The Legend of the Dying Kingdom
"Let's have a good match, Bayul."
"Yes, Senior Raigean. I look forward to it as well."
"Just call me senior. No need for all that formal stuff."
"But you're a fourth-year, my senior in every sense of the word..."
"I'm just another Academy student like you. Relax."
"Yes, Senior. Or—Raigean."
Bayul corrected himself mid-sentence and flashed an awkward smile. Quite some time had passed since he'd entered the Academy, but the word senior still sat strangely on his tongue.
"Looks like a lot of spectators came for you, by the way. Your name was the one I heard loudest out there."
"...I'm sorry."
"Nothing to apologize for. If anything, I'm a little jealous."
Raigean swept his gaze around the stands once before adding, "No one came to see me, after all. Not that it matters—I'm used to it."
Bayul didn't quite know what to say to that and simply blinked, and Raigean flashed him a good-natured grin.
"Anyway, don't be nervous. Chess is just chess."
Chess is just chess?
"It's not like anyone's life is on the line here. Let's just enjoy ourselves."
Perhaps it was the confidence of someone who'd claimed the throne two years running. Facing an opponent he was meant to fight and beat, Raigean radiated an unshakable ease from start to finish.
Bayul didn't sense any affectation in it. The senior genuinely seemed to want to offer sincere advice to a junior from a kinder place.
And with that ease came an unmistakable air of self-assurance—a sense that he hadn't even entertained the possibility of losing.
The opponent's carelessness is an opening, they say. Maybe I actually have a chance.
The thought surfaced unbidden. Right. Even if I lose, I'll lose with dignity.
That way, he'd have fewer regrets. Losing a match was nothing to be ashamed of. It would sting a little, sure, but there would always be something to learn from it.
Don't freeze up. Keep your head in the game.
He resolved to give it everything, just as he had when he'd faced Jared at the Crow's Nest.
"Thank you for the advice. Shall we begin, then?"
"I suppose we shall."
Bayul, holding the white pieces, made the first move.
"And so it finally begins."
Matches were unfolding at tables all across the venue, but most eyes were fixed on Bayul and Raigean. Which of the two would claim victory was the single greatest point of interest in today's tournament.
Their friends—including Aidan—somehow seemed even more tense than Bayul himself. Every one of them stared at him intently, frozen in place like statues.
Rita, for her part, who could usually be heard chattering from across a room, sat with her hands folded neatly and prayed in utter silence.
Lord of Despair, please, please let our young master win!
They were close to the Temple of Despair, so she figured His grace might pack slightly more punch than the God of War—and she willed it with everything she had.
There were plenty of others rooting for Bayul too—the Crown Prince, Hayes, and even Ian, standing a little apart on escort duty.
"Bit of an uncomfortable seat, that. Is this one all right?"
How much time had passed?
The matches had matured and the crowd's attention was beginning to wander when Rayegar suddenly moved to sit in the seat beside Quinn. Perhaps because the merfolk made people uneasy, seats near Quinn often emptied out like this, one by one.
"Shouldn't you return to your own seat?"
Eli sat to Quinn's right, and Rayegar had just appeared on his left—which meant Quinn was now wedged between father and son. Absolutely not what Quinn wanted.
"Hm? What was that? I can't quite hear you."
Rayegar cupped a hand to his ear, pretending not to have heard. Eli, who knew perfectly well that Rayegar had heard every word, shot his adoptive father one withering glare—then snapped his head away. Indifference was the only answer to a man like Rayegar.
"I heard chess was never a particularly popular event until last year. Yet today this is the rowdiest spot in the whole venue. Any idea why?"
"...Are you asking me that right now?"
Eli, for his part, wasn't sparing Rayegar so much as a glance. When Quinn turned to him with a puzzled look, Rayegar countered with a question of his own.
"Who else is sitting here?"
Aidan and Logan were seated farther away than Eli. Thanks to Rayegar's relocation, Chancellor Reinhardt—who normally trailed him like a secretary—and several professors had also been pushed well back.
"...It wouldn't happen to be because of the Crown Prince?"
Quinn had no idea why Rayegar had come all the way over just to ask this, but a man of his standing was a man of his standing, so Quinn answered, his reluctance written plainly across his face.
"The moment the Crown Prince shows the slightest opening, the nobles swarm in to strike up a conversation. Occasionally the professors over there are no different."
Chances to meet the Crown Prince face to face were never common. It wasn't necessarily that they wanted something from him—many simply yearned to be seen, to leave an impression.
"In the Mermaid Kingdom, you'd be in much the same position. A familiar sight, if anything is."
"Hah. Hardly comparable, when the kingdom in question is dying."
It wasn't that Quinn never spoke of it—the royal authority of the Mermaid Kingdom had collapsed to rock bottom. There were still those who clung to the royal family, but the factions that had abandoned them were, by any measure, far more numerous. It was a bitter reality, a harsh age.
"Is that why you approached Bayul?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"One who will still the drying spring. One who will make the spring overflow once more. One who will bring prosperity to the kingdom. From one who bears two legs instead of a tail, and round ears instead of fins, shall that beginning come."
"H-how do you know that...!"
Anyone who'd overheard would have dismissed it as gibberish, and rightly so—yet Quinn jolted as if struck by lightning. He had never once dreamed he would hear those words here, of all places—and from Rayegar, of all people.
"It's a legend every merfolk knows by heart."
"...You are not merfolk."
So how in the depths could you possibly know it?
Every syllable Quinn uttered was a demand for an explanation.
"I'm something of a special case?"
Rayegar broke into a dazzling smile, wildly out of step with the moment.
"Striking, isn't it? The one destined to breathe life back into a dying mermaid kingdom—born not a merfolk, but a human. A little hard to swallow, wouldn't you say?"
Quinn had felt the same, at first. Of all the words the great prophet of the Mermaid Kingdom had left behind at his death hundreds of years ago, it had to be that one.
The salvation of the mermaid kingdom, already walking the road to ruin, would be born not of merfolk, but of humans.
An absurd prophecy—yet the old prophet had never once been wrong in his lifetime, and so it had been passed down through the generations until it became the legend that every merfolk alive now knew.
Quinn had been unable to bear it. Born a scion of the royal house, to hear that his homeland's fate rested in the hands of a mere human was tantamount to a denial of his very existence.
And so he hadn't believed it.
I will protect my own country myself.
He'd dismissed the legend as nonsense and crossed into the human world himself, in search of the Eye of the Ocean that a foolish, heedless former king had offered up to the Water Spirit King.
The Eye of the Ocean, guardian treasure of his homeland, wielded its true power only when the matched pair was united. With it, Quinn had been certain, everything would be solved.
That certainty had grown hazy the day he met Bayul and learned the boy was a Spirit User. Every time he watched Bayul grow stronger, his faith in the legend deepened a little more—until now, even he accepted the prophecy as truth.
"To be honest, I never quite trusted it. What power could a human possibly have to save a kingdom of the drowning sea? It only made me think—your country must have been desperate indeed, desperate enough to invent a prophecy like that."
"...You still haven't answered how you came to know it."
"Does it really matter that much? It's hardly some terrible secret."
"That may be, but..."
He wasn't wrong. It was an oral legend, layered and embellished with all manner of retellings over the centuries. But the merfolk were a closed people by nature, and humans had a habit of looking down on them for it. The odds that a human could have learned of it were, for all practical purposes, nil.
"Well, judging by your face, you came to understand it later."
Rayegar's glowing golden eyes shifted to Bayul, still deep in his match.
Since when did his gaze carry such depth?
Perhaps because Quinn had only ever seen him tormenting his own son, it never quite sat right. Quinn was bewildered—and, in equal measure, desperately curious—about how Rayegar could possibly know the legend of the Mermaid Kingdom.
"He really ought to grow up soon, that boy."
Rayegar, who had been staring at Bayul in silence, murmured another loaded remark.
"Grow up? What is that supposed to mean?"
"You'd know better than I would, wouldn't you?"
"...I don't follow."
"Keeping himself so busy every night must be fun, but I imagine it can't be easy."
Rayegar muttered it quietly, almost to himself—but Quinn had sharp ears. He started far harder than he had when the legend first came up.
"...!"
Quinn couldn't fathom how he knew, but Rayegar knew. There was no doubt about it.
The secret Bayul hadn't yet been able to tell even his own father.
He knew the boy was a Spirit User. Only then did everything the man had said, from beginning to end, fall into place.
"See? That's the face of someone who understands. For your sake, and for the sake of your kingdom—the sooner, the better."
Getting no answer from Quinn, Rayegar raised his voice abruptly and spoke.
"Protect him."
This was not the Rayegar Quinn knew. It was as if someone else's soul had slipped into the man's body—utterly foreign.
"...What do you mean by that?"
"You're clever. You'll figure it out—when the moment comes."
"What moment? I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about, Chairman."
"Hah. A moment ago it was all 'you, sir,' and now it's Chairman?"
"That's... you startled me, and..."
"You do have a hidden soft side, just like my son."
And just like that, he was back to his old self. At the playfulness dripping from his voice, Quinn wrinkled his brow and pressed him.
"But why me, of all people? There's Eli, and Aidan, and Logan too."
"Because only you can do it."
"Only I can do it?"
"You'll have my thanks in return."
"And what thanks might that be?"
Quinn felt as though he were unraveling some infuriating riddle.
"I'll tell you now so you won't have to bother thanking me for it later."
Making it plain that the conversation was over, Rayegar rose from his seat.
"Chairman, if you'd only explain—"
Quinn scrambled to his feet to press him further, but a tremendous roar of cheers suddenly sliced into his sensitive ears.
Only then did Quinn realize: all this time, Rayegar had been sealing off the sounds around them.
Him sitting down beside Quinn had been no accident. He had sought him out deliberately, because he had words to deliver.
Why me? Is something going to happen to Bayul? Why tell me alone to protect him?
So deep was Quinn in these questions that it took him a long while to understand the source of the cheering.
"Bayul, congratulations!"
"That's my friend!"
"Our young master is the best!"
The son of Duke Randert had gracefully defeated a fourth-year senior who'd held the crown two years running and stamped his name proudly onto the bracket for the second round of the tournament.
The crowd was ecstatic—but Quinn could not share in their joy. Behind the sight of Bayul beaming, a long shadow had begun to stretch.
Was it his tangled heart?
For the rest of the matches that followed, Quinn's mind was steadily overrun by an anxiety whose shape he could not name.