The Eyes Beneath the Mask
Bonjwa, the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin.
No matter how deficient my instincts for reading a room might be, this was dangerous. Fine — if it were only my little sister Se-ah, who had been radiating this strange obsession toward me lately, I could perhaps let it pass. But why on earth was Namgung Yurin crouched there like a cat with its claws fully bared…!
I knew Namgung Yurin doted on me, now that I'd been reduced to this bite-sized little girl. I… well… look… I hadn't exactly acknowledged a kid like Namgung Yurin — with an age gap that enormous — as a friend yet…! In any case, even if our acquaintance was only nominal, I could see why Se-ah suddenly barging into a friendship might rub someone the wrong way.
That was no excuse, however, for the two of them to wage a Great Beast Showdown between the strongest beings in the world, pride against pride, with Bonjwa caught in the middle.
"──Gal…!!!"
If I was the cause of the problem, then as the dashing hero of the realm I am, I decided to bow out gracefully. It was absolutely not because getting wedged into that pandemonium would make the festival's delicious food awfully hard to force down my throat…! That candy had already shown me a flavor so singular it nearly cost me my sanity, so who knew how divine the rest of the otherworld's cuisine might be… Not that I entertained even the tiniest, tiniest shred of such childish fantasy or hope…!!!
Pababat!
And so, treading the Liangshang Junzibo's hidden stealth arts and lightness skill, I threaded through the sea of people, meaning to slip quietly away beyond the festival street.
Bonk!
"…Aaghk!"
The very instant I piled acceleration upon acceleration, I slammed into something and landed hard on my backside.
True, I had been running fast through a packed crowd — but I was an internal-energy cultivator who had already ascended to the Second Stage of the Forged Blood Art. With my razor-sharp qi sense, I had been dashing with a complete read on every stir around me. However thick the press of bodies, this tiny frame combined with the Liangshang Junzibo's nimble footwork should have slipped through without the slightest effort.
And yet — bounced?! The protective artifact wrapped around my body was sturdy enough that a rolling boulder couldn't have jostled me an inch. To be knocked sprawling, helpless as any ordinary little girl? Impossible.
I rose, dusting off the seat of the goddamn skirt I'd been forced into because that middle-school-dropout idiot Se-ah wouldn't take no for an answer. In any case, my collision should have given the other party quite a shock too, so I bowed my head while clutching my throbbing neck.
"U-aghk… I-I'm s-sorry…"
…………
"…Eh?"
The one I had crashed into was a tall man, his head hidden beneath a hood and his face behind — festival cosplay, presumably? — a mask shaped like a vengeful spirit. Under any normal circumstance, I'd have snorted at the sight, musing that this Gate era had truly become the homeland of chuunibyou. But a warrior's instinct — in that instant, looking at the masked man, I felt a strange chill crawl over me.
His presence was like a ghost's. No — it was so faint, so impossibly faint, that I genuinely wondered whether he might actually be one. It recalled the times my first master, Amyoung Sintou, would hide himself away inside the shadows.
"A thief and an assassin are one sheet of paper apart."
"Whether you steal a thing or steal a life, only the stolen goods differ. Either way, you walk the same rooftop beams, do you not?"
"Though we Liangshang gentlemen do not count life among our goods. Khekhek."
My master's face, wrinkled into a smile as he added that, surfaced in my memory for the first time in an age. And just as he'd said, at their extremes a thief's stealth art and an assassin's become one and the same. That was the Dark Shadow itself — the realm where darkness and shadow ceased to be separate things.
The masked man, standing utterly motionless, evoked that very realm so strongly it was as if he were living proof of it, and I lifted my head, bewildered.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
For an instant, the Forged Blood Art pulsed, straining to spew out blood qi — but thump… thump… thu-ump… the reaction lasted barely a breath before it subsided, as though I had merely imagined it.
Or perhaps…
As if it were afraid.
And then my crimson eyes met the pupils behind the vengeful-spirit mask.
…………
Eyes empty of all emotion… yet steeped in bloodred light. Eyes like my own, dyed in a deeper, darker shade. The moment I saw them — plip — a single faint tear slipped from one of my eyes and traced down my cheek.
An inexplicable… nostalgia.
There had been a time when I despaired that returning home might be impossible. Bonjwa… I, too, had known such days. Back then I would gaze at the ridgelines rolling vast beyond the horizon, at a wilderness so remote that neither utility poles… nor neon signs… nor transmission towers spiking like awls existed anywhere in it, and be tormented by longing for what could never be reclaimed.
And now, in this moment, just like back then — it was as if I had glimpsed something out of memory that I could never return to, never take back. Something beyond undoing, and therefore achingly, impossibly dear… That emotion came seething up until even the heart-channel the Forged Blood Art shielded trembled at my throat, stirring ripples without end.
And at that moment, the hollow gaze of the masked man looking down at my face… drifted, just for an instant, somewhere very far away.
Swoosh!
"…Hnk!"
At the hand that came suddenly toward me, I nearly struck out to meet it on pure reflex — but the palm simply settled over the crown of my head once, then swoosh, swish, stroked downward slowly… very slowly, the way a big brother pats his little sister.
"Take care on your way."
Advice that did not suit that cruelly sunken voice. The blood-eyed man murmured it, then walked off as ordinarily as anyone and vanished into the crowd. Into the crowd, into the crowd — gone in a blink, like a shadow melting into the light.
…………
A voice I felt certain I had heard somewhere before… many times, even. Without meaning to, I began rummaging through the farthest reaches of my memory —
"…Oppa! Seriously, why did you suddenly run off alone? I nearly sprained my ankle chasing you."
"S-Se-ah?!"
The sudden, fervent embrace from behind — all soft and squishy — launched me straight up, and I nearly turned a somersault in midair…!
"Ughhhh…."
Typical Cheon Se-ah. So merely because I had dawdled on the road for a moment, she had tracked the coordinates of her barrier and chased me all the way here…! I despised my little sister's uselessly superb competence!
Se-ah, arms still locked around me from behind, thrust me abruptly up into the air. However tiny my body had become, to be princess-carried by my own little sister… How could I possibly permit this! I flailed every limb, trying to shake off the idiot dropout's monstrous grip, but she only jostled me up and down like she was soothing a squirming little animal, tilting her head.
"But why were you on the ground? Did you bump into something? That's weird… if you had, my barrier would've activated and turned whoever dared lay a hand on my oppa into very finely minced meat."
"…Eep!"
No — what.
"Hey, you idiot dropout! This thing — your barrier was that dangerous?!"
…………
The idiot dropout said nothing. The corners of my sister's mouth pulled taut at both ends, unnaturally.
"Aw, come on, don't take that seriously. It's obviously a joke."
"Really……?"
"A joke, I told you. A joke."
Her mouth was smiling, stiffly — but her pupils, their light so faint they looked pitch-black, were not smiling in the slightest…
Along with a resolution to retrain my light-body technique to perfection so that I would never again collide with another living soul, I gave brief thought to the man in the vengeful-spirit mask. The moment I had seen those eyes and heard that voice, something had seemed on the verge of surfacing. If only I could retrace my memory a little longer and sink into the thought, it felt as though I might grasp the end of some thread. But that intuition had scattered the instant Se-ah seized me, leaving behind only a strange lingering echo that set the Forged Blood Art's pulse beating slow and heavy.
"Heyyy, Jjin! What… how are you… hah, haa… so fast…! I'm… not a… physical-type… awakener… hnngh!"
Before I could savor that echo, Namgung Yurin came tearing through the crowd in Se-ah's wake, sweat pouring off her.
"I'm… pretty confident in my stamina too, you know… but, haaaah… no beating a martial-arts awakener, huh…"
Perhaps breaking out the lightness skill on top of everything had been a touch excessive. Unlike Se-ah, who had at least refined her own means of travel through barrier arts, Namgung Yurin had apparently chased me down on lung-bursting effort alone. The moment she caught her breath, raised her head, and saw me and Se-ah — or rather, saw the idiot dropout Se-ah holding me bodily aloft, cradling me like a swaddled infant — her eyes narrowed to slits, and Se-ah's mouth split into a thin grin.
"Oppaa… my poor Yujin! You fell down and got hurt, didn't you? Walking will be hard for a while… shall I carry you like this?"
"Eh?"
"It's fine, it's fine. I'm an awakener; this is nothing… and besides, this much is only natural for "family" to do… right?"
A slow, wide grin.
It was dark enough to recall Ma-noe from the old days — the one who had unearthed the candies I had hidden away in secret during that closed-door cultivation where nothing but fasting pills passed my lips, and then smacked his lips over them right in front of me, grinning like a villain. A wicked smile flickered across Se-ah's lips.
"Fufufu."
"Hahaha."
A smile surfaced on Namgung Yurin's sweat-soaked lips as well. A trembling smile…
At this rate, the Second Great Beast Showdown would break out before long — so:
Pahat!
"Kyaah…!"
Palm arts in my hands, step arts in my feet, and a somersaulting light-body technique besides. Unleashing even the subtler mysteries of my martial arts, I tore free of Se-ah's embrace and spun once through the air before landing on the ground.
"Enough already… let's go see the Starlight Festival! Okay? Please…!"
I hadn't intended it, but in my hurry to end this situation, strength had balled up in my hands, and I stood there with both fists clenched, held close beneath my chin. And since my height, dwarfed by either of theirs, was small enough that "little kid" was no exaggeration, the picture completed itself: a crimson-eyed girl gazing up at them with wide, brimming eyes…!
The result:
"Okay! Let's go right now! What are you waiting for, Yurin? You said you were confident about guiding us…!!!"
"Where do you want to go first? What should we see first? Anything you want to eat? Should we grab a bite first? There's something even tastier than that candy from earlier. Want to eat while we look around? Huh? Huh?"
…And so it came to this. Honestly, it was getting a little frightening. Namgung Yurin was one thing, but it made me wonder whether I had… perhaps spoiled my little sister just a bit too much…
And so the group set off in earnest to tour the Starlight Festival — while I remained oblivious to one thing. The Starlight Festival was a festival, yes, and at the same time a showcase for the Aegis Guild's trophies and triumphs… with every manner of otherworldly curiosity paraded as spectacle. A past I had tucked into a corner of my memory and forgotten, buried under the storm of incidents that had crashed over us in the space of a few months. It wasn't even truly so long ago… and now it stood before my eyes again.
"…Huh? The Starlight Festival's never caught a living creature and put it on display before. That's new."
Namgung Yurin's puzzled murmur. And just as she said, partway through the festival… the group came upon a creature confined in a cage. A hunter who appeared to be a magic-type awakener belonging to the Aegis Guild spoke in an excited voice:
"Thanks to its exceptionally developed danger sense, it's an extremely rare monster that even hunters almost never glimpse… a rare variant, no less, documented by academia for the first time. The only one we have ever managed to capture…"
Inside a cage reinforced without mercy in mana alloy — the kind of metal a decent awakener would struggle to so much as scratch — sat a single creature, its fur and eyes red as blood.
"…It's a Ratman!"
My eyes met its.
"Squeak squeak squeak-squeak-squeak……!!!"
Bonjwa thought.
…………
…about whether it might be better to stop thinking altogether.