Episode 9
A new goal had been born.
“Do you really have to die?”
I wanted to die in the arms of a beautiful person.
“You probably don’t know this because there are still so many things you haven’t tried. The world is full of beautiful things.”
Not some worthless human standing before me, but someone so beautiful that my thoughts would twist of their own accord and leave me restless and desperate—I wanted to die for that kind of person.
As I savored the new hope I’d been turning over and over since yesterday and opened my eyes, a human who looked exactly like the one who had slapped my face and run away yesterday was preaching the beauty of life to me.
It was absurd.
For a human like this to speak of the beauty of life.
I was not thinking that only people who possessed beauty had the right to speak of it.
I was the sort of person who believed even someone who had lived uglily could describe beauty with the kind of sensibility only the ugly could have.
Still, shouldn’t you at least know what something is before you can explain it?
“Yes, and how about eating something delicious? There are so many delicious things in the world.”
A person blind to red and green can still know the beauty of color itself, but they cannot know the beauty of red and green.
How could someone speak about something they had no concept of to begin with?
If they borrowed another person’s help, if they borrowed another person’s mouth, then perhaps they might be able to speak of the beauty of red and green.
But could words spoken that way move others, stir them, make them change their minds?
Could it really be done with language in the dictionary’s sense of the word?
Well, yes, it could.
It would only fail unless one possessed prose of the caliber of Hemingway’s novels—something that could seize hold of a human’s instincts and shake them to the core.
To teach him that, I said to the large prince in front of me,
“Should I turn the little prince into stone for you?”
“……What?”
“Isn’t that the goal? You want me to turn the little prince into stone instead of you. I still have plenty I need to do. Isn’t that why you’re talking about the beauty of the world?”
“N-no! I……”
“Still, if one of the two of you is going to turn to stone, you’d rather it be the little prince.”
“I.”
“You can’t say it isn’t true.”
If it were not true, he wouldn’t have brought the medicine.
If I had been an ordinary illegitimate child with a person’s name, then I might have thought he had brought the medicine to follow the Blium family’s motto, but I was not that sort of person.
So there was only one reason the large prince had come.
Don’t try to dump the curse on our family, and even if you do, don’t dump it on me.
The large prince jumped in alarm at those words and denied them, saying that wasn’t it at all, but honestly, there wasn’t a shred of persuasiveness in him.
No, worse than that, the fact that his emotions were wobbling so plainly was, in the opposite sense, overflowing with persuasiveness.
“Pffft—”
Was he begging me to go to the princess and tell her to die?
A foolish laugh kept spilling out of me.
There was nothing I could do except laugh at such an absurd attempt at persuasion, and perhaps the large prince sensed some kind of resolve in my laughter, because his face went pale and he ordered the servants to block the door.
“Do you think they can stop me?”
If I wanted to, I could kill all the knights too.
If dozens of knights poured in here like they had when I was first trapped in this room, then in the end I would lose—but the knights could not kill me, and I could kill them, so would things really go the way they imagined?
No matter how much they loved the people of this house, once their own lives were on the line, wouldn’t that be different?
“Step aside. I have to go to Her Highness the Princess.”
“Ha, hah. Where do you think you’re going? Let’s talk a little more. I’ve been far too indifferent until now.”
“Talk……”
“Yes. Let us talk.”
“Well, the only thing I can say is ask when I can die.”
“What are you saying?”
“For the ten years or so that I’ve been alive, the only things I’ve ever heard are that I was cursed and had to die in someone else’s place. For that, I lived while keeping myself healthy and cutting away all attachment. I learned nothing, enjoyed nothing, and simply remained alive. If you ask me what I can say to someone like that, I can only give one answer. Because I know nothing else.”
When can I die.
He had promised me death, made it my only remaining attachment, and yet where in the world was he keeping it from me?
As I whispered those words, the large prince opened and closed his mouth a few times before urgently thrusting a book at me, saying we should learn something—anything—right now, and I stared at it blankly before tearing it, cover and all, and throwing it to the floor.
The large prince was, in some ways, even less desirable to meet than the little prince.
He was the sort of person who strained to hide his desires and desperately tried to remain a good person, which made him remind me of the family head.
Maybe this was why the head of the house liked the large prince more than the little prince.
“So next time you come, please let me die. I want nothing else.”
Having snapped the leash, the large prince stared at me so blankly he could not even manage a hiccup.
I looked at that pathetic sight for a moment, then wrapped myself in the blanket and walked toward the place where the princess was staying.
It was a mansion I had never wandered through before, but finding my way was not difficult.
I had seen it once yesterday.
I was not stupid enough to be unable to retrace a path I had memorized.
“You may not enter.”
When I reached the princess’s room, a knight blocked the door.
Not the princess’s knight—the Blium family’s.
The princess’s own knight bowed to me politely as if she had been informed of my arrival in advance, and explained who was inside and what they were doing.
“Her Highness the Princess has instructed us to receive Lady Silvi respectfully when she comes.”
“Then I’d like to go in.”
“That is not allowed. She is still under examination.”
There was no way an examination would take that long.
Was this because they thought the fluid seeping from my arms and legs would be harmful?
I looked at the knight with that thought in mind, but I did not get that impression.
I could feel many emotions—pity, aversion, disgust, and more—but not the sense that he was stopping me because of those feelings. Rather, he was stopping me to obey orders, to protect someone he respected.
……Not as much as a true master, perhaps, but at least he felt far more like a knight than the Blium family’s knights did.
“Would it be all right if I lay down and waited here?”
“Yes, that is fine. Our duty is to attend Lady Silvi when she comes.”
“Wait—……if I stay here like this, I may interfere with the examination.”
The princess’s knights watched me lying on the floor without saying a word, their backs straight as boards.
Seeing that, the Blium family’s knight looked flustered and suggested that, for the princess’s sake, it might be better to drive me out.
Even so, they stumbled over their words as if merely calling me Lady was already blasphemous.
Well, I was an illegitimate child, so I supposed that was to be expected.
At that thought, I twisted my lips, and the duke’s knight half-drew the club at his hip. In response, I pulled my arm out from under the blanket and made a flame.
A flame that rose dark and filthy, carrying an unpleasantly sweet scent.
“You won’t stop me with clubs, so why don’t you bring out a real weapon?
Something that can actually kill me.”
As soon as I said it, the knights began shouting with their faces contorted, and the princess’s knights frowned at the noise before stepping forward as if to shield me.
That only angered the Blium knights further, and they drew their clubs from their hips, while the princess’s knights, in turn, drew their swords as well, making the atmosphere turn vicious in an instant.
If they grew just a little more worked up, maybe they could even die from an accident.
It was when I was letting my eyes shine at that thought.
“Lady Silvi, don’t play outside and come inside.”
The princess called to me.
“You said you wanted to die for me, not die fighting with knights, didn’t you?”
“……”
“Unless I’m mistaken, come in quickly. I’ll be taking a nap soon.”
Her voice wiped out both the excitement and the anticipation in an instant.
At the beautiful sound that emptied my head in a single breath, I pressed the flame on my arm flat with my palm and snuffed it out, then opened the door and stepped inside. The princess, seeing me like that, widened her eyes.
“I’d heard rumors that some young ladies seduce young gentlemen in this way, but seeing it in person is rather shocking. Of course, I’m sure you had no such intention, Lady Silvi.”
“……You look terrible.”
“Yes, so come here. Raising my voice is quite tiring too.”
The princess’s whole body was drenched in cold sweat.
After pressing at her eyelids repeatedly, she drank the water handed to her by a maid and then motioned for me to come closer. I passed the family head and the Blium family’s people and approached the princess.
Her condition looked even worse up close than I had imagined.
It was almost astonishing that she had been told she could live three more years in this state.
Was this why they were such a renowned family for healing arts?
As I touched the princess’s cheek, the maids attending her startled and tried to pull me away, but the princess raised a hand to stop them as if it were nothing, then brought a smoking pipe to her lips.
“Is it bearable?”
“……You mean you inhale the fumes of an anesthetic?”
“My veins burst if I take injections, and my stomach is a wreck if I swallow medicine.”
“I see.”
The princess’s fingertips were trembling.
At that sight, I lit the pipe for her, and she exhaled gray smoke, her expression growing a little sleepy. I said nothing at the sight of her—a sight I could only describe, charitably, as slowly dying.
I had wanted to say many things.
I had wanted to ask whether it would not be better to die quickly than endure such suffering.
I had wanted to tell her that if she killed me and simply turned one of the princes into medicine to eat, she would have no more minor ailments, no more pain.
I had wanted to frighten her by telling her, based on the information the curse revealed to me, what exactly was broken, and what level of pain she would have to endure to survive it for three years.
But when I looked into the princess’s eyes, I could not bring myself to speak.
Whatever I said, the princess would not be swayed by it.
That fact came at me nakedly, forcing me to confront the reflection of myself caught in her eyes.
Just moments ago, while being tormented by the princes, I had wanted to see the princess; yet now that I was face to face with her, I could do nothing but clamp my lips shut, looking at my own miserable self.
I wanted to run.
To conversation, to persuasion—after wanting those things so badly, after sneering at the princes like a reckless fool all the way here to the princess’s side, now that I stood before her, now that I met those blue eyes, all that came into view was my own embarrassing figure, and I wanted to flee anywhere, anywhere at all, so long as it was away from the princess.
You are a person greater than I am, so please understand it by yourself, accept it by yourself, and then kill me—pleading for mercy like that, shamefully doing nothing at all, I wanted to beg for death.
Even though the other person was looking at me with complete seriousness and treating me as an equal, I still wanted to flee in that shameful way.