Nothing Is Going Smoothly — 15 (End)
Rain is falling from the sky.
It isn't raining in Berne City, so this must be coming down only around here. Today, as always, I change into the clothes the lodging has laid out for me, eat breakfast, and set off for the Royal Academy. I walk along the edge of a road wide enough for six carriages to pass abreast. Perhaps because of the rain, a great many of them are turning in, and the path from the dormitories to the school is washed in bright color. Umbrellas bloom like flowers. I have the one they pressed into my hands when I left, and I'm glad the wind isn't blowing hard.
A little farther on, the road opens into a circular drive with a great stone statue standing at its center. Carriages line the rim while students climb down. So many came by carriage on account of the rain that the line stretches long. Past that, stone columns rise like the pillars of a temple, and beyond them stands a door carved with the kingdom's emblem. I open the wooden door and step through.
Inside, a broad central hall opens up. Wings of the building stretch away to left and right, and a staircase climbs directly ahead. I turn left along the first floor, and a long, straight corridor appears. My classroom sits about halfway down. By the time I step inside, Victoria has just left the dormitory.
She doesn't need an umbrella. Raindrops fall from the sky only to slide aside, as if a transparent sphere were shielding her from above. A superpower. I'm a little envious. Not that I couldn't do something similar—but if I tried, and the world cracked, it would be a catastrophe. She's running here on an ability I find difficult to use, so she'll arrive soon enough.
Meanwhile, in the slums of the capital, Brightshin has been restless since dawn, people already up and at their work. And with the morning rain, something sad has happened.
Between the blocks of Brightshin there are little plazas—small spaces left where buildings collapsed, or simply formed as the district was built. Until just yesterday those places were covered in writing: characters setting down techniques drawn from Daegon's memories, and from Yuanshi Tianzun's. People who had already filled the rooms they lived in with script had come outside to keep inscribing it. The curious part was that even those who had been perfectly fine, upon seeing it, joined in as if entranced and wrote along with them.
The sad part is that the rain has washed the letters away. There are no permanent markers in the slums, so they had built fires and written with the leftover ash. The rain erased it. Once the writing vanished, the people woke one by one, as if coming back to themselves, and returned to their ordinary days. Writing like that was proof the knowledge was settling properly into their heads. I wish they could have kept on. The rain is a shame.
A drowsy nod.
I'm waiting for class to begin when Freesia looks at me, dips her head in greeting, and goes to her seat. I had taken her for nothing but a sharp person, but when I look through Kanna's memories, she was extremely blunt. To think her wariness around people wasn't because she was sensitive and cutting, but because dealing with people was simply hard for her. I thought that if I knew someone's feelings, I would know everything. I never imagined the reading could change so completely depending on the angle.
Perhaps.
Among the people I have watched until now, have I misunderstood others in the same way? From now on, I ought to look a little deeper.
"Bell! Good morning!"
Victoria comes into the classroom almost at once, runs over, and drops into the seat beside me.
"Don't people say a rainy day isn't a good day?"
I ask because that's what one would ordinarily think. Even with a superpower, isn't it still like exercise that leaves you hungry—tiring, in the end?
"When it rains, the world turns so clear I could almost hold it in my hands. That's what's good about it. Oh, right. Bell, stand up for a second."
Victoria says something extraordinary. From the way she put it just now, isn't she exerting dominion over the droplets falling out of the sky? Thinking the ability is more powerful than I had imagined, I stand as she asked. At once, the faint dampness under my shoes lifts entirely into the air. Victoria flicks it out the window, then stares fixedly outside. Her pupils aren't holding any clear image. She's thinking about something.
Suddenly she gets to her feet, leaves me, and goes down to the platform where the teacher lectures. Class hasn't started yet, so stepping up there isn't against the rules—though the behavior is, admittedly, odd.
"If you're damp, come forward! I'll dry you off!"
Victoria calls out loudly to the students. No one readily comes down. Is it because of where she's standing?
Then one boy cautiously steps forward. Whatever he stepped in on the way, only his left ankle is soaked through.
"Can you dry it?"
"Of course."
Victoria sweeps her hand, and not only the water on his left ankle but every trace of moisture in his clothes floats up and drifts over to her. She shoots it out the window, then smiles at him.
"Well?"
"Perfect."
The boy shifts his leg a few times, grins, and goes back to his seat. One by one the others rise and form a line in front of her, and Victoria meets each of them face to face as she draws the moisture away. She could probably strip every drop of water from this room at once if she wanted. She's doing it this way on purpose. A kindness offered, and her face stamped into memory. She's using the ability cleverly. Do it for the crowd and it gets buried. Do it one person at a time, and it becomes a meeting between individuals. Even if they don't want it, the awareness that they have received a kindness takes root.
By the time most of the students have returned to their seats, dry and soft, the teacher—who had come in—stands before her with an awkward smile. Victoria bows deeply and dries him off completely. He thanks her and prompts the class to applaud. The students clap without complaint, and Victoria comes back smiling to sit beside me.
"The ability you gave me, Bell. It's convenient. I like it."
"I'm glad to see you using it so well."
Of course, it isn't a superpower I chose and handed to her. The harsher the situation one faces, the more easily a superpower arises, and the circumstances Victoria was in were harsh enough that she could never have escaped them without one.
Meanwhile, the superpowered born in Brightshin number forty-nine. Compared with Berne City, that is few. Brightshin isn't standing before any special hardship; it is simply withdrawing from daily life and rotting from within, so I suppose they never needed powers at all. In Berne City the situation was urgent. In Brightshin, it was nothing special. That is my guess.
And so class begins, and class ends. We eat lunch, and the afternoon classes start again. School life is, by nature, extremely static. When class is over, Victoria and I part so she can study to become a Clockwork Knight.
We have four years to live here, and Victoria is living them at a tremendous pace. I wonder whether she doesn't need a little time to play. Mm. Interfering that far probably isn't wise. Some people simply live with that kind of passion.
By the time school lets out, the rain has stopped. I carry my umbrella back to where I live. From the central hall, some students head back the way I do, while others turn elsewhere—into the bent wings of the U-shaped building. There are no classrooms there. They are closer to club rooms, or after-school study rooms. Or spaces meant to tighten the bonds of a faction. Places where people gather to study together, to chatter, to assign work and receive reports. So they stay, half under compulsion, until it is time for dinner, and only then go back.
Kanna does that. Not everyone does, of course. Polaris, who holds a fairly high place in her own way, says it is a lighter sort of gathering. Kanna thinks that means a lack of leadership.
Ah—speaking of Kanna, I just remembered. She isn't at the Royal Academy today. She rushed back to her family yesterday, so right now she is home with them. I thought that now her body had healed she would act even more cruelly. Instead the whole family simply held one another and cried, said they were glad she had recovered, remarked that her hair had changed color, that her skin was far too pale. Talk of that sort. In short, they spoke the way a real family speaks.
And now she has gathered every member of the house and is about to say something.
Oh.
Kanna is saying she will leave the family.
Where did the house of struggle go? Or has she still not fully awakened to her own power, and does she mean to seize everything she can grasp before—
Hm?
The reason doesn't make sense. She says the peace that arrived because of her own distortion will be ruined, and so she will step away in order to keep that peace from now on. Honor, she says, exists to protect one's family—not something you win by trampling your family underfoot. A house piled up through kin slaughtering kin will only drown in that blood. She says it to the people she has gathered, her father the family head among them. When someone asks whether this means the head of the house is abandoning the house, Kanna smiles. A shell like that isn't what matters, she says. The people inside matter more.
You—where did all that inferiority you carried until now go? You were jealous, watching each of them tend to their own work, weren't you? You grew close to your family in order to survive, bound them with affection, and made yourself a place where you could live, didn't you? Isn't it normal for human desire, once it gains power, to grow even harsher? Why are you setting it all down, like someone who has attained enlightenment?
Ah!
Perhaps it's because she is still too young. If this is a childish choice, then someday she will realize what a powerful weapon a name built upon greed can be. Once she understands that she herself was the one who let it slip from her hand, she will change. She simply hasn't collided with reality yet. So long as a class system exists, there is a limit to how high ability alone can carry you. I am looking forward to the moment she strikes that wall.
One person out of the lot can be a little strange! I'll just think of Kanna as the odd one in ten. It's a shame that someone of high rank turned out to be that person. But there is no need to worry.
The Harvesters move exactly as I wish. The world is flowing smoothly, just as I planned.
There are people everywhere who hate becoming uncomfortable—who even forget that they once worked for a charity, and look out only for their own gain. The Harvesters in Berne City. Among them, the bad tenth. They band together and set to work. Perhaps the clouds have drifted that way; in Berne City, where the rain has now begun, they lead a crowd and storm the office.
Yes. That's it. Go and fight, and give me warmth. What I like best is that the one who first stirred them up is standing at the back. If things go wrong, he'll slip away and build the faction up again, won't he? Just looking at them, their strength has doubled. Strike hard with that and a person dies easily. Each of them has picked up a length of construction pipe or a tool. It would be strange if someone didn't die.
The door bursts open.
People push into the office. Give me warmth from those who have hung up a picture of me—cut from the newspapers and pasted together—and are praying before it.
A clatter.
No. I mean—why are you dropping the weapons in your hands and praying with them? Why are you collapsing alongside them, shedding tears like penitents? Why are the Harvesters who were already praying patting them on the back with faces that say they understand everything?
Did I want this? No. I only meant to feed on the warmth of you living as your desires demanded, and dying crushed beneath them.
The one who first incited them shouts, demanding to know what they think they're doing. Yes. That's it. There is no way he would give up his desire so easily! Plenty of people follow a loud voice like fools, so at least they will fight.
No.
Why are you collapsing too, spilling out that you only did it because the future frightened you? Especially the second—of the five I made into Harvesters, the one whose past crimes were the worst. Why is he at the very front, soothing people? Salvation isn't somewhere far away, he says.
What on earth are you saying?
This is strange. Where did they go—the humans I knew? The plan I laid?
What do you mean, the world turns smoothly according to my design?
Not a single thing is going smoothly.