinn who reined in Letisia and Freya. Letisia looked at her with open incomprehension, yet Erinn remained remarkably composed.
Or perhaps she was only pretending to be composed. Either way, she turned to Albrecht with a quieter, steadier air.
“…Whatever relationship you have with Clara, that was your freedom once you left the party. I won’t interfere.”
At Erinn’s words, Albrecht thought to himself,
It’s not like we were anything special…
Of course, from this point on it might become something, but until now it had not been.
“I’ll get to the real reason we came here.”
“Uh…”
Albrecht had been intensely curious about that himself. After parting ways he had assumed they would not meet again for quite some time, yet here they were so soon. There had to be a solid reason.
“Albrecht, first… I’m sorry.”
“…Huh?”
Seeing Erinn suddenly apologize left Albrecht flustered. He had no idea why, so she explained.
“When you decided to leave the party… I asked for your opinion, but I never asked how you felt.”
“…”
“I should have asked that. Of course I should have.”
Erinn’s brow tightened slightly. The dissatisfaction was not aimed at the present situation or at Albrecht, but at her own past attitude.
“I think I only thought about my own feelings. Like an idiot.”
“…Mm.”
“So I came to ask you now.”
Erinn swallowed hard. She spoke as if she were calm, as if none of it truly touched her, but the truth was the opposite. Of everyone present she was the most tense; she was terrified of Albrecht’s answer.
Afraid he might refuse.
Afraid he would say he no longer wanted to travel with them.
Amid those emotions Erinn carefully opened her mouth and asked him,
“Did you… want to leave the party?”
At Erinn’s question I could only stare at her blankly.
A great many thoughts crowded in at once. I could feel that she was truly sorry, and I understood that she was trying to be considerate of me.
At the same time another question rose: why ask this only now? I had left that day for her sake and the party’s—what meaning did the question hold after the fact?
But I did not say any of that out loud. I could not.
Looking at the expression on Erinn’s face as she asked, I was not cold-hearted enough to answer so harshly. Strictly speaking, I had not been wounded that deeply either.
Erinn looked terribly anxious. She must have known there were only two possible reactions to a question like this, and yet she still looked like that…
…She came without thinking about what comes after.
She had arrived carrying nothing more than vague hope. Considering Erinn’s original personality, she was not the sort of person who did reckless things like this. If anything she was methodical, thorough to a fault.
Even the way she had kept acting like a mesugaki just to stir old memories—believing I was still Allen—proved it. That was not her real nature, yet she never once dropped the act no matter the situation. That alone showed how meticulous she could be.
The fact that someone like her wore an expression like this told me everything about her anxiety and about how little she had planned for the aftermath.
“…How was it, you ask.”
So I decided to answer a little more honestly.
“Of course I was anxious. Extremely.”
“…!”
“Think about it. I was traveling with all of you without any real knowledge of this world, and then suddenly I had to leave the party.”
Erinn’s shoulders flinched at my words. I had not meant to press her, but once I had chosen honesty there was no soft way to put it.
“So of course I was anxious. Honestly… hanging around with you lot shattered a lot of my common sense. I wasn’t even sure I could manage properly on my own.”
“…Common sense?”
Letisia asked, puzzled.
In Dungeon in Evil terms it was the common sense of damage-dealing concepts. After running a party stacked with the highest-performance characters, suddenly trying to play with weaker ones produced a brutal reverse shock.
“Well… things you all take for granted that other people simply can’t do.”
“Ah…”
“And I said I would go on adventures, but when I actually tried, there were parts that felt completely overwhelming.”
With the party composition changed, the things I had to handle multiplied and there was suddenly a great deal to learn. Magic especially—without anyone to teach me I had decided it was hopeless and given up for a while.
“…I wish you’d asked a little earlier.”
If she had, I might never have chosen to leave the party at all. The moment I said it, Erinn’s eyes shook hard.
“…That means…”
What?
I had only meant it would have been nice if she had. Yet the reaction was far too intense. Not only Erinn—Letisia and Freya’s faces hardened in an instant as well.
Clearly thrown into confusion, Erinn soon hung her head low. Seeing that, I grew flustered myself.
“…?”
She seemed to be misunderstanding something. How exactly had my words sounded to produce a reaction like this?
Did it sound like I was blaming them?
Of course it was not as if I had never felt that way at all. If they had truly asked earlier, I might have made a different choice.
But I did not resent them, nor did I feel the decision itself had been unreasonable. There had been valid reasons and genuine understanding; that was why I had left them and the party.
So there was no reason to hate these people now…
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
“…Huh?”
The situation, however, moved in a direction completely different from my thoughts. Erinn, still hanging her head, began to apologize in a tearful voice.
“I’m really sorry… sob, I was wrong… I should have asked everything first, sob, and only then decided… I just went ahead and…”
“W-wait a second.”
No—she was not merely sounding tearful. She was actually crying. Erinn was crying.
“W-why are you crying!?”
“Sob, hic…”
Unlike me, who was completely lost, Letisia and Freya watched her with eyes full of shared sorrow. Even Clara and Ser-Aria—who until moments ago had seemed to have no thoughts on the matter at all—looked at the scene with open pity.
The only one who, like me, failed to understand was the person sitting right beside me…
“…Hm?”
Only Caesius.