Lost Dreams — 14
I went to the dormitory where Victoria was anxiously getting ready.
The room she used to live in had not been so far from the entrance, but she had since been moved to a thoroughly out-of-the-way corner. Students of common birth who, like Victoria, had been pushed aside lived there. No matter how distinguished their parents, or how exceptional the talent that had won them admission, the wall between nobles and commoners stood high. Once the nobles came in and those who gathered past a certain number carved out their territory, the rest were simply driven out.
I walked the corridor. Whenever Victoria used to pass, there had always been one or two people staking claim to their turf, but not now. They were probably too busy watching Sorindiges.
I cut across that stretch and went farther in, to the noise of voices near the stairs that climbed upward. There Victoria and the other students who had been pushed out had settled. I stopped in front of her door.
She was packing a bag for the Clockwork Knight School. The room was as cluttered as ever. She cleaned, in her own way, but it was hardly what anyone would call clean. Beatrice would have been furious if she saw it—not that I could tell whether Beatrice herself was living properly.
Before long Victoria opened the door and came out.
"Oh? Belle?"
"You're heading out, aren't you?"
"Yeah. I've got class at the Clockwork Knight School today. What's going on with you, though? Still can't get home?"
I shrugged. I still didn't know. At least when I had slipped out of the classroom and come to the dormitory, a barricade of steel framework had still been standing in front of the main gate.
"I don't know when it'll be over."
"Want to rest in my room, then?"
She said it and pointed at her room. I pointed at that same room and answered.
"It's a pigsty."
"Hey! I keep the place organized and live in it just fine!"
Victoria flared, but she wasn't truly angry. And even as she spoke, damp objects behind her rose into the air and snapped, one after another, back into their proper places.
This.
In all likelihood she could see even where her eyes did not reach. Unfortunately, I could not see through that sense of hers. What a Harvester even was, what a psychic power even was—I still didn't know. If it lay outside the senses I shared, I could only dimly guess that it was not a function of the body. A sense housed in the flesh would have given me not only sight and hearing, but the feel of the organs as well.
Anyway, I said to Victoria:
"Let's go out together."
"Huh? But it won't be any fun if you come."
On an ordinary day, tagging along would only have meant standing around blankly outside the school.
"We're going together."
I said it so she would not ask why. Victoria looked at me with a reluctant, sour face, then nodded, as if she had put her thoughts in order all at once. Once she was fully outside, she shut the door.
There was no key, and yet I heard a click. A moment later, white vapor jetted from the keyhole.
Right. Of course she didn't need a key. She truly used her power like a hand.
Victoria and I left the dormitory together. She had looked puzzled at the empty corridor, and once she was sure there was no one about, she asked me in a low voice:
"Did something happen?"
"Can you get outside easily?"
"There isn't really anyone who can hurt me, you know?"
"That isn't what I mean. You'll understand when you see the main gate."
We stepped out the dormitory door and walked straight on along the pure-white wall to the right. Even before we reached the gate, voices were already rising—people shouting for food, shouting for work.
"They're still at it."
"It's something they'll have to keep doing."
Because otherwise, living was difficult. A protest is a scream made in order to survive.
The closer Victoria and I drew to the main gate, the louder it grew. We turned right, and there it was: through the steel bones of the gate, soldiers and a barricade, and farther off a crowd standing with pickets and tools, shouting.
"The gate... it's shut."
"This is the only way out. Come on. Let's go, Victoria."
I took her forward with me. The moment we neared the gate, a soldier came over.
"You're students, aren't you? Forgive me, but I must ask you not to come outside."
Politely, he was telling us to turn back. But I said:
"My name is Belle. I'm going out."
The soldier who heard my name looked baffled. Had he not been told anything? They should not have had any objection to my moving about, at least—and yet he muttered that he did not remember ever hearing such a name.
"Please wait a moment."
With that, he hurried off somewhere else. Right. He was going to ask someone of higher rank. Students, as a rule, held a station considerably above that of soldiers. And from the way he had run his eyes over my hair and skin before leaving, there ought to be good news.
"You sure about this?"
She looked at me with a face that had lost its trust. Even so, asked like that, I could only tell her it was fine.
"If it truly won't work, say the protest was blocking the entrance and you couldn't get out. The person teaching you will understand."
I said it knowing full well what state the Clockwork Knight School was in. At my words Victoria's face twisted—the look of someone who did not want to do that. She didn't seem it, but Victoria was diligent. Unless something out of the ordinary had come up, she had always attended the separate class held late in the afternoon. That was how completely a clockwork knight was her dream. And because she was that sort of girl, her teacher still gave her lessons on the side, even though she was all but expelled.
On top of that, Victoria could not afford to stop attending the Royal Academy. One might think that if she hated the place, she had only to withdraw and return to the Clockwork Knight School—but the Royal Academy was also a site of protective surveillance. They had brought talented people there. And if such a person could not endure the Royal Academy and left, what then?
Yes.
They were buried.
People with talent are dangerous. Whatever the kind, once they set their minds on evil, they can turn it to harm. The three great corporations had already shown as much. Refuse to be absorbed into mainstream society, and they would be excluded for the sake of safety.
Of course, no one had explained this to me outright. But Beatrice, at least, had seemed to know; early on she had worked hard to persuade Victoria. I had learned it from her memories, back when I made Kanna into a Harvester.
Even so, Victoria's patience was gradually reaching its limit. There had simply been too much, and it was far too cruel for one girl to bear. And though no one had ever told Victoria—
Victoria had already killed a great many innocent people. Her power was so vast that it was like a supersonic aircraft skimming close to the ground, the shockwave shearing the earth itself. Without even the awareness that she was killing, she had drowned the innocent.
Or perhaps she knew. No one had said a word, and she had never let it show. But seeing the way she handled water—perhaps.
As for me, so much warmth had come flooding in that I was happy!
If things went on like this, a great deal of warmth might come in again. But we had looked each other in the face for a long time now, hadn't we? And...
And.
And there was my promise to Soo, too. Yes.
So I could, at the very least, stay beside her. I am what remains of the time when I was human. I know how to act like a person. I know the way of it, and I know how to feel that way.
But even taking all of that into account, I hate the cold more. That is why I take warmth. No matter how my heart screams, the cold hurts worse than that. To ease, even a little, the thing that hurts the most, I can do anything. Even a child who is like family—if they give me warmth, I will drive them into hell and set them to producing it. Because that hurts less.
If some wretch says I am not human, I would like to set them in the same place as me.
Kehihi.
They would surely scream as I do, then break, and hunger for warmth. The problem is that no one in this world, nothing at all, can undergo what I undergo. Enviably enough, they can die. They can choose to vanish forever without ever feeling such pain.
To ease the pain of the Victoria who would scream—and yet without keeping her from facing reality—I stayed still, and let it be.
Before long a man who looked to be a commander came up before me, together with the soldier who had stopped us.
"Are you the one called Belle?"
"Yes. Will you let us out as we are?"
At my question the commander looked at me. Then he opened the main gate a crack with his hand. A soldier behind him said something, but the commander called him by his rank and ordered him silent. I went out through the opened door, then called to Victoria, who stood behind me dumbfounded.
"Come on. Out we go."
"Whoa. This actually works."
The moment we were through, the gate shut again.
Beyond the barricade, between the protesters, my lodgings came into view—entrance and windows reinforced with iron plate. The same as what they had used last time, when the thorn trees were growing. That must have been their original purpose.
I walked straight on toward the protesters. The instant I passed the barricade, the commander shouted after me.
"It's dangerous to go that way!"
"It isn't dangerous."
When I emerged, the protesters slowly began to fall silent. They looked at me the way one looks at something strange. I paid those gazes no mind and walked straight ahead. They were not enemies, in any case. Behind me Victoria hesitated, then broke into a run to where I was. A few soldiers, at a loss, glanced at the commander as if asking whether they ought to protect me.
I held out a hand toward them—stop—and walked up to the front of the protest. A large man, fierce-looking, a shaggy beastman. He stood out terribly. So I made him my mark.
"You. You a noble?"
"No. I'm Belle."
He thrust the wooden rod in his hand at me. Something had once been fixed to it, but it had broken off, and now it was like a spear. I could see droplets of water halted in the air.
No. I did not need Victoria's help for this. Of course she could have harvested the warmth if she wished, but here I meant to do something else.
Looking at the mass of warmth, I lifted up my humanity—crushed flat, and rotting away.