The Child from the Slums
I was from the slums.
I have no idea how I survived those earliest years. Whether I had parents at all, or whether someone had taken pity on a child and watched over me — I couldn't say. All I knew was that from the moment I possessed anything resembling a memory, I had no choice but to live alone.
Then one day, a friend I'd worked alongside in the slums was suddenly dragged off to the Royal Capital. I had a rough idea why. But the look on his face as they took him — he genuinely didn't want to go — and that worried me.
We'd only stuck together for mutual benefit, sure. But we'd shared life and death for years. Affection had taken root whether I wanted it to or not.
So I went to the Royal Capital. There was no grand reason. At that moment, he was the only person I could call a friend, and I was certain a place as suffocating as the Royal Capital would be misery for him.
That was how I first left the slums and made for the Royal Capital, gawking at every unfamiliar sight like the textbook country bumpkin I was. People noticed.
I was lucky. Arriving at the Royal Capital alive could fairly be called a miracle. And luck struck a second time — I found my friend almost immediately.
But he looked happy. Well-fed, dressed in fine clothes, living well.
Well. That's fine, then.
That was the only thought that crossed my mind. The instant I saw him, I figured he was all right. If he'd been suffering after being dragged there against his will, I'd meant to save him. But if he was genuinely smiling, genuinely enjoying himself — there was no need for me to rescue him.
He had money. He had food. He had clothes. A life with everything provided was a little enviable, I suppose. But it wasn't mine, so that was fine.
Back to the slums, then. Or… did I even need to go back? Maybe I could just live out here.
I was turning that over when it happened — the moment I'd started wondering what to do now that I was in the Royal Capital.
"Huh? What—"
My body went numb. I couldn't move.
And then:
"Not a child of the Royal Capital, I see. Perfect. Take him."
I was dragged away without the faintest idea why.
The talent of a Spiritist is something you have to be born with. Without an innate ability to commune with spirits, you cannot become one. But a Spiritist was a versatile power, capable of answering any number of situations.
And so people had wondered: could that talent be manufactured? If the ability to commune was what mattered, couldn't you simply force that ability to grow after the fact?
That, I think, was the idea.
"Ghk—! Hh—! Ah—!"
That was how a Spirit Core was driven into my chest.
At first I thought someone would come to save us. An unethical experiment targeting young children — there was no way people would permit such a thing.
That was my mistake. The experiment was being conducted with the blessing of high-ranking nobles. The king himself might have known. At the very least, it was not a situation in which I could expect anyone's help.
Living in the slums, I had thought I understood human malice well enough. But the malice of the slums and the malice of that place were different creatures entirely.
The malice I had known in the slums came from a kind of fear — the fear of being harmed yourself. People with no room left in their hearts, for whom each day of survival was already too hard, growing sharp-edged, hardening themselves so they wouldn't have to surrender their own interests. That, I think, was closer to the truth of it.
But the malice here was malice, plain and simple. They delighted in it. You could be writhing in agony, and they would be pleased — they were getting the data the experiment required.
How many had died?
Others had been brought in during the course of that experiment besides me. Children my age. Elderly people. Women. Grown men in their prime. They took them without discrimination, and then they vanished.
I, it seemed, had some measure of talent. Even after two Spirit Cores had been driven into my chest, the only ones who survived were myself and one other boy. Everyone else failed to endure even a single core, and died.
It was on a day when I thought, So this is how I die, that I overheard them.
"The spirit communion ability has risen to an astonishing degree! This is a success!"
"But the reaction varies too wildly from person to person. Aside from those two children, no one can withstand the cores. We've received orders from above. This appears to have been a failure. The experiment is to be halted."
"Don't be a fool! If we just had a little more time—"
"This is an order. If you disobey, you know what will happen."
"Kh—!"
They had performed every kind of experiment on us, but even they seemed to be nothing more than the tail. Where the head was, and what it was doing — I had no idea. Resentment stirred in me, but I couldn't begin to guess where to direct it, and so I simply went numb.
I had no will left. I only wanted these days of suffering to end, and soon.
"I can't stop now! An age is coming when anyone will be able to use spirit arts!!"
"Oh? Are you refusing my orders?"
"…H-Your Grace! You've arrived!"
The Duke.
Someone important, then. Was this the man who had orchestrated this inhumane experiment? He was older than I'd expected. Looking at his face alone, I couldn't believe he was the one behind it. You really couldn't trust a person's face.
"That's the bastard."
I turned, startled, to look at the boy beside me.
He was chained as I was, and blood was running from his eyes. In the beginning we had talked, the two of us, but at some point he had stopped speaking entirely. I used to address him now and then, trying somehow to keep his mind intact, but it seemed he hadn't been able to hold on. He no longer responded to anything I said. He only looked at people with eyes that begged to be killed.
Blood spilled from the eyes of a boy whose name I didn't even know — and for the first time in a very long while, it seemed as though a light had returned to them.
"I took an interest in the vocation of Spiritist, which is why I sponsored this. But it's meaningless. The returns don't justify the risk, do they?"
"Your Grace, please calm yourself. We did achieve results."
"If it isn't a technique that can be applied to everyone, it's nothing more than luck. Two children survived, you say? That's your result? I'm sorry, but people will start asking questions soon enough. The risk is far too great, and the results far too meager. That's enough. This experiment ends here."
So the experiment was over. Freedom, then. But freedom in which sense?
We were proof of their crimes. They would never let us live.
That was what I thought. The boy beside me seemed to think otherwise.
"Huh? …Y-you're letting us go? We can leave?"
That was hope. Into emotions that had been nothing but rage and hatred, hope had taken root. It wasn't that none had stirred in me — but I had judged the odds too low. I was in better condition than he was, I thought, and yet I had simply lost the will to live entirely.
A worthless life in the slums anyway. Dying wouldn't matter — I had thought that every day I was alive. And after enduring every kind of unethical experiment, my heart was already broken. There was very little will to live left in me at all.
"Those children, I take it."
"Yes, that's correct…"
"Huh?"
The boy beside me went wide-eyed at those words. The hope that they might let him live vanished, and he seemed to tremble at the thought that they were going to kill him after all.
Then the flames flickered.
"Wh-what is that?!"
The fire was visible to everyone.
"Impossible! They're wearing mana-sealing cuffs — they shouldn't be able to use spirit arts!"
Mana-sealing cuffs do, it's true, block every kind of mana generated from within. But a spirit is mana — the creature itself. Those cuffs obstruct the circulation of mana, not its production. And they had been made for human criminals. Naturally, they would not work on a boy who had become a spirit itself.
And then, at last—
The flames erupted, swallowing the room whole.
"Gh— kkh! Khah—!"
In a space filled with the sound of things burning, I pushed myself up. Everything around me had been charred black. I was burned, but I was alive. Whether something close to survival instinct had driven me to Spirit Integration as well, or whether I had simply developed a resistance to fire even without it, I couldn't say — but compared to everywhere else, the wounds I had taken were slight.
Perhaps that rampaging boy had decided, at least, that he didn't want to kill me.
The prison door had burned away. So had the cuffs. So had the people. In the midst of all that cinder, someone was crouched over a single corpse.
Thud. Thud.
He was driving his fists into the already-dead body of The Duke. He himself was deeply burned. The wounds were worse than mine — the blackened, charred traces were severe, and he looked nothing like the boy I had known.
When I sat up, he seemed to notice me at last. He turned his head and smiled, awkwardly. It was the smile peculiar to a broken person. I couldn't bring myself to smile back.
Slowly, he came toward me.
He crumpled.
Those were his last words. I couldn't know what they meant. I'm glad you're alive — was that it? Or shock that I was still breathing, even in this? Or a kind of sorrow — that it would have been happier if we'd died together?
I would never know the true feelings of a boy whose name I didn't even know.
A small sound escaped me. I got to my feet and I moved. What I felt, what face I ought to wear — I didn't know. I simply went outside, and found myself in a dense forest.
It was raining. I ran from that place as if fleeing.
Far from my survival instinct having faded, it seemed I had run in order to live. I had simply been in so much pain that I had thrown away the hope that I might survive. When that hope returned, my heart began to pound.
No one in this world can truly accept death. There are only those for whom dying is easier than living. They choose death because living frightens them more than dying does.
"Ghk— kh. …Nngh."
The burns were severe, and there was nothing a child could do. My strength gave out completely. I collapsed on the ground, breathing in awkward, shallow pulls.
Time passed. The rain poured down, and it grew colder and colder.
"Aigoo, you're just a kid."
I lifted my head. A grown woman was looking down at me — the sort who looked like she belonged in a tavern.
"You still alive, kid?"
That was the moment I met Madame Florence.