020 — Professor Ferzen
The Middle Ages borrowed into novels are, as a rule, a muddle, Renaissance civilization stirred through them without order.
In point of fact, the syringe—which first appeared in eighteenth-century France—already existed in this world, and medical knowledge had advanced so far that to call the age purely medieval would have been a misstatement.
And yet Lizzie's ankle had come to such a state.
It meant that, by the medicine of this place at least, the damage could not be undone.
Of course, it was not that there was no way at all.
A black magician is a being who can bargain with the anomalies of the Netherworld. The first floor, open to a black magician of Kether rank, is Sañjīva. The second, with which a magician of Euclid rank may deal, is Raurava. Pass beyond those two layers, attain the rank of Apollyon, and gain the right to bargain with the anomalies of the third floor—Pratāpana—and it might be possible to heal Lizzie's ankle.
Yes. It was not certain.
Which anomaly of the Netherworld would make contact with one's altar was not a thing a black magician could choose. Contact with the anomalies dwelling on the first floor, Sañjīva, could at least be guided so that one connected with a being possessed of the ability one desired—but from the anomalies of the second floor onward, there was not the slightest chance of it.
There had been a record, at least...
Once, when a black magician of Apollyon rank made contact with a certain anomaly of the third floor, Pratāpana, that anomaly took its price and restored the damage done to a body. House Brutein was a house of immense wealth. Borrowing the power of an anomaly that dwelt on the third floor of the Netherworld would exact a price vast beyond measure, but he was confident he could bear it.
On the assumption that contact could even be made...
His head ached. In truth, even if contact were made and the leg healed, he did not believe the rift in feeling would close. And how could it? She would have lived that way for eight full years.
Irritating. Truly...
He had walked up to the roof of Lecture Hall A. Opening his umbrella, he set a cigarette between his teeth and drew a long breath.
Rather...
If only he could sweep the matter cleanly away. Might House Alfred and House Claudia not furnish him a pretext? Controlling a variable was one thing. Removing it was easier.
"......"
He had been sunk in that brooding only a little while when, at the corner of the roof to his right, a blue umbrella peeked out and fidgeted. Wondering who it was, he approached at an unhurried pace, and there she was.
"Wh-what is it..."
Uriel, crouched low, carefully smoking a cigarette.
"Unexpected."
"Is there a law that says a woman isn't allowed to smoke?"
"I meant precisely what I said. It was unexpected."
"Hmph... It's your fault to begin with, so spare me the useless sermon."
She pursed her lips and, with brazen insolence, blew a stream of smoke into his face.
"......"
His brow creased for a moment. He endured it.
"Ah—! Agh!"
No. He did not endure it. How was one meant to tolerate insolence this ill-mannered? He caught the brimmed hat she had pulled low over her face and flung it to the ground.
The hat settled into a standing puddle, drank the rain, and sank.
"......"
Yes. That was how it ought to have gone. It did not sink. It floated. The falling rain bent this way and that; she was interfering with the air around them, holding the hat aloft. A moment later it was about to drift, quite naturally, into Uriel's arms.
"Ah...!"
He unraveled the working and dropped it to the floor.
A black magician could not, as an elemental magician could, convert mana into a given element or interfere with earth and air. Once he had grasped a spell's compositional formula, however, dismantling it was possible. In truth it was less a dismantling than a conversion into nothing. The lecture of the second week, still to come, was bound up with this as well—more precisely, with the concept of recognizing a spell's compositional formula.
"Your eyes are remarkably insolent."
Uriel was picking the fallen hat up off the ground, both eyes lifted as she glared at him. He drew on the cigarette and blew the smoke over her. She coughed, turned her head, and rose. For having talked back to him, she seemed to judge this much of an exchange not a poor result, and showed no sign of pressing further.
"Move."
"Uriel."
"Don't be so familiar..."
"Professor Uriel."
"What."
"Dress yourself properly."
He caught the umbrella between neck and shoulder, discarded the spent cigarette on the ground, and reached for the cloth of her dress above the breast. The collar stood open by exactly one button—one side folded aside, the other set in a clean edge—and it grated on him more than a little.
"......"
Perhaps because her chest was considerably large, the moment he tried to fasten the button the cloth drew tight as if wrung, and the creases came into his eyes with painful clarity.
"Ah, that hurts!"
"A body so vulgar it cannot be made decent to begin with..."
He abandoned the attempt and folded both sides of the collar neatly aside.
"What business is it of yours! And stop pawing at me on the sly like that. It's revolting. Alfred has Alfred's own decorum. I don't hang on Brutein anymore. What Alfred pursues is freedom."
"That is not freedom. It is license."
"And that dignity of yours isn't nobility. It's cruelty."
Cruelty. He was not without a guess as to what the word pointed at, and so he could say nothing.
"Hmph..."
With that, Uriel walked past him.
"Ha..."
The rain still came down in a dreary drizzle. Standing in it with his umbrella, he watched for a long time as the scenery of the capital slowly soaked through.
Four-fifty in the afternoon.
Lizzie, who had chosen the violin in the liberal-arts course Understanding Art and Culture, at last came out of the lecture hall once the class ended. With that, there were no more lectures to attend today. She had only to share a simple dinner with her older brother, who would be waiting at the main building, and return to the dormitory.
Without fail...
Since that day, Lizzie had lived like a wreck. And no wonder. For a girl of only twelve, the violence Ferzen had shown her had dealt a severe shock to the mind.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Even when she wailed and begged, in the end he broke her left foot.
No. It had not broken. The nerves were alive, and it moved. But when she set it down, it could not bear the weight of her body. A left foot that had become nothing more than an ornament. Had her eldest brother, arriving late that day, not struck Ferzen across the jaw and knocked him senseless, the foot would truly have broken.
Of course, now that things had come to this, Lizzie sometimes thought it might have been better if the left foot had been broken clean through. If it had been broken thoroughly, at least her late father and her eldest brother would not have had to suffer such humiliation.
...
It was autumn, and the grain had to be harvested and sold, yet not a single merchant company anywhere would buy what was theirs. Not a single physician came to examine her foot. Winter was drawing near, so the people of the domain had to sell the harvest if they were to survive the cold, and her foot was swelling day by day, growing worse. Paradoxically, her father and her eldest brother went to the head of House Brutein, knelt, and apologized. The head of Brutein accepted that apology on the added condition that the matter of that day be kept in absolute silence, bought the grain at three times the average market price, and withdrew the other pressures.
This, too—Ferzen von Schweig Brutein.
No. Ferzen von Schweig Ruerug.
Did that man know?
Even now, Lizzie could not understand what she had done wrong. Had a mistake made out of nerves in the middle of a dance been so grave a crime?
Truly. Without fail...
A contest, under identical conditions, over a corpse's implementation rate. Four years ago he had said that if anyone could defeat him in that contest, he would grant whatever they wished under the name of Brutein. She did not know whether the promise still held. But given his character, at least, he would not treat it as if it had never been made.
So Lizzie meant, once she held a clear certainty, to challenge him head-on, win, and drag him before her father's grave to force an apology—or demand that one of his own feet be broken, just as hers had been. The latter had little chance of being realized. Still, once her eldest brother had held his wedding with the eldest daughter of House Alfred, it did not seem it would be an impossible demand.
Creak. Creak.
She waited quietly at the corner of the corridor, and only when she saw that every other student had gone down did Lizzie command a corpse to push her wheelchair. On that day eight years ago she had suffered an aversion that set her trembling at the sight of any man who was not family, but in the end she had overcome it. She had a talent for black magic as well, and if she had only two or three years, a path up to the rank of Euclid was already in sight. At the first lecture, the sight of him had made her emotional, and she had thrown out a rebuttal full of openings. From now on she had only to make no mistake of that sort.
"Ah..."
The ramp descending from the second floor to the first. Halfway down it, her mana was entirely spent. She had been going about like this since morning, so it was no unreasonable thing. No—the amount of mana had been sufficient. She was simply unfamiliar with the layout inside the lecture hall, and wasting her route had led her to overspend.
Of all times...
Were it not a downhill, she could have turned the wheels herself. It was a downhill, and if she went on like this she would be unable to stop and would strike the wall. She had no choice but to rise on her crutches, call the brother waiting for her at the main building, and have him bring the wheelchair.
Step. Step.
Every student had gone down. Beyond the end of the stairs, where only the silence of falling rain lingered, a man revealed himself—turning the corner of the first floor on his way up. A neat suit. A figure of overflowing dignity, without the slightest disarray.
Ferzen von Schweig Ruerug.
"Ha... hhh..."
To Lizzie, that figure looked like something else. The terror of a killer who had quietly shown himself in a gloomy alley where the dark had settled, and was looking at her.
Why? She had overcome her aversion to men. Even if it was not that—even if what she feared was the man Ferzen himself—had she not been all right while she sat through the lecture?
"Ah... uh..."
Step. Step.
He was coming up. Closing the distance. Each time he did, Lizzie felt as if someone had a hand around her throat, and she could not draw a proper breath. Only then did she finally understand. Just as on that day eight years ago, the mere fact of facing him alone, with no one else around, was setting off that cruel trauma.
"Have you run out of mana."
When those crimson eyes—enough, of themselves, to raise gooseflesh—looked down at her, Lizzie's whole body went rigid.
"There is time. I will help you."
He enslaved the fallen corpse and raised it, then took hold of Lizzie's wheelchair from behind and slowly pushed it on. But the moment Ferzen, who had been within her sight, shifted to the rear so that he left it...
The terror she felt doubled. She might flee the killer met in a gloomy alley, and yet the sound of footsteps kept pursuing her, and with it the fear that she might die wretchedly at any moment, without knowing when.
"Ha—huh—uh... hhk...!"
At last it reached its limit and broke her.
Creak.
"......"
A pale yellow liquid ran down from the wheelchair. Rain was falling, and mixed with the sticky humidity inside the lecture hall, a strange reek of urine rose. At that, Ferzen halted the step he had been taking. He was not fool enough to mistake what trickled down the slope of the ramp. Worse, he had noticed too late. His right shoe had already come down along the path the urine had made, and it gleamed wet.
"K-khhk...!"
Her whole body shook. Both legs drawn tight together, Lizzie Paul Liana Claudia wept. Ferzen, watching her, knew it was filthy—and still, almost by reflex, he could not help but set his left foot forward and tread upon the urine with which she had soiled the ramp.
"Ha..."
He had no mysophobia, but this was a thing anyone would find unpleasant, mysophobia or not. Irritation surged toward Lizzie for having given him a cause his compulsion could not help but seize upon, yet Ferzen forced the feeling down. He was aware, in his own way, that there was a fitting cause for this result. It was only that he could not understand why she, perfectly composed while she sat through his lecture, should be like this now.
"......"
And in the silence that hung between them, Lizzie felt a shame and a despair more violent than at any other moment of her life.