A Beast in the Capital - 2
The warm atmosphere, the racing of my heart—it all cooled in an instant. The baby, who had been wearing a smile, stiffened harder than I had ever seen and stared at me.
I was bewildered. Why? Why was he making that face? Everything had been fine until a moment ago. I hadn't said anything strange.
"Your Excellency."
When I failed to answer in my confusion, the baby spoke again.
His voice was low. But his eyes burned hot. As if there would be no next time if I did not properly explain what I had just said.
"Please explain yourself. That I would live for hundreds of years?"
This time, fear flooded in. I still did not understand why he was acting this way, but it was clear he was angry. Not a fleeting irritation or sense of grievance—true, erupting fury.
"The potion."
I forced my trembling lips open and managed a single word.
Of course it was nowhere near enough of an explanation. It was only something I spat out to buy a moment to gather my thoughts. If I had simply shut my mouth without even that, the baby would have turned his back on me at once.
And hearing me, the baby leaned back against the sofa again. Thank goodness. At least I had stopped him from leaving right then and there.
"Do you remember the potion I gave you, baby?"
"Yes. I remember."
"That potion's purpose is to extend one's lifespan."
The baby's expression twisted.
"I-It doesn't take effect right away. You have to take it steadily for forty years before the results appear. Right now it simply helps with your health."
I added the words on instinct, and the contorted look eased a little.
Only after seeing that did I understand. The baby recoiled from a longer life. It was not mere awkwardness toward the unknown—he genuinely hated the idea.
Why?
I could not comprehend it. A longer lifespan, a life equal to that of the long-lived races—that was the longing of every human being.
Father had said he wanted to live a life like Mother's and mine. Mother had poured her entire existence into trying to make Father like one of the long-lived races.
It was not only my parents. It was not merely lovers of mismatched lifespans who clung to the idea of longevity.
Surely, surely all of them.
Every human I had seen across more than a hundred years of life had yearned for long life. The previous emperor, the emperor before him, countless nobles who were not emperors at all. Even the clergy who claimed to follow the will of the gods.
When they looked at me they would show quiet envy. The closer death came, the more they would fix me with desperate eyes.
Because they possessed so much, because there was so much to enjoy, their attachment to life was fierce. Because they could not be certain what came after this life ended, they wanted to savor the glory of the present.
All of them were like that…
Even ordinary commoners who were neither royalty nor nobility. Even the commoners who had little, even the class of humans who perhaps knew more despair than happiness, still wanted longevity.
Because death was frightening. Because leaving behind this world they had taken for granted and facing the unknown was frightening.
Of course the baby would too…
The baby lacked nothing. Wealth, honor, power, even personal strength. So of course I had believed he would desire long life. Was there not so much in this world for him to enjoy?
I had thought he would be glad to live hundreds of years at my side. To live those centuries basking in the glory he already possessed—no, in glory even more splendid than now. I had thought that, being human, he would like that.
It would feel strange, of course. He would be bewildered as well. No one would remain perfectly calm after learning their lifespan had suddenly more than doubled.
Even so, even so, I had believed he would come to like it in the end.
"Your Excellency."
After a stretch of silence, the baby opened his mouth again.
"Why… did you do it?"
A short sentence. Yet that single sentence was dense with his emotion.
Words he had restrained and restrained, so many things he wanted to say but was forcing down.
"I thought you would want long life too, bab—"
"Why."
The sentence was cut off before it could finish. A situation I had never once experienced. A situation a duke would never encounter.
Of course I was not angry because I wanted him to see me as a duke rather than simply as a woman. On the contrary, it was a joy that he seemed to look at me not as a duke but merely as Beatrix.
Even so, this was not the situation I had wanted. I had not wanted him to grow so furious that he forgot I was a duke.
"Why did Your Excellency make that decision for me?"
Before I knew it my hands had begun to tremble. My mind went blank; I could find no proper answer.
I had proceeded because I believed the baby would naturally want long life, would be happy about it. But if the baby rejected long life? Then what could I possibly say?
"…You know as well as I do, Your Excellency."
Watching me like that, the baby spoke in a somewhat softened voice.
"You know very well… how hard it was for me after I sent those people on ahead."
No—rather than softened, it was closer to a hollow voice.
And at that voice of his, my gaze gradually sank lower.
I knew. How could I not know? I knew full well how much the baby had suffered right after the Great Subjugation War.
Because that was when I first met him.
I had first met the baby immediately after the war ended. I had taken an interest simply because there was a child with abnormal recovery, the only child said to have returned alive after subjugating the Heaven-Defier.
But the more I met him for the sake of research, the more I came to know him in detail. A child who, young to the point of childishness, had already lost precious bonds—so much like the me of the past who had lost my parents.
He was different from me, though.
Even so, the baby had pressed silently forward. He had forced down the pain and tried to keep going as if nothing were wrong. Unlike me, who had lost my parents and wandered without finding a path.
I myself had been prepared to send my human father on ahead. And even then I had been so lost—yet the baby, who could not have been prepared at all, had endured alone.
That was when it began. When I started looking at him not as a research subject but as a person, when I found myself glancing his way one more time for no reason. When I began piling up affection all by myself.
And that was why.
I had come to hold the baby in my heart. So I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to live forever with a happy baby.
I wanted to share enough affection that the pain of losing precious bonds would become nothing more than a memory that had simply passed. And I wanted him never to face the terror of death—or if he must, to push it far into the distant future.
Because the grief of losing bonds eventually becomes the terror that one day you yourself will die. Because the sudden death of another wakes you to the fact that you too can die meaninglessly.
And so… that was why…
I had done it knowing his pain, yet my choice had become nothing but needless interference to him.
"Your Excellency."
"Y-Yes. Go on."
At his voice I hastily lifted the gaze that had been dropping.
And the moment I saw the baby's face, my body locked up.
"Do you mean to make me go through that pain again?"
An expressionless face—or a face that looked as if he were crying. A strange thing to say. How does one see tears in an expressionless face?
"If I live for hundreds of years, just how many more people am I supposed to lose?"
Yet the baby was clearly crying. He shed no tears, his face did not contort, but he was clearly crying.
"…To Your Excellency they may be nothing but bonds that pass in a flash, but to me there are many bonds I mean to share my life with."
At those words my mind went blank in a different way than before.
"How many times am I supposed to lose those bonds?"
I could say nothing to the baby looking at me as if resentful.
Why, why had I failed to think of something so simple? No matter how much the baby's lifespan increased, the fact that he was human would not change.
To me, every bond except my parents had been nothing more than a passing connection. Even the longest-lived people were only a fraction of my own lifespan.
Aside from my parents who were already gone, and aside from the baby I loved, every bond was one I would simply forget and move past.
But not to the baby.
I had been a fool. I had thought of him only through my own eyes. I had treated people who were lifelong bonds from his perspective as mere flashes.
When the baby's lifespan lengthened, lifelong bonds did not become fleeting ones. Bonds he had believed he would walk with for a lifetime would leave him first—far, far too quickly.
"…I have been rude, Your Excellency. Forgive my discourtesy."
As self-reproach flooded in late and I stared blankly at him, the baby rose from his seat and bowed his head.
"If Your Excellency did so, there must have been a reason. I dared to interrogate you."
A courteous statement—and one that drew a clear line just as firmly.
I remembered laughing and talking with the baby only minutes before. At the ghastly gap, I felt I might cry.
"B-Baby. I… I…"
No. We could not end the conversation like this.
Through my ignorance, through my stubbornness, I had wounded him. I had to apologize. I had to apologize at once…
"From now on I will not dare show my face before Your Excellency."
At those words the hand I had stretched toward him froze.
The baby glanced at me and left the tower master's chamber without a shred of lingering attachment.
Of course I had to stop him. I had to beg him to forgive me, to say that I would never do it again.
But my body would not move. Shock after excessive shock piled on top of each other until I simply could not.
"From now on I will not dare show my face before Your Excellency."
It was a statement of taking responsibility for his discourtesy, but in truth it meant he never wanted to see my face again.
Above all, that most dreadful, most terrifying sentence kept circling in my ears. The happiness of only moments ago crumbled like a lie.
And now, as happiness turned to despair, I saw the comb resting on the table. Pure white, an elegant design.
"It may be of no use to Your Excellency, but it is still my poor token of sincerity. Please don't refuse it. Between us, something like this is nothing, isn't it?"
No.
With trembling hands I hurriedly clutched the comb to myself. If I did not seize it at once, even this gift felt as if it would leave my side.
No…
And the tears fell. The first gift I had received from the baby—a treasure I could not obtain even by selling the entire duchy.
Yet it had become the last gift. The treasure that should have been more precious than anything had become a cursed object symbolizing the catastrophe between the baby and me.
"No!"
A scream tore free.
We could not end it like this. Even if the baby never forgave me, even if he resented me for the rest of his life, I had to apologize. Even if I remained a monstrously selfish being to him, I at least had to remain someone who knew shame.
So I ran. I had never run for the dignity of a duke's daughter or the dignity of a duke, but right now such dignity was nothing but garbage.
"T-Tower Master!"
"What on earth—"
The farther I ran, the lower I went, voices of shock rose around me.
It did not matter. My authority was of no use whatsoever.
Baby.
Even as I ran I strained to grasp his location. If I found the mana he carried, I could teleport to him at once.
But it was not easy. Magic was a technique deeply affected by the user's mental image. When I myself was in chaos and unable to collect myself, how could magic be fine?
Baby…!
So I simply ran.
Because the me who had nothing left—neither dignity nor authority nor magic—could do nothing else.