The First Sacrifice
Research into the Grimoire had hit a wall.
Experiments with field mice and other animals had reached their limit. It seemed he would have to use a person now — though he knew perfectly well that harming or killing an innocent stranger was something one must never do. A shattered teacup was nothing but trash, and water mixed with filth was nothing but sewage. The knowledge that such a thing, once done, could never be undone frightened him. Once he stepped off the path, there would surely be no coming back.
The boy, sharper than others his age, wrestled with himself. So was he supposed to rot in a den of beggars, clinging to some worthless morality, never recognized by anyone for as long as he lived? That wasn't it either. Hadn't he sworn it on that wretched day? That no matter what it took, he would claw his way out of this place and succeed. The day he had hidden his name and the color of his hair out of shame.
Had he already forgotten?
The boy clenched his teeth. The heart that had been standing on the borderline began to tip, slowly, toward one side. He stood as if a single tap would send him tumbling off the path entirely.
Several days passed.
It was lunchtime on an ordinary day, the air thick with the stale smell of unappetizing food.
"You're tiny anyway. It's not like you'd even get hungry."
"We're not taking all of it. Just share a little."
He was surrounded. He remembered them going around picking on other kids these past few days — the kind of slum-dwellers the boy despised. Beggars down to the bone. Hollow-eyed parasites who took and took, who treated stealing as their birthright.
Listening to their pathetic noise, his mind went strangely blank. He simply sat there, still. Something was stirring, slowly, in his chest. It seemed all he had needed was a push. He had only been waiting for someone to shove him.
Watching those drooling, snickering things finally put their hands on his soup bowl — watching them scrape it clean and then sneer, We only took a little, right? — something occurred to him, faintly. If he had to use a human life, then using ones like these—
Clang!
He snapped back to himself with a jolt. Had that come from inside his own head? It had rung out so loudly he was left stunned.
He looked toward the source of the sound and found a white-haired girl picking a fight with the gang. She had thrown a soup bowl. The expression on her face was somehow infuriating, and the way she crooked a finger at them was a textbook example of starting trouble.
The one-versus-three brawl that followed could only be described as impressive. She never backed down against opponents bigger than her and greater in number, charging in with her head held high. Watching her, something strange stirred in a corner of his chest. He couldn't understand going that far to help a complete stranger. Wasting your strength on something you could have just walked past seemed foolish.
And yet. It didn't feel all that bad. So he sat still in his seat and watched.
The girl who returned from the fight was a wreck — hair torn out, lip split, eyelid swollen. And yet she was smiling, as if something about it pleased her. Combined with what he had felt earlier, his eyes kept drifting toward her.
He had received her help, so he figured he ought to say something. He opened his mouth.
That was when—
"Hey. I'm better than those guys, right?"
Watching her shamelessly take half his soup, the words died in his throat.
Is she not right in the head?
She helps him, and then she steals from him? With guts like that, she could have gone after someone else's food. Why steal back what other people had already stolen?
"I'll protect you from now on, so hand over half your breakfast every morning."
His brain froze. He couldn't react at all, and so, without meaning to, that was how things ended up.
Three days passed.
Sure enough, no one came near him. The girl who had made such a spectacular display sat with him at every meal, and the thugs who had bothered him that day had taken it upon themselves to sit in a far corner. He had finally made up his mind that day. He had been one step away from taking the plunge. And now, for some reason, the human experiments had fizzled out and the Grimoire research was going nowhere, and it made something boil in his gut.
"Life is so hard..."
The girl sitting next to him, sighing dramatically, was partly to blame for this mood. He shot her a glare.
"What? Is this about the soup? It's not like I take it every time. I only take it at breakfast. How humanitarian is that?"
Wasn't she the biggest problem here to begin with? Irritated, he finished his meal quickly and left.
His stomach growled. It really was boiling. He had definitely eaten breakfast, and yet this bizarre hunger only made him angrier.
...What if I just used her as the first sacrifice?
The hand reaching for a newspaper froze.
"..."
And yet. The way she had charged those thugs that day — that image burned into his mind — he had felt gratitude for it. That much was true.
Doesn't... really move me, though.
He quietly went up to the attic.
How many minutes had passed since that thought?
"I wanna look too. Tell me when you're done."
Did she never get tired of this? The attic he had claimed as a place to be quietly alone had been invaded. The fact that she had come after the newspaper somehow made it even more infuriating. She was out of her mind, and yet she knew how to read a newspaper? Finding him in his hiding place made him angry too. It made him feel as if they were on the same level.
No, no. He was reading the newspaper to practice his literacy and stay in touch with society. She would talk a big game and then just fold it into paper toys.
And so the boy immediately handed her a page.
But she read it just fine.
"..."
He simply ignored her and went back to what he had been reading.
Before long, he felt an intense gaze and sighed inwardly. The only people here were himself and the girl, so who else could it be? He lowered the newspaper slightly, and their eyes met.
Sunlight streamed through the small window. In that light, her strange eyes looked pink, then sky-blue. It had only been three days since the fight. Her swollen eye, the bruises, the scabbed lip — all of it was still plainly visible.
"...What."
He was almost finished reading anyway. If she had something to say, he would hear it.
What he heard was a bizarre story about a nephew, and the shocking declaration that if she had to treat her nephew's food the same way, she would steal that too. This was not a person he should spend much time with. The boy stood up immediately.
"Leaving already?"
"...I'm done reading."
"Are you sure you finished? Wait, just answer this one thing."
He didn't want to. How dare she try to test the owner of the Grimoire? He had no intention of playing some mismatched quiz game.
"Hmm... what plant is the Phesper family supposed to deliver to the imperial court this time?"
...What?
He had been about to go straight down the stairs. But he couldn't. Like a fish that had spotted the bait. Like a sparrow that had found a granary. Hooked completely, the corner of the boy's mouth twisted upward.
"Blue jasmine. And it's not the Phesper family. It's the Nesper family."
She got the spelling wrong? How laughable.
Ignorance was something to pity, not mock, so he didn't laugh outright. Still, he looked at the girl, hoping that this person who had dared to act smart and challenge him would learn her place. He wanted to see that face — the one that followed him around and infuriated him every day — flush with embarrassment.
"Oh."
But his expectations always seemed to miss the mark.
"Come here."
The way she crooked her finger was not a good sign. Come to think of it, she had picked a fight the same way in the dining hall that day. Was she angry, perhaps? Sublimating her humiliation into violence, or something.
A bad feeling kept him still, and the girl strode toward him first. Intimidated by that momentum, the young boy had no choice but to stay put. A strange standoff.
Then the girl smiled. Looking down at him with a vaguely smug, infuriating expression. She didn't need to say it — she was clearly enjoying the difference in their eye levels. Was she trying to make up for her lack of knowledge with her height? What a ridiculous display.
The boy, indignant at what he considered a barbaric performance, was in the middle of hurling all sorts of nasty remarks at her in his mind when his eyes went wide.
A hand suddenly reached for the top of his head, and the patting that followed brought his thoughts to a complete halt. His hair, its color hidden under a layer of dust and dirt, made a dry, scratchy sound, but the girl paid it no mind and kept stroking.
"Well done. That's my boy."
What in the world. This was a time to be embarrassed, not a time to praise someone. And yet she spoke calmly, as if she were the adult here.
"You've already learned to read. You can even handle a difficult newspaper. That's amazing."
What was — amazing — of course he should — why would she — so casually — say something like—
His head felt like it was going to explode. Never mind that it was the first real praise he had ever heard in his life. Never mind that her infuriating, smug smile had somehow become a gentle one.
Wait. Then what came first?
What had been the point? What was the important thing again?
The point? First? The first one?
With his brain fried from the overload, his body could only move on instinct. Emergency escape.
Thud!
As he shot down the stairs, a flood of thoughts raced through his mind. Most of them were replays of what had just happened, but even so, he managed to think.
What I wanted to think about — the point was...
Well done. That's my boy.
The first... the first one was...
You've already learned to read. You can even handle a difficult newspaper. That's amazing.
"..."
The boy bit his lip. Feeling the heat rise to his head, panting for breath, he reached a conclusion.
"Y-you!"
What he had originally been trying to think about no longer mattered. All that remained was the desire for revenge against the girl who stole his food, pestered him, and acted like she was teasing him. So this pounding in his chest was definitely, without a doubt, the anger that came with it.