Sooner or Later, You Will Need Me
In the end, you'll need my touch.
Did you know? Psychologically, people tend to feel more at ease with those who have given help than with those who have received it.
Call it the burden of debt, I suppose — the weight of owing something that must be repaid. Whereas the one who gives feels the other grow closer, more comfortable in their presence.
Well, that's only by the measure of someone with an ordinary conscience.
Best to verify it for myself.
Fate. That was what I should have called it — but what surfaced instead was panic. Not from meeting her, but from that incident, which had meant so much more to me.
Yet as my emotions gradually settled, what rose next was relief. Seeing her returned to everyday life after that horrific scene of the accident, I felt my heart ease without my willing it.
"I'm glad you seem to be unharmed. That's a relief."
"You worry about me first, of all things……."
"Sorry?"
"Nothing. It's just — everything about you feels new to me, somehow."
New, in what way? The question followed me, but I didn't care to press further. There were more important things at hand, after all.
"Here — please, take this."
"Hehe. Thank you."
I handed her the bag I'd recovered, the situation briefly forgotten. The instant our hands overlapped, my impression was of something terribly, terribly cold.
Whether that was a feeling about her countenance, or simply a sensation born of bare physical contact, I couldn't quite say myself.
"What a relief. Truly, in every way."
"Yes — and it's all thanks to you. A relief in every way, really."
"I only did what anyone ought to."
"……"
At her repeated thanks I brushed it off with a few short words, but in a fraction of a moment too quick for me to even register, I felt her pupils dilate.
Still fixed on me.
"Actually — I know this may be a bit forward, but there's one more thing I'd like to ask of you."
"Yes?"
"It's nothing much. I don't know my way around this area at all, so I was wondering — could I trouble you to show me around, just for today?"
It caught me slightly off guard, but the pair of eyes facing me held a terrible stillness, silently winding around my feet.
That said, honesty compels me to admit I wasn't exactly eager. Today was a freedom that had been made for me by someone else's consideration.
Rest. Read a book if you like, help someone if you like. Doing absolutely nothing at all isn't a bad option either.
Just moments ago, she had told me to do as I pleased. A time that belonged to me and me alone, beholden to nothing.
But I knew that granting this small favor was itself a good deed.
"Showing you around the neighborhood? Nothing easier. Shall we go together, then?"
I must, rightly, do good.
I gave my assent. The woman before me curved her lips into a brief smile, and at the sight of another's smile, my own mood lifted in turn.
"I really am nothing but a burden to you."
"It's nothing."
"No, truly, it's a small thing. Especially in a place like this."
Hearing words so similar to Robin's made me a little dizzy. All I could manage was to force the corners of my mouth upward.
Because I was coming, little by little, to understand that those words were no lie.
"I'd like to hear the name of someone who carries such a beautiful heart. Would you tell me?"
"Zeo. Zeo Frizian Ernest."
An easy question. I opened my mouth at once.
Then I looked at her. This time, the red-eyed woman seemed to understand without my needing to say a word.
In a blink, she concealed her jewel. She raised her eyelids once more.
"Please call me Lize. Lize Valles."
"This is the library I visit often."
"What a place steeped in years. There are far bigger, far more refined establishments — may I ask why you insist on coming here?"
"I have, ah, certain circumstances."
Haha — I laughed awkwardly and let it pass. For now, this was the best I could do.
It wasn't as if I could tell someone I knew only by name that my body's previous owner had caused a scene and gotten us blacklisted everywhere else, could I?
"I don't mean to disparage it. It's a lovely space. It smells of people, I suppose you'd say."
With that, she ran her fingers slowly along the spines of the books. A fair amount of dust came away, and even that seemed to please her; she lifted the corners of her mouth, just slightly.
A little unusual. That was my impression of her from the short time we'd spent together.
"Still, is it all right to keep coming only to places like this?"
"I'll say it again — you don't have to strain yourself to take me somewhere nice. Just the places you normally go. That's more than enough for me."
That very remark proved it.
"I feel a bit guilty, that's all. I'm the one showing you around, and I can't even take you anywhere better."
"Impressions are, in the end, relative. From where I stand, a place like this — where the traces of people soak into everything — feels far more noble."
Delicately, she brushed the dust from her hand. Her expression was still a smile.
So I looked at her. That inexplicably gentle voice of hers could melt away, in a single instant, even the faint guilt that had been sitting in one corner of my heart.
"You said you don't know this area well — then conversely, what sorts of places does Lize usually frequent?"
"Not so many, really. Clothing shops. Bookstores, same as here. Most of my time is swallowed up by work."
"Is the work treating you well?"
"If I said the kind of work done in a place like this wasn't hard, that would be a lie."
A place like this. The words came at me like an arrow and lodged in my chest. So she, too, was bound to this Underground City.
"'A place like this' — do I take your meaning correctly?"
"Just think back to our first meeting."
I knew without needing to recall it. I answered lightly. She, too, was someone who moved within the Underground.
"So we were both people who lived in dark places, then."
"Being aware that it's a dark place is already proof that you're human."
It was from that point on that our conversation began to stretch longer and longer — because I had grown somewhat more at ease in dealing with her.
To say some wall between us had come down — that didn't feel like a bad thing either.
And so the real conversation began. Before I knew it, we had left the library and were walking with no destination in mind, wandering aimlessly.
Neither of us led. She followed me, and I walked along with her. You could have called it a kind of virtuous cycle.
As the conversation gradually deepened, I found myself asking one question.
"Have you never thought about leaving this place, Lize?"
"Hmm…… I wonder."
It was the same answer someone else had once given me, and in that familiar yet strange moment, my feet stopped of their own accord.
She did not speak. She simply stopped as I had, and looked at me quietly.
That sight, oddly, brought a new emotion with it. The stillness no longer felt awkward to me.
In that tiny fissure, a small, trivial question bloomed — and at the same time:
"Please forget everything I'm about to say. It's just — I wanted to hear, from a third party's perspective, about something purely personal of mine."
Before I knew it, I had smiled, ever so softly.
"……I want to leave this place."
"Go on."
Without a trace of bewilderment, she urged me onward. And so the dam holding back the water collapsed.
"I mean it exactly as I say. This space, where murder is treated as a matter of course — it terrifies me. I can't stand it."
"……I see."
"But as I am now, I'm bound. To a group I never chose, doing work I never wanted."
The emotion trailing after the words was, surprisingly, detached. As though speaking of some ordinary daily routine, her utterly flat voice carried not a trace of lingering regret.
And somehow, it felt cleansing. It just — it just did.
"I simply…… want to go home. That's all."
This time she didn't answer. She only closed her eyes quietly, savoring the words.
Only then did I come slightly back to my senses. What kind of story was this to tell someone I'd only met face-to-face today?
"I'm sorry. Was that too heavy a thing to bring up?"
"Not at all. I feel I've drawn one layer closer to who you are — if anything, it makes me happy."
Her answer left me more flustered than before.
"I'm sorry?"
"Just what I said. And as for an answer to what you told me — here it is."
She rummaged slowly through her coat, then held out her fist. At first I couldn't parse the gesture, but I soon understood she was trying to give me something. With no grounds to refuse, I spread my palm open beneath her fist. Something dropped into my hand with a soft tap.
"When the worry you spoke of deepens, and you can bear it no longer — try using that, once."
The object was a translucent black-red sphere. Rolling my eyes over the unfamiliar thing, I looked up at her — and she was already staring straight into my pupils.
"How it works, though — you'll have to figure that out for yourself."
"……When I was young, I was taught never to accept things from strangers."
"And we're strangers no longer, are we?"
The air lightened in an instant. Even the corners of her eyes had curved, ever so faintly.
To the point where even tossing out a little joke like that carried no strangeness at all.
"Thank you, again and again, for kindness asked with no price. Thanks to you, today was — truly, genuinely — a joy."
Then, sliding back a step, she withdrew. I didn't hold her back as she signaled the end. I knew, after all, that this was the best moment for parting.
"Might we meet again?"
"If you wish it, as often as you like."
And that was that. She inclined her head gently in farewell, then turned away first.
Watching her figure slowly vanish from view, I turned and walked back the way I'd come, unhurried.
This bond, born of a good deed — I found I rather liked it, and my mood brightened.
In a dark room where no one else stood, the red-eyed woman slowly lowered her eyelids.
"His usual routes — that covers all of them. And the residence I told you to look into last time. You've located it?"
Where had all that tenderness gone, the warmth she'd shown beside Zeo? A clipped voice, stripped of even a flicker of emotion, echoed through the dark.
And in that instant, a man appeared out of the shadows and gave a silent nod.
"So. Did he please you?"
"Yes. More than I expected."
She smiled, slow and curling. But that smile was so alien — so utterly unlike anything human — that no one but Lize Valles herself could have guessed what thoughts churned behind it.
"After all, now I know exactly what position our little prince is in, and exactly what he feels about it."
She began to hum a tuneless little song. In her hand dangled an object that gleamed the same color as the sphere she'd handed him only moments ago.
She lifted it slowly, observing it. The blood-dark thing, blazing with all its might, somehow seemed sharp as well.
"We'll meet again. No — we will meet again."
Because as long as you keep struggling to slip free of your chains, Zeo — you will need me.