The Closed City (2)
Several heads hung in the square.
Blood dripped steadily from them, tracing the cracks that split the plaza floor. The drainage channels originally cut to keep rain from pooling now served as conduits for blood instead of water.
“······.”
Najin stared silently at the heads strung up across the square. Was this an occupational hazard? The cuts looked crude to his eye—ragged and unclean, as if the executioner had lacked the strength and had to hack several times just to finish the job.
“The executioner’s technique doesn’t seem particularly refined.”
“Sorry about that. Not much skill to speak of.”
“Pardon?”
Yuel, standing beside him, gave a casual shrug.
“I could always appoint a dedicated executioner, but doing it myself tends to be more effective. The citizens find it rather shocking, it seems.”
“······.”
“‘Ah, our lord is one scary motherfucker. Better not get on her bad side. Gotta crawl on our knees.’ That’s the kind of talk that goes around. A person in power needs to be a little terrifying.”
Mimicking the citizens’ voices, Yuel swallowed a breath. Then she tilted her head. Pure white hair spilled down; between the strands her red eyes gleamed as she looked up at him from below.
She regarded Najin’s face at an angle and tossed the words out like a casual stone.
“You, on the other hand, seem pretty used to killing people. I brought you here to scare you a bit… but not only are you unfazed, you’re even appraising the cut like, ‘Damn, the executioner’s technique is shit.’ That level of critique.”
“I didn’t go that far.”
“Close enough. So what, you come from a line of work where you hunt people down and mess them up?”
Hunt people down and mess them up, huh.
Najin snorted a quiet laugh.
“I’ve done work hunting down bastards who weren’t people.”
“Mercenary work, I take it.”
“I was a mercenary once, yeah.”
Najin idly brushed at his coat—the free knight’s attire. Ordinarily he kept his identity hidden, but when it mattered, one flourish of this coat and eyes would go wide with recognition.
What, you’re Free Knight Najin?
That free knight who appeared for the first time in a thousand years?
Lately a few more modifiers had piled on—youngest multi-star, wielder of Excalibur, the greatest knight, and so on—but either way, one look at his clothes and people would clap their foreheads in recognition.
Of course this place belonged to an era before he had made his name, yet the free knight’s attire was famous, wasn’t it? A ready means of introduction: I’m this kind of person. As Najin absently fluttered his coat, Yuel’s eyes narrowed.
She recognizes it after all.
Just as Najin was preparing to introduce himself with a quiet “Yes, I’m this person”—
“What are you doing? You’re kicking up dust. Knock it off.”
“······Pardon?”
“Yeah, I get it, you’re wearing nice clothes. Some kind of noble, were you? Huh, damn. No wonder you looked a bit different. So what the hell does that matter?”
Yuel waved a dismissive hand.
“Here, I’m the lord. Whatever you were doing outside, I don’t give a shit. If you’re expecting noble treatment, you’d better put that idea away right now.”
“No, that wasn’t what I—”
“Then what did you mean?”
“You don’t know this coat?”
“Am I supposed to?”
Yuel tilted her head.
Najin was left speechless.
-Pffft.
And then—
-Heh, hup… heh, hehahahahaha!
Merlin clutched her stomach and started rolling on the floor. She pounded the ground with her palms, exploding with laughter. The sight of Najin trying to pull the “Do you know who I am?” move only to get hit with “Who the hell are you?” was simply too much.
“······I just did a bit of this and that.”
“Good. Hope you can put that outside experience to use finding a decent job.”
Yuel took a step forward. As if they had been waiting for her, secretaries and attendants who had rushed out from the lord’s castle attended to her at once. Handing them her coat, she looked back over her shoulder.
“What’s your name?”
“Najin.”
“Yes, Najin.”
Yuel looked at him and said,
“I’d prefer we don’t run into each other if possible. Seeing my face means there’s a high chance you’ve broken the law—and that you’ve done something worthy of hanging your head in that square.”
Her mouth was crude, but her face remained expressionless. She might contort her features at times, yet she still revealed little emotion. Even so, Najin sensed something off in that face.
If the Yuel he knew had been devoid of emotion—
the past Yuel standing before him now…
“I hope you adapt well to this city.”
…felt as if she were deliberately hiding her emotions.
2.
He spent several days in the Closed City.
Merlin had said the time dilation for this stage was set extremely high, so he need not worry about the passage of time outside. Najin wandered the Closed City at a measured pace, gathering information and assessing the situation.
First point.
Where was the Yuel who had entered with him?
She’s integrated with the past Yuel.
From the past Yuel he could faintly sense Yuel’s presence. And he guessed that her memories and abilities were all in a locked state.
Even with “I’m Najin” practically written on his forehead, she hadn’t recognized him. Moreover, the Yuel serving as lord here seemed like an ordinary person who hadn’t even reached Sword Expert, let alone Sword Master.
And it isn’t just Yuel.
That was the second fact he learned.
In this city, not a single Sword Expert existed. Everyone was ordinary—people who couldn’t properly handle mana, let alone aura.
To Najin this was strange. Sword Experts weren’t common, yet for a city of over a hundred thousand souls to contain not even one Expert was unnatural.
As if they specifically kidnapped only people of this sort.
Najin clenched and unclenched his hand repeatedly.
He too had restrictions placed upon him.
In this stage where Yuel’s past was the protagonist, no powerhouse drawing aura left and right existed. The power Najin possessed was something that simply did not fit this stage.
He could use it if he tried.
But the moment he wielded a transcendent’s power, he would clearly be ejected from the stage. Save it for the decisive moment. Najin made his decision.
“That explains it, then.”
-What does?
“Why she didn’t recognize my clothes. Could be because only ordinary people are gathered here—or maybe the stage itself has put a distortion on my existence. Something like special roles such as free knight don’t fit this stage.”
-Hmm, yeah, could be.
“What’s with that look?”
Merlin sent him a lukewarm gaze. Yeah, if you say so. I understand completely. That kind of look. Najin felt an inexplicable irritation.
-So what are you going to do?
What to do, huh.
Najin stroked his chin.
“I’ll have to approach Yuel. Either way, this story revolves around her.”
And he had to find it—the part the Revelry Emperor had hidden in this story, and the moment of contact with the Star of Oblivion. For that, he needed to stick close to Yuel.
Chewing over his purpose, Najin nodded.
-Well, yeah. So how?
“I’ll have to figure that out from now on.”
It sounded carefree, yet a few methods did surface in his mind. No matter how thickly the restrictions were layered on, his senses hadn’t gone anywhere. He was even finding a strange freshness in physical abilities dropped to ordinary human levels.
If I get a hole punched in my body, do I die?
-Normally people die if they get holes punched in their bodies.
Ah. Right.
As he walked the city turning over methods, Najin’s steps suddenly halted.
The crowds of the city were converging on one place.
He listened to their murmuring.
“I hear the Howard brothers pulled something.”
“They finally crossed the line.”
“So what did they do? Until now they only picked crimes that skirted the edge, didn’t they?”
“The lord looked the other way. Because they hadn’t crossed the line.”
Listening, he joined the flow of people. From the talk, the Howard brothers had committed a crime and were finally being dragged to the square.
The citizens’ steps stopped before the plaza.
In the center of the square two men knelt bound, with guards watching over them. Those must be the Howard brothers. The sound of teeth chattering reached even Najin’s ears.
“Ah.”
“She’s here.”
“It’s the lord.”
The noisy assembly fell silent in an instant. Someone was walking out from the lord’s castle—the lord of the Closed City, Yuel. The coat she wore, symbol of the city’s master, rippled long behind her.
Click.
With measured steps Yuel took her place behind the Howard brothers.
“Otto Howard.”
Thud.
“Uven Howard.”
Calling their names, she continued in a monotone voice, like a judge reading a verdict.
“Theft, assault and battery, flight. Crimes that would originally warrant only imprisonment… but one more has been added.”
Thud. Yuel tapped the judgment document with her finger.
“You got into a fight with the shopkeeper and went beyond assault to nearly killing him. If the guards hadn’t found you—if they hadn’t stopped you—the shopkeeper would have died right there.”
Death. She put force into pronouncing that word.
“In this city, murder is a serious crime that is never forgiven under any circumstances. Though it ended in attempt, it cannot be lightly overlooked.”
The sound of teeth clashing.
“Death sentence.”
Yuel extended her hand to the soldier beside her. He knelt on one knee and offered a sword. Grasping it, she reached out.
She seized Otto Howard’s hair and forced his head up. Bound hand and foot and forced to kneel, he begged. I’m sorry, my lord, I was crazy, I lost my mind, if you just give me one more chance… Yuel looked down at him expressionlessly.
Then, with a shove—
“Ghk, urk, kuh……”
She held Otto Howard’s hair and thrust the sword into his neck. Even with a body fixed in place and bringing the blade down, severing a person’s neck is not easy. Doing it from such an unstable posture would be harder still.
Especially for someone who had never learned the sword.
Yuel moved the blade expressionlessly.
Even put charitably, it could not be called skilled. The movements of a complete novice who knew nothing of how to handle a sword.
“Ghk, kuhk……”
Otto Howard died slowly.
Over a long stretch of time Yuel severed Otto’s neck. The cut surface was ragged, and Otto’s face twisted in agony. Even the work of skewering the severed head and standing it in the square she handled with her own hands.
“Next. Uven Howard. Same charges.”
Screams. The noise of thrashing and cursing. The horrible sound of nails scraping the floor. And the gurgles of a blade stuck in a throat. Uven too became like his brother and was displayed in the square.
Yuel carried out the entire process expressionlessly.
Blood had splattered across her face; sticky blood clung to her hands; her pure white hair was stained red here and there from the spray.
“Hoo.”
But as if it did not matter, Yuel raised her head. Slightly out of breath, she exhaled and surveyed the citizens gathered in the square.
Everyone whose gaze met those red eyes flinched.
Mixed among them, Najin could hear the voices they muttered.
“She’s a complete lunatic.”
“No blood or tears. I hear even the godfather who raised her got executed without exception. By her own hand, no less.”
“That’s why she’s the lord, isn’t it?”
“A ruthless stickler for principles. The kind of person who wouldn’t bleed a drop even if you stabbed her with a needle.”
Slander passed around, yet what circulated among them was fear—dread of their lord. The image of a ruler who expressionlessly cut off criminals’ heads with her own hands and displayed them was more than enough to inspire terror.
“Obey the law. That is all I ask of you.”
Leaving those words, she returned to the lord’s castle.
As if nothing had happened.
Because everyone averted or bowed their heads as if afraid even to meet her eyes—or because their eyes simply were not sharp enough—there was something they failed to notice. Najin saw it.
In that brief moment when she returned the sword to the soldier and shoved her hand into her coat pocket—
Yuel’s fingers were trembling.
“······.”
Wordlessly, Najin moved his feet.
3.
On the rooftop of the lord’s castle, perched on a bench, Yuel dunked her hands into a basin full of water and scrubbed them madly. Her lips trembled.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck……”
Muttering curses, she tried to scrub the blood from her hands. But the blood that had seeped into the crevices of her nails would not come off easily. Or perhaps it had—yet in Yuel’s eyes her hands still looked covered in blood.
Ugh—she gagged and bowed her head.
White hair cascaded down. Looking at the white strands stained with blood, Yuel let out a hollow laugh.
“Ha.”
Exhaling a long breath, she pulled her hands from the basin. Clenching her trembling hands tight, she approached the railing. Leaning her upper body against it, she took a cigarette pack from her breast pocket.
Tap-tap. She irritably slapped the pack to extract a cigarette, but it would not come out. When she simply crushed the pack, a cigarette popped free—yet—
“Ah.”
It fell over the railing. It had been the last one. When the situation’s fucked, even the little things get fucked. Thinking that, Yuel brushed back her hair.
“Hoo……”
Just as she was about to heave who-knows-which sigh—
“Heave-ho.”
A voice came from right below. Yuel blinked and looked down.
“······What are you doing?”
“You dropped this. Looking for it?”
Skillfully catching the cigarette Yuel had dropped, Najin clung to the wall of the lord’s castle. Yuel blinked again. Najin expertly climbed the wall and landed beside her.
“Hoo……”
“Here.”
“Thanks, but infiltrating the lord’s castle is a serious crime. Don’t you value your life?”
“I hear that a lot.”
Yuel stuck the received cigarette in her mouth and lit it. After drawing a long drag of smoke and exhaling, she leaned against the railing and looked at Najin.
“Did you see?”
“See what?”
“Never mind. If you didn’t—”
“You scrubbing your hands like crazy in the water? Or the gagging? Or if not that, the way your hands were shaking before you shoved them into your coat?”
“You saw everything, fuck.”
Yuel dragged a hand down her face.