Chapter 154
Polaris turned her gaze from me to Victoria.
"Tori, what kind of magic was that just now? I didn't feel a trace of mana. It's the same thing as the floor getting wet a moment ago, isn't it?"
She said it while looking at Victoria, her voice blazing with excitement — nothing like the way she had been speaking to me. She went straight to a pet name. The sort of person who closes the distance in long, eager strides.
Victoria looked at me as if she were in a terrible spot. Looking at me like that wouldn't help. There was nothing I could do for her.
"Is it really a superpower, the way they showed it on the broadcast? What else can you do?"
Polaris stepped right up to her.
Victoria began to explain, fumbling.
"Yeah. A superpower. Water is all I can handle."
She drew a thin stream up out of the empty air. Polaris studied it intently.
"No mana after all. So it isn't magic. Mm. A superpower you can use without trouble even in a city short on mana? That's frightening."
Victoria tilted her head.
"Frightening? Next to magic, it's nothing much, is it?"
Polaris giggled, and as she did she jabbed a finger into Victoria's chest, right over her heart.
"It isn't the superpower that's frightening. You are, Tori. You followed along ready to bury me if things went wrong, didn't you? The killing intent was prickling."
At that, Victoria turned her head a little aside, slipping out from under Polaris's eyes. Polaris squared her shoulders.
"See? Children like you are rare. And then a power like this on top of it. Any interest in knighthood? You'd be a noble, of a sort, and I could look after you a great deal. Won't you think it over?"
A rise from commoner to knight. In a society that still kept its class system, it was a fine opportunity. Victoria shook her head all the same.
"A knight is a knight, but my dream is to be a Clockwork Knight. If you want some other kind, go find someone else."
"Would giving you a factory do it?"
Interest flickered across Victoria's face at the casual probe. Then she whipped her head from side to side in a violent refusal, and Polaris laughed, soft little chuckles.
"A pity. If the mood ever takes you, come to the Bearington marquisate. Should the you of that day still be someone I like, I won't be stingy with my support."
With that she offered a brief farewell and headed off toward the building.
"What a storm of a person. I don't think she's a bad one, though. Her voice dropped when she said an acquaintance had withdrawn — thinking about that, I believe she meant to help Bell."
"You think so?"
"It was a little funny, the way the wariness came in the moment she heard I'd met the prince."
"I thought so too."
There seemed to have been a blood feud in the prince's year.
Using even a benefactor as bait when the need arose — that earned a passing mark as a Harvester. Set that point aside, and I rather liked her.
"Are we going to Theodore now?"
Victoria asked it carefully, watching my face. Instead of answering, I nudged the subject aside.
"I didn't know Theodore's body was like that."
"You met him before, didn't you? You didn't notice then?"
"He stayed seated the whole time. I assumed that was just how people of high rank were, so I never had cause to look closely."
In every world I had been something close to an outsider, so attention like this was new to me.
So long as I had a body in this world, I was not merely watching through the Harvesters. I was inside it. Following the current and gathering the warmth that spilled over and fell away had been enough. Could I make the current myself?
It felt like playing a simulation and realizing I could step inside and become the player.
Until I had a foundation under me, I would rather pretend I had no self. An opportunity like this was unlikely to come around often.
Hmm.
When had I ever done anything while weighing this and that? I had always aimed at a single goal and, in the spaces between, done what I could. This time, too, I would answer things as they came.
Once the subject had shifted, Victoria didn't ask about Theodore again. She started to grumble.
"Why did I suddenly get into the Royal Academy and end up like this?"
"If you take it as not shutting notable people out, but taking them in, you have to call it open."
To know for certain I would need the history, and the international situation as it stood. I didn't have either. Among the memories my Harvesters held now, there was almost nothing about foreign countries — at most a rumor that some great incident had occurred somewhere, or a trifle such as the food there having tasted good.
Turn that person of Theodore's into a Harvester, and I expected I could obtain useful information.
But I wouldn't make contact.
It wasn't a difficult situation in the least. Use a fact as a weapon, and you become bound to that fact. A fact is as constraining as it is powerful. And if the aim was treating a disability, they would approach first. I would let this side keep the initiative.
"Say, is Bell smart?"
"No. My head is poor. I know a great deal, so I'm confident when it comes to interpretation, but I can't take the information I have and make something new out of it, or predict. In short, that's it. I lack creativity."
Reading the thing in front of you from information you have taken in, and inferring the future, are entirely different functions.
That did not seem to be how it looked to Victoria.
"Then apologize to the Clockwork Knight hopefuls who scream because they can't manage even a simple reading."
"Memorize enough, and it'll be fine."
"I'm telling you, no matter what I do, it will not stick!"
So she had been talking about herself. Victoria grumbled.
Had memorizing been that difficult?
I dug through faded memories. There were times I had struggled to commit things to memory. So being good at memorization was, itself, a kind of intelligence — even if knowing things still left you maddeningly unable to make anything new from them.
"Let's agree that anyone who can make something from that is remarkable."
"So even a monster comes to envy what it doesn't have..."
Victoria seemed, somehow, to have arrived at a realization. She stared into empty air with a hazy look.
Wasn't it only natural that the part you lacked stood out all the more? Jealousy, once it scorched on, did not come away easily. And since that built an environment in which I could obtain warmth with ease, it was something I would rather encourage.
Anyway.
"Let's go home."
"You mean the dorm, right? I've got somewhere to stop, so I can't go with you."
Victoria was busy with all sorts of preparations to become a Clockwork Knight.
"Oh, right. Where is Bell living now?"
A fair question. I pointed toward the main gate of the Royal Academy.
"Once you leave by the main gate, I live in the building immediately on the left of the avenue."
"Left of the main gate? Ah. That place."
She seemed to have called it up from memory. The Clockwork Knight school stood in the capital as well, like the Royal Academy, and Victoria had been around this neighborhood before. If she meant to remember, she could.
"What does Bell do once you're back in your room? Put something on and watch? You don't cook or clean there either, do you?"
She was asking about what I had done at her house. I shook my head.
"The people who work inside do that. I just go into the room and sit still."
"Nothing else?"
"No. There's no need, so I don't."
Victoria looked at me, worried.
"Don't you get bored, then?"
"It passes in an instant."
I had more than ten thousand Harvesters. That was to say, that many channels. It wasn't that I could watch only one — I was watching all of them at once, and that was true even now. So there was nothing to be bored by.
If I compared it to a sensation from those faded memories, of lying in bed and watching a video cut very short, it might be easier to picture. A human life is, at bottom, a comedy when seen from far off, so I was enjoying the view.
So far, the only warmth that had come in was from a Harvester who died crushed between building materials on the job.
Someday a great deal of warmth would arrive.
Of course, warmth came in when you killed living things other than people, too. That side fell short, though. Butchering livestock you raised yielded almost none. A bug at the roadside held more warmth than a beast like that. It must have meant that such livestock had their possibilities shut from the very beginning.
There were many living things, of course. The jungle I had watched from the sea, on the way from a small harbor to Berne City. It had been full of creatures that held a great deal of warmth. Sweep the place bare and open it up, and in that moment I could take a great quantity. Afterward, though, human warmth was still the most efficient. A monster might hold more as an individual, but warmth against density ran higher in humans.
Think of efficiency, and humans made excellent Harvesters in reserve.
"In an instant? You mean time flies? You sound like a grandmother. Oh, that reminds me — your age?"
"As you grow older, time does feel as if it goes faster."
I conceded, because it was true, and Victoria's face twisted in horror.
"Whoa. Then I don't want to get old. I've still got so much to do, and a whole day goes by that fast?"
"Don't worry. You won't age much from here on."
I said it while pointing at Victoria.
Become a Harvester, and the old grow young, while the young hardly age at all. Hair that was gone comes back. The marks the years left behind disappear.
"Really?"
"Yes. You may think of your lifespan as having roughly doubled."
It reset again from the next generation, of course. Put me into that, and it lengthened.
"Bell is incredible."
I smiled at that.
It was a reason for people to fixate on me. Everyone grows old, and an old body fails. If it can be turned back to what it was, many will pay any price.
King Hypion would come looking for me. He had to.
Hehe.
Before that, though, there was one thing. A problem I had to face.
The witch who had laid a curse on Aurora.
She might decide I was an enemy and attack. The attack itself I welcomed. What worried me was something else.
The witch had been quick to catch on. Hyungkesuni had been like that. After she fell to the floor where I was, she came apart and vanished midway through becoming a monster, never managing to become one. Not every human who fell to that floor became kin, as I am.
That witch had kept suspecting me in the first world. And she had very nearly reached the truth.
The other side of the Harvesters. The real danger I had told no one. The reason I could never be anything but a wicked monster.
What would I do if the witch grasped it?
Then I might have to bring aggressive force to bear. Or perhaps, rather than be driven out with nothing gained, it would be better to break this third world and take the warmth.
A few things. I would set out the choices I could make, and wait.
"Expect that much, and you'll regret it, Victoria."
I started toward the main gate. Victoria followed for a while, then waved, saying she was off to the faculty office, and we parted.
The day passed quickly.