The Crow and the White Heron
Impossible for them to ever mingle, and yet — with Zeo's compromise, the two of them brought their day to an end.
His head gradually throbbing with a tangle of tangled emotions, he made his way back to his lodgings, while Robin remained alone where she sat.
That silver smile still lingered, soft and unfading on her lips.
She was even humming a little tune under her breath, which suggested her mood was quite pleasant indeed.
"Come on out."
Right up until the moment Zeo slipped from her line of sight, that is.
The instant his figure no longer lived in her eyes, Robin turned her gaze to the thicket of grass beside her, her voice sharper than a freshly honed blade.
The violet eyes that had carried the same light all day long darkened by another shade.
Had he been there to see it, her face was so cold, so keenly edged, that Zeo would likely have been more than startled — he might well have drawn his staff from his coat and readied himself on the spot.
"……How long have you known."
The answer revealed itself in the flesh. From the grass she had been staring at emerged a figure — a man of somewhat dark countenance, a black ring on his middle finger.
"What does it matter? What I want to know is why you were tailing us."
"It matters because I intend to find out. And besides — it wasn't me doing the watching. It was your man over there."
Hooah. She exhaled a long breath toward the sky — the process of venting the fury piled up inside her, of forcing her emotions back under control.
Needless to say, this display was pure Robin. The man before her had managed to irritate her on a great many fronts, after all.
She was seething badly enough that anything less would have sent her lunging at him, blade already drawn.
"For once in my life I thought I'd have a little fun, and you had to go and spoil it. I couldn't enjoy myself properly at all — you know that?"
"Fun? Because from where I stood, it looked a whole lot like one-sided pressure. Like you were trying to squeeze him into a corner. Are you perhaps confused about the dictionary definition of the word fun?"
"It was all a necessary process. Don't worry about it."
Robin stretched herself out with a long, exaggerated arch of her back. Then she loosened her arms and legs, making sure nothing would hinder her if things turned violent.
She had no weapon on her, though. Knowing this, the man judged that no matter how the situation unfolded, the advantage would be his.
After all, the great axe that had always hung at her back was absent today.
"Hey. You know why that rat got himself attached to us — so why'd you just stand by and watch?"
As she spoke, Robin slipped a hand into her coat. Out came a hand axe. A dagger slid free from her thigh.
The merciless serpent had more than one set of fangs. The man recognized his miscalculation.
"Because I can shut every mouth in this city, that's why."
A brief and violent clash — though not all that long — and it did not take the two of them much time at all to mix blood and bone.
"……Maybe I shouldn't have bothered."
The first to speak at the end of it was none other than Robin.
Her voice was thick with regret and remorse. She was looking back on her own actions now with bitter regret.
It had complicated things in every possible way. The blood that had flowed and pooled into rivulets seeped into the soil, becoming fertilizer for the earth. The woman let out yet another deep sigh.
"Doesn't look like I'll be getting home in one piece tonight. Seriously, what am I going to do about this."
"Guh……"
Of course, all that red belonged entirely to the man.
Her, straddling a man reduced to rags while lamenting her own sorry lot — she was soaked in blood so thoroughly that right now, she might as well be called not the White Snake but the Red Snake.
And not a single drop of that red was her own.
"And right now I don't even have a Zeo around to cast Purification for me."
Crunch. Robin's hand axe sank into his thigh yet again. The man no longer had the strength even to scream — all he could push out was dry, dead air.
"So, you're never going to tell me why you had us followed, all the way to the end?"
"……"
"Come on. Time's wasting."
With that, Robin wrenched the hand axe free from his thigh and leveled it at his throat. Naturally, the man had neither the strength nor the will left to answer.
"……Ask my corpse."
"Wow. Good for you."
Having paid brief tribute to his iron will, Robin rose and stretched her aching back. Swish, swish — she even remembered to wipe the blood off her axe on the man's clothes.
"No matter how I look at it, this wasn't something you did on your own initiative. So who gave the order?"
"……"
"Loyal to a fault, aren't you."
Silence was as good as a confession. Robin took it as such — and her read was, in fact, correct. The man, his handler discovered and his purpose exposed, could do no more than quietly close his eyes.
"You're really not going to talk? I'll cut your head off."
The tone was so casual it might have belonged to everyday small talk, and the man's face did begin, little by little, to twist — but in the end, he gave no answer.
His readiness to die left even Robin impressed this time. Impressions aside, however, the axe was already swinging.
The blood-caked fangs rushed at the man once more. Just as the sound of steel cleaving the air reached his ears, he sensed his death coming and clenched his teeth.
"I ordered it."
And then — stillness. At a single utterance, the very space froze in place.
A woman's voice. Utterly toneless, stripped of all feeling, a single short sentence — and yet its impact was tremendous.
The man was stunned first. Why would she — his commanding officer — come to this place in person? Confusion and dread flooded his head to the brim.
Next, Robin — smiled. Because she saw through the fact that those words were no lie. Just as she had with Zeo, she curved her lips into a smile colder than blood.
"V-Vice Captain! Wh-why are you in a place like this——!"
-Crunch!
The instant she confirmed the man was of no further use, she brought the axe down on his neck. Tumble, tumble — the severed head rolled across the ground.
"Nice to meet you. You're the one who ordered him to tail us, aren't you? Right?"
Robin extended her hand. Her expression was one of genuine, heartfelt delight — and her hand was smeared with blood. The woman standing opposite did not take it.
Even at a gesture that made an offering of her hand into nothing, Robin did not lose her smile. If anything, she looked thrilled.
"Why would you do that."
It was nothing but a trifle to her.
The violet-eyed serpent stood directly before her, glowering — but the nameless woman was not frightened in the slightest.
She simply watched, with those red eyes. And in that moment, Robin grasped, on a far deeper level, the true nature of the color red.
At the same time, a flicker of interest stirred faintly within her. Infinitely smaller than her disgust and unease, of course.
But clearly, unmistakably, Robin was intrigued by her.
"Your man just died, and you don't even blink."
"He wasn't a subordinate I was particularly fond of. He followed me of his own accord because he liked me. So — not really."
One exchanged sentence was all it took. From those words alone, Robin was able to grasp, however slightly, something of who this woman was.
"So. Why bother showing yourself in person?"
"I don't see any reason to tell you. Though speaking of which — you're armed. Not aiming for my throat?"
"Shall I?"
Before the words had even finished leaving her mouth, the blood-caked blade pressed against the back of the woman's neck. Even as its chill crawled down her throat and spread through her entire body, she showed not the slightest tremor.
No — rather, it was as though there had never been any reason to tremble in the first place.
"……Heh. You're human, right? You are human?"
"Who's to say."
Absence. Having confirmed it, Robin drew the blade back once more.
"A Vice Captain should still live with the consequences in mind. That's all."
With that, Robin tucked the axe into her coat and took a single step back. A faint smile touched the woman's lips.
"Smarter than you look."
"And I'll take that as the compliment it clearly is."
Offering her brief thanks, Robin rested her hand on her chin for a moment. It was her signature pose, the one she took whenever she needed to think something through.
It meant she was concentrating.
"So — you're the Vice Captain of Tocalos, the one behind all those people going missing from Shatrira lately, aren't you?"
"Congratulations. Correct answer."
The words Vice Captain from the man's mouth, the unrest within her organization, the loss of personnel that had prompted the Captain to reveal herself — and, on top of it all, the surveillance of Zeo, a genuinely capable asset.
From those four pieces of information combined, Robin had arrived at the right answer. She did not look particularly pleased about it.
"Sharp ears, too. You noticed what an extraordinary creature that sweet, gentle young man has hiding inside him."
"His abilities aside — his name is probably…… Zeo, was it?"
"You even know his name? Knowing him, he'd never have given it up himself. Hmm…… picked it up somewhere, or did a little digging, I suppose."
Tsk. Robin clicked her tongue. An openly rude display of displeasure — the kind of thing one ought never do in front of another person.
Then again, she had never been the sort to care about such niceties in the first place.
"This is exactly the problem. He shines too brightly on his own. Shines brilliantly even in the dark. That's why the crows come flocking like this."
With that, she could draw her eyes into a glare so rough it was nearly feral.
Scrutinizing. Wary. Displeased. The emotions readable in those violet pupils told the whole story of how Robin currently regarded her.
"Crows…… an apt metaphor, I'll give you that."
Entirely unbothered, the woman — the Vice Captain of Tocalos — voiced her agreement with Robin's words. A monumental moment, and just as monumentally, Robin took no joy in it.
She only stared at her with displeased eyes — but she could tell. The woman's combat strength was nothing remarkable.
And that was precisely why Robin stayed on guard.
In this underground city built of blood and bone, for someone to seize the position of a syndicate's second-in-command without force meant that every other ability she possessed was extraordinary.
"Though speaking of crows — wouldn't that make you one too?"
"Naturally. That remark very much includes me."
A barb driven in hard — and answered with equal force.
Not a single step yielded on either side. On the surface, the two appeared evenly locked — but digging deeper, the disadvantage was plainly Robin's.
Unfortunately, Robin hadn't the faintest clue how many cards the woman was still holding.
"There's a saying: where crows are playing, the white heron shouldn't go. It's what people say when they fear the heron will get stained black for no good reason."
So Robin was displeased. She could feel it in her skin — the woman's information network, her intellect, her connections, all of it extraordinary, beyond her own.
"……I owe Zeo an apology. I get why he gets irritated now — using some cheap metaphor at the worst possible moment really does make your blood boil."
"It's the opposite, actually. Crows are drawn to bright things."
Robin had helpfully announced that her mood was wretched, but the woman showed no reaction at all. She simply continued exactly as she had been.
In an instant she closed the distance and whispered softly at Robin's ear. Robin made no move to stop her — she calmly met the voice that came.
"No matter where you hide, it will fly to you in the end. Because it's going to meet the white heron."
Her head returned to its place, and this time she wore a smile that was unmistakably chilly.
A smile thicker than blood, stickier than a spider's web — and Robin answered it with a smile of her own.
Both sides laughing, and no one laughing at all. A rare and exquisite tableau.
And in that tableau, the one to shatter the laughter, the silence, the pretense first, was—
"Flap around all you like. Just know that I'll snap those wings before you get the chance."
"Well then. My observation ends here, so I'll take my leave. Next time, we'll meet face to face. Oh — don't worry about that one. I won't hold you responsible for killing him."
It was the woman who withdrew first — and that was by no means a retreat with her tail between her legs.
Rather, it projected the air of someone who had committed the first offense magnanimously forgiving the other party.
Robin, for her part, stood rooted in place watching her opponent recede — but it was unmistakably she who had been driven onto the back foot.
The difference in their positions went without saying, so it was a shrewd maneuver indeed.
"Hold on. Before you go — just one question."
But there was one doubt — a single thread of the question that had filled her head from the very beginning until now — that she could not let slip away.
The most fundamental one of all. Perhaps the question she should have asked the moment they first met.
"So. Why are you interested in Zeo?"
Stillness. The woman stopped in her tracks. Both of them — and the entire space along with them — froze, so completely that even the sound of breathing vanished.
Once more, the two women's eyes met.
Red eyes deeper and darker than the evening sky. Violet eyes cradling moonlit frost. Two stars that could never, ever mingle strained toward each other, trying to become one.
It was a meaningless endeavor. For all that they seemed to carry similar colors, the two were painting in directions that were unmistakably, irreconcilably different.
They were the kind of beings that ought to be compared to water and oil.
The two of them could acknowledge one another — but they could never understand. In their brief meeting, they arrived at the same conclusion.
And yet, there was one thing. One single thing that could mingle.
"……Someone who keeps trying, against all odds, to find the good in this world. Isn't she beautiful."
If they could be made to mingle — it would be through that.