Erkia, City of Water — You Have to Live
Belita Bright.
A girl born to be a Saintess, raised as a Saintess, forged into a Saintess — born to live as a Saintess, and to die as one.
Belita was not a Saintess. She did, however, possess a gift for healing magic, one so overwhelmingly beyond other people's that, had she honed it, she might have reached a realm beyond even an aged Pope while she was still young. It would never have been enough to make her a Saintess — but she would at least have become a fine cleric, more than capable of living a decent life.
And so Belita's father, greedy as he was, forced experiment after experiment upon her, all in the name of making her stronger still. The result was this: if Belita turned her healing upon herself, she could produce a restorative power that bordered on true regeneration. Barrier arts and similar magics had grown immensely strong as well. But her mind had grown far more unstable than that. The experiments had laid her spirit to waste, stripping her of the capacity to judge for herself.
Belita had become so passive that she would follow anyone who made her a proposal and then forced it upon her. As if to declare she had no right to the title, the Saintess Stigma never descended upon her.
In that moment, Belita thought she was being set free. She was not the Saintess, so this hell would end. That was what she believed. From then on, a thought took root: they don't need me anymore, so will I die? I hope I die. A kind of death wish had begun to writhe inside her.
But though Belita had not been chosen as Saintess, neither had anyone else. And that gifted her yet another hell.
The fake Saintess.
It doesn't end.
It won't end.
I want to die, but I don't want to die. I don't want to die, but I want to die.
Ah. I don't know. I don't know anything at all.
"...Wh-where...?"
"You're awake?"
I closed the book I'd been reading after Lois and looked at Belita as she sat up. I had held back, true — but for her to wake in only an hour was still rather remarkable. Depending on how things went, I had thought she might not even open her eyes before Titania returned. For her to come around this quickly was, I had to admit, surprising.
It seemed that, like Lois... no. Perhaps because she carried a Spirit Core even more powerful than his inside her body, the burden of her wounds had lessened, and her mind had surfaced that much faster. At this rate, she probably barely needed to sleep at all.
Belita could not grasp the situation at first. She stared blankly around her. Then it landed, and her eyes went wide. But only for a moment — she immediately started scratching at her own wrist, so I stepped in and caught her arm.
"Don't scratch."
"...Why...?"
"Why what?"
"Why didn't you kill me?"
"..."
I swallowed the sigh that wanted to come out. Lois had gone downstairs to bring up something decent to eat, which meant I was alone with her. I was not, to be honest, what you would call socially gifted. My ability to communicate had never been particularly high, and I was not good at putting things clearly. I would say something with one intention, and people would take it as another, so it was better not to speak carelessly at all. I needed someone beside me who could read what I meant, who could unravel a misunderstanding on the spot, or who could tell me I shouldn't have said it that way.
So my role here was to keep silent and simply watch her, so that she would not run. That was the role. And yet.
"That's—"
"..."
"You hate me, don't you... Or are you so much the Hero that you can shrug off what happened back then as if it were nothing?"
"Hardly. I'm still suffering from the wounds you people gave me."
"I suppose you are. Then why?"
"Because I know now that there are times when death does not pay for a sin."
"..."
Punishment for those who kill. Condemnation for those who plunge countless people into suffering. With that conviction I had cut down evil after evil, and not once had I given ear to the circumstances of that evil. They would only have offered excuses for what they had done. Some, by virtue of power, would never have faced a proper sentence at all. Some would never have reformed. Some would never have been punished as they deserved. It was easier on the heart to simply cut them down in a single stroke.
So that was the path I chose. I discarded the anguish and the pain a Hero was supposed to carry, and merely played at being one.
Someone might have truly repented and changed. Someone might have received a proper legal sentence. But with a heart that said maybe not, or they're villains anyway, I had cut them down without a shred of torment. I had not troubled myself with doubt. I pursued a universal good. I protected only what lay inside the walls of that so-called universal good, and I cut down everything beyond them. I forgave no evil — however it was done — the excuse of I had no choice.
It was such a convenient kind of goodness.
If you swing the blade of judgment without a shred of anguish — would you even recognize the moment it curdles into evil?
"You can't die."
"..."
"You have to live."
"..."
"To lay all the blame on you... your whole life has been too cruel, too wretched for that."
It was not that she should go unpunished. It was that punishment would not be punishment at all. Misery. Pain. Even the penalty of death, of execution — none of it would be a punishment for Belita now. Because she wanted it. Somewhere deep in her heart, she was hoping for her life to end. A girl who could no longer even die as a Saintess, who could no longer even live as one, had nothing left but the wish to be at ease. The mask had been stripped away, and all that burned in her chest was a longing for death, born of that hunger for ruin.
"You think that because you're not a Saintess, you have no value? No. That's wrong."
Someone from the past came to mind — someone who had believed I was worthless if I was not the Hero. It was cruel, as if the thought were holding up my own history in front of me. But what was crueler still, and what made me angrier than anything, was this: that no one had realized this child was being destroyed until she was already broken, and that the people who had realized it had only thought of how to use her.
"It's the name of Saintess that has no value."
"The name of Saintess... has no value?"
Is this all right? Should I even say it? Should I just shut my mouth, even now?
When I was in a bad way, Lois had stood beside me as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and held me up. I had been so grateful for that. I had thought it was extraordinary. He had made me believe, all over again, in the goodwill of one person helping another. Then I — I, too—
A feeling rose from somewhere inside me, asking if I was really allowed to do this. I did not stop. I kept talking.
"That's right. It has no value."
"N-no. It has value... It has to have value. To protect the house, and... and... Father..."
"That bastard is not your parent!"
"...!"
"Don't you dare call someone a parent who claims it's for your sake while driving everything you are toward ruin!"
"L-Lady Olivia...?"
"It's only natural for a child to look up to her parents. To a child, in that time, a parent is the world."
Without meaning to, I saw my past self overlaid on her again. I had obeyed the father who beat me, who starved me, who permitted me nothing — simply because he was Father — and I had grown up as if that were the correct way to live. Back then I had not even known it was wrong. I had not known that I was living in a wretched place. I had not known that the way he treated me was bad.
"But someday you find out. That world called 'parent' is a small one, and your own world has to keep getting wider."
"..."
"Your parents locked you up so that wouldn't happen. They cut off the hands and feet of a little child so she could never escape the belief that her parents were her entire world — and they gouged out her eyes so she couldn't see a thing! That's what you are right now!"
I could tell I was answering her with emotion. Obsessed with the name of Saintess. Convinced she was worthless if she could not be one. Bound hand and foot by her family. A life like that was wretched beyond measure, and she could not even see it. She only wanted to die because it hurt. She had not even realized that she was unhappy, that she carried a terrible past. It was a painful thing — but she was too broken to call it wretched. At that young age, she had already died.
"You did try to kill me, Belita. That's true."
"Yes..."
"But this isn't the time for you to think about punishment for what you did to me. Before that, you have something you need to do. You can take your punishment after that's finished."
"..."
Belita was too young. More than too young — she had been crushed from the moment she was born, and she had never been able to think of anything at all. Choice, in any real sense, had never existed for her. All she knew was a life of following someone else. It was no exaggeration to say that the only thing she could imagine was living as a Saintess. And even that had been a clumsily made mask. Scratch it even a little and it cracked on its own, fragile enough to vanish completely.
"You have to start over. Whether that means prison or something else — you have to start from there, or nothing else can begin."
"I... I'm the Saintess... I have to be the Saintess..."
"You're not a Saintess."
She doesn't even have the Stigma, for one thing.
"..."
Silence. I had no way of knowing how what I had just said had sounded to her. Forcing a girl who had never chosen anything for herself to choose everything for herself might be a cruel thing, and a difficult one. Belita's condition was very bad, and she was far too young. Even if she was punished, it should be possible, somehow, to keep her from a death sentence or from life in prison. At the very least, that was what I hoped for. This child was already ruined in every way that mattered. For me to deliver the finishing blow on top of that would have been neither pleasant nor, I thought, humane.
"I don't want to die..."
"I know."
That was a feeling any human being would have. If that much was still alive in her, then perhaps there was still something that could be done — the way Lois, hearing my vague answer, had immediately said we should go to Elvenheim. At the very least, that feeling still remained somewhere deep in her heart. But the opposite feeling would still be there as well.
"But."
"..."
"I want to die..."
"I know. I know that too."
What was I supposed to do with this child? A child whose life had never held a single light. Was I supposed to charge her with the same sins, hand down the same punishment? I no longer knew if that was justice.
"Ahem."
"Lois?"
"Forgive me for interrupting, but... perhaps we should eat first."
"Right."
"I took the liberty of getting food for Belita as well — though now that I think about it, she already ate, didn't she?"
She had finished every last bit of the udon she'd been eating, and then she had run.
"I-I can eat..."
"..."
I smiled, took Belita by the back of the neck, and hauled her to her feet.
"Right. Let's eat first, then talk."
That's the point of all this, isn't it? To eat — and to live.