The Night the Full Moon Sets
"Please depart."
"Understood."
Last night had passed, and this morning had come in its place. Meeting the spring dawn as it poured down over her, Uriel climbed into the carriage and set off for the Imperial Academy.
Yesterday was truly the worst...
She let her head rest lightly against the window and closed her eyes. Had it been her own birthday, she would never have wanted to turn it over in her mind again. It was only later, when the whole company fell to badmouthing Perzen together and the air finally cleared, that she could bear it at all...
Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug, was it.
Uriel let out a thin sigh and folded her arms. Her own face, reflected in the glass of the carriage window, came into view.
That tiny, unheard-of border rubbish of a house called Ruerug could hardly be worth more than House Alfred.
Long ago, at the meeting where an engagement with her had been passed back and forth, Perzen had risen to his feet spitting cold abuse. She had idly wondered, then, which daughter of which house he might actually marry...
How irritating, for no reason at all.
No lingering attachment remained. It was simply absurd that he had wrecked that engagement merely to marry a woman like her. Euphemia was not plain, yet from a third party's eyes it was difficult to call her a beauty striking enough to turn one's head. She might belong among the beautiful, but the adjective that ought to stand before the word was common.
Perzen, however, was not obsessed with Euphemia's appearance. That allure was something only he could feel, and only he could know.
"I don't like it."
Wanting a look at the woman's face for herself, she had already sent a letter inviting her to a tea party, but no reply had ever come.
Is he shielding her...?
According to the rumors that reached her, even the desks and chairs in her own lecture hall followed a design his wife had proposed. And if she thought of that painting from last night—the single picture she could not forget, however she tried—then Perzen was sunk in that woman beyond anything she had imagined.
"..."
A man who looked as though not a thread of his composure would slip even in the moment of death, an unrivaled devoted husband before his wife. It was difficult to believe.
The carriage creaked.
"Ah..."
Lost in thought, she found that they had already entered the Academy grounds and finished parking. She climbed down with a weary tread, and not far off a carriage marked with a familiar crest caught her eye.
He shouldn't even have a lecture. Did he come in to work...? Or did he only stop by for a moment?
"Hmph..."
Either way, it did not matter. Unwilling to turn that man over in her mind any longer, Uriel shook her neatly bound ponytail hard from side to side and walked on toward her office.
"This should do..."
I tapped the pen a few times, set it down, drew out the thumbtack, and lifted the sheet. It was the seating plan for the hall that would host next week's second-week lecture, together with the public talk explaining the paper. A professor would not ordinarily trouble himself with such things, but if I left it to others and then had to look upon some lopsided wreck of broken symmetry, I would not be able to bear it. There was nothing for it.
Once I handed this to the administrative assistant, nothing else remained to be done, so I meant to return straight to the manor.
Click. Click.
I started down the ramp beside the stairs, gentler underfoot than the steps themselves, and from below came the sound of a woman's heeled footsteps. This was not the education hall but an upper floor of the main building, so it was likely a professor.
Click.
When the owner of those footsteps came into view, I stopped where I stood.
"..."
Unlike last time, when her clothes had announced to every corner of the world that she was a mage, today Uriel wore a pure white blouse and a black skirt that fell to about her knees.
"A glance would have done for a greeting. Go on your way. Why stop? You're making me conscious of you."
I had not yet said a word, nor done a thing. Even so, she frowned and spat her irritation at me.
So it is that time...
I could feel, with perfect clarity, that her temper was unusually sharp.
"Don't look at my stomach. It's revolting."
"You're being unusually insolent today. I thought you were on your monthly."
"Y-you—you really—!"
"If not, then why pick a fight with me at the crack of dawn? Do you want to be scolded again, the way you were then?"
"Hmph..."
When I narrowed my eyes a fraction, Uriel flinched and turned her head, as if she had nothing left to say.
"Yes... enough. Even exchanging words with you is exhausting."
I sighed, took up the steps I had halted, passed her, came down to the first floor of the main building, and entered the departmental office.
"Alphonse. Next week's second-week lecture will be held in the hall. Outside guests are expected as well, so it will double as a public talk. This is the seating plan for that occasion, so be certain to follow it... and have a notice posted on the board, so the students will know the lecture is to be given in the hall."
"Ah... yes! Understood."
With that, the errand was finished. Lightened, I left the departmental office and was about to step out of the main building when—
Thud!
"Ah..."
The moment I turned the corner, I collided with a wheelchair that shot out into my path.
"..."
What sort of day was this, truly. Absurd for no good reason, I looked down in silence at Lizzie, seated in the chair.
She flinched.
Like a puppy with its tail curled tight, she backed away as if growling. Trying not to show that she was afraid, Lizzie forced her chin up and opened her mouth in a trembling voice.
"Th-this... is both our faults."
I had not been watching my step at the corner either, so I could not call her wrong.
"So... p-please... move."
Prod. Prod.
Governing, by Enslavement, the corpse that pushed her wheelchair, Lizzie jabbed my leg again and again with her knee. It looked less like insolence than a cute little struggle, and so I stepped aside, as she wished.
Then, with the creak and rattle of wheels, Lizzie rolled past me and out of the main building.
"..."
Watching her back, I sank for a moment into thought.
A positive sign... is that what I ought to call it?
Given the history between us, I had expected Lizzie to blurt an apology at once and shake where she sat. She had not.
Or perhaps not...
Had it been an empty place, with only the two of us facing each other, I might have taken it that way. But this was an open hall, with people passing through, and so I concluded it was nothing more than a minor incident. I made for the carriage park behind the main building and climbed into the carriage.
Before she knew it, it was the second week since the entrance ceremony had begun—the ninth of March. At five in the afternoon, when every lecture had ended, Laura did not return to the dormitory. She stepped outside the Imperial Academy.
Permission for an overnight absence had already been secured. Yes. Not a mere outing. An overnight leave. Today, Laura had not the slightest intention of remaining inside the Academy.
"Hah... hahh..."
Before the sun had fully set, she entered the fine inn where she had reserved a room in advance and locked the door behind her. The day she turned exactly nineteen. Laura's nineteenth birthday. Yes. That was today. And at the same time, it was the day the full moon rose.
Was this truly coincidence?
It might be coincidence, but...
For some reason, Laura could not shake a creeping dread. Not a drop of Genova blood flowed in this body. There was nothing to fear. That curse-like peculiarity would surely not seize her.
"N-never... n-never. It w-won't seize me, it won't..."
Collapsed before the door, hugging her own body, Laura whispered to herself without cease, as if laying a hypnotic spell upon her mind. But as the sun sank, and darkness rose beyond the red of the sunset, the trembling only grew past all control.
The heart of her fear was this: if the Full-Moon Quirk ever seized her, there would be no escaping it. Even if she used drugs to force herself down into something like unconsciousness. Even if she refused all food and drink and drove her body to its limit until her strength was spent. The moment the quirk broke upon her, the body entered a state of extreme arousal. She could feel no fatigue, and she would never lose her mind.
Even if her whole body were carved away like meat, she might die of shock, but fainting was not even to be hoped for. Even locked in a solitary cell as impregnable as an iron fortress, from which she herself could not escape, if she failed to satisfy whatever pleasure the quirk demanded, it would twist at last toward mutilating her own flesh. The Full-Moon Quirk handed down through the comital house of Genova was that vicious. The only means of breaking that ring was death alone.
And then...
Before the trembling Laura, the sunset that had stretched the shadows long vanished without a trace. Together with the stars, the full moon rose to light the dark of night.
"Hah... hahh... ha... hhh...!"
In the moment when excitement born of fear reached its peak, Laura spilled out irregular breaths as if she might suffocate on the spot, and clutched with her left hand the place near her chest where a faint pain was rising.
"Hhk...!"
At first she thought it was simply her heart beating too fast, from a body wound tight with tension. It was not.
"Haa...!"
Like a fever on a midsummer night, a burning heat that set the whole body aflame swallowed her. Thirst, from a throat gone bone-dry. Staggering to her feet, Laura seized the water bottle on the table, brought it to her lips, and drank in rough gulps.
Water spilled.
What missed her mouth and leaked aside ran along the line of Laura's neck and slowly soaked the clothes she wore.
Gulp. Gulp.
But no matter how much water she drank, the thirst would not ease.
At last, rather than drinking, she lifted the bottle and poured it over herself, as if drenching her own body. The wet cloth clung lewdly to her snow-white skin, faintly revealing the flesh beneath.
"Ha... ah..."
Then the wind blowing in at the window wrapped Laura's wet body and cooled, if only for a moment, a heat that had seemed as though it would never die. Drawn by that coolness, she moved naturally toward the window.
Am I... all right...?
The impulse that surged the instant the quirk seized her. She did not feel it. Her body's state was identical to the omen that came before the fit, but seeing that it went no further...
A kind of phantom pain, perhaps...
Clutching her throbbing head, Laura steadied her breath. Then, suddenly, she lifted her face and looked up at the sky.
"..."
The full moon was hidden behind cloud. At that sight, Laura curled her hand into a fist.
It can't be...
Because it was a quirk that seized beneath the full moon, when the moon was briefly veiled by cloud, the impulse eased for a time.
It absolutely cannot be...
Gripping the window frame tight, holding a conviction little short of stubbornness, Laura waited in anxious silence. At last the cloud that had swallowed the full moon drifted slowly past, and when it spat out a portion of that brilliantly shining form...
"Ah..."
The heat that had briefly died flared up all at once, and a powerful, unbearable urge to kill began to boil. The people passing below...
A gentle mother walking with a child's hand in hers.
—If I split that woman's belly, stuffed the child inside, and strangled her to death with her own guts...
Lovers embracing, tender with each other.
—If I wrung that woman's body like a twist of cloth, squeezed out a flood of blood, ground her flesh into it, and made the man drink...
"Uk—!"
When the vivid imaginings rose with a surge of nausea, Laura retched where she stood. Was the Full-Moon Quirk of the comital house of Genova not carved into the bloodline, but branded upon the soul? Terror and despair—that she must turn once more upon that dreadful wheel—wrapped Laura's body.
But they began, quickly, to thin.
"Hh... nngh..."
The more the cloud-veiled full moon revealed itself, the more Laura, merely by imagining the killing of people, felt a sweet orgasm beyond all description. This was something seated inside a curse of the utmost horror... perhaps a handful of light. A pleasure of the heavens, granted in the course of carrying out the quirk.
"Ngh... hhk...!"
Twisting her thighs together, Laura barely managed to rise. She seized the door handle and pulled her robe down deep over her head. At least the quirk had not broken out as a desire to kill those who bore her goodwill. Was that not, if nothing else, a small mercy?
The judgment she reached with what little reason remained was this: go to the outskirts of the capital, and find those whose deaths would leave her with less guilt.
She flung the door open.
Yes. That was all.
"Goodbye!"
It was a shame. I had a brief errand at the society, and on the chance that the oil portrait painted then might have dried, I had stopped by while I was at it. They told me the paint still came off at the mere touch of a hand. Well, only four days had passed.
If it was going to be like this, I should have asked for watercolor instead of oil...
Harboring a futile regret, I opened the shop door and stepped out. Then, to climb into the carriage waiting ahead, I walked slowly, careful not to tread upon the lines of the road.
A rapid patter of feet—!
A woman running in desperate haste, her robe pulled deep over her head, shoved me roughly aside and stomped squarely upon my left foot, and then—
She went down with a crash.
She fell so spectacularly that the people around raised a fuss.
"..."
But whether from shame, or because she truly had urgent business, the woman did not so much as apologize. She scrambled up in a fluster and ran off again toward the far side of the street. What on earth was she doing. A pickpocket, surely? The thought made me slip a hand into my pocket, but nothing was missing—neither coin nor anything else.
That she had gone without an apology soured my mood considerably. Even so, I had no wish to linger on a crowded street, and so I climbed meekly into the carriage.
A twitch.
"..."
"Shall we return to the manor?"
"No... that won't be necessary."
Shaking my head at the coachman's words, I pressed a hand once to my brow, stepped down from the carriage, and rolled up my sleeves.
"Go on back ahead of me. Something urgent has come up."
"Yes...? Ah, understood."
"Tell Euphemia to eat her supper first, and then sleep."
"Yes!"
The coachman soon drew the horses away and vanished down the street. And I—my throbbing left foot.
More precisely...
Ha...
So that my right foot, the one that had not been stepped on, might be stepped on as well, I tore through the night streets in search of the woman who had trampled my left foot and fallen. This was a matter of the gravest importance. At least for this body—for Perzen.
The full moon. The fifteenth day of the lunar month, when the full moon rises. Tonight the moonlight poured down with unusual brightness, as if following, through the streets of the capital, a woman and a man each steeped in their own madness... as if casting a brilliant spotlight upon them.