Hymn of the Betrayed, Part 1

For now, I simply watch, and wait to see what she means to do.

But Victoria only stands there. I glance around, half expecting water to be drifting in the air, and find not a single droplet hanging anywhere. Has the sheer weight of reality cowed her?

Even so, the citizens keep hauling students out of the clockwork machines and putting them to death. Riding one of those machines changes nothing. This place is not the world inside a faded memory. Unlike a world where no crowd of unarmed civilians could ever hope to stand against a tank, this one has people of formidable strength mixed in among the ordinary. Not merely folk who can work a spell — civilians whose living is made by fighting monsters.

So even astride a clockwork machine classed as heavy equipment, swinging all that power, you are not invincible. Unlike Berne City, Victoria is in danger here.

Still, with a power that commands water, she ought to handle most people. Most living things, I should say.

I remember a work from inside a faded memory — a character who could control water, and who received a forbidden technique from a villain. The art of manipulating the moisture inside a body. In that story it was blood they steered, but seventy percent of a human body is water, and among the fluids there is even water that flows through the brain. You would die before you ever properly understood that something was being done to you. From Victoria's own sight, no water was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠moving, and still, already anticipating that technique, I headed for where she stood.

Unexpectedly, she did not move at once. She turned on her heel and ran.

Victoria was coming toward me. I was heading toward Victoria. In the very next instant, I was in her eyes, and I looked at her face as well.

Pupils gone white and clouded. Despair settled beneath them. A face that had, plainly, lost something essential. I already knew she was living through it, but seeing it directly is another thing entirely.

Victoria ran straight to me and, without a word, seized me and held on tight. Honestly — you can't do this in the middle of the street.

But I understand. I was human once, a long time ago, so I can understand a little. Only I was never, in those days, someone who ran toward a dream the way Victoria does. I simply lived however things went, and when I came to, I was standing in the middle of a cold too dreadful to bear.

Yes. It isn't that I don't know.

She doesn't cry. She only holds me tight.

And yet there is a problem.

"Hey! That's the student who ran!"

"Grab her!"

"Catch her and kill her!"

That Victoria saw them means they saw Victoria. Of course they did. A child who had been staring at a burning school, then fled in a panic the other way, would look to them like a student of that school. Even if she weren't, they would not stop. Killed for being a child, and she wasn't a student after all? Oh well.

Someone who quietly draws their foot back and pretends not to have seen is a good person. At least they recognize that what they did was wrong. They have shame, so they hide it by acting as though it never happened.

Worse people shove the guilt onto someone else. They shout — why were you there? The offender, playing the victim. They cannot admit they have done wrong. Ignorance is not the reason. They simply cannot endure the wound to their honor.

Ah — not honor in the ordinary sense, of course. It is closer to the belonging they won inside the community they belong to. That is why so many people go rotten the moment they become a group. Before truth, before justice, before family, they will sacrifice anything at all to keep that sense of belonging, and religions, companies, every kind of collective, make use of it.

Belonging somewhere was a crucial element in human evolution. Those who failed to form a group died. Those who formed one lived. That inertia carried on long after society grew complicated. Why, when a company orders something unreasonable in the company's name, can you not quite bring yourself to flee? Why, when a religion demands sacrifice in the religion's name, can you not refuse? Because an old instinct has put down roots.

But in those days society was small. There was only one group. Society grew complex, many groups arose within it, and still biological instinct could not keep pace with civilization. An ordinary person is already overburdened merely by belonging to a single group, and so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they try to settle there. It may be that their intelligence is low. It may be that their minds have broken. It may be that violence harried them until they were broken in. Whatever the cause, once you belong, you try to keep it.

They are the same. To preserve their own group, there is nothing they will not do. Having already torn someone apart and killed them, they come this way with tools still dripping blood.

"Bell. Can you bring the dead back to life?"

Victoria's voice reached my ear — terribly cold, and brimming with the will to kill. So I answered.

"No. It's impossible. The dead stay dead."

"Right. Of course."

The air went dry all at once. The moisture vanished. Victoria, her hand resting on my shoulder, stopped holding me and rose to her feet.

"That's the bitch! Kill her!"

"We starved, and it's all your fault!"

"Kill every last one of you, and everything goes back to normal!"

"Murderer! You killed people with a clockwork machine!"

"Lunatic who built the devil's machine!"

As if determined to announce that what they were doing was righteous, the mob roared in every direction — as if, unless they appealed for their own legitimacy that way, they could not go on living.

But Victoria was stronger.

A thin sheet of water sheared through the air, and the people charging her with weapons raised were parted, forever, from everything below the knee. The unlucky lost a thigh. The tall lost a shin. The smell of blood burst outward, explosive, in every direction — and only for a moment. It vanished as if a rake had scraped it clean, as if even the air that might have carried it had sunk.

"Aaaaaaaa—hk!"

The screams ringing against the ground were choked off soon enough. No. More precisely, the moment they collapsed, water rose and they sank into it. Sound ought to travel even underwater, and yet, as if swallowing the waves themselves, the water drank every sound.

Those still conscious were alive, legs or no legs, and they thrashed, trying to drag themselves clear — but only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for a moment. Then they could no longer move from where they lay. An arm that had managed to reach the outside still jerked this way and that, but the water risen from the ground was no longer liquid. It had turned solid.

"Huh?"

Why?

No warmth comes in. Reduced to that shape, that state — and not one of them has died.

"You're not going to kill them?"

"Should I, then?"

Victoria looks at me through vacant pupils. I nearly shouted, without thinking, for her to slaughter them all, but I swallowed it somehow. I have to keep to the concept.

"Do as you please. Whatever road it is, I want the one who accepted me to do what they wish to do."

If people are to die, let the blame be yours. I will keep the rules I have set for myself. I never lie, and I only give pieces of myself away, because I know that with that alone I can obtain the warmth I want.

Yes. Warmth is what matters most. So no matter how close a person is to me, I will put first whatever act lets me obtain it. Even if Victoria massacres them just like this, I will simply watch.

"I'm not killing them."

She isn't choosing revenge, then? Unexpected.

"Is that so. I see."

When she asked, a moment ago, whether I could save someone even after they died, it was because she was weighing kill against spare. She had meant to let them live from the start.

Hmm.

Then I'll make use of these.

I start toward the frozen slabs of meat. Or I meant to. Victoria caught my arm.

"Where are you going?"

"There's someone ahead who's asking for me."

People drowned in despair, flailing to seize even a rotten rope — the very people who, seconds ago, were trying to kill Victoria. And? All I see before me are harvesters waiting to be made.

"You're going to save them? Turn them into what I am?! The moment they wake they'll try to kill me again — you want me to fight them all over again? You don't even understand that much?"

Victoria pressed on. Genuine disappointment on her face ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— how could you — and she seized me by the collar and hauled me up.

"Because you're a monster who doesn't know the first thing about a human heart!"

Correct.

I was about to concede the point, and then I understood that if I did, the heart of the girl in front of me would break for good. Alone, where there is no one.

Mm. What should I do?

Soo's face rose before me, but I close my eyes.

Hmph.

I took hold of the arm gripping my collar, to pull it off.

"Victoria. Everyone is given a chance. The good, and the wicked. Even those who have done a wrong that ought never to be forgiven."

I make harvesters without distinction. The more a person is stuffed with desire, the better use they will make of me. In the first world, I failed while wearing the mask of goodwill. Here, I mean to experiment with irresponsibility as my theme.

"I am going to give myself, right now, to the people dying in front of me. If they wake and start fighting again — well. That would be what it is to be human."

I put my strength into it and freed myself from Victoria's hand. I am not that strong, so she must have let go. Has her heart broken clean through, then?

At this rate there may be casualties on the scale of Berne City. And then, for the first time in a long while, I would be warm.

Seeing myself through the eyes of Victoria, who was staring straight at me, I went to the people lying there like butchered meat, and recited the words of the contract.

Even if they cannot speak, even if they have lost consciousness, the words of the contract pierce every impossibility and arrive.

And the result is exactly what lies before the eyes.

Countless harvesters woke — hair gone purple, skin turned white.