What She Wanted (2)
That day marked the turning point in Yuel's life.
Not everything changed.
She was still the lord of the Closed City. To her people she remained an object of fear, and in the square the heads of criminals still hung on display.
"Najin."
So what, exactly, had changed?
"You know, Najin?"
"You don't have to call me like that. I'm listening."
"How about just living here?"
"……What?"
"I mean, climbing in through the window all the time looks a little undignified, doesn't it? The room's too big for one person alone anyway. And, well, that is to say……"
"If you're fine with it, then sure."
A roommate had appeared in her once bleak office. On the coat rack that had held only Yuel's clothes now hung a Free Knight's coat, and on the sofa where she alone had sat, that man was always seated.
Scratch, scratch.
Where once only the scrape of a fountain pen across paper and the breathing of a single human had filled the office, another person's breath had been added. Even when she groaned under piles of documents and looked up from her work, across from her……
"……"
There he was, leaning back on the sofa with a book. Yuel would watch him in silence, then allow herself a faint smile before returning to her duties. In her rest hours she sprawled on the sofa opposite his and stared at him openly.
It was a rather burdensome gaze.
With a soft tap, Najin closed his book and shot her a look. Why was she staring like that? Did she have something to say? To that, Yuel answered with a bashful little smile.
"Just…… because I like it."
Merlin, sitting beside Najin, let out a scream. Leaving aside Merlin's furious outburst, Najin himself was thrown. Had this person always been like this? Watching the usually unshakable Najin falter for the first time, Yuel burst into laughter.
"I meant I'm glad I have a friend. Did you think it was something else? Did you think I was confessing or something? Hmm?"
She sprang up from her sofa, sat down right beside him, and jabbed him repeatedly in the side.
"From the look on your face, that was exactly what you thought."
Yuel grinned.
"Not yet, so don't get your hopes up. We've only known each other a few months, right? Wait at least a year before you start expecting anything."
"I wasn't expecting anything."
"Ah, now that actually hurts a little."
Light banter, easily traded.
Banter that carried a sliver of genuine feeling.
"Najin."
"Yes. What is it?"
"About your coat—there was definitely blood on that thing, wasn't there? You never washed it, yet it looks spotless."
"There are dozens of kinds of magic built into it. Self-repair and cleanliness are just the basics."
"Whoa. That must be ridiculously expensive."
"It's the sort of thing you can't put a price on, but a merchant I know once said selling that one coat alone would keep a whole domain running for ten years."
When work wore her down, Yuel chattered with Najin. The conversations were nothing special, light and easy. With every passing day the distance between them shrank at an exponential rate.
"……"
"……"
It was not only the psychological distance that narrowed. The Yuel who once sat across from him during breaks began, after only a few days, to claim the seat right beside him. There were two sofas, yet she deliberately chose the same one. Najin moved a few times at first, but when she followed him like a duckling he gave up.
They grew closer—mentally and physically.
"Yuel."
"You called?"
"Move your head. I can't see the book."
"Do you really have to read it? It doesn't even look interesting."
At some point Yuel simply began resting her head on Najin's shoulder. The soft fall of her hair across the page forced him to lift his arm and read with the book held high.
She began to smile more often.
The woman who had worn a blank face, a rigid manner, and nothing but sardonic smirks now showed a full range of expressions—at least in front of Najin. She laughed, she grumbled, and sometimes she even cried.
"The person I executed today was someone I used to see all the time. He served as a page when I was growing up under the previous lord. He was a good man. Not the kind of man who would commit a crime like that, not the kind of man who deserved to die like that."
"Is that so."
"He wasn't. So why—ah, fuck, seriously……"
In front of Najin she no longer hid her feelings. When she was glad she laughed; when she was sad she wept. Some nights she cried herself empty and fell asleep against his shoulder.
The Closed City itself had not changed much.
But her life most certainly had.
Until now she had possessed no refuge. She spent all twenty-four hours of every day as lord, with not even a moment to catch her breath. That was why Yuel's life had been gray—flavorless, joyless, a life lived solely to prevent the worst from happening.
Ah.
It was no longer so. No matter how hard the day, no matter how crushing the work, that man was always sitting in one corner of the office. In front of him, Yuel could simply be Yuel.
"Najin."
She smiled.
"Thank you."
And so time flowed on.
The longer it flowed, the more chaotic the city became. People killed people. Children killed their parents; parents killed their children. Blood ran through the streets almost daily, and a little more blood than that ran across the plaza of the lord's castle.
Yuel was a capable lord.
She somehow held together a Closed City that was racing in a straight line toward ruin. She could not stop it, but she could at least slow its speed.
In the heart of a city where a transcendent being in the sky goaded humans and sang of their destruction, Yuel—a mere human—resisted.
"Execute."
She stained her hands with blood, earned hatred, inspired terror, and endured every insult without bending. She kept her back straight, her shoulders open, her head high, and performed her duty in silence.
Slender limbs. A slight frame. White hair that spilled all the way down her back, and red eyes glimpsed between long lashes.
Her appearance suggested a noble young lady far more than a city lord—someone better suited to a book than to a sword dripping with clotted blood. Yet by now no one who looked at Yuel could think of her that way.
"……"
She narrowed her eyes and surveyed the citizens. Her gaze was already sharp; narrowed, it felt as if it could pierce a person outright.
A lord holding a blood-soaked code of law in one hand.
There were those who rose up under the banner of liberating the city from her, and those rebels gathered into an army. But only one end awaited them.
Blood flowed. It flowed and flowed again.
Her pure white hair was stained with it. Her pale, slender fingers turned red. Her crimson eyes grew a shade redder still. She remained the lord.
And so.
Time flowed on and on.
"Najin."
One night Yuel swirled her glass and looked at him. Her eyes were fragile. That day she had executed nearly a hundred people. With trembling hands she gripped the glass and offered a desolate smile.
"Do you know the good thing about mathematics?"
"What is it?"
"That the answer is clear."
Yuel took a sip.
"There are correct answers. There are incorrect ones. No matter how fucked-up the problem, no matter the ones people call hundred-year or thousand-year enigmas and make a huge fuss over—an answer still exists. It's only that I lacked the ability to find it."
"Is that so."
"Yes. But you see."
She tilted her head. A pleasant haze of drink had risen; she exhaled a breath thick with the smell of liquor.
"In the world there are neither correct answers nor incorrect ones. Everything is ambiguous. Even if you follow every proper procedure and make the best choice again and again, there is no guarantee that the best will wait at the end."
She smiled bitterly.
"That's why I hated it. Trying so hard to find answers made me feel like an idiot, so I locked myself away in the Ivory Tower. And this fucking world dragged me out by force and sat me in this seat."
She chuckled and let the sentence trail off. She had brought up the subject without thinking, but she clearly did not want to dwell on it. Ordinarily Najin would have followed her lead and left the topic alone.
"Neither wrong answers nor right ones, is it."
This time was different.
A conversation he had once shared with a future version of her, outside this place, rose in his mind. Najin smiled.
"True enough, there aren't any. You can never be certain that whichever path you choose is the best, and there's no law that says a human who lived with everything they had will meet an end that matches the effort."
He had seen too many such people—people who had given their utmost and still been insulted by their endings. Yuel nodded with a bitter smile.
"Yes, so just take it easy, take it easy……"
"Then does that life have no value?"
The hand swirling the glass went still.
"A life lived with everything you had, a life that struggled to find the right answer—does that life have no value? No. It must not."
Najin looked straight at her.
"As you said, the world has neither correct answers nor incorrect ones."
But.
"There are better answers, though. Unlike mathematics."
"……"
"Some people devote an entire lifetime just to find one. Others, finding a single life insufficient, pass the search on to their disciples and successors. All while believing a better answer must exist."
So.
"It will exist. A better answer."
"Pretty words. And irresponsible ones."
"I don't know about that. I don't think they're irresponsible."
Najin shrugged.
"If one doesn't exist, I'll make it. Because it would be a tragedy for a life lived with everything one had to go unrewarded."
"Wow. What am I supposed to do with this man. Be honest. You're trying to seduce me, aren't you?"
Yuel let out a hollow laugh and raised her glass.
With a clear clink, their glasses met.
"A better answer……"
Turning his words over, Yuel lowered her head.
"I hope it exists. That."
She set her glass down and rested her head on Najin's shoulder. Then she laid her hand over his. Her pure white fingers slipped between his. Interlacing their hands, she spoke.
"There are so many things I want to say to you."
Yuel closed her eyes.
"But I don't want to say them like some excuse under the cover of alcohol, and I don't want to say them in this city that goads every emotion. So if—just if, even one chance in a million……"
She whispered close to his ear.
"If we ever get outside."
A faint smile touched her lips.
"I'll tell you then."
So.
"Until then, stay by my side. Don't leave. Remain human to the end, not a beast. Then I think I can hold on a little longer."
It was a plea and a request.
It was also a wish that could never be granted.
Time raced forward.
Najin felt the stage drawing toward its end.
"No new residents are arriving."
Yuel said it lightly. The population had long since fallen below a hundred thousand. Yet no new humans dropped into the city.
"One of two things, I suppose. Either that fucking constellation has abandoned its purpose, or else……"
She pointed at herself.
"I'm gradually turning into a beast."
The humans she had executed, or who had died under the laws she proclaimed, already numbered over a hundred thousand. She still could not draw sword aura or handle mana, yet Najin could see it clearly.
A seed had taken root inside her.
If she simply willed it, that seed would bloom at once. She was already drawing close to the transcendent. As the story raced toward its close, Najin too had accomplished the purpose he had set for himself.
How the Revelry Emperor intended to use Yuel.
What script the Revelry Emperor had prepared for her.
Having more or less guessed it, Najin finished his preparations to tear that script to pieces. Waiting for the moment that drew ever nearer, he clenched and unclenched his hand again and again.
"Najin."
And then.
"I've heard that constellations and transcendents each possess their own concepts. That ridiculously powerful person who used to commission unsolved problems from the Ivory Tower—its patron, I mean……"
"I'm listening."
"I didn't care enough to remember, but today while I was executing a few fanatics I heard them screaming and it came back to me."
"Screaming?"
"Yes. 'That one knows all things. Do not resist. That one is omniscient!'—they were shouting that, and right then I remembered."
Najin was not the only one who had found an answer.
"The patron of the Ivory Tower was the Constellation of Omniscience. From the circumstances, that bastard is almost certainly the constellation that created this city."
"……"
"You said every star possesses its own concept. If there is a Star of Omniscience, then of course there must also be a Star of Ignorance, no?"
One night Yuel spoke with a bitter smile.
"And I've heard that stars listen to the wishes of humans. If a wish falls within their domain, they probably listen with even greater interest."
Ordinarily the statement would have been half right and half wrong. But when the speaker was Yuel, it was wholly correct.
Stars listen to the wishes of humans—yet only of humans who already possess the necessary qualification. Yuel, who already carried the seed of a transcendent within her, possessed more than enough of that qualification.
"How does one screw over the Star of Omniscience?"
Yuel looked up at the sky and smiled.
"I think I know now."
A better answer.
And so.
The story began its headlong plunge toward the finale.