A Misunderstanding Biting Its Own Tail (2)
Belua, a luxury inn in a village in the eastern reaches of the kingdom. It was the kind of establishment where the average adventurer would struggle to scrape together a single night's lodging fee. And in the most expensive room of all, a woman sat in one of its elegant chairs. Selene Vesperia. A daughter of House Vesperia, and the wizard hailed as the greatest genius of the age. "Hmm. Same with what I heard yesterday. In the end, it's all speculation and eyewitness accounts — nothing I can actually confirm."
She murmured to herself as she quietly gazed down at the documents in her hand. What Selene held was information on Tiana, requested from the Adventurers' Guild. She had received it and read through it at her leisure, and the further she read, the more absurd it became. "They say she cleaved the monster clean in two with a single joined stance. That the sound of it being cut only arrived after the cut itself."
There was nothing but outlandish nonsense — stories one could only assume were baseless rumors and exaggerations. Judging by the eyewitness reports alone, one might think some hero straight out of a storybook had appeared. "Know your limits."
Her delicate brow furrowed in irritation. It felt like nothing more than propaganda, a stunt the Guild had cooked up to lure in adventurers. "According to the records, she seemed perfectly ordinary until recently..."
It was something of a stretch to call an S-rank ordinary, but by Selene's standards, Tiana showed no real difference from any other S-rank out there. The reason she had taken such sudden interest in Tiana was simple. Slaying an S-rank monster like the Bloody Claw alone? Difficult, certainly — it would take genuine effort and no small share of luck — but with flawless preparation, she judged it theoretically possible. She simply had no intention of volunteering for the trouble. But killing an S-rank monster wasn't enough. Doing it in a single strike? No matter how thoroughly she prepared, a mage like herself would find that impossible. Since it defied every conclusion she could reach, she had dismissed it as a lie and begun investigating. In short, it was pure spite: she couldn't do it herself, so she refused to believe someone else could. One might call it arrogance — or, viewed another way, perfectly natural. She was a genius. She had sensed mana before she ever learned to walk, and she could honestly say that manipulating mana came more easily to her than breathing. Her talent was spoken of as being on par with that of Aman Vesperia, the founder of House Vesperia and the hero said to have defeated a Calamity. With talent of that caliber, 'I can't do it, and you're telling me you can?' — such a thought was hardly strange. If Tiana hadn't been her own age, Selene might have forced herself to accept it and moved on. She might be the greatest genius of this era, but she had never considered herself the strongest in the world. 'They're just ordinary people who happened to be born before me.' Given the same span of time, she was confident she would surpass them many times over. She had never once seen anyone her own age who was stronger than her — which was precisely why she was so fixated on Tiana's strength. By inclination, she wanted to march straight out and confront Tiana face to face. 'But there's no way to know where she is...' Tiana had left the Bloody Claw's corpse behind and vanished on the spot. She was heading somewhere even now, on her path of vengeance, but no one alive knew where. All Selene could do was this sort of investigation. 'Wait, though...' Something seemed to occur to her, and she swept through the documents again. And then— "...So this is the turning point."
It didn't take her long to pin down when everything had changed. It was after visiting the S-rank adventurer Elina. There had been a stretch where Tiana's whereabouts were murky, and then, all at once, word of her began spreading everywhere. "Elina."
They said that among S-ranks, Elina was exceptional even then — that she could stand against a Calamity itself. "...Hmph."
She was forced to admit that Elina was stronger than her right now. But if she kept moving forward, it wouldn't be long before she stood above her. In any case, that wasn't what mattered at the moment. She traced Tiana's reported movements backward, sighting by sighting, from the moment she had reappeared after her disappearance — searching for where she had come from. "It looks like she stayed in this village."
Selene tapped one spot on the map with her finger. A nameless country hamlet. Elina's hometown, if she remembered correctly. "..."
She fell deep into thought. Everything has a cause and an effect. If both Elina and Tiana had changed after this place, then surely something in this village was responsible — the question rose in her mind unbidden. "I suppose I'll have to go and see for myself."
She had nothing else to do until she found Tiana anyway. Gathering her belongings, she set off for the village where Sian lived. And then— "Milady, please come back soon... Ugh, seriously. Where has she gone off to now..."
The maid attending Selene could do nothing but heave a deep sigh at her mistress's sudden disappearance. . . . While Selene drew steadily closer to the village, Sian was— "Thank you, Teacher!"
"...?"
—receiving gratitude from the children completely out of the blue. When he asked one of them what on earth was going on, "Sister Tiana told us, 'Always give your thanks to the Teacher'! She said never to forget to say thank you!"
"..."
"Teacher, teach me that thing too!"
"Teach you what?"
"Grateful Beheading! How do you do it? Tiana held her palm out like this and it just worked!"
"Like Sister Elina? Squats? Push-ups? If I do that, can I become an adventurer?"
Children swung the wooden swords at their hips through empty air. Others dropped to the ground and sprang back up, or ground out push-ups in the dirt. It was an outright circus unfolding right before Sian's eyes. "No. *Whew*..."
Watching the scene quietly, a sigh escaped him of its own accord. He had a mountain of things he wanted to say, but he doubted any of it would sink in, so he found himself washing his face dry with both hands. Was it just him, or had the difficulty level of babysitting shot straight up into the stratosphere? If he carelessly put strange ideas into the children's heads here, he suspected the villagers might start avoiding him entirely. 'I miss the old days.' The children who had only ever tugged at his sleeves demanding stories or begging to go to the forest — their faces burned clearly in his memory. And that had been just a few months ago. What was more, the children weren't the only problem. Lately, merchants had been visiting the village more and more often. When he asked why they were coming to a backwater with no particular local specialty to speak of, "Miss Tiana has been clearing out all the monsters in the area, so the trade route is much safer now."
"We were attacked by monsters, and Miss Tiana saved us!"
They'd tried to reward her for it, apparently, but she had told them there was a teacher here in the village who had trained her — a man named Sian — and that they should pass their gratitude along to him instead. Thanks to that, Sian hadn't merely been selling his goods to the visiting merchants for free; they were pressing all manner of treasures on him with the promise of their continued good favor. 'I refuse on the grounds that it's all a misunderstanding, and it doesn't even register.' Even when he tried to give the gifts back, they'd just shove them down and hurry off. There was nothing to be done. Why on earth were they so utterly convinced? Perhaps because of the weight an S-rank adventurer's word carried, the merchants had apparently decided that failing to stay on Sian's good side now was not an option. 'At this rate, I'll need a separate warehouse.' The house was already at near capacity with the gifts he'd received. He couldn't exactly leave valuables of that caliber sitting out in the open, after all. Most of the items were worth a fair sum of money, but almost all of them were useless luxuries for someone living in a country village. Of course, money made life easier even out here, so it wasn't a bad thing, exactly... 'But if I spend it carelessly and word gets around later, it'll be a headache.' So he hesitated to touch any of it. Once the misunderstanding cleared up, everything he'd spent would come back to bite him. Granted, when that day came, he could always tell them, 'That's what you all assumed on your own!' — but that was Sian's side of the argument, not theirs. These were merchants who counted every last copper. He could only imagine how much they'd hate taking a loss. 'If they ever find out I'm just an ordinary man—' They might come after him with blades in hand, hire mercenaries, demand every item back at knifepoint. And if he told them to go to hell then, they really might kill him with a smile. The pile of goods had grown to the point that it amounted to a life-changing fortune, and the thought of 'just running off with all of it?' did cross his mind — but he had no desire to live out his days as a fugitive. 'No matter how I look at it, leaving everything alone is the best choice.' It wasn't as if he had any use for it. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, he'd tell them to take it all back, and surely no one would object. Except— "You do wonder why a man like this lives in the middle of nowhere."
"He seems to have no interest whatsoever in worldly gain."
"It's a rare piece, but I think I brought the wrong gift."
Even that — his bland indifference to their treasures — seemed to be deepening the misunderstanding, painting him as a man utterly detached from the material world. No, honestly — it wasn't as though he had some refined eye for beauty. He genuinely couldn't tell. Silk painstakingly sourced from the East, gemstones from who knew where. One of them had even brought a painting. And even as he wrestled with that particular headache, "Teacher, this one—"
"Teacher, that one—"
"Teacher, what should I do about—"
—the little ones chattered ceaselessly around him, an unbroken torrent of questions. Watching them, though, he found himself thinking: misunderstanding or not, where else would children come running up to him without a shred of hesitation? The grown-ups all tiptoed around him these days, slipping away the moment their eyes met. "Enough. Everyone sit down. I'll tell you a story."
The moment the words left his mouth, they plopped down neatly on the ground in a circle. Stories kept the children from pestering him, at least, so lately he'd been looking after them this way — telling tales rather than trudging out to the forest. He was in the middle of one such story when it happened. "Pardon the interruption."
An unfamiliar voice reached him. He turned toward it and found a woman with sky-blue hair approaching, and she asked: "I heard Tiana was staying here."
The moment Sian heard those words, a strange, unshakable sense of foreboding crept over him.