The End of the Day (4)
As the representative of everyone who had suffered damage, great and small, at the hands of Hoyeon and her guards, Anastasiya found herself at a complete loss as to how she ought to confront the girl.
In Anastasiya’s mind, Hoyeon was a pretty enough creature on the surface, yet something dangerous clung to her all the same—and, at the same time, she was someone rather like Anastasiya herself.
At first glance it had been the former impression that stuck. But once they had actually spoken, Anastasiya had decided that Hoyeon was of her own kind.
Every word out of the girl’s mouth had been thick with that particular awkwardness unique to people who found dealing with others difficult.
Because of that, she had already forgiven the incident at lunch. She knew better than most how much courage it took for someone uncomfortable with people to approach a total stranger and ask a question; she had even been rooting for her, however faintly, in private.
Her followers, however, had no intention of forgiving Hoyeon whatsoever. The damage they had taken was not something that could be overlooked simply on account of her station.
From the moment she first set foot on this continent, Hoyeon had ignored every procedure and every border and gone straight for the Academy—already a mountain of problems—and there were those who had suffered grievously trying to stop her and her party. That only made matters worse.
It was a mercy no one had died. Had anyone been killed, a declaration of war would not have been out of place.
It would take only a few weeks for the Baek Empire—known until now merely as a source of fine silk and spices—to be recast as an empire of pure, unmitigated evil.
So when lunchtime handed them the perfect opportunity to paint Hoyeon’s approach as a threat, they did not let it slip by. They meant to cast Anastasiya as the hero standing against the arrogant invader from the East.
After much stubborn refusal on her part, she had managed to shrink her role from the living embodiment of their grudges and the Empire’s spokesman down to something more like an advisor, simply warning a foreigner to mind her manners. Even so, the weight of it all was no lighter for her.
“…Then what am I supposed to do?”
Be rude if you must, but do not let yourself be looked down upon—and extract an apology from her.
Their demands were more than enough to leave her thoroughly at sea.
Who on earth would simply apologize if you barged in and demanded one from on high? Even she, for all her social inexperience, could see that much.
How they had learned which room was Hoyeon’s was a secondary concern.
They had brought her information of equally mysterious origin often enough before; she simply accepted it as the usual and moved on.
Still fretting over what she ought to say, she arrived at the floor of Hoyeon’s room—and walked straight into a sight she had not expected in the least.
There was Hoyeon, stepping out of her own room and walking into another as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Had she made a friend already? Doubt stirred in Anastasiya. She had thought Hoyeon was like her. Had that only been her own misunderstanding?
To anyone else it would have been a trivial question. To Anastasiya, it mattered a great deal.
But the sight of Hoyeon emerging from that room alongside a young man bleached every coherent thought clean out of her head.
Her sex education was not quite so catastrophic as all that. She knew that the claim that a man and woman only had to hold hands for a child to result was a lie.
If that had been true, she would already have had a child by her own father. She knew how children were made.
A man and a woman entered a room together.
As a little girl she had woken in the small hours and wandered the manor, and by chance she had seen her father go into her mother’s chambers. Not long after, a younger sibling had arrived. That was how she had learned it.
Of course, her father had emerged the next day looking thoroughly disheveled, whereas Hoyeon and that young man had been together for a few minutes at most and still looked perfectly composed—so she could not be certain.
But she had no precise knowledge of how children were actually conceived, and so she thought:
Then… was Hoyeon carrying that man’s child?
Anastasiya could no longer think straight. She had already forgotten why she had come at all. One hand pressed to her racing heart, she simply stood and spied on them.
The moment that felt as though it might last forever shattered the instant Hoyeon’s eyes found her. Time lurched back into motion.
Like someone who had witnessed something she was never meant to see, Anastasiya bolted from the dormitory as fast as her legs would carry her.
Her face was burning scarlet the whole way.
Anya had been right there—and then she was gone.
I had no idea how long she had been watching, and I had no idea why she took off the second I looked at her. Maybe she had come to gawk because I was a beastkin and she found it novel.
But then why run?
Something that’s neither beast nor human is fascinating, sure—but I don’t want it staring at me! It’s creepy!
Something like that, maybe. It stung more than I cared to admit. It was exactly the look the girls at school had given me the day after my otaku merch got found out in middle school, and that memory only made it worse.
“Is something the matter?”
Dogeon, dense as a brick, asked me what was wrong. True to form for a harem protagonist, his instincts failed him in the strangest places. The same guy who pulled off mind-reading when it counted somehow became the densest creature alive the rest of the time. It was almost annoying.
“It’s nothing. Come on—let us be off.”
This time he seemed to take the hint and strode ahead in silence while I fell into step behind him. After a moment he asked,
“…May I ask what pure magic is?”
“You do not know?”
The protagonist, and he didn’t even know that? I asked again, and he insisted he truly didn’t. I wondered if he had dozed off while reading the novel, but there was no real reason not to tell him.
“Hmm… what pure magic is.”
The moment I tried to explain it, I realized I had no idea how to put it into words.
“…It is the power that sets the earth trembling, moves the heavens, and parts the seas.”
“Isn’t that the same as mana?”
Fair enough—mages could do similar things. I supposed someone who didn’t know better might say that.
“It is different. Pure magic is not a power humans can wield. It can only be handled by the will of the gods. Some call it the blood of the stars.”
“Gods…?”
The fake gods you people worship. The words rose all the way to the tip of my tongue before I swallowed them again.
Was that something I should even say out loud? In stories like this, the Church usually turned out to be thoroughly slimy and vicious.
Weren’t they the ones who waited in the wings and dragged the protagonist off as a heretic the second he did anything slightly unusual?
On the way to the Academy I had already seen inquisitors hauling people away as heretics. Did I really need to go around saying your gods are fake and hand them an excuse to drag me off too?
“…Knowing would do you no good, so put it from your mind.”
It came out sounding like some irritating green cat from a certain game, but it was the best I could manage for now.
He looked so blatantly disappointed that I glared at him for a moment until he pulled himself together. You can put on that pitiful face all you like—I’m still not telling you.
“I do not know by what means you people managed it, but it seems you twisted pure magic and took to calling it holy power or mana.”
“What do you mean by twisted?”
“That a power only the gods were meant to wield was made usable by humans—and other beings.”
I was careful not to say “fake gods,” and instead sidestepped with the vague “other beings.” It wasn’t even wrong. Elves weren’t human, after all.
“…Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It is like entrusting the national treasury to fools. They would squander the coffers on every idiotic whim. Is it not better to leave such things to the wise and the capable?”
Probably. Humans were already wrecking the environment without magic; if they started flinging pure magic around freely, it would be a disaster. I had seen with my own eyes what became of a place where pure magic ran dry, and that only made me more certain.
Of course, that particular case hadn’t been people burning through it so much as Mother draining the ley lines dry in an instant. I still couldn’t forget the fortress that had held for months crumbling into white powder in the space of a heartbeat.
Not just the walls—the people and animals living inside them, all of them turning to pure white dust before my eyes. I had wondered whether any of it was even real.
“I suppose so.”
“That seems explanation enough. Come—let us continue.”
Honestly, I had fudged a few points in the middle, and it sat poorly with me. But if he pressed any further it would be me in the awkward position, so I did my best to cut the conversation short.
If he kept asking, I might not be able to hold back and would spill everything.
Dogeon did not look entirely convinced, but thankfully he started walking again. Come to think of it, he had stopped at some point without my noticing. I had stopped right along with him while I explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Was this how popular people handled others?
He had come to a halt so smoothly I hadn’t even registered it. His knack for managing people really was something else.
Every time I watched hypnosis stories I used to think they were ridiculous—but looking at this guy, maybe they weren’t entirely impossible.
Thank goodness there hadn’t been any hypnosis scenes among the R-19 ones. If there had, even he would have been a genuine hazard.
Well—he was still pretty dangerous as it was. At least he didn’t just reach in and mess with people’s wills whenever he felt like it.
“We’ve arrived.”
When I came back to myself, we were already at the dining hall. A few people were scattered about, but overall the place was still quiet.
I started happily deciding what to grab first—then remembered what had happened at lunch.
If I picked, it would definitely taste awful. No matter how nice something smelled, the second it hit my tongue some nightmare flavor would explode across it. Just imagining it killed my confidence.
I turned my head, and there was Dogeon.
…He was a social butterfly. He had to know good food, right?
Clinging to that desperate hope, I called out to him.
“What looks good to you?”