An Oath to the Stars
An Oath to the Stars
The place Isabella reached after running endlessly was the same hill where they had watched the stars together the night before. She climbed the slope, gasping for breath.
It was her third time coming here, so even though it was a night steeped in deep darkness, she navigated the path well, and her clothes remained unsoiled.
Besides, the trail they had made that day was still there, so she was able to follow it and ascend toward that place without difficulty.
At the same time, the many emotions she had felt that day began to intersect. It was then that the memories of 'Isabella' — who had felt emotions entirely opposite to the revulsion she was feeling now — became particularly hard to stomach.
The back of that damned bastard's head came into view.
'Isabella' had liked that silhouette.
She had loved the sight of him holding her hand and leading her forward,
and she had followed behind him with a racing heart.
But Isabella — the Isabella of now — couldn't stand it.
The emotions she had felt that day were simply boiling up again. It felt as though murky, negative feelings were surging up from her core, and Isabella, unable to endure the sensation of her blood running hot, screamed at Zeke.
"Hey, you son of a bitch!"
There was no honorific to be found there.
She didn't even want to call him by his name.
But Zeke still loved that voice.
"...You called for me?"
Even though it was an insult, all he did was answer.
Zeke's face wore a shattered expression.
Isabella thought that expression suited him perfectly.
"...Did you have fun?"
It was the question she had wanted to ask.
But because it was somewhat vague,
Zeke did not answer and waited for what came next.
"Did you have fun playing with me?!"
Isabella could barely contain her fury.
What had been going through the mind of the man who had read that day's letter when he stood before her and confessed his feelings? What had made him happy enough to smile in front of her? He had babbled apologies and yet never said anything with certainty... Isabella found all of it so loathsome, so infuriating, so utterly contemptible, and she screamed.
"You want me to be happy? And what? You're asking if you can ask whether I'll forgive you?"
Isabella railed at him, item by item.
"Everyone was miserable because of you — so do you think I'm some kind of idiot who'd forgive a bastard like you?"
She hurled the words at Zeke like a blade.
"I hate you, you son of a bitch! I wish you'd just die as you are!"
But for some reason, her heart began to ache.
"...So why did you make me spew that kind of bullshit? You son of a bitch."
At the same time, Isabella gripped the pendant in her hand.
The cold feel of the pendant spread across her palm.
And a chill far worse than coldness spread through her heart.
"...You love me, you loved me, and you will love me?"
She believed the pendant was the cause.
So Isabella roughly tore it off.
"...Don't give me that crap."
The moment she tore it off, a sharper pain lanced through her.
It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes.
But Isabella was beyond stopping.
She hurled the pendant — the one she had handed over that day — straight at him.
"...I don't want something like that. Taking it makes me so disgusted I want to retch."
Thunk. The pendant dropped to the ground.
'...This is strange.'
She had clearly removed the cause.
Yet for some reason, her heart only ached more.
Enough that the flowing tears soaked her clothes.
But because she hated that so much,
Isabella slowly moved her feet forward.
"...Why did you make that choice that day?"
And then she asked the question she had kept in her heart all along.
"...Why did you save me?"
Why had he deflected the assassin's strike?
"...I believed it was the right thing to do. Killing an ordinary person who had nothing to do with any of it was not just — that was what I thought, and so I merely deflected the blow."
She heard the answer from the man himself — the same answer from that day.
But Isabella did not stop.
"...Then why didn't you tell anyone about it?"
Isabella asked for the reason behind his hypocrisy.
"...Even so, I wanted to be acknowledged. It was the first battlefield I had set foot on in a capacity other than as the Hero. So, as a human being before the Hero — as the sword of the Empire — I wanted to be recognized. That was why."
Zeke had taken part in that battle not as the Hero, but as the Imperial Prince. After all, he could hardly march onto a battlefield where he might end up killing the Saint under the Hero's name. And so, that day's battlefield was the first time he stood as the sword of the Empire.
"...And you're telling me that's your reason now?"
Before she knew it, Isabella had drawn right up to Zeke's face. She stopped in front of the pendant she had thrown and, with her two tear-filled eyes, stared into Zeke's. Those starlight eyes, brimming with guilt, were utterly revolting to her.
Because she resented the Hero standing before her so unbearably — the man who had killed her friends out of a childish stubbornness to be acknowledged, yet still babbled self-righteous nonsense about wanting to do the right thing, and had spared her life through sheer hypocrisy.
She instinctively seized him by the collar. Zeke was taller, so Isabella put strength into her hands, intending to pull him down to her eye level.
...Normally, Zeke would not have budged an inch. After all, compared to the Hero, Isabella had a frail body. But Zeke moved his body to follow her pull, and
for the very first time, they faced each other at the same eye level.
"...And now, you're standing here babbling at me to forgive someone like you?"
Isabella ground her teeth. She simply could not understand. She had no way of knowing whether it was right for this disgusting hypocrite to be asking her for forgiveness now.
Her hand moved on instinct.
And then Isabella slapped Zeke across the cheek.
Zeke took it without a single word.
But that alone was nowhere near enough to quell Isabella's fury.
"Thank you."
She said it and kept hitting Zeke.
"For being exactly as much of a piece of trash as I thought you were."
Zeke's cheek did not redden.
The Hero's body would not be wounded by something like this.
And that only made Isabella more spiteful.
"Thanks to that, even when I hit you like this, my conscience doesn't hurt at all."
The palm of the one doing the hitting grew tender.
The winter wind swept over that swelling hand.
"Thank you so much, you son of a bitch!"
She felt a pain as though she were being cut by a knife.
The sensation in her palm gradually disappeared. A sharp agony began to rise, as if the very bones composing it had developed a hairline fracture, but Isabella ignored it and kept hitting him.
Then, with a sigh, she stopped the beating.
And then, steadily,
she let out the thoughts she had harbored since that day.
"......Why the hell did you do it?"
She wanted to hear the reason.
"...Just kill me! Or else, tell them you saved me!"
Zeke himself must have regretted it countless times.
And then, having finished slapping the man responsible, Isabella wept and screamed.
"Why the hell did you act so half-heartedly and make things turn out like that?! ...Why did you do that to Rosaria and Canaria?"
It was impossible to understand the contradiction. Even Zeke himself had not understood his own actions that day — so how could Isabella, an outsider, possibly understand the choice he had made?
"...And after all that, why did you fall in love with me, you fucking psycho!"
And then she began the story of 'Isabella.'
"...Why didn't you tell me? Why did you hide it from me — that you're a son of a bitch who pulled that kind of shit?"
If only he hadn't hidden it.
If only he had told the story honestly.
"If you had, I would have hated you from the start."
The pain began to intensify.
"...If you had, I wouldn't be hurting this badly right now."
The more she opened her mouth, the worse it grew.
"...And you wouldn't have had to stand before me, crying so disgustingly, would you?"
And that pain was the same for Zeke.
At some point, Zeke was shedding tears just the same.
But even that was part of Isabella's question.
"...It was because I loved Isabella."
And so, all he could do was answer it.
"...Because she was someone I came to love, however belatedly."
Twisted affection had been where it started.
"...And so, I thought even a lie would be fine."
He had cowardly exploited the fact that he had noticed her fondness for him.
"...Because I was afraid of the misfortune to come."
He had merely needed a support to lean on against the storm of unhappiness. And so, Zeke had confessed his feelings.
"...What kind of nerve do you have, loving me?"
Every single one of his actions disgusted Isabella.
And so, she intended to loathe even the very reason it had begun.
Because if she did, this vermin would have no grounds left to love her.
If she denied it all from beginning to end, he would collapse and fall away.
"...Isabella was the first person I had saved since that day. The first person who did not resent me, who did not curse me. Even if it was a smile made by a lie born of erased memories... it was beautiful. And the desire to keep seeing it — that was how it began."