Suspicion
Even after I came to the Academy, I still hadn't found a single solid lead on Lieben.
If anyone might know something, I thought, it would be the Headmaster—the man who sat where every rumor and every story people carried eventually gathered—so I went to see him. As luck would have it, I was told he had left on leave, starting today. No one could say exactly when he would return. Unless the matter was urgent, they said, I would simply have to wait. I had no intention of giving up on the spot.
If Lieben had been captain of the Vanguard Unit, then others who survived alongside him would still be out there, and it was more than plausible that some of those who left the army after the war had taken posts in the Academy guard. More than that, I could finally set a name against a face. The Pathfinder I had crossed on the battlefield so many times—I could call him Lieben now.
Hair tied back. Scars left across his face.
I had never thought that man was Lieben, so I had never truly looked at him. Once I knew who he was and reached back for the memory, the details that remained were sharper than I expected. So I didn't only ask after the name Pathfinder, or the name Lieben. I went around describing a man who looked like that as well. Among those with their hair tied back and scars on their faces, no one named Lieben turned up.
Then it would be faster to find someone who had been with him.
I spent a while making inquiries, keeping to the guard, and before long I heard that a man who had actually served in the Vanguard was working here as one of them. Someone from that unit was likely to know far more about the Pathfinder than the Headmaster did, and if I was lucky, he might even have heard where Lieben went once the war was over. I went straight to the post where he was said to be on duty and spoke to another guard who happened to be there.
"I heard there's someone here who served in the Vanguard Unit."
"Ah, yes. There's one."
He seemed to understand at once who I was looking for.
"Would it be possible to see him now?"
"Well... he isn't here at the moment."
"He isn't?"
"No. He was with us until this morning, and then he vanished all of a sudden."
"...All of a sudden?"
"Yes. He never said where he was going. We don't know why either, so we're a little thrown ourselves."
"Do you know when he'll be back?"
"That, we don't know either. He disappeared without a single word."
"...I see."
I didn't press him. I only nodded, slowly.
The Headmaster had left on vacation as of today. The Vanguard veteran I had tracked down among the guards had been here until this morning, and then he was gone without a word. If I called it coincidence, it could have been. And yet on the very day I came looking, every person who might have known something about the Pathfinder was absent. That sat wrong with me in a way I couldn't shake.
Of its own accord, the Saintess I had seen at the Cathedral a little while ago came back to me. The way her face had stiffened, just for a moment, when I asked about the necklace. The way her answer lagged when I asked where the Pathfinder was. Above all, the faint tremor in her fingers, even as she said she knew nothing.
I wondered if she knew something after all. Even so, I had no grounds for tying the Headmaster's absence, and the guard's, to her as well. All I held, in the end, was suspicion.
Then there was no reason to wait here indefinitely for people who might never come back. That one guard could hardly be the only survivor of the Vanguard. Among those scattered across the land, some would have joined the guard in other cities, and some would have gone back to mercenary work. For now, it was far better to go looking for them elsewhere.
I meant to remember what had happened here, though. The Saintess's reaction. The fact that the Headmaster had chosen today, of all days, to leave. And the fact that a guard from the Vanguard had vanished that same day, without warning. If I found nothing worth following anywhere else, I could always come back. By then the Headmaster or the guard might have returned, and I could ask the Saintess again.
Once I had settled that, I headed for the Cathedral one last time before leaving the Academy, if only to say goodbye.
I retraced the path I had taken out not long ago and opened the door. The Saintess, tidying the interior, caught sight of me, and her eyes went wide.
"Arien?"
"Yes."
"Didn't you say you were going to rest?"
"I walked around a little."
She looked at me for a moment, as if she wanted to know what I had been asking after, but she didn't ask first. I had no intention of explaining how far I had gone, either.
"I meant to rest before I left, but I can't afford to lose the day. I'm going to go."
"...You're leaving?"
"Yes."
Her expression seemed to ease, just a fraction. Whether she was truly relieved, or I was simply too on edge and only thought I saw it, I couldn't tell.
"I don't think I'll turn anything up if I keep searching here for now. The people from the Vanguard won't all be at the Academy, so I'm going to look around a few other places."
"I see..."
The Saintess smiled, faintly.
"I might come back, though."
For the briefest instant, her face hardened.
So there was something weighing on her after all. Even so, I had no intention of digging into it again. Not here. Not now.
"Travel safely, Arien."
"I will."
I inclined my head, turned, and started for the door. Just as I reached for the handle, I stopped.
"Ah. Saintess."
"Yes?"
When I looked back, she was watching me with a faintly puzzled expression.
"This time, I'll just go."
I smiled the way I always did, faint and easy.
This time, her expression froze where it was.
I looked at her for a moment. Then I said nothing more, and walked out of the Cathedral.
This time, I had decided to let it pass. But if it was the same next time... even I couldn't say what I would do then.
Had she caught me...?
Even after the Cathedral door shut, I couldn't move from where I stood. Arien's last words kept turning over in my head. This time she would simply go. Next time, don't play games. I couldn't tell how far that meant she knew.
Had she found out that Lieben was at this Academy? Or had she only noticed that I lied to her a little while ago? The more I thought about it, the tighter my chest grew, but soon I shook my head.
No. If she had truly uncovered everything, she would never have reacted like that. Had she known Lieben was here, she would have had no reason to leave for somewhere else, and if she were certain I knew the truth and was hiding it, she would never have walked away smiling, leaving behind nothing but a warning not to play games. So for now, it was only suspicion.
And if that was so, then Dorothy had done what she said she would do. If the Headmaster and Lieben's old subordinate both vanished without warning on the same day, of course Arien would find it strange. At least, because of that, I had kept her from learning the truth today.
The problem was everything after.
"...Haa."
Arien would come back. I was sure of it. Searching for Vanguard veterans elsewhere, she might pick up a thread that led here, and even if she found nothing, she had said it herself a moment ago—she might return. I couldn't use the same method twice. I couldn't send the Headmaster away again, and I couldn't keep making Lieben's old subordinate disappear. Once, it could pass as coincidence. If the same thing happened again, anyone would be certain.
In the end, the time I had bought would not last long.
The moment I understood that, Lieben came to me of his own accord.
I hadn't meant to move in haste. The words I never managed to say on the battlefield, the heart I never managed to offer—I thought I could give them to him slowly, one by one, from now on. However dull he might be, I believed there would be all the time in the world. Not anymore. Arien had appeared, and on top of that I had lied. I had no idea how long remained before that lie came apart.
Then I couldn't simply wait forever, could I? When Lieben came back from the North, should I go to him more boldly...? Or should I stop waiting for that narrow gap in his heart to open on its own, and force my way in...? Stop reading him. Tell him I like him. Whisper that I love him, and simply fall into his arms. Wouldn't that be enough...?
The moment the thought went that far, I bit my lip before I knew I was doing it.
Not long ago, I had been happy just to hear him say my name. Now I was telling myself I had to push things further, somehow, before Arien returned. I was the one who had resolved to draw close to him slowly. And now, because I no longer had that luxury, I was trying to seize his heart first. The realization turned my stomach.
"I'm... the Saintess."
Hiding the truth from my friend hadn't been enough. I had taken someone else's help so the two of them could not meet. And now, in the time that bought me, I was trying to reach Lieben first.
I knew it was wrong. From the beginning until this moment, I had never once believed that what I was doing was right. And yet, before any wish to stop, only one thought rose.
"...I don't want to."
I didn't want to give up. Not here. Knowing I was in the wrong, and being unable to let Lieben go—those two things seemed to live in entirely different places, and neither of them would leave me. The more they tangled in my head, the more I hated myself.
Was someone called the Saintess allowed to be like this? A person meant to give of herself for others was trying, instead, to take what belonged to someone else. Guilt came with the thought, and before I knew it my vision had begun to blur. I blinked, and a tear I could no longer hold slipped down my cheek. I wiped it away in a hurry with the back of my hand, but once the tears broke, they would not stop.
I didn't want to believe that loving Lieben was wrong, too. But the things I was doing to protect that love were plainly wrong, and knowing it better than anyone—while still being unable to give it up—was harder to bear than anything else.
In the end I bowed my head in the middle of the empty Cathedral, and for a long while I cried without a sound. Whether I ought to beg God for forgiveness, or whether I ought to pray that I be allowed to hold on, even to a heart like this, until the end—I could no longer tell which.