What Do You Mean, an Academy? That's Insane — 9
I heard what had happened that day from Victoria's point of view. She laid it out in order, from the moment she left the school dormitory to the moment she made it back to the harbor.
While she spoke, Beatrice did not believe a word of it at first. That began to change around the time Victoria said, quite calmly, that she had survived because the sahagins' patterns of behavior were simple. Beatrice seemed to have understood that her daughter was recounting something she had actually lived through.
Little by little her expression twisted, and when she heard that a sahagin had stabbed Victoria in the thigh, she cut the story short and checked the girl's condition herself.
"If the sahagins kidnapped you, you were supposed to run. Why did the goal suddenly turn into getting rid of whoever was behind it?"
"I told you, didn't I? My side felt strangely wrong, and when I touched it, scales were coming in. And the sahagin documents. I could read them a little, because of that general-education class on other species' scripts, so I vaguely hoped that if I ruined whatever they were doing, I'd get better."
So that was how she class-changed into a Sahagin Butcher.
When Victoria said she had been turning into a sahagin, Beatrice was genuinely shocked. She calmed almost at once, though, once Victoria—dressed in something thin and close to a tank top, with very little cloth to it—showed her the side in question.
Had she worn something that thin on purpose? No. When I looked through the memories, it was summer, and she had simply dressed as she always did.
In any case, Beatrice rubbed at the corners of her eyes as if her head ached. The skin there had already gone black with fatigue the first time I saw her, and she looked terribly haggard. Then she pointed at me.
"Those monsters summoned a god, and you're saying the one who was there was Bel?"
"Yeah. But according to her, she wasn't the god who was supposed to be summoned."
Both of their gazes turned to me, and I nodded. Dagon, at least, had been as good as the one true god of the world he was born into.
"So you made a contract with Bel when your life was in danger, and that's how you survived."
"Yeah. I stopped turning into a fish, and I got this ability too. I'll say it again—if I didn't have this power, it wouldn't even have been strange if I'd died back there, right?"
A liquid verging on deep brown rose lightly out of Victoria's teacup and into the empty air. It shifted through one symbol after another, then dropped back into the cup with a plop. Victoria caught the end of her hair, tied off to one side, and shook it toward Beatrice.
"This hair isn't dye. It's from the contract. My skin went pale too, see? Even the scar I got crashing my bicycle when I was little is gone!"
Smiling, Victoria lifted her left leg—and then, under the sharp look Beatrice turned on her, carefully lowered it again.
Beatrice stared straight into my eyes and asked, her voice low, as if she would not permit a lie.
"This child can say all that. Why did you make a contract with her?"
But what was I supposed to do? It was already too late. I had crossed the river of no return long ago, so I decided to tell her nothing but the facts, and to make them easy to understand.
In truth, there had been only one living creature. The rest had been swept clean away by the security devices Dagon had prepared.
Victoria blinked at that. It seemed strange to her that I had contracted with her for such a reason.
"Uh... you kept me alive for that?"
"The ones who summoned me lost their lives because they summoned wrong, and you were the only one left."
All of it was true. They had gone and died on their own before I could do a thing.
"Tell me the terms of the contract."
Beatrice's words came sharp. It was not so difficult a thing, so I recited the wording, and her brow furrowed as she listened.
"That means you're taking everything my daughter has."
"No, Mom. If I hadn't contracted then, I would've turned into a fish and been swimming around in that rainforest. I'm telling you."
She didn't seem to consider what she herself had stopped with her own ability. Even if she had become a fish, she would have died there. Remembering how the first body I entered had been ground down to half, as if set in a grinder and milled, she ought to have known she would not have come through unharmed.
"You look like a demon who means to take my daughter's soul."
Yes. She thought exactly that, and the glare she fixed on me was openly hostile. I could feel the fervor in her—she would get it back, no matter what it took.
But she could not get it back. The contract was already complete, and the warmth could be taken at any moment. I would have to settle her with nothing but the truth.
"I have no interest in souls. When someone dies, I simply go to them, take their last warmth, and that is the end. I keep using this wording only because it was the very first contract I ever made."
That was the truth. If I tried some other phrasing and it failed, that would be a problem, and if I revised the contract and then—as had happened before—failed to obtain dominion over one's descendants, or the right of survival, whichever it had been, that would be a problem too. I knew this was why an old system stays where it is until it can no longer keep pace with the age and breaks down. There was no reason to take the risk of changing it.
"Then what if I made a contract too?"
Beatrice asked it while gazing at me steadily, turning wariness and suspicion my way, and killing intent with them.
Agree on the spot, and the revolver in her hand would spit fire. It would not kill me. But there were Soo's last words to consider, and I had already produced five harvesters, so here I took one step back.
"Please set that aside."
"Set it aside?"
Her suspicion only deepened. I had chosen neither yes nor no, but a postponement, and in the long view a postponement becomes a yes. Here, I decided, I would add an excuse.
"A contract can be made only once for each living being. In the moment you contract, every wound is healed, but if you are wounded afterward and begin to die, I can only watch, the same as before. So please think of the contract as a spare life."
Did it sound like a sentence full of goodwill? For me, though, obtaining warmth was success enough on its own. Everything beyond that was a bonus. If the situation was friendly, it was better to keep it that way.
The five who had attacked me were no different. I put on a thin imitation of religion, offered a few words, and they were enthralled and contracted before long. If anyone asked them about the contract, they would remember me as a good person. Even if they took that power and did filthy things with it, I could defend myself by saying they had simply chosen it on their own.
I stood at the border of the truth, told no lie, and dealt in falsehood all the same.
At my explanation Beatrice studied me with a complicated expression, and then, as if her thoughts had settled, she asked one question.
"Someone. Was there someone you lost, because you couldn't help them?"
I was silent.
It was not that I could not have helped. I only needed to have been a little bolder—to step forward, take the immortals' attacks, and twist them.
"All right. I understand. Bel. Are you a god?"
That, I could answer with certainty.
I answered in the spirit of a meow. Just that much. I was not a god who could do anything and obtain anything. Far from perfect—a beast shivering in the cold, craving warmth.
"Fine. Next question, then. Why did you follow my daughter?"
"Victoria dragged me here."
"What?"
Beatrice's head whipped toward Victoria. Curses were all but dripping from her eyes, but I could see her forcing them back because I was standing right there.
"But Mom. What she said to me was, 'I don't want to go home.'"
I had said that. In truth, I did not want to return to the bottom.
"Mom! I'll raise her properly!"
Am I actually supposed to meow?
Beatrice's face crumpled. Words that made her head ache kept bursting out of the girl, and the urge to hit her was dripping off Beatrice in plain sight.
"Are you in your right mind, or aren't you?"
"She's not that bad a person."
What reached me, translated, was that I was not a bad beast—and I doubted I was the only one hearing it that way. Beatrice wore the face of an adult looking at a child who had scooped some animal up off the roadside on a whim, carried it inside, and announced that she meant to keep it.
"The house is big anyway! Just for the break, okay?"
The house really was quite large. It was no wealthy neighborhood, of course, but it looked like a home where people lived comfortably enough.
"Fine. Only during the break. Haah. What am I actually supposed to do with this. Right. Tori. There's a guest room, so Bel can use that. Here I thought you'd brought a friend home from school..."
With a deep sigh, Beatrice rose from the table, stepped over to Victoria's side, and smacked her on the head with a solid thud.
"Mom! Thank you!"
Victoria did not look hurt in the slightest. She threw her arms around Beatrice, who shoved the embrace away as if it were revolting and came to stand in front of me.
The matter was settled. I got to my feet.
"The years I have lived as a person, added together, come to less than three digits. What I am is a monster."
"So that was the question from earlier."
With a bitter smile, Beatrice held out her hand, hesitated once, and held it out again. I took it.
"But why won't you say your exact age?"
Victoria cut in from beside us. I let go of Beatrice's hand and answered.
"The cycles are different, so I don't know which one to measure by."
"Cycles?"
"Orbital periods. Put simply, how many days are in a year."
"It's 318 days here, though?"
"One place had 365 days. One had 415. The last had 639."
I was speaking of a span of time held in faded memory, and of the day-counts of two worlds that shone bright. I suspected the second world had lain about as far out as Mars. It was not a fact of any great importance.
"A year is different in other worlds?"
"Yes. It differs from world to world. I'm not clever enough to calculate an exact age, so I can't tell you any more precisely than that."
Judging by Victoria's memories, she still did not know much about the cosmos. Of course there would be people here who knew in detail. Human beings had been looking up at the sky since the distant past. But that knowledge was not spread everywhere—at least, not at the level Victoria knew.
"But you're a monster."
"What do you take a monster for? It is because I am a monster. To return to the matter at hand, Mrs. Beatrice Vett."
I eased Victoria aside and finished the greeting.
"I'll be imposing on you for a while. Please look after me."
Beatrice heard it and looked at Victoria. Then she spoke.
"Better than my own daughter."
"Mom!"
Victoria flared and lunged at her, indignant, demanding to know exactly in what way she fell short.
It was just like the days I had spent with Soo in Choseol's body. Thinking so, I took one step back and watched the two of them bicker.