Lingering Echoes - 3
The fireworks went on bursting for a long while yet, until at last they faded little by little and the night sky began to show through again, just as it had always been.
The afterglow of what had just passed was hardly the sort of thing to vanish so easily, and I remained sunk in thought as I slowly lowered my head. I hadn't expected to watch fireworks here, of all places. The ones from the Full Moon Festival seemed to have left a rather vivid mark on Adele's memory.
Though what I had seen that night wasn't the fireworks at all — it was Adele, standing beneath their light.
There was no need to tell her that, I supposed.
This loop could fairly be called the first to pass wholly beyond the Singularity since I had begun breaking off my engagement with Theresia. Some of what had happened I had already lived through before, but never once had my fate become entangled with Adele, Adrian, and Mirajane all at the same time.
Perhaps it would have been better if I had let go of my expectations for Yuria and Theresia from the very start. If I had abandoned any hope that they would change, and instead dug only into the Crown Prince, tightening the noose around his throat alone — then maybe I wouldn't have had to face the memories surfacing in my mind right now.
"You don't look too happy. For someone who just got told she's pretty."
At the voice that came suddenly, I lifted my head to find Adele watching me with an odd expression. To me, too, the words she had just let slip sounded loaded with meaning.
"A very long time ago, I think I wanted to show you this."
That was the line I meant — it had sounded exactly as if she remembered a previous life.
Even as I told myself that couldn't be, some small what-if made me want to confess my regression. To speak of my hundred lives, of three hundred years. Would Adele truly understand, if I did?
But when I looked at her face with that thought in mind and caught the faint smile resting at the corner of her lips, fear seized me all at once. The fear that she might see me as some kind of madman.
Letting out a sigh at that ever-present dread, I slowly parted my lips.
"I'm fine. Something just came to mind."
"Came to mind?"
"I suppose you'd call it something from long ago."
Going by the calendar, it would be a point several months from now — but for me, it was already decades in the past. The North before Adele died, and the North I visited after she was gone. The reason I had been reluctant to stay at Adele's side in the first place was that I hadn't welcomed this kind of moment returning.
Of course, I knew by now that it was something beyond undoing, so all I could do was watch her with a heart full of tangled feelings.
At the words long ago, Adele knit her brows, then twisted the corner of her mouth and spoke again.
"Seems there are an awful lot of old stories I don't know about. Considering I'm the older one here, aren't I?"
"That's true enough. We're three years apart, after all."
"And yet you're stuffed full of secrets. The nerve of it, really."
Even as she said so, she didn't seem to have any intention of pressing me further. Adele lived as though the world were hers to arrange, but she had a line of her own that she kept. The trouble was that the line only applied to those who pleased her — though fortunately, I happened to meet that standard.
Adele was quite fond of me. I might not have known why in the past, but I knew now. It was because my manner was rather like her father's, I supposed.
Adele had first raised her mercenary band for one reason: to find her father. To hunt down news of the man who had abandoned her in childhood — and to slap him across the face for it. There had been no shortage of people willing to threaten a girl holding nothing but a sword. But Adele's talent burned so brilliantly that it took her exactly five years to become the leader of a band with no rival in all the North.
By the time she led that band to the seat of Grand Duke, Adele had gained a great deal — and lost a single thing.
"—I thought I'd gained everything, only to find I never did track down my father."
The expression Adele had worn as she said it was flat. As if it were nothing at all, as if it were merely an old story, her face had been blank. But that numb look was precisely the proof that she was shaken. She was superimposing that father onto me. I had heard her say it before, too — that I felt like someone who might vanish without a word one day.
"—I was always afraid you'd disappear. My father was like that too, with those same hazy eyes as yours."
It was the same scenery, yet what Adele said then and what she says now were worlds apart. Perhaps it was a difference in where we stood in time. In the loops where I had been in the North, I had always remained here, season after season.
But I was one who had to leave now. Leave the North, go south, and finish what still needed finishing.
I swept away the memories lingering in my head and met Adele's eyes once more. For two days I had thought not only of Theresia, but of how I would ever bring up the matter of treason with Adele. And in the end, I hadn't been able to force the words past my lips. Because spoken aloud, I feared I might fail to keep my feelings steady against the old memories.
So I had settled on writing it in a letter instead. It might look rather strange, but telling her to read it later was the better way. Explaining her death would take a long time, and raising death out of nowhere in an atmosphere like this would have been odd in its own right — better to give her the space to think it over in her own way. If she read everything written in that letter, I believed she would at least be able to accept it. And even if she didn't believe it, that was fine. If Adele still set out for the Imperial Palace all the same, I would stop her — even if it meant rewriting the plan.
"I have something to give you as well."
"Something to give me?"
"Do you read letters?"
When I drew a neatly wrapped letter from inside my coat, Adele stared at me blankly. Reading the embarrassment in her wavering eyes, I smiled faintly and laid the letter gently into her hands.
"Read it after I'm gone. I've written down everything I wanted to say."
"...What a pointless thing to do. Handing it over like this — do you actually think I'll read it?"
"I'd like you to. Please."
At the faint desperation in my voice, Adele's brow creased. I suspected she wouldn't be able to refuse. She might have, when we first met — but by now, she couldn't help being curious about this letter. Besides, it was a letter from me. After eyeing the thing in her hand for a moment, Adele accepted it with a little cough.
"Don't write letters like this again. You'd be better off swinging your sword with the time."
"I likely won't see you for a long while after I leave this time. Consider it my farewell."
"A long while? Hm. Right. I suppose we won't be seeing each other for quite some time."
With a meaningful smile, Adele slowly rose to her feet. The night sky, emptied of fireworks, had regained its silence. The light spread around us had faded completely now; it was the hour when the forest began to darken again, steeping itself once more in the shadows of night.
It was probably time to head back — and Adele seemed to think the same, quietly parting her lips.
"Let's head back. You need your sleep too."
Rustle.
Each time Adele moved, I heard the crunch of leaves underfoot. Perhaps she had grown used to the heels, for she strode along briskly — until she noticed I was trailing behind and turned her head.
"You shouldn't be slower than me. What do you think you're doing, falling behind a woman in heels?"
"I'm walking behind you on purpose."
I took one deliberate step, then another, and came to stand beside Adele.
"Because if you stumble, I'll need to catch you from behind."
"I won't stumble. I've gotten completely used to them by now."
"I'm sure you have."
A little further, and the main castle would come into view. When had we walked out this far? Realizing we had come much farther from the castle than I'd thought, I clicked my tongue. Going by the hour, it had to be nearing midnight.
The people who would soon gather beneath the bell tower to await the coming year were nowhere to be seen, but the tower standing tall in the distance was unmistakably visible.
"So it wasn't the new year yet. The fireworks went off a little ahead of the hour."
"The bell is the most important part of welcoming the new year, after all. I'd call it only natural."
"I hate the bell ringing. It hurts my ears."
And yet she never had it done away with — perhaps, in her own way, she was looking after the people of the North. The bell would likely ring before long. Up on the tower, a priest was offering a prayer toward the crowds below, then making his preparations for the tolling.
When I paused our walk to the castle and quietly watched, Adele spoke softly.
"...Come to think of it, I never did apologize to you, did I. The new year hasn't arrived yet, so I'd better say it now."
Slender fingers tugged at my sleeve, and at that small touch I turned my head. Hesitant, faintly abashed, blinking again and again, Adele nibbled at her lip.
The word apology puzzled me. Then I remembered her temper with me the other day, and simply waited for her to speak.
A little time slipped by — until the priest, his tolling all but finished, stretched out his hand toward the bell.
"I'm sorry. For getting angry at you."
The fingers that had pinched my sleeve had, at some point, become a palm. It closed around my arm and held on, as though to say I wasn't to run off. My arm was now caught in Adele's grip.
Clasping my wrist tight, Adele stared hard at me and went on.
"For cutting your throat when we first met. For acting on my whims, a little too often. I'm sorry for those... that's what I've thought."
"Didn't you already apologize for all that, some time ago?"
"I just feel like if I don't say it now, I never will."
At those sudden words I raised my head, and Adele, her gaze slipping from me, was looking at the bell tower by then. Her expression was one of recalling something — and yet, as if even that weren't certain, her brow was furrowed.
"If I don't say it now... I don't think I'll be able to say it at all."
Her unease was plain to see. But I couldn't tell what she was anxious about, so all I did was slowly close my hand around the one gripping my wrist. The hand that had tightened for a moment gradually loosened. And as it fell away, my fingers slipped in between.
Beneath the cold wind, our warmth overlapped. It was barely a palm's worth of skin pressed together, but it was contact enough to feel each other's heat. It was less a grasp than simply offering my hand to be held — meant only to ease her anxiety a little. Instead, Adele flinched, startled, her eyes flying wide open.
I met her wavering blue eyes. Then came a brief silence — a fleeting moment that felt like an age — and when it passed,
Dong—
The bell announcing the new year began to fill the air around us.
"I am here."
"...I know."
"I was here last year, and here I am again this year, aren't I?"
The bell had tolled, and the year had turned — yet nothing had changed. Robert at twenty, Robert at twenty-one: neither was any different in standing at Adele's side. Even if the unease Adele felt was only her uncanny instinct — even if it was a premonition of her own death — it was no reason for her to be afraid.
"Is it that you hate the thought of me going?"
"Don't talk nonsense. It's just a feeling I have, that's all."
"Then make a bet with me. Whether we'll watch the bell ring together next year — or whether we won't."
Adele, having no idea what I meant by that, gave me a strange look. But I knew exactly what would become of her next year. Adele would not be here next year. In every loop until now, she had always died this winter. It was a fact that only I knew — so the bet was, in truth, a wager I was making with myself.
"Which side will you bet on?"
Still, I asked without letting any of it show. I trusted that Adele would bet on my being here next year as well. And just as I expected, she answered without a moment's hesitation — as though stating the obvious, her expression careless.
"I'll bet on watching it together. So what does the one who loses have to do?"
"Hmm. Let's see."
The answer to this bet would surely come down to a single outcome: the side Adele had chosen — watching the tolling together. Adele was not going to die. Even if the future was already set that way, I had no intention of standing by and simply watching it happen, so it was only natural.
"The loser grants the winner one wish."
"Not bad."
I supposed I had better start thinking about what wish she might make. Because in this life, Adele Igrit would survive — without fail. Just like the phrase Adele was always tossing around: because I had decided it would be so.