A Wound That Won't Heal
The day they set out for home after the subjugation festival ended.
"...My head hurts."
Shiron, a massive backpack strapped to his shoulders, let out a low groan of misery. Arms folded tight across his chest, the boy wore a scowl so deep it looked as though some tremendous torment were grinding away at him from the inside.
He had accepted the Emperor's invitation, killed the witch who had threatened chastity itself, and somehow smoothed over the murderous intent rolling off Lucia. Crisis after crisis, he had managed to slip past them all — or so he had thought. One last crisis still refused to resolve itself.
Siriel Prien.
The girl he had tucked carefully into a pocket of his heart had begun to poke out like a sharp nail.
She's going to be furious. Of course she is. She'll have cried her eyes out asking why I took Lucia, who's the same age as her, and left her behind...
"Ugh..."
Shiron heaved a long sigh.
Guessing how heartbroken his still-young little sister must have been was easier than eating cake. One mountain after another, as the saying went — and now a fresh crisis had planted itself squarely in his path.
Earning Siriel's hatred at this point would be a real problem.
The effort Shiron had poured into winning Siriel's affection was beyond counting. Whenever there was anything worth praising, he would pop a piece of candy into her mouth. Day after day he wracked his brains inventing new ways to play with her so she would never grow bored. Sometimes the two of them would sit on a garden bench and read those not-even-funny fairy tales together.
Someone might think messing around with a little kid was nothing special. But every single one of those acts had been aimed at securing Siriel's complete trust.
Friends were fine. Family was fine. Why did any of that matter? Even if the relationship wasn't perfect, the longer you spent looking at someone, the more affection settled into the heart. Even if Siriel hit a rebellious phase later on, wouldn't that childhood fondness of playing together be enough for her to grant him at least one favor?
Which meant he absolutely could not afford to be hated by Siriel. But bringing Siriel to the subjugation festival had been an entirely different matter.
Even with knights standing guard around the tents like an iron wall, Ailey Suarez had still found some grotesque method of slipping through the escort and attacking Shiron. Lucia had walked away from a witch's assault unscathed only because she was Lucia. If the one who had been attacked had been Siriel... he didn't even want to imagine what kind of danger she would have faced.
But Shiron had neither the skill to explain these circumstances to Siriel nor the ability to make her accept them.
People were like that. Even when the head understood, a lingering sense of hurt stayed lodged in the chest.
Still, Shiron knew a way to take the edge off that hatred as much as possible. He decided to resort to a somewhat vulgar method.
"What would Siriel like..."
For some time now, Shiron had been circling the duty-free shops without pause.
Arwen Plateau Station might have been a lonely building standing alone in the middle of a prairie that stretched like an open sea, but the station itself was massive enough that its top floor rose more than ninety meters high — so of course it had duty-free shops.
Even Hugo, who was constantly away from home on business trips, bombarded Eldrina with gifts, didn't he? That was where Shiron had gotten the idea.
"...She'd probably be happy with just about anything."
Lucia, trailing quietly after him, muttered under her breath. She had no idea what this whole production was about first thing in the morning, but her curiosity about what gift Shiron might actually buy was enough to keep her heavy feet moving.
There was a limit to that, though.
Lucia glanced at the clock set into the corridor wall.
11:20
"...Thirty minutes until the train leaves. You need to decide soon."
Lucia spoke with a slight edge of urgency.
"If you're really having that much trouble choosing, want me to pick something for you?"
"...You?"
Shiron looked back at Lucia with a faintly unconvinced expression.
But Lucia neither bothered to call out his attitude nor got angry. Instead she gave a little shrug and put on a leisurely face.
"I may not look like much, but I'm a girl the same as Siriel, you know."
"...True enough."
"So if you think about it simply, there's a good chance that whatever I pick is something Siriel would like too."
Lucia raised a hand and pointed. Over there stood a souvenir shop with a rather quiet, understated atmosphere.
"I noticed it when we passed by earlier. How about a set of jeonbyeong? I bought one myself."
Lucia held out a paper box toward Shiron. Wrapped in brightly colored paper, the box looked about as far from refined as a thing could get.
Shiron narrowed his eyes at her.
"Jeonbyeong? That's the kind of thing grandmothers and grandfathers like. You think a ten-year-old Siriel is going to want that? A roll cake, maybe."
"I—I also..."
I'm ten years old too.
The words rose all the way to her throat, but Lucia had no choice but to clamp her mouth shut. She simply wasn't shameless enough. Even pretending to act like a child while hiding that she was a reincarnator already pricked her conscience; saying it out loud was a far higher hurdle than merely acting it.
Aren't jeonbyeong delicious, though...
Lucia hung her head and pulled the paper box back into her arms. She wanted to argue that it wasn't only old people who liked jeonbyeong, but she had just watched Yohan buying some with a big smile on his face, so she couldn't quite bring herself to say it.
Come to think of it, people were buying water buffalo milk cheese and mahyuju, sure — but not a single other person bought jeonbyeong...
"Figures. This really is the sticks."
Shiron clicked his tongue as he scanned the display cases and turned his gaze away.
For a moment the face of the clerk who had been attending them went stiff, but as far as Shiron was concerned that was none of his business.
"No matter how I look at it, nothing here grabs me."
"...So what are you going to do? Go home empty-handed?"
"As if."
Shiron's eyes fixed on the wooden case strapped to Lucia's back.
It held the elixir made from mermaid's blood, awarded as a prize from the subjugation festival. But Lucia had no intention of taking it herself.
Deep down, she too felt guilty about leaving Siriel out of everything.
"Even if you said you'd give that elixir to Siriel... my pride wouldn't allow it. At the very least I have to give her a gift that measures up to that elixir before she'll cool off."
"...The way you say that, it almost sounds like I'm the one who did something wrong."
"Anyway, there's nothing worth buying here, so let's go."
I'll have to stop by an auction house or something.
For now, Shiron decided to hold out for a better opportunity.
At that same hour. The plaza of Arwen Plateau Station.
It was nearly time for lunch, but Maleus Garibaldi had neither slept nor eaten since the day before.
Maleus was not the sort of man who practiced austerity for its own sake, yet ever since yesterday he had been personally treating the wounded left behind by the subjugation festival.
It was work that should have been finished long ago, but it had collided with the schedule for writing up the witch-hunt report, and still showed no sign of ending.
Some had questioned why the captain of the Holy Iron Hammer Knights himself was stepping in. But the patients under his care were people who could only be treated by someone like Maleus, who could wield cardinal-level holy arts.
"You've come again this year without fail."
"Forgive the imposition. I have no shame left to lose."
"Let me see the wound first."
Dexter Dras turned a bright smile on Maleus. The grin revealed a ruined set of teeth, front ones missing here and there.
Maleus focused his mind and invoked the holy art. Sacred light poured from his hands and began to mend the injury.
Then something that could only be called a miracle took place.
Crrk—
Like a spring seed pushing up a new shoot from beneath the soil, teeth began to rise from the gums.
"Mm..."
Dexter worked his mouth a few times, then fetched a mirror and held it up to his face. Not only the missing teeth — even the ones that had been loosely wobbling were completely restored.
But Dexter felt a lingering disappointment.
"As expected. It doesn't heal."
"I am sorry..."
He had received a holy art powerful enough to regrow lost teeth, and still his face — crushed nearly beyond recognition — refused to mend. That pitted, scar-ravaged face was Dexter's greatest complex. He knew it well enough. His face was not merely hard to look at. It was ruined to a degree that inspired disgust and avoidance...
No matter how many times I see it, it's grotesque...
Dexter stared at the monstrosity reflected in the mirror. The face could only be described as a monster's, twisted so badly that even he felt sick looking at it.
Because of this viciously hideous wound, Dexter could not properly face his one and only child. The only child who had ever looked at that hideous face and still smiled was Shiron Prien, and him alone.
"Well then. Thank you for your trouble."
"...You have worked hard as well, Brother."
Dexter set a pouch heavy with gold coins on the table and turned to go. The sight of his back leaving the tent was one familiar to Maleus and many high-ranking clergy alike.
A wound that even a cardinal's healing arts could do nothing about had long left Maleus with questions.
It was not as though no one had ever asked. In the past he had been asked more than once where on earth he had gotten such a wound and still come back alive. Dexter had remained stubbornly silent every single time.
Whenever any of the clergy tried to bring up the subject of his scars, Dexter would cast a deep shadow across his face and hurry to leave as quickly as he could.