A Monumental Day When Man and Woman Were Bound
A fully grown man and woman spending the night under the same roof.
No matter how you slice it, the situation was bound to reek of something improper — the kind of story that would leave everyone involved mortified if it ever got out.
"Whoa, nice place. Guess you're more capable than you look?"
"I manage to live without envy, one way or another."
And that improper, mortifying situation had just landed squarely on me.
By the front door, where only my usual black sneakers had ever sat, a second pair now rested — similar in color, just a little smaller.
The house I had once thought a touch too spacious for one person, usually so quiet, was now filled without pause by the chatter of a single girl.
"Even a princess like me sleeps in a back-alley shipping container. How am I supposed to keep being a princess when this is so unfair?"
"It's not like you enjoy that position anyway."
"Well, true."
I watched Jerie giggle to herself, lost in thought about whatever amused her so much.
I had never pictured a scene like this from the start.
In my mind, Jerie was a hedgehog of a girl — someone you had to coax into lowering the spines she kept bristling around herself before you could get anywhere near her.
Fair enough. Jerie had lived a turbulent life.
Half-kidnapped from her homeland and forced ever since to live as a puppet of the elf elders, a warped outlook or two hardly seemed worth fretting over.
Still — I never expected it to turn out like this.
"Is this really okay?"
"Of course it is. Why else would I invite you?"
I had planned to spend a long time carefully dismantling the walls around her heart. That prediction had been spectacularly wrong.
The moment the words left my mouth, Jerie stormed into my house as if she had been waiting for the cue.
Calling it a "storming in" was a little unfair, given I had just told her she was welcome anytime — but did that distinction even matter right now?
Whatever you called it, this was not the distance you kept with someone you had met for the first time that very day. Of that much I was certain.
"Those old farts must be losing their minds about now."
Sprawled across the sofa, Jerie let out a wicked little cackle.
She embodied the word serves them right so perfectly that even I had to huff a laugh.
"Obviously. The core of their rebellion plan — and their only justification — just walked out on her own two feet."
I wasn't free of worry, but I had to admit it felt good on my end too.
Those fossil elves who had tried to keep Jerie locked under their thumb truly deserved every ugly name in the book for the personalities they flaunted.
Well. What was done was done.
I had contingencies and scenarios of my own mapped out, so there was no point wringing my hands over it.
Even if the elf elders kicked down my door this second, I could subdue the lot of them and hand them over to Security.
All I needed to do for now was keep my guard up and thoroughly enjoy mocking those fossil bastards.
Their group was called the Green Forest Dawn Society, wasn't it?
A name forged from their resolve to restore the glory of the emerald woods.
To me, though, it sounded less like glory and more like a pack of bandits out of some martial arts novel.
"So — how much do you actually know?"
Jerie, who had been rolling around on the sofa, sat bolt upright and fixed her eyes on me.
Those half-lidded eyes of hers and that decadent little smile caught the soft light and glowed.
"Curious?"
"In a situation like this, wouldn't it be weirder not to be curious?"
How much did I know, exactly.
I had expected Jerie to ask that question.
But when it came to the answer, I had no choice but to scrap what I had prepared and give her a revised reply on the spot.
"Then I'll tell you. I know everything."
"…Everything?"
The answer I had originally planned was a kind of push-and-pull.
Dole out the information she wanted in little baited pieces, and when she bit, cast the next line and slowly draw her toward me.
That was how I had intended to stamp myself as an ally in the mind of this wary girl, and lay the foundation for trust.
"I don't lose information wars to just anyone."
"Quite the confidence."
But the situation had changed.
For reasons I couldn't quite pin down, Jerie had lowered the sharp spines she had been aiming at me.
I had no idea when they might spring up again, but for the moment, at least, she was treating me as a partner.
Odd as it was, I could roughly guess why she was being this proactive.
It's the Elixir, most likely.
The Elixir — renowned as the greatest panacea alive.
Its effects cured every disease, restored lost years of life, and could drag even a half-dead corpse back to full health so long as a single breath remained.
It was also the sole reason Jerie had been forced, through gritted teeth, to cooperate with the Green Forest Dawn Society — her only goal and purpose.
Because she has family that can't be saved without an Elixir.
Parents lost to an accident. Two sisters left orphaned at a young age.
Then the older sister collapsed with a terminal illness, and Jerie was left alone.
That was when the Green Forest Dawn Society reached out.
Having taken notice of her Gift, Gaia Nova, they approached the child Jerie with an offer.
—Cooperate with us. When everything is finished, we will cure your sister's illness.
Jerie had been only a child then, but she was clever.
She knew those outstretched hands were the rotting claws of a devil.
She knew — and yet a ten-year-old Jerie could not bring herself to refuse them.
—Promise you'll keep your word.
—That depends on you, doesn't it? If you drag your feet and things finish late, your sister may already have left this world.
That was the end of it.
To heal her sister, Jerie threw herself into the Green Forest Dawn Society of her own free will.
For the last of her family, she accepted their elevation and became their princess.
She hated the position. She knew it was wrong.
She was sickened by the elders' filthy desires and despised their mad, contradictory path.
And still, she could not leave.
She could not report the Green Forest Dawn Society to Arca Security and wipe them out, nor simply run and reclaim a life of her own.
If she did, she would never get the Elixir.
She would never cure her sister's illness.
And that was when I showed up.
The Elixir — superior to the Philosopher's Stone in certain respects — traces its origin to alchemy.
It is the supreme panacea and catalyst completed by the first Hohenheim, founder of the house.
Born of alchemical manufacture from the start, any alchemist with the materials can produce one even now.
Except that in this world, Elixirs are made only by the House of Hohenheim.
They are the sole suppliers who manufacture and sell them.
The supply is vanishingly small, and every time one surfaces, the price rockets into the stratosphere.
The reason is simple enough.
The Elixir's Transmutation Circle is an extremely complex high-order array, and even the list of materials is treated as a closely guarded Hohenheim secret.
Except for me.
It didn't matter how tightly the Hohenheims locked their secrets away, or how the Green Forest Dawn Society had scraped together a single unit to dangle in front of Jerie.
To me, an Elixir was a potion I could stamp out like factory product the moment I had the materials.
"Jerie. Just one question."
"Sure. What?"
"You came all the way to my house because of the Elixir, right?"
At my question, Jerie closed her mouth, and silence settled over the room.
It did not last long before it lifted on its own.
"Yeah. If you can actually make an Elixir, there's nothing for me to lose by trusting you."
Her expression darkened a little.
Watching that sly, playful air vanish as if it had never been, I saw the fragile girl of her age laid bare.
Those half-closed eyes and that decadent smile were not the face she had been born with.
They were the result of a young girl thrashing to keep from being underestimated — to keep from being wholly steered by the elders' hands.
She left her eyes half-open and unfocused so her thoughts would not be easy to read.
She held a smile and kept her mouth shut so no surge of feeling would hand anyone a weakness.
That expression had set and hardened over one year, five, ten.
A harsh world had stolen the light she had pushed down into the deepest reaches of her eyes.
What had once looked like a pale, fidgeting smile had slowly curdled into a decadent one thick with self-mockery and self-reproach.
And I intended to give Jerie back what she deserved — everything she had lost.
"Then help me."
But like every change, nothing shifts unless the person themselves wants to change.
Fortunately, the Jerie before me had the will to change. All I needed to do was show her a hope solid enough to move on.
"Help you? You don't look weak enough to need my help."
Jerie tilted her head at the request.
She was probably recalling how easily I had blocked every one of her attacks in the industrial district — but what I meant had nothing to do with who was stronger.
It was about what each of us could do from our own position. Roles.
"I need you. I need the 'Princess of the Green Forest Dawn Society' cooperating with me in earnest."
Reading the gravity on my face and in the air, Jerie lowered her voice a notch and asked why.
I answered her short question.
"I'm going to pull the Green Forest Dawn Society up by the roots and wipe it out completely."
They would not go quietly.
Even if they vanished, the outcome might not be the one I wanted.
That was why I needed Jerie.
As the woman they themselves had elevated to princess, she could steer their downfall firmly in the direction I required.
"I have a lot of enemies. More precisely — I know a lot of villains who deserve to be erased."
The Green Forest Dawn Society and the House of Hohenheim right in front of me were case enough.
They were not merely separate organizations; they were bound in something close to an alliance.
That single physical Elixir they dangled while recruiting Jerie was the one unit the Hohenheims handed over as proof of the pact.
The Green Forest Dawn Society had no intention of surrendering the Elixir even after their goal was met.
Their rebellion would begin with the death of Jerie's sister.
If I did not step in, Jerie was doomed to be used and discarded for the rest of her life.
"Can you use a Binding Oath?"
"I can. You have to learn it if you don't want a knife in the back in a world like this."
"Then use it."
A Binding Oath was a kind of geas.
Both parties made a promise and set the price of breaking it.
I brought the Binding Oath up and waited for Jerie to draw it out.
"I swear on my name and my life. Before this year ends, I will provide Jerie Beloborg with a sufficient quantity of Elixir."
I had put my life on the line.
It was only a verbal contract with no paper, but the Binding Oath guaranteed its weight.
Jerie's eyes went round with shock. She bit her moving lips for a moment, then answered my vow in a voice that trembled, just slightly.
"I, Jerie Beloborg, accept Ryu Seojun's oath, and swear to cooperate fully with his plan."
The mutual vow was complete.
Somehow, ominous ash-gray threads stretched from both our hearts and knotted into one.
This went far better than I expected.
It was an unfair contract with only my life on the line, but I wasn't particularly worried.
If anything, the harvest was bigger than planned, and I was grinning on the inside.
I can bring down the Green Forest Dawn Society whenever I want now.
With Jerie — the very justification for their existence — turned to my side, the society's destruction was only a matter of time.
"So, where am I sleeping? It is the monumental day a man and woman were bound, so sharing a bed wouldn't be a problem."
"Please don't describe having our lives tied by an oath that way. Any room except mine at the end of the hall is yours to take."
Jerie's mischievous side had resurfaced for no good reason, but I found I didn't entirely dislike it.
What I was hearing now was not the performance of a girl under a crushing burden, but the genuine playfulness of someone who finally felt lighter.
Looks like I'll be finishing lesson prep tonight.
There was always the chance the Green Forest Dawn Society's elf elders might try something overnight.
The odds were low, but this was an unprecedented crisis — their princess vanishing without a trace.
From their perspective it was more than enough to declare an emergency, so I stayed up preparing for class with the documents Charlotte had given me, ready for the worst.
"Haaah. Morning. You look exhausted."
And morning arrived without a single incident.
Facing a dawn loaded with nothing but fatigue, I almost regretted not just going to sleep.
If I'd only learned ether cultivation, this level of exhaustion wouldn't even register.
I really needed to get Sayulcheon to teach me a cultivation method.
Whatever else I neglected, basic physical capability and cultivation techniques were non-negotiable.
"You look refreshed."
"Ah, right. Of every place I've ever slept in my life, this one was the best."
Whether she knew what I was thinking or not, Jerie simply beamed, in high spirits.
Knowing the life she had lived, I couldn't exactly scold the poor half-elf or give her the cold shoulder.
"I'm hungry."
"I'll fix something before I head to work. Just give me a moment."
…Somehow, it was a morning that brought Albedo to mind.