You Said It Doesn't Flow Away (6)
"…What?"
"Huh."
"……."
"Ha—hahaha."
This—this was allowed. This wasn't information the demon had told him, nor anything that proved contact with that creature.
It was something he had uncovered on his own. That was why it worked.
"Heh."
It was so absurdly funny, so fiercely satisfying, that Deathbringer could only feel the ragged tear in his own shadow and snicker under his breath. Being able to flip the bird at that smug demon bastard's face—what a joy.
Even if it still required their trust for the plan to work, joy was joy all the same.
"Like I said just now—believe it or don't. That's up to you."
He couldn't hand over the fact that he had contracted with a demon. Saying he knew because of the shadow stuck to him probably wouldn't work either. Sensing a location through a shadow implied a prior meeting.
Even naming it a Great Demon was almost certainly a breach. The first time he had tried to say the Great Demon's location, blood had surged up his throat—near certainty.
Not dying on the spot was fortunate. That he could not speak of it was unmistakable.
"It's a trap."
"Still don't know. Who that demon even is?"
For the same reason, he couldn't answer that either.
He clamped his mouth shut. Silence, it seemed, still counted as an answer of sorts—more blood rose.
His insides spun. Vessels in his eyes must have burst; the world before him went red.
"You—!"
"…Perhaps we should stop with the questions."
Ah. He had meant to hold out to the end if he could.
He retched and spat a clot of blood. "Hunter, you all right?" Berserk rushed over in a hurry, fretting over him.
"Surely you don't mean to believe that?"
"I… want to believe him."
"It could be a demon's snare!"
"Well. It doesn't seem that way to me."
The Inquisitor and the Archmage, for their part, wavered between doubt and faith—and still moved to take his side. He was truly grateful, and at the same time thought, Aren't you trusting me a little too much?
The weight of that trust was almost burdensome. What if he really had sold himself to a demon?
"Don't push yourself. You need more rest."
"I—I'm fine, really……."
If anything, being trussed up head to toe had been the worse of it—
Shrrrk.
The cords binding him sheared through all at once. The sudden freedom made Deathbringer's eyes go wide. It couldn't have been Berserk—she hadn't so much as reached for the ropes.
"You……."
"The discussion isn't even finished yet!"
Then the one who had cut the lines—
"Acting alone is—!"
—was that man.
"Gwahaha! Comrade, so you couldn't stand it either!"
"Demon Knight!"
Deathbringer looked past Berserk's cackling laugh, past the temple folk frozen in shock, past the Inquisitor and Archmage brightening with relief—and fixed his gaze beyond them.
Someone was leaving, quieter than usual.
"But where are you going?"
"Let him go. And don't scold him too hard, any of you."
It was the Demon Knight.
"…Sir."
The sight dragged back every doubt Deathbringer had set aside for later.
Had the Demon Knight's failure to react to his attack truly been chance? Was what he had seen just before he blacked out nothing but a trick of the mind?
Like a doll cast from every grief and sorrow and aching tenderness in the world, then sealed under poured wax—and like a fragment melted and cracked and crumbled by the years.
That face, submerged only in shadow, moldering and fallen—had it truly been yours?
Thud.
But the door was already shut. There was nowhere left to ask. As always.
"We leave once your condition improves a little."
Given the blood he had coughed up, Deathbringer underwent a physical under the Inquisitor's watch. The verdict at the end: internal injuries that needed at least a full day of rest.
"Holy Power is… ah."
"You slippery bastard—if you take it now it'll only poison you. Swallow some medicine instead."
He was discovering, more sharply than he had expected, how uncomfortable it was both to be beyond the reach of Holy Power and to feel a temple itself like a den of maggots.
Well—the first point he could have guessed just by watching the Demon Knight. Having it apply to himself simply made it clearer. The second only left him wondering how the Demon Knight had endured this long at all.
"If we're even a day late… I get the feeling Sir Knight's going to have something to say about it."
"Don't ask me. Haven't seen him since he walked out earlier. Haven't heard a word of him coming back to the temple either."
And still the Demon Knight hadn't returned.
A man who would normally have been foaming at the mouth over demons, choosing instead to keep his distance—it was almost funny, and it filled his head with every kind of thought.
No—if he was going to start somewhere, it ought to be with the fact that the man had left him alive at all.
Clink.
He followed the line of the shackles—nominal ones, and only on a single wrist—along the chain that ran from them.
The Inquisitor held the chain the way one holds a livestock lead. That blank expression of hers looked as dull-witted as ever.
"Hey, bookworm."
"What."
Still, she was the only person he could ask right now. He tossed the question out as if it were nothing.
"Sir… why do you think Sir Knight left me alive?"
From the outside, he would look like someone who had chosen of his own will to become a demon contractor. Not some being born that way with no say in the matter.
Which meant, in the end, that he was exactly the sort Sir Knight could never abide.
"Why… why me……."
He called up again the expression the Demon Knight had worn in that moment. Not a single tear, not the smallest twist of the features—a face collapsing like a ruin swallowed all at once.
"You ask the strangest things. Is it not because he knows what kind of person you are?"
Ah. Maybe he already knew the answer. He simply couldn't bring himself to believe it.
"…Hah. And what kind of person am I, exactly?"
He asked it in a daze.
If they ever learned the things he had done, they would never look at him the way they did now. The self-mockery came free of charge.
"What kind of person, that that man would—"
"Shameless, stupid, slippery, rude, and full of secrets."
"Oh my. Is that so. But that alone would hardl—"
"But you are quick-witted enough to dig out vital information with ease, worldly enough to know how things work and judge them soundly, and skilled enough at reading people that you catch countless things the rest of us miss. That merit is not something those flaws can bury."
"Would hardl—"
"Ah—and though it is less conspicuous, you are also outstanding at preparing camps, hunting, cooking, and the like, and have been the greatest help on the journey. Without you we would have suffered far more hardship wandering this land. That, too, is a contribution that deserves its due."
"…Uh."
"There. How is that? I am still no match for you, but I have done my best to learn from your example. I will keep striving to catch up to you… What is that face for?"
Surely that was how it ought to be.
"What."
What in the world had he just heard? What had that damn bookworm been spouting?
S-sound judgment? Catching what others miss? Being a help?
Th-th-this was—
"Have you a fever? Your face—"
"W-what is your hide even made of, that you can just say things like that out loud!!"
He hurriedly covered a face he could feel burning hot. That mad bookworm had never possessed a scrap of shame in her life—!
"What are you talking about! My hide is perfectly ordinary! And if you have a fever, show me at once. Your internal injuries may have flared!"
"G-get away from me!!"
Insane. Truly insane.
If it had been empty flattery he could have snorted and waved it off. But a man this inflexible would never waste breath on a hollow word.
Those words had come from pure, uncut sincerity. Which only made them more humiliating.
"Show me your face! How am I to diagnose you otherwise!"
"I said get away!"
Even now, Deathbringer fled the tactless advance by flopping face-first onto the bed. The bookworm tried to force a look anyway, but a person had pride—he was not about to lose this one.
"Can you not install a little common sense?!"
"I—I am trying! Why is that coming up now!"
Damn bookworm. Did she not even remember their fight? He had poured abuse on her one-sidedly and then walked out—did that not stick at all?
"You truly dense bookworm……!"
"Grr! After I answered you with all my heart and soul!"
A little too much heart and soul, honestly. Deathbringer buried the heat that would not fade into the pillow and dragged in a breath.
It was embarrassing—mortifying—and yet his mood was soaring so high it left him light-headed.
"Fine! None of it matters!"
In the meantime the Inquisitor huffed to her feet.
"Take this, you rascal!"
And she flung something at his head. Thok. A pouch of small, hard pellets smacked him. It hurt.
"Why are you hi—!"
Rustle. The open mouth of the pouch spilled its contents. What tumbled out were clear beads with flower petals sealed inside. Sticky to the touch—candy, by the feel of it.
The abrupt appearance left his mind blank.
"This is……."
"A gift of apology! No gift can truly atone for the discriminating looks I cast upon you—but apology is still what must be done, so I prepared it!"
Even through all of that, the bookworm's shouting went on.
"I am sorry! For making you feel despised. For demanding, without knowing your circumstances, that you spill your secrets. For treating you like a criminal while knowing nothing of the life you have lived! I am sorry for all of it! Do you understand?!"
True to her title as Hero, she was a human so upright it bordered on pure stupidity.
"Then I am going!"
She was also a person who shone so straight and so brilliantly that even he, who had not yet managed an apology of his own, felt ashamed.
He thought he finally understood why the gods had chosen her.
Click!
With the sound of the door, Deathbringer buried his face in the candy pouch. And, small as a grain of millet, he muttered,
"What if I."
"……?"
"What if I really am a criminal. What would you do then."
Luck or misfortune, the bookworm who had stopped to listen sank into deep thought.
"Then……."
And—
"I would help you. So that you could atone. So that you could become a better person."
The answer that came back carried a nuance wholly different from before.
"…You wouldn't throw me in a cell?"
"What do you take me for! Once, when my thinking was still short, perhaps—but not now! I have learned that the world may hold circumstances truly beyond one's control!"
Deathbringer lifted his head. There in the doorway stood the red-haired priest.
"Moreover, the you I know has a habit of lightly ignoring law and rule, and a corner that approves of private justice—but you are not the sort to commit crimes without reason. So there must have been a reason you had no choice. I have no intention of hounding a person like that with guilt and punishing him!"
"Then……."
"Of course that is not forgiveness! I am not the victim, so I have no right to forgive. But I will speak, in the place of those who were harmed, and say that what is wrong is wrong—and so I will help you atone. Because that is what I believe is right!"
Fresh green eyes sparkled. That the words, similar in grain to what the demon had whispered, did not repulse him was probably because of those eyes.
"…Even if hundreds of people died because of me? Would you still say you understand then?"
"Did you intend it, take part in it, or wish for it?"
"That… no, but……."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Because of me… if I was the cause……."
"Hah. Do not say things that make no sense! How does something you never intervened in become your responsibility!"
A truly good person's scolding never even managed to sound spiteful.
You could always tell it was a road toward becoming a better human being.
"If I… if I just hadn't moved, those people wouldn't have died……."
"Don't talk nonsense! By that logic, are the ones who stood against a lord to save people crushed by unjust law also criminals?! The fighting would have spread because of them!"
"…That's—that's different."
"No. It is similar. Because I believe that whenever you move of your own will, it is always to resist injustice!"
"……!"
"If, in the course of resisting by violent means, bystanders were swept up and hurt—then apologize to the wounded. Leaving good and evil aside, to them you are the perpetrator. If you opposed wrong in a crooked way and disordered the peace so that people suffered—apologize to them as well. That, too, is your fault."
And yet, for that very reason, the shame only deepened.
"But—one thing. Before one single fact, hold your head high without shame. You did not keep silent before injustice; your methods and manner may have been wrong, but you raged against what was unfair."
He had not stepped forward because he could not overlook injustice.
He had stepped forward on simple revenge alone.