On the Night the Moon Dances - 4
"...Wait — what was that?"
From the blank stares Adele and Lotos fixed on me, I remembered that they knew nothing of my previous lives. Well, it wasn't as if this hadn't happened before. In that frozen field of snow, these two — who had witnessed this blue flash with their own eyes — had worn those very same expressions.
Back then I'd been rather insolent, so I'd brushed it off by declaring myself a genius. Should I do the same now? But looking at their faces, so plainly demanding an explanation, I felt my resolve soften. There were too many loose ends for "genius" to paper over anyway.
"Calling it talent would be a stretch, I'm afraid."
"If you'd secretly taken up the sword without my knowing, that might explain it. But those hands of yours are soft as anything."
"...It would be difficult to explain at the moment."
My gaze lifted upward, and Adele's eyes followed it to the building where Jay lived. She must have realized the appointed hour was drawing near. There would be people moving toward that place above before long.
"A life needs saving, doesn't it?"
"And the thing you meant to tell me — is that a secret too?"
A secret. It wasn't as though I was deliberately hiding anything. I simply hadn't enjoyed being treated like a madman. The reality — hardly a laughing matter — of a man dying a hundred times and regressing, always returning to that summer day of his twentieth year only to repeat another miserable death. Even if I claimed I'd borrowed the power of a Relic, who would believe it?
"Speak, then. And stop staring at me like that."
The woman called Adele was someone bound to me by countless threads of fate. If a person like that came to see me as a lunatic... well, it wouldn't feel wonderful. Hence the secrecy. Because I wanted nothing like disgust or contempt to ever settle in those eyes of hers — that was why my past had to remain a secret.
"It's... a secret."
"I see."
Her face said she wasn't entirely convinced, but Adele nodded and laughed, easy and unbothered. I was grateful for that laugh. Had any doubt lingered, my unease might have made me slip up.
"Then I won't ask. We just wait here, then?"
"You intend to wait?"
"You don't move until I tell you to."
She held my gaze for a moment, then added with a faint smile, "And don't go sneaking off on your own again."
"...Of course not."
I felt I owed her a great deal. Had she pressed me question by question, I'd have been in a tight spot — yet it had never once crossed my mind that she might ask nothing at all, simply because I'd called it a secret. To the woman watching me, I bowed my head with every ounce of courtesy I could muster, thinking that someday, without fail, I would tell her of my past.
Tap-tap. My footsteps up the side of the building were light. I'd grown so accustomed to this sort of covert climb that I could probably manage it with my eyes closed. Two steps from here, then one more, and I would reach the window.
Sure enough, my hand caught the edge of a balcony, and I pulled myself upward. I had experience wielding a sword, but the body itself was clumsy. To think my arms strained from nothing more than a climb. As I always thought — what a wretched body this was. At least it wasn't short on stamina. And once the mastery I had achieved in past lives was layered on top, subduing the attackers who would soon arrive would be no trouble at all.
From the balcony I peered inside and spotted Jay, still asleep. She lay in bed wrapped in her blankets, breathing softly... Was it her original fate, then, to die stabbed like this? A woman with a truly cruel destiny. Though perhaps not as cruel as mine.
"One more step from here and the alarm sounds."
Her mana was of a kind specialized in barriers and illusions. Every person's gift leaned toward some field, but I knew of few whose power concentrated so heavily in auxiliary abilities like hers. A single reach of my hand would trip a ward that would sound the evacuation alarm for her. I had once brushed it and woken her, so this time I needed to move with care — Jay, once she sensed a threat to her life, was not one to calm down easily.
I couldn't remember how I'd saved her last time. She panicked at the mere sight of a drawn sword; more than once I'd knocked her unconscious just to fight. So I waited, briefly, for movement nearby.
Before long, shadows began to writhe at the base of the building. It wasn't merely a feeling. They were truly moving — slithering, seeping toward this building. However many times I watched it, the movement was uncanny. It was what had let me trace their employer, though in the beginning they'd been quite troublesome to handle.
"...Four of them."
The number never changed. Four assassins, deployed to kill a single woman. They had likely been commissioned to guarantee the result — by none other than the Crown Prince. I'd learned that in my previous loop. When my investigation of everyone who might hire assassins turned up nothing, I'd searched from the very top, and his name surfaced. Why did that name appear so endlessly? Adele, me, this alchemist — all of us had died by the Crown Prince's hand. What could he possibly gain from killing so many? In the line of succession he held absolute supremacy. The reigning Emperor had sired only one son; there was but one heir. There were plenty of theories, but none of them explained enough...
Flick.
"I can think about it later."
Before I cut off the Crown Prince's head, I could simply ask him then. However long I wracked my brain, nothing would change unless I acted. Wasn't that the lesson all those lives had taught me? Pressing the ache between my brows, I followed the path the shadows had taken. Memorizing the placement of the wards was simple enough. Avoiding one, then another, I took my position in the passage leading into Jay's room.
Click. Click.
Perhaps I no longer bothered to hide even my own footsteps. The moment I drew my sword, they would have known — that an uninvited guest waited within. And since I had no intention of hiding either, a flame that scorched the darkness flared to life, wavering in the air.
"......"
Three figures emerged from that darkness. Even meeting my eyes, they held their silence. I had lived through this exact scene before. If there was anything different from every time before, it was that this sword could endure my mana.
Shff—
A line drawn through the air — it happened in the space of an instant. Like a butterfly alighting on a flower, the movement was so natural that the assassins failed to react. That was their fatal error: letting their tension slip, even for a heartbeat. And when that instant had passed, blood fountained from an assassin's throat.
Even as the man stared at me with bulging eyes and his body crumpled, blades surged toward me. Two swords raining down... no, three. Even the assassin in hiding revealed himself to strike. Shff — the blade at his wrist sprang free, scattering poison. A single graze would paralyze me, so I twisted aside. Spinning, my sword moved with my body as it turned through the air.
It was nothing like they expected. My body had reacted only because I already knew the attack. Had they used something genuinely unpredictable, I might have struggled. But across all those repeated lives, the assassins had always used the same moves. One dies; three strike at once; the strike is evaded with a twist of the body. Shraak—! Only when one assassin's arm went flying did their eyes turn serious. They had grown careless, most likely, because they knew my face. Robert Taylor could never parry their attacks. How did I know that? The answer was simple.
"The Crown Prince."
The assassin who froze for an instant lost his head to my blade. Two remained. At the look in their eyes — asking how I could possibly know that name — I smirked. Apparently they didn't care for that smile, because they dove for my chest in unison. I slipped back, dragging my foot, kicked off the ground, and ducked my head in the same breath to evade the blade arcing in from behind.
The same as always.
Whiing! The sword traced a round arc and swept downward. My gaze stayed fixed on its tip — I knew it would change trajectory here, too. My response differed little from before. Krk — before the blade could land, I thrust upward. Mana-laced steel skewered his heart, and the assassin collapsed where he stood, blood pouring from his lips.
Then silence fell. Only one man still held a blade toward me, and even he had lost his will to fight, standing there blankly. So nothing had changed this time either. Flicking the blood from my sword, I turned — and saw the masked assassin's face.
"Just... who are you?"
As I wiped the blood from my face, the assassin stared back with hollow eyes and asked again. Three men dead in what could only be called an instant — and I was not among them. It must be shocking. The Robert Taylor they knew had been nothing but a foolish young lord. At an answer I had heard far too many times, I sighed and spoke.
"Robert Taylor."
"...I know the name. But are you truly Robert Taylor?"
"You won't believe me no matter what I say."
Shraak—
I knew the exchange that would follow; there was no need to hear it. As I closed the distance, the assassin flinched and readjusted his grip — but that was all. His head had already fallen. I looked down at the dead head, its eyes still wide open. Everything I needed to learn from these men, I had learned in a previous loop. Conducting torture firsthand was, as ever, not a pleasant experience in any respect. I might be the one holding the instruments, but the memories of my own torment surfaced all the same, and it hurt all the same.
No other presence stirred nearby. Lotos and Adele would be far off by now, so it was safe enough to lower my guard. I had just moved to withdraw, thinking of Jay, who would wake soon, when I felt movement behind me.
"You... what are you...?"
When I turned, what met my eyes was a woman who looked scarcely older than a child. I hadn't expected her to wake now. For a moment my brows knitted in dismay — then I considered my own situation. A corridor drenched in blood. A man holding a severed head in one hand, a sword in the other. I wore no mask, and I had entered without tripping a single ward — what would she make of me? I watched those round eyes bulge wider, saw her mouth fall open, and answered.
"I came to save you."
I doubted she'd believe it — but if I didn't say as much, she'd start screaming.
"Haaah... my room..."
Jay whimpered at the sight of the corridor — beyond stained, plastered in blood. She had wailed at Robert's words, too, but only fell quiet after watching the man swing his sword. Had he been an assassin, he would have killed her long since. And if he wasn't an assassin, how on earth had he gotten in here? Much of it made no sense, but she asked nothing more. This was the man who had cut down those assassins alone. The face was one she knew well — but might even that be an illusion woven by magic...? Delusions whirled through Jay's head.
Thankfully, no harm had come to her medicine bottles. The only thing splattered with flesh was this corridor. That was no comfort, of course — what mattered was that she had been saved from the threat. Saved by Robert Taylor, of all people.
Jay knew this man well enough. She had heard he was the Taylor family's useless black sheep — but could this really be the same person? That doubting look on her face was odd enough that Robert narrowed his eyes and spoke.
"I'm the Robert you know. The family disgrace, the problem child. You're not imagining things."
"I... I see."
"You can clean this up soon enough. Do it quickly — someone is coming."
Robert's gaze dropped to the window below. He had told them to wait, yet there were Adele and Lotos, already climbing up, unable to endure even that short a wait. There was no need to show those two this scene. It would be enough if they simply believed he had rescued someone in the nick of time.
"...But why did you save me?"
At Jay's question, Robert turned his head, wiping his bloodstained face with a wet cloth. She flinched for an instant at those emotionless eyes, but curiosity was not so easily dismissed.
"An alchemist — but your true trade was espionage."
Jay's eyes did not waver. She lied better than anyone, so well that even Robert found it difficult to read her true intent. But this was the truth. Her real past — the one she had spoken of with her own lips, and the one he held records of.
"Once attached to the imperial house, you betrayed it — and now you live as a fugitive under the identity of the alchemist Jay."
"How could you possibly—"
"Arwen. I need you."
Jay frowned at eyes unlike any she had ever seen in her life. There was no emotion to read at all. They were not weaving lies the way she herself did — they were simply empty, hollowed out, inhabited by nothing but void. What was she even supposed to say? The gulf between this man and the Robert Taylor she knew was wide enough to call him an entirely different person.
And when he answered her — that he needed her — Robert wiped away the last remaining trace of blood and gave his reply:
"I intend to kill the Crown Prince."
At those words, Jay dropped the beaker in her hand.
Clang—
In stark contrast to the clamor, only silence flowed between the two of them.