Whether Master or Disciple, Things Never Go as Planned
Take, for example, this:
A man finds another man collapsed on the ground and helps him. As it turns out, the fallen man was carrying information that could save the nation from crisis. He returns to the royal court, delivers his report, and the country is pulled back from the brink. Can the person who helped that fallen man not also be said to have saved the nation? Without him, the man would have died where he lay, and the country would almost certainly have fallen into ruin. To say that this person performed a great deed in saving the nation would hardly be an exaggeration.
Therefore—
Who was it that rekindled the will to save the world in a Hero who had, in despair, completely abandoned any desire to do so?
Could that person not also be said to have performed a great deed in saving the world?
And so—
How would Jade appear in the eyes of Riel, the Elf of Blessing, who saw a world entirely different from anyone else's?
He's light itself.
Riel had been forced to see all manner of extraordinary things over the course of her long life, and yet even she had never once witnessed anything like this. Not in the saints and holy women that humans so revered. Not in the elders that elves so deeply respected and followed.
Never, not once, until now.
A light this beautiful. A sight this radiant. No matter how many more years she lived, the only one who could ever show her something like this would be the human man standing before her. Riel could not help but be certain of it.
That was how special he was. That was how beautiful it was.
The karma Jade carried was that extraordinary.
To think a day would come when I'd be glad I have this "curse"…
It was astonishing.
In this very moment, Riel was genuinely glad to be the Elf of Blessing. She was sincerely grateful that her nature as the Elf of Blessing allowed her to see this sight—and the fact that she felt this way at all, even though it was happening inside her own heart, left her thoroughly bewildered.
For an entire lifetime—across the long, long span of her years—she had lived cursing the fact that she was the Elf of Blessing.
She had resented the World Tree for foisting this unwanted power on her under the name of a special gift. She had resented her own parents.
And now that same self was feeling joy.
Joy at being the Elf of Blessing.
How absurd was that?
But that was how beautiful Jade's uniqueness was.
Beautiful enough to feel almost unfair. Beautiful enough to make her think it was too much. Beautiful enough to make her shake her head at the sheer unreasonableness of it—and yet she had no choice but to accept it. Because it was beautiful beyond any possible denial. Because the specialness Jade possessed, the light of his soul, was too precious to waste time rejecting.
It was sacred.
Sacred enough that she, the Elf of Blessing herself, felt in this moment as though she were the one receiving a blessing.
Sera knew that the self-proclaimed "Elf of Luck," Riel, was in truth the Elf of Blessing.
Across her long life she had accepted Riel as a companion many times over, so of course she knew. But that fact had never been a good thing for Riel. It couldn't have been. Sera had never once given Riel a satisfying result.
The reason Riel had become a companion of the Hero Sera was simple. She had hoped that Sera might give meaning to the "curse" she carried. But Sera had never properly answered that hope.
Riel's "curse"—
Its true nature was the special eyes she had gained upon becoming the Elf of Blessing. To bestow the blessing someone needed, you first had to know them. But the World Tree had given Riel a power far too strong. Because of that, she no longer needed to learn anything. Simply by looking at someone, she could bestow the blessing they required. The problem was that this had made the world she saw far too extraordinary.
No matter how brilliant a mind might be, if it has no capacity for forgetting—if it has no brakes—that is never a good thing. It is nothing but the torment of hell. Nothing but a curse. And so it was for Riel. Because her vision was too special, it was hellish torment to her. A curse. Because of it, she suffered even among the elves, and she suffered just as much when she left them behind.
No matter how long she lived.
No matter how far she wandered.
No matter how many special souls she encountered.
She could never escape that hellish torment.
So she had no choice but to place her final hope in the Hero.
And the Hero Sera, every single time, could only deliver disappointment and despair. Even so, Riel always stood at Sera's side with her bow drawn, insisting that she couldn't stand the idea of dumping everything on some little human girl.
Maybe Master could… No. That won't work. Maybe Master's soul could save Riel—but even so, no.
Knowing the Riel she did, Sera figured the elf wouldn't develop any particular feelings for a human man. But you never really knew. She might. Wasn't Sera herself living proof of that? She had been certain she would never again let anyone into her heart—certain that no one would ever be able to affect her.
Until she met Jade.
But after meeting Jade, everything changed.
The world itself changed, quite literally.
She had taken one person into her heart more deeply than anyone, and her thoughts and feelings were always full of him. She had been completely transformed—by one man named Jade. He had changed someone who had despaired of everything and given up on everything. And there was no guarantee, no certainty, that such a thing would only happen to her.
In other words, Jade was someone who could cause in another person what he had caused in Sera. That possibility—that special ability (or talent, as one might call it)—could not be assumed to work only on Sera.
Because Jade was an extraordinary man.
And an extraordinary man could accomplish anything.
He might even work such a miracle for an elf who had wandered in despair through a long, long life.
No—he would. Because Jade was extraordinary!
…Yeah. I definitely can't let them meet.
Sera decided as much.
But—
Even a Hero was only human. And as long as one was human, the affairs of the world never went as planned.
What is this elf even talking about?
"I'll specially grant you some luck. After all, I'm the Elf of Luck!"
"…No, I'm good."
"You're my lifesaver, so I'm making a special exception!"
"…I said I'm good. Just go."
Even if some kid who looked nothing like an "Elf of Luck" offered to grant me luck, I had zero interest in accepting it.
I'm fine. Leave.
I have no desire to get tangled up with an elf and suffer for the rest of my life!
I know things never go as planned in this world, but why does it have to be an elf of all things…
"So you're saying you're not the 'Elf of Luck'—you're the 'Elf of Blessing'?"
"…That's right."
In the end, Riel told Jade the truth.
She had the feeling that this stubborn stalemate would never break otherwise.
"Elves lie, too?"
"…It's not that they can't. They just try not to."
Riel would have preferred to dig in her heels to the bitter end—watching the stereotype that "elves never lie" crumble was a little painful—but Jade was not a man who could be easily swayed. Her long-lived instincts were screaming that changing this man's mind would require paying a price to match, and so Riel complied.
The stereotype that "elves never lie" had been useful in all sorts of ways, and Riel hadn't wanted to lose it. Unfortunately, the one in a hurry to give a blessing was Riel, not him. And so she had no choice but to abandon a very useful tool of her own free will.
"So receiving a blessing from you would be good for me, then?"
"Yes! Of course! Extremely good!"
"It's not some deal where you're actually the 'Elf of Misfortune' and you give other people bad luck so that good luck comes to you, is it?"
"……"
For a moment, Riel sincerely considered just dropping the whole thing.
"You already lied once, so you could lie twice, right?"
"Have you spent your whole life being deceived?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
Mercenary work was brutal enough as it was—an industry where everyone was constantly deceiving everyone else. Jade hadn't been an outstanding mercenary from the start, so he'd had to get burned plenty of times. Of course, once he became a veteran, he'd flipped to the other side and done his fair share of the deceiving. For him, suspicion was daily life—a survival skill, more or less. If the person in front of him had been Sera, it would have been different. But since it wasn't, his paranoia kicking in was only natural.
"……"
Riel looked at Jade with a thoroughly sour expression.