Does It Mean Anything? (4)
The promised third day arrived, yet my body was still far from well. The muscle aches had eased a little, but the fever simply refused to break.
“Hah.”
Still, I could move. Yes—now, at last, I could leave the bed. That was enough.
I pushed myself up to leave the Great Forest.
[Sir Knight, are ya leavin’?]
“The time has come……”
[Yer really goin’?]
But the attempt was stopped before it could truly begin. Sangun, who had been coiled up in the cave, suddenly thrust his head inside.
[How the heck did we go an’ patch up yer life just so’s you could take off like that!?]
Sangun’s antics did not stop there.
A deep, rumbling guuuuuu—his true voice—mixed with the words only I could hear, and the whole cave rang with it. The resonance overwhelmed even the ringing in my ears; my mouth fell open without permission.
[Aigoo, aigoooo. I grew the herbs myself, raised the fruit with my own two hands just to save Sir Knight! Nursed ya an’ everythinggg! How can Sir Knight just up an’ leave after all that!! How can Sir Knight!!]
…And why did the content have to be like that while he was at it! Saying it that way made me sound like some ungrateful, shameless bastard with no sense of debt or decency!
[If I’d known Sir Knight was this kinda person… aigoo, aigoo.]
I was left speechless at the sight of Sangun wiping his face with his own tail, sobbing his heart out.
I-is this really something to cry over……? Objectively speaking, if you only looked at the surface of this whole affair, I might come off as thick-skinned and shameless. I might even look like some brazen, face-of-steel scoundrel.
But if you weighed the underside of the matter, it wasn’t completely unreasonable! The underside was the more important part of the whole thing, too! He knew that, so why……!
“Thunder Snake, what in the world is going on?”
Perhaps my soul had briefly left my body at Sangun’s completely unexpected display. Because of that, I failed to stop the priests who had woken and come running, failed to stop them from spotting me and surrounding me.
My ankles were well and truly caught.
“…Let go.”
Nooo, people! I’m not doing this because I hate you—I’m doing it for your sakes, so why are you like this!
If they find out you hid me, you’re the ones who’ll suffer, you know? Now that you’ve started trading with the outside, it’ll only get messier, you know?
You lot—hey? No matter how different your faith might be, aren’t you afraid of becoming enemies with the temples? Are you thinking that if things go wrong you can just slam the borders shut again and that’ll be the end of it?!
“I am one who carries a curse, a man who abandoned the greater good for my own ends.”
I chose my words carefully with a mind that felt a little sharper after even a little rest—sharper compared to three days ago, at least; nowhere near my usual self.
I had to leave. Over the past three days I had learned just how sincere their desire to protect me truly was, and that knowledge only made the urge stronger. I did not want to become someone who repaid the people who had helped me by bringing them harm instead.
“I am not someone you should be protecting.”
I did not want to lose the warmth I had gained these past few days by letting greed destroy this place.
[Sir Knight…….]
“We are not trying to protect you.”
Before my words could crush everyone present, a clear, bright voice split the priests into two groups. Between them stood a boy I had not known long, yet whose face was etched deeply in my mind. His height and the length of his limbs had grown especially striking since the last time I saw him.
“We merely wish to become a cradle where you may rest.”
“…I don’t need it.”
“No. There is no living thing in this world that has no need of a nest.”
“That is only your opinion.”
“And it is an opinion a great many would agree with.”
It hadn’t been that long since we parted… children really do grow quickly. I felt oddly unsettled looking at the boy—no, the Great Chieftain—who seemed to have grown a full five centimeters at least. Do they… usually grow this fast……?
“Perhaps that was too forward of me? Yet, Benefactor of the Great Forest, if one considers the debt this forest owes you, this desire can only be inevitable.”
No—before that… did the Great Chieftain originally know how to speak this tongue?
“…Everything I did in this forest I carried out of my own free will alone. You owe me no debt.”
“Is that so?”
Had he learned the language after that incident? But his speech was far too fluent. The time that had passed hadn’t been that long.
Of course, if he had already known the language back then he would have spoken to me directly… so he really had learned it only after we parted?
“We wrote letters to the outside and let people in at your request, all so that we might repay the Thunder Snake. Yet it seems the grace we sought to repay never existed in the first place.”
Suddenly the Great Chieftain’s eyes sparkled like stars. I had been so busy admiring his language skill that only then did I feel a subtle unease.
Wait—this… don’t tell me?
“Then may we regard this as a debt the Thunder Snake owes this forest?”
…This is a scam!
“That’s a stretch……”
“I trust the great Black Thunder Snake would not reverse his words like some petty man.”
“…….”
I realized it once again.
Right. This kid was the Great Chieftain. Sangun had just grabbed him and stuck him in the role, but he was still the Great Chieftain……! Young as he was, he had been fulfilling a Great Chieftain’s duties with excellence……!
“Please lie down.”
I felt hollow looking at Sangun grinning goofily behind me, the priests smiling gently, and the Great Chieftain delivering his sunny threat.
No—I had thought they would only try emotional persuasion to the end… and instead they hit me with this mid-game technicality…….
“…I will leave in three days.”
“Shall we discuss that when the time comes?”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the boy’s shrewd, mischievous smile. The fever still hadn’t fully broken; I no longer had the strength to keep turning my head and stringing words together.
“And Thunder Snake—please give up on lying.”
“……?”
“If you had truly abandoned the greater good for personal ends, you would have long since made use of useful pieces like us, would you not?”
Or perhaps… the fever was simply rising higher because of a child’s provocation.
Whether it was that he could only feel satisfied once he kept his own word, or something else entirely—Yukgui flicked a flipper once as he watched the human try to run away again three days later. If Sangun and the Great Chieftain hadn’t been waiting in advance, the man really would have succeeded in escaping.
“You again……!”
“I thought the value of everything this forest has done for the Thunder Snake would be enough for at least a month’s stay, but…….”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Still no agreement, then?”
The next day was the same. The Great Chieftain had already anticipated that the knight’s escape attempts would not stop at one, and had prepared accordingly. That preparation caught the human’s ankles once more. Sangun wrapping the knight tightly in his own body while declaring he wouldn’t let him run was just the bonus.
“More importantly, please try this. It’s a fruit that only grows in this season…….”
[Heehee, I put a bit o’ power into it this year, so it oughta taste even better.]
And the day after that as well.
“…Don’t you have work?”
“The priests of the swamp have been helping a great deal, so lately I’ve been free.”
[Catchin’ Sir Knight’s the most important job of all, ain’t it? The little odds an’ ends are plenty for those empty-headed fools.]
The day after that was much the same. Though the knight looked ready to go mad, with two of the swamp’s power-holders clinging to him there was no dreaming of escape.
In the end the human rested in the swamp until every wound on his feet had vanished and the fever had completely broken. More precisely, until the very moment Sangun or the Great Chieftain finally let down their guard.
[…Leavin’?]
I had thought he had completely given up on going, but that didn’t seem to be the case after all. Yukgui set the idle thought aside and glanced at the human.
The man dressing himself in the dead of night radiated only a cool, razor-sharp presence. It was impossible to imagine he had spent nearly twenty days groaning in illness.
“I have stayed long enough.”
Yet beneath that blunt exterior his insides were either soft as overripe fruit or sharp as a fox—one of the two.
Yukgui narrowed his eyes at a being who could have left this place with ease if he had simply pushed hard enough.
[Why sneak off?]
From the fact that he had the ability to leave yet had not done so, Yukgui had wondered whether the man meant to use this place. In other words, once he confirmed he could stay safely, he intended to plant his rear and dig in.
But at this point that hypothesis shattered. If he had verified the reliability of his collaborators, the proper course would have been to keep sitting tight—yet he chose once again to leave. It was a choice too suspicious to write off as simply having recovered his health.
[If ya just say, “I’m healed so I’m goin’,” they’ll be sad, sure, but they won’t stop ya.]
Because the reason was exactly what he had just said.
“I know.”
Yet the knight was not acting this way out of ignorance. The man who had shoved his feet into military boots and pulled on vest and coat in turn slipped his right hand into a gauntlet.
[Then why’re ya sneakin’ off like a rat?]
Clink. When he moved his fingers, plate scraped against plate, each piece releasing its own sound.
“Were you interested in me?”
[…Only in the parts that fall outside the ordinary.]
At Yukgui’s answer the knight’s lips curved down at the corners. The greatsword he lifted with one hand settled against his back and fixed itself in place.
“…If you answer my question, I will answer yours.”
[A deal, huh. Interesting.]
In case the others woke, the other side wouldn’t invest much time either…….
[Fine. Let’s do it.]
Yukgui decided to accept the proposal. He was fairly curious why the human was sneaking away, and he also wanted to know what the man was so eager to ask even in the middle of fleeing.
“Question.”
[Why sneak off like a rat.]
“…I judged that if they learned what I am searching for, they might try to hold me again.”
[Good. Your question?]
“A method to conceal Demon Energy.”
The fact that it was more unexpected than anticipated was a bit of a problem.
[Gutsy of ya. Even if I tolerate you right now, I’m not exactly friendly toward those who carry Demon Energy. Or are ya askin’ because you trust I can’t kill you in my current state?]
“Is that a question for the deal?”
Yukgui let out a long breath at the other’s words.
Well, this human had already shaken off a whole group of humans for his own purpose—according to his own claim. Once he left this place there would be risk of being caught again, so asking a question like that was roughly understandable.
[No, so no need to answer. And as for your question…….]
Whether to give a proper answer to this one or play dumb. Yukgui fretted a little, then decided to answer with what he knew. In any case, nothing in his knowledge would be of any real use to that human.
[Seals are the most common, yeah? Of course, to make a seal you need the knowledge for it, and there’s the risk of being found out by anyone who has related knowledge.]
“…Methods other than sealing?”
[That’s a “question,” isn’t it?]
“Do you have something you want to ask?”
[Your purpose. The thing you’re searching for after running from the humans, without telling these people.]
Meanwhile, at that question the knight fell silent for a while. It was as if he were weighing the single question opportunity he would gain by answering against the weight the answer itself carried.
“…Home.”
And then.
“A way to return home.”
The former had won.
It was so far off any prediction that a bit of additional explanation might have been needed, but still.
[Too short.]
“…Swear that you will tell no one.”
[Is this really something that needs a vow…….]
Yet when even the existing answer was already puzzling and now a demand like that was piled on top, curiosity stirred about just how deep the circumstances ran. Besides, a vow didn’t exactly come with binding force, did it? It was nothing more than a promise.
So Yukgui accepted readily. It was a decision made with the lightest of hearts—a verbal promise alone wouldn’t cost him anything.
“I am not originally the soul of this body. I was dragged here because the original owner made a contract with a demon.”
Well, if he had known an answer like that would come back, he never would have gotten involved.
Yukgui recalled his past self, the one who had idled about saying that whatever the human’s circumstances were, it was none of his business. What, none of my business no matter what the circumstances are? Damn it! It is completely my business!!
He suddenly wanted to go find his past self and wring its neck.