For Now (5)
The restaurant felt quieter than usual today, but the emptiness in my stomach had gone on too long for me to dwell on the atmosphere.
I brightened at the unusually generous spread of fish dishes and shoveled them into my gut one after another.
Whether out of consideration for someone who had been laid out for over ten days, everything had been cooked until it would melt the moment it hit the tongue, so I could set aside any worry about indigestion. It was delicious.
Clink.
Still, eating a full portion was clearly out of the question.
Even though I had taken less than usual, my stomach was already tightening, and I set my spoon down. I fretted briefly over the leftover food, but one look at Berserk putting it away and I relaxed again.
She was the sort who would finish whatever I left behind without complaint.
Scrape.
I pushed my chair back a little and let my thoughts wander.
I could really use a friend with an appetite like that back in the real world. At least then I could try a wider range of dishes whenever I went out to eat.
Why was everyone around me such a light eater?
It was not a particularly important train of thought.
"Aren't you going to have tea?"
I considered answering, then decided that with the replies I had already given while listening to explanations, I had hit my quota for the day, and chose silence instead.
In its place I turned over the far more important question of where to go next.
If I went back to my room, there was nothing to do.
Rattle.
So I kept turning it over while the restaurant doors were being closed.
Borrowing a book from the temple was out—my body was still in poor shape, and more than that, I simply wanted to get out of the temple. Sketching outside only left me with a strange feeling, so that was rejected. The restaurant was pointless now that I had just eaten, and there was no café.
"How is the restoration of the burned forest coming along…?"
"Is it true the drought has really ended…?"
Then, for a moment, conversation drifted into my ears as I passed along the corridor. It was the priests working the herb garden beyond the wall.
Listening to them, several useful things I could do occurred to me.
Add the fact that our departure looked like it would be delayed a few days, and the timing was perfect.
I decided to pay a visit to the Information Guild I had recently put myself in debt to.
"…That was rough."
Meanwhile, in the restaurant the Demon Knight had left behind.
Deathbringer exhaled the words as if releasing a breath he had been holding. His hand thumped at a stomach that felt uncomfortably close to indigestion.
"Is something wrong with the food? I thought it was fine."
"I wasn't talking about the food… Ah, never mind. Just keep living like that, Miss Scholar."
"…?!"
While the blank-faced Inquisitor tried to work out whether that counted as an insult, Deathbringer set down his spoon.
On any other day he would have eaten until his belly threatened to burst, but today was simply not the day.
The longsword at his side weighed far too heavily.
"Mm-mmph-mph?"
"…Please swallow before you talk."
"Heading out again today, little hunter?"
"Yes. Heading out again today."
There was plenty he wanted to say to the Demon Knight, and things he wanted to give him as well, but under the present circumstances it seemed completely impossible.
So what else was there to do? He would have to do something else instead.
This was the kind of chance that would not come around often.
"Take care of yourself."
"Yes."
Even though he had been going out steadily for the past few days, she saw him off every single time. He felt a faint prickle of awkwardness at that and left his companions behind.
His body, free of surveillance at last, slipped out of the temple. A little farther and he would be free of Ednium Castle itself.
"This place is seriously hard to find…"
Of course they would disguise it as a tavern or an ordinary shop, but did it really have to sit so far off the main road?
I nursed that mild complaint as I pushed the door open.
A bell on the door jangled.
"Welcome… Ah, it's you? Back again?"
Whether because it was barely opening time or because cooking was not his real trade, I ignored the proprietor's attempt at familiarity and took a seat at the empty bar. Not that the other tables had anyone at them either.
"Here, here—on the house!"
Clack.
In the meantime the proprietor set down a drink I had not ordered. From the scent and the color, it was clearly no ordinary liquor.
Wondering what the gesture was supposed to mean, I glanced at him. The proprietor's eyes, under short ash-gray hair pulled back and tied, curved into crescents.
"Had some of the money left from last time. Service."
Ah. So that was it.
Well, I had effectively opened an information route into the closed-off Great Forest for them.
Even if only the intelligence vetted by the Great Chieftain and his aides made it through, that was still enough of a gain. Keep the exchange going long enough and eventually someone inside the Great Forest would get recruited by the Information Guild.
I doubted the Great Chieftain would sit quietly and watch that happen, but that was their problem.
Just in case, I had put a word of caution in the letter this time.
"Take it away."
"Not to your taste? This is a brew we take pride in."
I decided I was glad I had written that caution out of excess worry, and brought my left hand toward the bar top.
Something appeared before my palm touched the surface.
Thud.
A letter, tightly rolled in well-dried calfskin, settled onto the table.
"Oh…"
"Delivery."
"Same destination as last time?"
"No reply required."
The odds were high I would be gone before any reply could arrive. I made that clear and withdrew my hand. As if accepting a baton pass, the proprietor reached for it next.
"Deadline?"
"None."
"Hmm, in that case. We'll throw this one in as a freebie."
Fine by me.
"This is a separate commission."
"Hm?"
"Every piece of information you have gathered on 'me.' I will buy it all."
That, of course, was not something I could expect as a freebie.
For the first time I spoke aloud the request I had hesitated over and abandoned every previous time. There was no taking it back now. That was how it felt.
It was a sensation not unlike the one I had felt when I first sat down for an interview with the lord of Belgart.
"…Hold on, hold on. Selling it isn't the problem, but why would you want your own information?"
"Is information not a commodity in this place?"
"…Well, yes, but still."
If the purpose was not an exchange of information, he had no reason to answer me. Instead of free service, I produced the payment I had prepared in advance.
"Down payment."
"Hm?"
Two claws the size of a child's fist dropped onto the table.
The platinum-colored talons gleamed with a light utterly unlike any ordinary beast's, as if determined to prove they were nothing common.
"What… is this?"
"Biryuho's claws."
"What!?"
What was there to be so shocked about? He should already know I had Biryuho's corpse. Or was he so incompetent he did not even know that much?
"No—I knew you had them, but I never thought you'd actually…"
Fortunately, that did not seem to be the case.
I began to prepare to rise from my seat. The proprietor caught at me.
"Wait—!"
Thwap!
Nice. I pulled my hand free before he could grab it.
"I'm not finished talking."
"Is it impossible?"
"That's not it…! Ah, for crying out loud."
The proprietor scrubbed at his hair, then strode over to the shop door and dropped the bolt, shutting it completely. Clank, clank. He did the same to all four windows.
The shop returned to its pre-opening state.
"Let's get the terms exact. Everything our guild has on you—that's enough with this, right?"
"If you have any conjectures or opinions drawn from that information, I will buy those as well."
"Fine. So you want everything that has ever been said about you, literally. Compiling that is going to take some time…"
He glanced at the claws as he spoke.
"Got one more claw?"
As if I wouldn't. I had brought all fifteen.
I dropped another claw onto the table. The proprietor's expression turned complicated.
"Should've asked for two from the start."
Trying to gouge the customer right to his face. Well, I already knew he was that kind of person and was using it.
I thought of Camborer's Information Guild and only clicked my tongue inwardly. If Ednium's branch had been the same, I would have put this investigation off for later.
Clink.
In any case, I dropped yet another claw. The proprietor's eyes went round.
"I wasn't asking for more. Down payment or not, the information fee is covered with this."
"Keep your tongue heavy. That goes for the organization you belong to as well."
"…Ah. Right. So only I need to know that you bought this information?"
"Even the fact that you know it must not be allowed to spread."
"Then the price is a bit short. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide something from your own workplace?"
Is that so? Then take more.
"Hey, doesn't the knight know a joke when he hears one?"
"Keep your tongue as heavy as the sum you have received."
I added another claw. The proprietor adjusted his glasses and let out a sigh.
"One claw is enough to buy silence. Instead, clear up one small curiosity for me."
One claw returned to my hand. Ssst. I shoved it into my inventory before it could burn my palm. That one could not be discovered.
"Is there a special reason you're buying information on yourself?"
Separately, this turn of events was not especially pleasant from my point of view. Of course it wasn't—it made my personal information feel less valuable than money.
Still, well. Judging by his face, he did not look prepared to let a claw settle the matter.
"This statement, too, must be buried without record."
"Ah, of course, of course. Only I'll know about this as well."
I weighed whether I could trust that, then stopped.
I was the one demanding secrecy, yet even as I issued the caution I did not actually believe it.
How much of this man had I even seen, that I should trust him? I was simply extending the same sort of trust one places in a bank teller not to spread one's account number around.
"From a certain point, my memories are no longer clear."
And honestly… even if this fact got out, it would do me little real harm. It was not a matter that connected directly to my combat strength, and it was far too ambiguous a subject to make a proper weakness of.
What were they going to do if I simply said I had no memories? If anything, if word spread, people might overlook my setting errors as memory problems.
In the end, secrecy was a nice-to-have, not a must-have. I answered him cleanly.
"Your memories…? Why?"
"That is the end of my answer."
But why the memories had vanished was something I had to keep absolute silence on. If sparks started flying that it might be a demon's fault, that would become awkward for me as well.
"Well, fine. That much is enough to settle my curiosity."
"The information."
"You asked us to keep even the guild from knowing you bought information, right? That makes the method of delivery itself a headache. Same when we pull in material scattered across the branches. So it will take time. About a month and a half…? Let's call it two months to be safe."
Two months. It felt long and yet not that long.
Travel between cities commonly took four days to a week, and if even one incident blew up we could be stuck for two or three weeks. If I collapsed after a fight, I usually stayed down for about two weeks.
So roughly… I would receive it after passing through about two more cities. Right around the middle of the East.
"Wow, looking at it this way, it's a real pain. Give me the claw back."
Clink.
"And you just hand it over again."
I passed him the claw without hesitation. Money was something I could earn easily enough if I simply focused on adventuring work, so I did not feel particularly attached to it.
"The problem is the delivery method… Do you know which city you'll be in two months from now? If you don't, we'll have no choice but to report to the guild what information you bought. That's the only way we can track your location and find a path to deliver it."
Separately, this part was genuinely inconvenient. I found myself missing the internet and thought of the schedule that got decided on the fly.
Then I suddenly remembered that our current destination was rather far away.
It had definitely been said that getting there would take over a month, right? And if that city had the largest Magic Tower branch in the East… odds were good something would blow up there.
In which case, wouldn't I be right there at the two-month mark?
"I will be in Bemyurhen."
"Bemyurhen, good. Then we'll send a letter care of the Adventurers' Guild there. We'll make sure it goes out before the two months are up, so collect it yourself."
"Understood."
Whatever. If it didn't work out, I would just park myself there for a while.
With that thoroughly unplanned thought, I left the shop.
Two months. The newly granted stay of execution left one corner of my chest both lighter and heavier at once.
"No telling when this dog-hole will get sealed up."
Deathbringer brushed himself off, debating whether to mention it or keep it as his private secret. Dirt from squeezing through the gap fell away into the air.
"Well, thanks to it staying open, it's been easy to come see you."
He uncapped the leather waterskin he had brought. What filled it was not water but hard liquor.
"Right, Emit?"
He chuckled and took a swallow. The drink he had not touched once during the journey, but had often taken before then, clung warmly to his tongue.
"Like I always say, this is alcohol, so you can't have any. Have these instead."
But coming to a person's grave and drinking alone would hardly do.
Deathbringer took out a couple of the candies he had been saving and set them on the grave. The wish that Emit might taste the sweets he never got to eat while alive was thrown in free of charge.
"…"
Once he had done even that, though, he found he had run out of things to say. He had come steadily for the past several days and prattled about every subject under the sun; that had taken its toll.
The road after escaping this place until he met Skyla. The incidents he had carried out and endured after that. And at the very end, the Hero's party he had run into. Their faces, one by one.
There truly was nothing left to tell.
"Emit."
Or was there?
"Were you really all right with it?"
He sat comfortably before the grave and pulled back his hood.
"No. Of course you weren't."
Green hair he had kept hidden for many reasons—though the most fundamental of them was almost certainly what had happened in this land—entered the domain of sunlight.
Gold light poured smoothly down over the dark-green strands.
"Because that's what death is."
The radiance was so dense it settled even on his lashes and irises.
Deathbringer narrowed his eyes slightly against the unfamiliar sensation.
"…Listen, Emit. If I die, I probably won't make it into a god's embrace. Someone might call my revenge justified, but in the end I hurt a lot of innocent people too. The fact that people died… because of me… that won't change."
But someday he would grow used to this as well.
"Still… I've decided not to regret it anymore. Yeah. Even if I die and can't go to your side, I still won't regret it. Even if I chose the wrong method, I was only someone who couldn't stay silent in the face of injustice. That's how I've decided to see it."
Just as melting into the shadows had, at some point, become as easy as breathing.
"So Emit, don't scold me for not coming to find you. This was simply the way I lived. The one who couldn't keep silent, and who didn't have the brains to choose a better way… that was me…"
The moment when standing in the light no longer felt strange would surely come for him as well.
"If that bothers you, then come back to life. Got it? Get up out of that grave yelling about how I went through all that trouble to save you only for you to live like this, and that if that's how it's going to be you should hand the life back. I'll welcome you with a smile."
So there was only one thing left for him to do now.
"Until that moment, though, I'm going to live like this. I'm going to survive like this."
He would live. He would live with the weight of those lives on his shoulders.
Because he knew this was wrong, he would correct it going forward. But he would never forget the weight of the sins he had already committed.
He would keep living, getting angry on behalf of the people who still could not be angry for themselves.
"Ah!"
Deathbringer rose from in front of the grave.
He looked up at the sky, wondering if rain was coming, but strong sunlight still poured down. It was so fierce that tears prickled at the corners of his eyes.
"That's why I always swear I'll come in the evening, and I forget again today. Am I just an idiot?"
He blamed his memory for no good reason and pulled the hood back on. Sincerity aside, the sun really was so strong he needed the hood just to see ahead.
"…Hm?"
But over there—what was that figure walking across the plain? That direction was not even a proper road; it led into the forest, and almost no one used it.
Without thinking he focused his eyes and examined the other figure in detail. The distance made it hard to see, but he could make out a few features.
Hair in two colors, black and gray. Something like a sword slung diagonally across the back.
"…That's unmistakably the young master?!"
Why had that man come outside the city? And without a single companion!
"Contact, contact… as if something like that would even be possible!"
He fretted over whether it was a trap or not, once again lamented the fact that he was not a mage, and finally made his choice.
Follow him.
The chance of a trap was not zero, but if that really was the Demon Knight… that would be a genuine disaster, wouldn't it?
Their relationship was still awkward beyond words, but even so, he could not simply let a man who had been laid up for over ten days go off alone.
Deathbringer's legs tore through the grass of the plain as he raced after the Demon Knight.