Some of Us Are Run Ragged
Some people were run ragged.
The Holy Sword test was finished, at any rate.
Shiron sent every last maid out of the room. Guests had poured into the manor, and hands were already short; keeping them tied up any longer would only make things worse.
Click.
He shut the door firmly behind them.
Just in case anyone thought of interrupting, he even hung a do-not-disturb placard on the handle.
Now the spacious room held only Shiron and Berta.
"We've got a stretch of free time until dinner."
Shiron slipped the Holy Sword back into his necklace, dragged a chair over, and sat down facing her. Mischief was written all over his face.
"So, Berta. After everything you just saw—"
"……"
"I can trust you'll take whatever proposal I make, right?"
"……"
Berta answered with a nod instead of words. Her tightly sealed lips seemed to declare her resolve through action rather than speech.
As Shiron had said, after coming this far, turning him down was absurd.
Even if she were mad enough to refuse, she doubted she would leave this place in one piece.
Knights were encamped outside, and inside the manor, demons prowled about, radiating a prickling demonic aura.
Berta swallowed hard, recalling the looks that had been leveled at her only moments ago.
"Good. I like how quick you are on the uptake."
Shiron leaned back against the chair and spoke in a low voice. He had gone to the trouble of arranging this tiresome private audience just to make sure of her.
He had already spent every card he could play in the present situation. If she showed even a hint of refusal now, he would be in a bind himself.
He closed his eyes lightly and opened his mouth.
"The proposal isn't anything special. I just want to touch up the report you're going to send upstairs—edit it to my taste."
"……Is that all?"
Berta blinked at his words.
"What? Too tame for you? Just what were you imagining?"
"Ah—no. Edits. You're welcome to make as many as you like."
At her reaction, Shiron cracked open his eyes and fixed her with a narrow look. What on earth had she been under the impression he was about to ask?
"Don't give me that 'no.' What, did you think I was going to slap a collar on you?"
"……Something like that."
Berta hesitated a moment, then answered reluctantly. Hands folded on her knees, eyes lowered, she looked for all the world like someone being scolded.
Shiron let out a heavy sigh and pressed his fingers to his brow.
"Well, that's cold. Here I thought I'd been treating you plenty well. Fed you, put you up, even went out of my way to show you the Holy Sword so you could carve your name into history—"
"Carve my name… into history?"
"That's right."
Carve a name into history.
The words that tumbled from Shiron's mouth were so far outside anything she had expected that Berta gave a small start.
And he did not miss it. The corners of his half-lidded eyes curved.
"You. Don't you want recognition from the Constabulary?"
"Of course I do."
She answered the leading question at once. Berta, born to nobility, had left her household and chosen the rough trade of the Special Task Force not only because she had a talent for the sword, but because she wanted to earn recognition by her own strength alone.
What came out of Shiron's mouth next, though, left her more than a little shaken.
"But from what I know, if you keep going the way you are, you won't see a promotion for ten years. You'll waste the time scraping up your superiors' messes."
"…What on earth are you talking about?"
Ten years of grinding for the organization only to stay in place. Perhaps because the future he described was so ghastly, her mouth fell slightly open.
"……Is that another one of those revelations you mentioned before?"
"Why? Can't believe it yourself?"
"Well… who could? Why would anyone get a special revelation over someone like me?"
Of course she was skeptical. The brat in front of her was not talking about the near future—he was handing her ten years of it wholesale. Honestly, it sounded like a lie.
It must have hit her hard. Berta bowed her head and clenched her fists.
A stretch of silence passed before she slowly lifted her face again.
"……Then may I ask just one more thing?"
"What."
"Why tell me a future like that at all? It feels like you're being far too kind to someone who has nothing."
"Hah. Are you stupid? Of all the things to ask."
Shiron barked a disbelieving laugh.
"Why should I have to spell all that out for you?"
"……"
"Just say yes and take it. I'm offering to treat you well—why so much suspicion? Have you spent your whole life getting played?"
He stood abruptly from the chair and strode around behind her.
Grab—
Clamping both hands hard on her shoulders, Shiron brought his mouth to her ear and whispered.
"Like I said earlier, turning me down after coming this far is not a good choice. All you have to do is take the rope I've thrown you. There's an easy road right in front of you—why are you making this so long-winded?"
"Y…es, sir."
Berta's voice barely crawled out of her throat.
The boy murmuring devilishly sweet words into her ear—the deeper his voice dug in, the more her sternum ached. The hands stroking and pressing her shoulders made her chest feel as if something were crushing it.
The faint tremors running through her body traveled up into Shiron's palms.
"I like you. That's why I'm giving you special treatment."
"……Thank you."
"If you're that curious, I'll tell you just a little."
Berta swallowed and focused on the breath against her ear. Shiron took a moment to think, then pressed his lips almost to her skin.
"How many of the Cult are still out there, and where are they hiding?"
At his words, Berta's body jerked.
This young master knew far too much.
It startled her every time.
Five hundred years had passed since Kyle Prien, founder of the Prien line, destroyed the Evil God—and still the traces had not vanished.
The Cult was one of them.
So were the Apostles who roamed the continent claiming the true savior's will lay with them.
Berta could hardly be ignorant of that. Her own work brushed up against it more than a little. Turning those facts over in her mind, she listened closely.
"Doesn't it seem strange? Five hundred years, and they still haven't squeezed out those rotten abscesses."
"Then……"
Berta bit her lip several times before she managed to speak.
What Shiron was saying was not something to brush aside lightly.
"Then couldn't you simply tell Lord Hugo? If he stepped in, it would all be cleaned up before long."
She chose her words with care.
Hugo Prien, hailed as the strongest knight alive. As far as Berta knew, there was no one who could stand against him.
"Of course I could borrow my uncle's strength. But here's the thing."
Shiron held the necklace out in front of her eyes.
"Those bastards don't properly die unless it's a Holy Sword. Cut off their heads, burn their limbs—give it time and they come back in the far Demon Realm."
His eyes were not on Berta.
"So it has to be me—not my uncle, who can't even use holy power properly, let alone a Holy Sword."
"I can't keep this act up for long."
After sending Berta away, Shiron collapsed onto the bed. Putting on a performance that did not suit him at all had left his hands and feet curling with secondhand embarrassment; he wanted to kick the blankets.
The succession ceremony is tomorrow, isn't it.
Everything was proceeding smoothly enough, but his heart was not at ease.
"Haa……"
Recalling the contents of the game, he breathed a sigh into the empty air.
Crossing the frozen lake, if I remember right.
He already knew what the succession ceremony entailed.
A short distance from Dawn Castle lay a lake.
In this place where blizzards fell year-round, before spring could even arrive, the children of Prien crossed the frozen lake bare-bodied. That was all there was to it.
It was a truly simple affair—and yet Shiron alone would sink beneath the ice, as if that were a fate already written.
Killing a troll had been easier for him than this. Not that he had a choice. He could not rewrite a tradition centuries old by himself.
It was a worthless little event, but the unease settling over him was unavoidable.
Charging in knowing a bad future is coming… I've been through that until I was sick of it.
Sometimes he had done it to live up to the people around him.
Other times he had done it because everyone else was going, and sitting it out would have felt worse.
The endings had mostly been poor.
He had lived a life more familiar with failure than success—and yet the shock of failing never got any easier to bear.
—Knock knock.
"Come in."
He was still turning the restless thoughts over when the knock sounded. Dinner time, apparently.
"Pardon the intrusion."
But instead of the maids who would normally bring a cart of food, Yuma appeared.
"……Dinner?"
Don't tell me they starve you before the succession ceremony?
Shiron pushed himself up from the bed. The hard schedule had left his stomach raw.
"Lord Hugo is calling for you."
"Uncle? Why?"
"He said the family is together for the first time in a long while, so we ought to share an evening meal."
Yuma relayed Hugo's wishes with a smiling face.
The banquet hall, long untouched by any footfall, was thrown open. Servants bustled about, laying out every kind of dish the table had not seen in ages.
Would it kill them to put on a spread like this on ordinary days?
Shiron eyed the food and smacked his lips.
What he usually ate was nothing more than simply prepared bread and meat. Tonight the table was piled high with dishes thick with the scent of spices.
Even so, he did not reach first just because he was hungry. Across from him, Hugo had not touched a thing yet.
Naturally, the presence dominating the round table was Hugo's.
The children who would undergo tomorrow's succession ceremony, and Yuma in a black dress, were seated around it.
"It's not often the whole family can gather like this."
Hugo, seated opposite Shiron, spoke while gazing at a glass filled with whiskey. The tumbler was a fair size, yet in his hand it looked like a paper cup.
"With a big occasion like the succession ceremony ahead, I thought it better we spend the time enjoying ourselves together than sitting around getting tense—so I arranged this. Go on and eat."
Hugo took a sip of whiskey, then wiped his hands on the damp cloth set before him.
Shiron followed his lead, then glanced sideways. Something caught his eye whether he wanted it to or not.
When did those two get so close?
In the seats beside Hugo, Siriel and Lucia were chattering away with bright faces.
Not a care in the world between them.
Meanwhile someone else was working himself half to death.
Pisses me off…
Shiron stabbed his fork into the steak with irritable force.