Luca (2)
Lawrence brought the girl into the room for the time being.
Out in front of the inn, there was nowhere they could speak privately.
No one would have looked kindly on a beggar in such miserable condition.
But the moment he let her into the room, he regretted it.
“I’m sorry for showing up like this all of a sudden.”
The girl kept her head bowed, and her hair was crawling with lice and fleas.
It seemed she hadn’t even been able to wash properly in the cold, and a harsh stench hung around her.
There was no way they could talk in that smell.
“Wait here a moment.”
Lawrence left the room and went downstairs.
He found Anne in the common hall and asked her to heat some bathwater.
“I figured as much. What about clothes?”
“Clothes?”
“You’re not going to let her wear those rags after she’s finally had a proper wash, are you? Trust me, the bathwater’s the only thing that’ll be wasted if you do.”
Should he make do with any clothes he had on hand?
He did have spare clothing, but judging by the girl’s frame, nothing would fit her properly.
“All right. I’ll bring something I used to wear when I was little.”
“How much do you want for it?”
“Forget it. I was going to throw it out anyway. Why would I take money for that?”
“Thanks, Anne.”
That solved the most urgent problem.
Just as he was about to head back upstairs, Anne grabbed him.
“So what are you planning to do?”
“About what?”
“Don’t play dumb. If that’s your sort of taste, I won’t say a word.”
“I’m going upstairs first.”
He had no intention of indulging in this pointless bickering.
Seeing his displeased expression, she lifted both hands.
“I’m joking. More importantly, you’re not thinking of taking her in, are you?”
“Why don’t you just say it plainly instead of dancing around the point?”
“That’s what my father always says—pretend you never saw it. There’s nothing more foolish than reaching out with half-baked pity.”
Lawrence knew exactly what she meant.
It was a question of responsibility. Anne was asking what he intended to do with the girl.
“It’s not like that. You could say she’s… something like a client.”
“These days even beggars come looking for work, huh.”
“If she weren’t a beggar, it’d be an inquiry I couldn’t have known about.”
For a moment, Anne looked unconvinced.
Then she nodded.
“Got it. I’ll bring everything you ordered to your room.”
“No. Just get the bathwater ready. I’ll carry it up myself.”
It had been a long time since he’d carried bathwater upstairs by hand.
The inn he had once relied on in Hilton Village came to mind.
Were Edrick and Greta doing well?
For some reason, the memories of that day felt like they belonged to a distant past.
“You’re here?”
The girl was still standing, not even sitting down.
Lawrence set the bathwater and clothes down in front of her.
“First, wash yourself properly and change clothes.”
“Huh?”
No further explanation was needed.
After leaving the room, Lawrence leaned against the door and sat down.
Guests passing by shot him knowing, meaningful looks.
He had no idea what sort of nonsense this really looked like.
A weak sigh drifted around in his chest.
A little while later, he went back into the room where the sound of water had gone quiet.
She had changed clothes, but the girl still looked filthy.
“Um, uh….”
“Wash again. Take your time and get completely clean. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
Lawrence went back downstairs at once.
When he returned to the room again, it was after the meal had been brought up.
This time, at least, she was a little easier on the eyes.
Perhaps because she had soaked in the warm water long enough, her face was faintly flushed.
After throwing away the girl’s ragged clothes, Lawrence opened the window.
Even that seemed to let some of the stench out of the room.
“I-I’m sorry about this….”
“Eat first. We can talk after that.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“If money had been the issue, I wouldn’t have let you in.”
After hesitating, the girl slowly picked up the spoon.
At first she only watched his expression, too wary to touch the stew.
But once she tasted it, she emptied the bowl in no time.
“Thank you. It was really delicious.”
The girl bowed her head.
She had eaten her fill and washed herself clean.
He had even given her a warm place to sit, so she was fully ready for a proper conversation.
Lawrence set the empty dishes outside the room and sat down again.
“So why did you come looking for me?”
“First, I wanted to apologize for the rudeness I showed you last time. I’m sorry. Back then I was so out of it that I said something I never should have said.”
The girl pressed herself to the floor.
It was probably the most respectful posture she could manage.
Lawrence had done much the same when he had met the lord himself, lying flat and silent like a mouse.
“Get up. You don’t need to worry about it. Honestly, if anyone was still clearheaded in that situation, that would’ve been strange.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
The girl raised her head.
Between the strands of sky-blue hair that were still damp, her eyes appeared.
They were nothing like the unfocused gaze he had seen before.
She was looking toward tomorrow now, by her own will.
“Did you send your younger brother off properly?”
“Yes. I’m sure he went safely to the goddess’s side.”
Her voice carried strength.
He wasn’t sure whether she had fully grieved her brother’s death, but he was certain of one thing: this girl had stood back up on her own.
He was glad his advice had helped, however little.
“I heard you were looking for the playground.”
The girl met his eyes directly.
“I know where it is.”
So that was the real reason.
“Can you lead me there?”
“Yes. But I have one request.”
That was how deals worked.
You gave one thing and received another.
What surprised him was that this child was the one setting the terms.
“Go on.”
“I want to leave this city. Anywhere is fine.”
Lawrence clasped his hands together.
“…Are you sure you won’t regret it?”
Considering her background, it was only natural to long for the wider world.
Lawrence had once felt the same way, and so had the friends who had walked beside him.
But the world was not as beautiful as a child might imagine.
“Wherever you go, there’s an old saying that home is best. Leaving the place you’ve grown attached to isn’t as simple as you think. You could die on the road between one village and another. And even if you safely reach a different town, you never know how long it’ll take to settle in. Some places even have local toughs who hate outsiders.”
He had heard it all in bits and pieces from wandering minstrels, from the foulmouthed complaints of mercenaries drifting through town, from bored gossip the shopkeepers shared over drinks.
No matter how many such stories you collected, there was always a limit to what your imagination could grasp.
But the girl shook her head with force.
“I’m sick of it. From now on, I want to see the world with my own eyes. I want to live making my own choices.”
This was no decision made lightly out of some half-hearted impulse.
In the eyes of the girl who had already lost the place she could call home, there was a much larger world waiting.
“…Understood. I’ll take responsibility and get you out of this city. But that’s all I can do. What you do after that, and what you choose—those things you’ll have to decide for yourself.”
He intended to take at least that much responsibility.
The girl nodded as if she understood.
“I’m Lawrence. What’s your name?”
“Please call me Luca.”
* * *
Before setting out for The Gutter, Lawrence stopped by a clothes shop.
After choosing clothes and a robe that would fit Luca, he stepped back out onto the street.
Even though he had bought the smallest robe the shop carried, it still didn’t fit her properly. The hem just barely avoided dragging on the ground, but the sleeves were so long her hands disappeared inside them, and when she pulled the hood up, most of her face vanished beneath it.
Lawrence adjusted Luca’s hood.
He tied the string near the collar so it wouldn’t block her vision.
That looked a little more human.
At the very least, she had definitely shed the look of a filthy beggar.
“I’m sorry. For buying me clothes like this too… I’ll definitely pay you back someday.”
“I’ll wait without expecting anything.”
With Luca beside him, Lawrence entered The Gutter.
The alleys were still full of beggars today, too.
What had once looked like open hostility from their eyes now felt a little different.
“What kind of place is the playground?”
“It’s just a wide open space. The only place around here where children can gather and play. There are all kinds of things lying around, too. I found everything useful I’ve ever had there.”
“So it’s like a mountain of junk.”
“I don’t really know much about it now. Lately, only Leo’s been going there.”
Luca led Lawrence through the cramped maze of alleys.
A beggar sleeping on the ground muttered and shuffled out of their way.
“It wasn’t like this before. I heard dog-catchers come by a lot more often now. Leo kept following them around for one reason or another.”
“Did your brother want to become a dog-catcher?”
“If he could make money, anything would have been fine. Leo always wanted to get out of the city.”
The deeper they went into the alleys, the narrower the space became.
Even the roads turned confusing.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but it felt like they kept circling back to the same place.
Seeing laundry hanging over a wall, Lawrence said, “Aren’t we lost? I feel like I just saw that.”
“That’s a different one.”
“A different one?”
“Yes. They deliberately hang up similar laundry to make people think they’ve come back to the same spot.”
What in the world was he supposed to make of that?
Luca kept speaking.
“It’s not just the buildings and laundry. You noticed all the beggars scattered through the alleys, right? They use them to limit which paths people can take, so anyone who doesn’t know better keeps circling until they’re pushed back out. In other words, if you don’t know the trick, you can’t ever get into the alleys. That’s how this place is built, or so I was told.”
Lawrence was startled.
“You heard that from Leo too?”
“Yes. The dog-catchers are part of an organization. I heard they’re the ones who manage places like this.”
It didn’t sound like a lie.
If what she said was true, then it all fit: why no matter how much he searched The Gutter he had never been able to get deeper inside.
Apparently, the beggars assigned to those roles even received a small payment for it.
In a place like The Gutter, where there was barely enough food or drink to go around, that was an offer no one could refuse.
After organizing his thoughts for a moment, Lawrence spoke.
“Then that means you’re in danger too.”
“Huh?”
“You’re guiding me, aren’t you? Won’t that put you in the organization’s bad books?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving anyway.”
Luca said it as if she didn’t care at all.
“I’m not going to entrust my life to anyone anymore. Like you said, Lawrence—I’ll think for myself. I’ll choose for myself. I’ll walk on my own.”
There was unmistakable resolve in her voice.
How far had they gone?
He could feel the alleyways gradually widening.
The beggars they passed were getting younger, too.
Some were around Luca’s age, and some looked even younger.
She even greeted a few of them, as if she knew them.
And before long, the two of them arrived.
“This is the playground.”
The playground was less a building than the remains of one that had collapsed long ago.
So much time had passed since it had fallen into ruin that all that remained were piles of stone that might once have been columns, fragments of walls, and other structures whose original shape was now impossible to guess.
Lawrence could not hide his disappointment.
No matter how he looked at it, it didn’t resemble the Lost Sanctuary at all.
As Luca had said, the playground was full of every kind of junk imaginable.
With all the trash that children seemed to have dragged here, it looked even less like some sacred place.
A mountain of junk.
The playground was exactly the kind of place that expression described.
“Those people taught us dancing and singing here. At first, I thought they were from the Order, but they weren’t.”
“Why did you think that?”
“I saw it myself. They killed people like they were dogs.”
“……”
Simple, but certain.
The clergy of the Order did not kill people.
“I miss it. Everyone would gather here, hold hands, and dance in circles. If you did well, they even gave you food and drink. That’s why there were always so many children here. But at some point, those people stopped coming. The dog-catchers started coming instead.”
“Dancing and singing. Can you tell me what the song was like?”
“Hmm… it was probably something like this.”
Luca hummed the tune.
Perhaps because he had recently heard songs from a minstrel and a gypsy, it sounded like an utterly ordinary melody without much character.
Still, it had one advantage: the lyrics and tune were simple enough that they should have been easy to remember.
“I heard the Order teaches songs too.”
“Yes. That’s not wrong.”
Lawrence rested his chin on his hand.
Strange.
The Order mainly taught hymns.
It didn’t teach other kinds of songs or dances.
Above all, Rombamel was not a place under the Order’s influence.
Who on earth had impersonated the Order and taught these children songs and dances?
They passed the place where the children had danced and headed to the far end of the playground.
If this had once been a sacred site, there ought to have been a statue of the goddess there, but instead there was a stone slab engraved with an inscription.
「Yesterday, I met her eyes.
Today, I held her hand.
Tomorrow, I heard her voice.
Lift your head. Her empire lies right beside us.」
“……”
It was indeed a phrase he had no memory of.
Still, he couldn’t be certain it was truly unfamiliar.
Lawrence couldn’t exactly claim to be deeply learned, after all.
To put it bluntly, it was just that he didn’t know enough.
In places with large Orders, like the temples of a great faith, children might be taught songs and dances as part of their education.
Even so, his doubts wouldn’t go away.
It might be worth visiting a monastery in another village and asking about it.
“Was there no statue here in the playground?”
“A statue? Hmm… maybe it’s under the junk somewhere.”
Lawrence looked out over the mountain of debris.
They had piled so much stuff here that it was packed with every kind of object imaginable.
Was he really supposed to dig through all that?
He could already feel a sigh coming on before he’d even begun.
“I’ll help too.”
“It’s enough that you offered.”
How long had they been searching through the pile?
Then, faint voices began drawing nearer.
Lawrence called to Luca.
He didn’t know who it was, but it wouldn’t do any good for them to be found here.
If it had only been children, that would have been one thing, but the organization Luca had mentioned was bothering him.
He hid behind the junk heap and carefully looked toward the source of the voices.
Two men were approaching the playground.
One was a scrawny man with a filthy beard, and the other a huge, bear-like brute.
They were nothing like the beggars Lawrence had seen in The Gutter until now.
With a sword and a spear at their sides, they looked more like mercenaries.
Luca whispered in a small voice, “Those are the dog-catchers.”
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