The One Who Should Always Stay Beside Me
When someone who never stops chattering from morning till night goes silent for days on end, it is bound to feel strange. Vigrind was the perfect case in point.
The one walking beside her right now, the Hero Ludwig, was exactly that kind of person.
The sort of man who, if thrown into a river, would probably keep floating along with nothing but his mouth bobbing above the water.
So ceaseless was his chatter, so carefree did he seem, that even on the ship to Carpithia Vigrind had nearly had her soul sucked right out of her.
And yet when it was time to be serious, he could be every bit the serious man, and when it was time to act, he acted boldly — so he wasn't simply an odd one. That was the kind of person Ludwig was, to Vigrind.
"Hero."
"Yes, Saintess."
Even now, walking together as they searched Semek, Ludwig said hardly a word.
And so Vigrind, in turn, fell silent as well.
She had, after all, next to no experience with the opposite sex — and the only person she had ever spent long stretches of time with, just the two of them, was Ludwig himself. It made silence that much harder to break.
"Is something the matter?"
"What do you mean, something the matter? Nothing of the sort."
Ludwig flashed his usual smile as he looked at her.
But it didn't quite look like his usual smile.
Ludwig's great asset was that open, easygoing grin — the kind that left even those watching him feeling refreshed — and yet this particular smile seemed, somehow, to carry a shadow across it.
So when he claimed nothing was wrong, there was no way she could believe him.
It was a night with a pale moon hanging high overhead. The village looked desolate, without the faintest trace of living breath anywhere, but even a village like this, standing stark and solitary under the moonlight, took on a certain atmosphere all its own.
And with a man and a woman walking through it side by side, there was nothing more that could be asked for.
Once Vigrind had gone quiet too, the only sound left was the crunch of footsteps in the dark. It wasn't quite a trail — more a path worn into the earth by the passage of many feet — and along it the two of them walked without a single word between them.
"Hero, you once said something."
It was Vigrind who could no longer endure the silence. Without even knowing what she meant to say, she simply opened her mouth.
"Hm?"
Ludwig answered as he tightened his grip on the Light Spear he carried in place of a lantern. His voice had a drained, listless quality to it.
"You said that you and I — that is, that a Saint is the person who must stand closest to the Hero."
"Yes, I did say that."
Crunch. With one last step, Vigrind stopped walking, and Ludwig stopped as well.
"Then tell me, please. What is it that weighs on you so? Ought I not to know, as well?"
Ludwig gazed at her quietly. Vigrind stood still, meeting his eyes.
A bleak wind swept through, cold enough to sting, fluttering Vigrind's veil as it passed.
"...Your veil has come loose."
Ludwig stepped closer and adjusted it. Once the veil that had skewed crookedly across her sight was set right by his hand, the view it revealed was of Ludwig looking down at her, quiet and gentle.
"Saintess."
"Yes, Hero?"
"The truth is, I'm a coward."
"...Pardon?"
At the words, spoken as Ludwig straightened his back, Vigrind's eyes went round. From the battle with the demon they'd faced at Carpithia — no, from even before that, from the fight against the demon at Evian — Ludwig had always cast aside his own safety and thrown himself onto the front lines. For a man like that to call himself a coward was, to Vigrind, simply incomprehensible.
"Exactly what I said — I'm terrified of everything. But being a coward doesn't mean my body is weak, you see."
Ludwig grinned at her, at her wide, startled-rabbit eyes. It sounded more than a little contradictory — a coward and yet strong — but then again, it wasn't entirely impossible either.
"It was because I'm a coward that I hated getting hurt, and hated dying even more. So, well... that's why I bury my fear under light words and frivolous behavior. If people think of me as a lecher who chases after women, then adding one more flaw to the list — coward — hardly changes anything. After all, he's a shallow guy, a frivolous guy, a guy who runs his mouth — a coward would be just about right for a man like that. Playing that role was simply more comfortable for me."
"I... I see."
"But even a coward like me could run wild and crush down that fear, all because you, Saintess, stood behind me and lent me such steadfast support. And because you stayed by my side, I no longer needed to keep up the act. But then, that isn't really me, is it? It's the Hero Ludwig who receives a Saintess's aid — the man Ludwig never changes."
Ludwig's face had gone dark as he spoke. He'd claimed nothing was wrong, but once the dam broke, the words poured out in a flood — a sign, apparently, that a great deal had been piling up inside.
And yet—
To Vigrind, honestly, none of it quite landed. She too had felt her own inadequacy far too keenly, had soaked herself in endless self-loathing as she watched those brave souls standing against the dead. What could she possibly say to Ludwig, who was pouring out his heart like a man making a confession of faith, insisting that it had all been thanks to her?
"Shall we keep walking? I do worry that my rambling might make you lose the trail, Saintess."
"You needn't worry about that. Even if I wanted to lose track of the miasma, I couldn't."
The burden of the Saint sat upon her, and she never lost the scent of demonic energy. Even sunk in the deepest sleep, she would surely wake the moment it stirred nearby.
"I see. Well, in any case — that's what I meant. And then, a few days ago, when we met that tide of the dead face to face... I came to understand something even more clearly."
"Understand what?"
Ludwig swept the Light Spear around in a slow circle, surveying their surroundings. With every rotation of the spear, holy light flickered across the area. Shadows of trees and brush stretched long beneath it, but there was no movement anywhere.
"That even the Hero Ludwig is still far from enough — that only Hero Ludwig is worth anything at all, while the man is nothing, and even the Hero has a long way yet to go."
"You say you have far to go as the Hero — what do you mean? If anything, it's I who am still lacking—"
"What nonsense is that?"
Ludwig let out a small breath of a laugh.
"You truly are remarkable, Saintess. You've supported me without the slightest shortcoming, and shown a bearing worthy of the very name of Saint."
Little by little, the humor drained from Ludwig's face. In its place settled something dark and unreadable.
"I only ran wild because you lent me your strength. I am still lacking, dreadfully so — and I, who must one day beat every last demon into the ground, am nothing but a fool who can do nothing without you, a mere Gold-Rank adventurer. I still haven't escaped that. That's what I am — a man who's only worth anything when the titles of Gold Rank and Hero are pinned to him."
Vigrind's lips parted and closed again and again, but no words came. She was no warrior, and her experience of battlefields where lives hung by a thread was far too shallow to know what she ought to say. Whether this was a moment for consolation, she didn't know; whether she should simply keep silent like this, she didn't know either.
Meanwhile, Ludwig continued.
"A Gold-Rank adventurer, and a coward at my core. Those two things are what I could never free myself from. Even when I thought I'd grown strong, the truth was that you were there — it was never that I'd grown strong on my own. And once I understood that, I realized I still stand impossibly far from where I need to be. Yes. That was what weighed on me."
Ah, that was a relief, Ludwig said — and to those words, Vigrind kept agonizing over what she could possibly say.
She knew, of course, how difficult Gold Rank was to achieve. Yona had suffered and struggled for everything she had, and even then only reached Bronze Rank — so with hardly any difference in age between them, there was no way Gold and Bronze could be the same.
Watching a man of that impossible height speak of himself as still falling short, Vigrind racked her brain, again and again, for what she should say.
And from that agonizing, a single thought took shape.
What would Yona have said?
That woman who had a gift for drawing people to her wherever she went — what would Yona have said?
Perhaps she would have said something like this.
Vigrind drew in a small breath.
"To-togther."
"Hm?"
Ludwig, who had been scanning their surroundings, turned back to her again. At her lips, moving as she tried to form the words, he waited without saying a thing.
"Let's grow strong together. I'll ask the Heavenly God too... wh-whether there's a prayer for fixing cowards..."
"A prayer for fixing cowards?"
For a moment, it seemed laughter would burst out of Ludwig — but he didn't laugh. Vigrind's face had gone scarlet, and those words were, without a doubt, everything she had wrung from her courage.
"I hope there is. Truly."
With her ears flushed red to the very tips, she looked quite adorable.
More than enough to earn Ludwig's brightest smile.