Such a Thing Happened
Blood.
A handkerchief.
And a bloodstained handkerchief.
The handkerchief was Luke’s, and it had come from Luke’s pocket. So was it really so strange to conclude that this was Luke’s blood?
Her hands were trembling.
Why is there blood on it?
Where had he gotten hurt? Or was something wrong with his body somewhere?
Surely not… from that day…?
No. That couldn’t be it. Even if it had been that day, he wouldn’t have wiped it with a handkerchief.
A thousand thoughts crowded in at once. Come to think of it, Luke had fallen asleep earlier than usual today. Had something exhausting happened at school?
Could it be bullying?
The moment that thought struck Yerna, her mind seized on it completely.
Luke being bullied?
Why?
There might not even be a real reason. Just looking different from everyone else was enough for bullying to take root, wasn’t it? Pretty or ugly made no difference. Gathering around to pick on a child who didn’t fit the group had been common then and was common now. Why else had the phrase “school violence” come into existence? Because it was something that happened all too often.
“…….”
Thinking about it, Luke had seemed like he wasn’t adapting well to school. Maybe that was even why he didn’t want to go…
No. She mustn’t declare it so. If she started from the premise that bullying had happened, only dark possibilities would surface. She had simply found a bloodstained handkerchief. He had only used it to wipe some blood, hadn’t he? She didn’t know why the blood had been there, but…
Yerna couldn’t stop herself from picturing Luke coughing, hacking, spitting blood.
Surely not… a side effect of the experiment…!
No. That couldn’t be it. Remember the test results. Aside from Luke’s race being unusual, he had been perfectly normal. His weight was still severely low, but she had stocked up on plenty of delicious snacks; he would put on weight soon enough.
Thud.
Yerna slammed her head against the wall to drive the thoughts away. Her imagination was running far too wild.
I’ll talk it over properly with Luke when he wakes up.
For now… she should just get some sleep…
Chirp, chirp.
With the weather warming, the birdsong that filled every morning was truly pleasant. Where would those early risers fly off to? Did birds need to worry about things? They might at least worry about finding food. If they went hungry today, they would have to wake even earlier tomorrow—perhaps they thought things like that.
Click. The door opened.
When she turned her gaze that way, Luke was emerging from the room, pushing the doorknob while letting out a long, stretching yawn.
“Did you sleep well, Lu?”
To Yerna’s hollow morning greeting, Luke reflexively returned one of his own.
“Yaaawn…. Yerna…. You’re up early…?”
In the middle of greeting her, Luke saw it.
Hollow-eyed—.
Yerna’s face, steeped to the bone in exhaustion… Frankly, it was a sight.
Luke looked at her with a slightly put-off expression and said,
“Ah…. It looks like you didn’t sleep at all. What on earth happened? Was the bed uncomfortable…?”
Luke approached her while plucking out, one by one, the horn plugs he had worn while sleeping. Then, with a worried look, he laid a hand on her forehead.
“Goodness, you still have a bit of a fever. Are you unwell somewhere? Did you brew and drink the Mirip flower properly, as I told you?”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Lu.”
“Hm?”
Yerna gently took Luke’s hand and, with affection, lifted it away from her forehead, her expression growing a little more serious. From that look, Luke understood. It was the face of someone who had something she wanted to say. Caught in her unusual atmosphere, he grew serious as well.
“What on earth is the matter, Yerna?”
Yerna hemmed and hawed, then spoke as if she had steeled herself.
“Lately…. Is there anything hard for you?”
“Something hard? Not at all. There’s nothing for you to worry about…”
“Nothing at all? You don’t have to hide it from me. I’ll never give up on you. I’ll definitely help you.”
“……?”
Luke was simply bewildered. He had no idea why Yerna was so worried. He hadn’t shown any signs of struggling… or so he thought. At school the sense of confinement might have been a bit much, but right now there were no hardships or adversities. He was living a perfectly smooth modern life…
As Luke rubbed his chin with a puzzled expression, Yerna was on the verge of going mad. Could it be that he was being bullied and didn’t even realize it was bullying? Maybe he had been abused so far past the limit that he no longer recognized a child’s malice as harassment.
“Did nothing happen at school?”
School?
At school, nothing…
Ah.
Luke recalled the chaos in the music club room. A piano cursed by a ghost—it had simply been Pai playing by herself. Spirit-form monsters and spirits were entirely different beings. How could one compare a ghost that harbored malice toward humans and tried to drag them into the underworld with a spirit that lived alongside them? Still, the incident that had unwillingly made him famous even among the students had been troublesome. Was that what she meant?
Luke spilled the whole story.
“After lunch yesterday…. I went to look because they said a ghost had appeared in the music room. The piano was supposedly playing on its own.”
“But it wasn’t a ghost—it was my spirit, Pai. She was just excitedly playing the piano by herself. When I approached and told her to stop, she stopped.”
“But that scene must have looked as if I were lifting a ghost’s curse from the piano, because the children started treating me as if I had done something magnificent.”
“It was troublesome…. So I couldn’t even use the music room anymore.”
Hearing Luke’s explanation, Yerna thought while forcing her fatigue-fogged head to move. She didn’t really understand the spirit talk, but anyway, it meant he had exorcised a ghost. A ghost? A story about a ghost appearing at school? Spirit-form monsters like that were common enough that you saw them often in the city. Danger levels varied by individual, of course, but if you used magic there was nothing you couldn’t exorcise. Weak ones weren’t much different from slightly large bugs.
Yerna suddenly felt a little lift of excitement, realizing that Luke was finally telling her about something that had happened at school. Last time, the story had honestly just been about why he’d gotten a guardian call or something of the sort.
“Lu, you. You exorcise ghosts too?”
“It’s not that I can’t…. But I told you it was a spirit.”
“Right, right.”
Anyway, it meant he had exorcised it. You needed magic to do so, but Luke had said he could handle circles. If he could freely control mana using the circle in his heart, exorcising spirit-form monsters wouldn’t be that difficult. Though the fact that Luke freely used that circle was abnormal…
Is that the influence of the human experiments after all…?
Yerna felt her head throb again and let out a groan.
“Ugh….”
Tired…. I have to go to work, too—why am I like this?
Her mind was simply blank now. From relief and fatigue, her head drooped with a soft plop. Luke looked at her worriedly and said,
“Are you all right? You look tired—why on earth weren’t you sleeping?”
“That’s…!”
Yerna suddenly lifted her head with a start.
“Lu, so there wasn’t any bullying or anything?”
“Bullying? Of course not.”
Luke hadn’t even attended school properly in the first place. He probably hadn’t even had time to be bullied.
“Then what did you get this blood on from?”
Yerna pulled out the handkerchief as if she could no longer hold back.
“Th-that…. Did you take it out of my pocket?”
Luke’s eyes widened in surprise.
Oh no. Yerna realized she had been far too direct. She had spent so long, without sleeping, fretting over how to ask indirectly—yet now that she was exhausted, only blunt words came to mind. She flusteredly tried to gather her words back up.
“No, just…. There was a smell of blood, so I was worried….”
Luke nodded as he watched her flustered, panicking state. A bloodstained handkerchief—she must have had all sorts of thoughts. In the end, the reason she had lost sleep was his fault. Should he have told her beforehand?
Luke shrugged and said,
“Yerna.”
“Y-yes?”
“That isn’t my blood.”
“What…. did you say…?”
Yerna felt every possibility she had imagined denied in a single sentence. Not Luke’s blood?
“Then what is this?”
“That…. was something you need not worry about in the least.”
“What?”
Luke walked over to the phone, picked it up, and operated it. A moment later, he showed her the photo he had taken.
“It was a situation like this.”
Four people surrounding and harassing one child. At a glance they looked about ninth grade, and it looked like nothing but shaking him down. Luke pointed to the weak-looking child being hit and said,
“I helped this young man here.”
“Ah….”
Yerna’s tension drained away all at once.
“Then that blood….”
“Got on it then. It isn’t my blood.”
“I see….”
With the tension gone, her strength left her too. Yerna sank deep into the sofa and thought.
Then that blood was from wiping what the child being hit had shed. Lu is kind, after all.
Then suddenly she bounced up, sat in front of Luke, and seized his arm.
“Wait—then it was dangerous. Lu! You’re not hurt anywhere?”
“Of course…. As you can see, I’m not hurt at all.”
“Phew….”
Luke was a smart child, so he had probably called the police or something.
Wait—then he might get retaliated against….
Yerna said with a serious expression,
“Lu, later if those guys call you or harass you…. No, if you see them anywhere, make sure to contact this big sister. Got it? I’ll handle it properly.”
Luke averted his gaze a little flustered and said,
“Uh…. I-I’ll do that…? Thank you.”
Luke thought,
Does this era not hesitate to double-punish robbers…? It’s a bit strict.
Even by past conventions that was a little pitiful, so it would be better not to inform Yerna separately even if he saw them somewhere.