The Confession, and What Followed (2)
Pop—!
Pop—!
The festive crackle of fireworks that had been blazing overhead slowly faded, until at last it died away entirely.
Outside the window, the fireworks were still going strong, and the Orengia flowers were spilling past the fields to embroider every flowerbed in town — yet inside this inn room, a thick silence had settled, and the world around them seemed to have gone utterly still.
Alec gazed quietly at Yona's face.
A blank stare. Then a look of sorrow. She bit her lip. Then forced a smile.
Not a single trace of joy crossed that ever-shifting face of hers.
From that alone, Alec could already guess what her answer would be.
"So... right now, I can't accept your feelings. I'm sorry, Alec."
A gentle but unmistakable rejection.
Looking at her expression as she said it, Alec found himself unable to speak.
Of course. That was how it would go.
From Yona's position, there was no other answer she could give.
He was her only ally. Alec's confession, offered to someone he'd believed would stand by him no matter what. A confession from the one man who, if not always, had at least often treated her as a man — it must have brought her nothing but a crushing sense of defeat and disappointment.
Alec had expected as much.
That was precisely why he'd never imagined, not for a moment, that this confession would be accepted.
"I see."
Alec gave a bitter smile.
He had known she wouldn't accept him — and yet being turned down like this still left his heart aching, stinging with pain.
"That startled you, huh? Sorry, Yona."
As he said it, he patted her shoulder.
Each time he did, he noticed her flinch ever so slightly, and a tiny sigh of relief escaped him.
He'd known she would recoil. He'd known she would refuse. Never once had he expected to be accepted outright.
Alec had laid his plans with meticulous care, all to coat over Yona's heart with his own.
Nothing ever goes exactly as planned, of course — but a plan is a necessity all the same.
And the first step of that plan was this confession.
It couldn't be some careless, offhand confession, either. It had to be the kind that sent ripples through Yona's heart — one that showed the depth of Alec's sincerity without seeming excessive, yet without coming across as shallow either.
Nothing less would do.
Shatter Yona's world.
That was Alec's plan, and its first step.
Yona's world — a world walled in by the conviction that he was a man.
He had to break down those walls and make Yona recognize, on his own, that he was a woman.
That was where it all began.
Once the walls crumbled and the existence of Alec was stamped even more deeply into Yona's heart — once Yona came to see himself as a woman, then Alec, the man before him, would inevitably leave a far stronger impression.
The confession had cracked those walls. The first step was a success.
And the pain Yona suffered along the way — Alec would be the one to heal it.
Just as he always had.
It was a plan he had conceived and built himself, yet Alec couldn't help shuddering at how sinister he had become.
But there was no other way.
To Alec, Yona was worth that much.
Alec was determined to have Yona, no matter what it took.
It was the next day.
Yona hadn't slept a wink; her eyes were puffy, and she looked exhausted to anyone who saw her. The hollowness in her pale face made her fatigue plain as day.
Alec knew perfectly well why she hadn't slept — but the people at the inn did not.
Sure enough, everyone who spotted her coming down from her room whistled and tossed out a teasing joke or two, but Yona gave no reply. She simply trudged down the stairs, head bowed in silence.
This was the same Yona who'd been bursting with energy just yesterday. Nobody knew what had happened, but seeing that firecracker of a girl so thoroughly deflated left them all puzzled.
Still, Yona answered none of their questions. At most, she would murmur that it was nothing.
"Alright, let's go."
Alec took her hand and led her forward.
"Huh?! Ah—uh... yeah."
The moment his hand closed around hers, Yona jolted and tried to pull free — but when she saw the smile on Alec's face, that hand showing no sign of letting go, she deflated all over again and let herself be led out of the inn.
Shame, embarrassment, and a handful of feelings she couldn't name.
【Behold. Not a soul in this world sees you as a man. Those wretches chattering below — do they not all assume you spent the night pinned beneath a man, drained dry of your strength? Who would ever take you for a man? You are a woman. How does that acceptance taste?】
Shut up. Shut your mouth.
Yona's mind was in turmoil.
Alec had planned for all of this, and his scheme was working with remarkable effect.
Yona was starting to wonder whether perhaps no one in the entire world saw her as a man anymore.
What if I really am a lunatic? What if I was actually born and raised in this world, lost my parents to some tragedy, and the shock made me believe I was a man?
But her memories of her previous life were this vivid, and the years she'd lived as a man were remembered with such certainty.
—What if even those memories are something I fabricated? What if it'd be simpler to just believe that?
What if I just believed I'd been a woman all along, and a sickness of the mind did this to me? Wouldn't everything be solved?
If all of these were memories I invented myself — if every recollection of living as a man were a lie — then if I accepted Alec...
Would I finally find peace?
【What a stubbornly obstinate woman you are. Where lies the charm in such defiance? A beauty that could topple a nation, a flower that understands the speech of men — and yet if that flower is stricken with madness, of what use is any of it? Even had there been no way for you to return to being a man, would you have held out all the same?】
Berbaria kept whispering into her ear.
I wish it had been that way.
If there had truly been no way to become a man again, it would have been better. Simply believing that would have been kinder to me.
If it had been like that — if only it had been—
【Give it up, I say. Is there any need to purchase such suffering and bear it? Surrender would be better. Would it not make everyone happy — you, that man, all of you?】
Under that ceaseless whispering, Yona wanted to cover her ears and scream.
What stopped her was the hand holding hers — Alec's hand.
It was the warmth flowing from that hand.
"We're heading straight to the shrine after this, right?"
"Yeah. That's the plan."
Yona forced a smile.
Still, it would be strange for a person to change this much just because she'd been confessed to, wouldn't it? The right thing to do was to act as normal as possible, as if nothing were wrong.
"Tell me if you get hungry, or if your legs hurt."
"Okay."
That was all she said before falling silent.
Adjusting the backpack on her shoulders, she felt once more the weight of the wooden box rattling inside it, asserting its presence with every step.
The wooden box that held everything Alec had given her — the skirt and the shirt, the vest and even the shoes.
She'd paid dearly for them, so she couldn't throw them away; and honestly, even if they'd been cheap knockoffs, she wouldn't have discarded them anyway.
Because Alec had bought them for her.
Things that precious.
The two of them left the city through the north gate.
The festival was in full swing, now on its second day, and the watchmen gave them curious looks as they walked out of the city — but they didn't press the matter, and the two kept walking.
"It'd be really nice if we ran into Kayak out here."
It slipped out of Yona's mouth after they'd been walking for a long while.
Kayak. A Silver Rank Lizardman warrior. Thanks to his ferociously aggressive, overwhelming style of combat, Yona had been run ragged tending to his wounds more than once — but he fought just as hard as he bled.
Kayak had gone home for now, but since Alec and Yona were also heading toward Lizard Den, there was a chance their paths might cross.
"Why bring up Kayak all of a sudden?"
"Well, if the water in a perfectly fine pond turned pitch black, obviously something terrible must have happened."
Yona said it in an even tone. In her mind, such a calamity had to have a cause — and if that shrine was, as the adventurers claimed, someplace important, then the cause was surely no small matter.
"Hm."
Alec, who'd been walking in step with her, came to a stop. Yona stopped as well.
"Maybe we should've gathered more information before coming out here?"
Alec said it to her, but Yona shook her head.
The festival was in full swing, so the Adventurer's Guild would be effectively closed anyway, and given that the adventurers treated the whole thing as gossip, there didn't seem to be much else to learn. Asking around among them wouldn't have turned up anything either — the situation simply wasn't suited for gathering information.
"No. Let's not get involved — we'll just look and pass on by. If a shrine of the Lizardmen is in that much of an uproar, the Lizardmen have probably already mounted a response."
If anything, that was the more reasonable judgment.
It was a shrine, after all. If disaster had struck a place like that, the Lizardmen would have known about it faster than anyone. By now they might already be dealing with it — or perhaps they'd already finished.
"You think so? Then let's just go."
Alec flashed a grin, and Yona answered it with an awkward but genuine smile of her own.
The two of them set off down the road once more.
The road to Lizard Den was by no means close, and the path branching toward the shrine would take a full day's walk on its own — they needed to hurry.