Hymn of the Betrayed — 2
People were pressing in all around us when a Harvester rose from where he sat, dazed. Victoria glared at me as if she meant to see straight through me, but what was I supposed to do? Whenever a chance to make a Harvester shows itself, I have no intention of letting it slip. I never have. That is simply what I have always done — arranging matters, in any situation at all, so that it looks as though I am saving someone.
Of course, once they have become Harvesters, I don't particularly mind what becomes of them. Unless it is like last time, when every last Harvester was slaughtered, I have no intention of interfering.
"What... would you have us do?"
The Harvester at the very front asked, looking at me. He was a man who had once held a proper job, until prices climbed so high the shop where he worked could no longer bear it. The place went under, and his work went with it. He had five mouths to feed, and there was no particular reason he had joined the assault on the Clockwork Knight School — not then, at least. He had simply believed that the people who reduced his life to this were the ones inside that school, and he had vaguely assumed that once they were all dead, some reward would come of it. Swept up in the crowd, they had come to believe, without any clear grounds, that they were doing the right thing.
Most of the Harvesters standing before me were the same. There was a girl who had picked up a weapon and killed people for no better reason than that someone told her this life would get better. There was an old man who had taken up a club, trusting that if he dealt with the bad people, some bounty or other would be pressed into his hand.
There was no one here especially brimming with malice. Not really. The people in this place had believed they were doing what was right. They hadn't known what was true and what was false. They had only done as others did, after hearing — from no one they could name — a vague assurance that things would turn out well.
And they had failed. That was all. It had been failure from the beginning to the end, and at the end of it they became Harvesters. The close of an unfortunate choice. That, I suppose, was their luck. Rather than go out of my way to say so, I told these people, who had already failed completely, this.
Would it end with a few of them throwing themselves at Victoria and dying, and the rest running? Or perhaps someone among them had gained a power capable of standing against her.
"Hey, uh... what are we gonna do?"
"What about you?"
"I don't know. Just... keep doing what we were doing?"
"I got younger, didn't I?"
"Huh? You're that old man from earlier?"
They whispered to one another atop the ice, faces thick with confusion. Ah — the ice was slowly sinking back beneath the ground. Victoria must have been preparing to use it again. Hoping, at the very least, that she would spare them annihilation, I watched the ones standing there with those foolish looks.
"Enough. Let's stop."
What? Victoria — the one who just drove you to the brink of death — is standing right there.
"What are we even doing? Storming the school isn't going to make a single thing better."
And now you're getting all misty, with that look of sudden enlightenment?
"If we've ended up with bodies like these, then... work. There'll be work, right?"
Have you already forgotten that there were Harvesters mixed in among your crowd? They were there from the start, which is how I know how this goes. In other words, becoming a Harvester does not make anything better.
Paying no mind to my gaze, they hung their heads as if they had no face fit to lift toward heaven, and fled the place like people who had committed a crime.
Hmm?
Well... they ran, so I would call that sufficient. If word of it spread, all the better for me. I turned around.
Victoria was there, glaring at me with a cutting stare. They were the enemy of her teacher, and the enemies of her friends, and I had brought them back and let them go. For any ordinary human being, this would be grounds to sever ties on the spot.
Astonishingly, it would not have been a crime even if Victoria had massacred every one of them. Why? The reason is obvious. If a society is to keep turning, the law matters. They were obstacles to the turning of society, and Victoria was the one setting it back on the proper path. So how could it be a crime? Killing people is a crime, you say?
No. It isn't. The law that forbids people from killing one another was made so that laborers — those meant to produce — would not thin their own numbers by killing each other. Why is it that when someone in power kills a person, the matter is simply let pass? Why is it that when a rich man kills a person, it becomes as though nothing happened? Because it does no harm to the running of society. The law operates fairly. There is only a separate class upon whom it operates more fairly still.
It wasn't even a crime to begin with, so Victoria would have done better to stay where she was, full of rage, and take her revenge however the feeling carried her. She ran instead of taking it. This was the result.
"Bell. Are you going to save them no matter who they are? You already know."
Victoria pointed at them, hung a curse-laden name on them, and hurled it at me.
The same question as before. No — strictly speaking, it wasn't a question. She knew the same answer would come back, and still she couldn't bear to leave it unsaid, so she spat it out. I answered again.
"I did what I wanted to do."
Ah. I shouldn't have said that. Put that way, it sounded as if I were telling her not to restrain me. Which was fine, as far as I was concerned. Even if they become Harvesters, warmth isn't taken from me in that moment. All I take is the warmth of the living things a Harvester kills, directly and indirectly, and the Harvester's own warmth when the Harvester dies. There is no way to measure it.
Victoria raised a hand and covered her face. Then she bowed her head.
Is she crying?
No. No tears came from Victoria's eyes. No sob left her throat. She simply stood there going through the motions of weeping, and then she moved. I thought she might step toward me, but she didn't so much as glance my way. She walked straight ahead.
The Clockwork Knight School lay in that direction. What would she choose?
I wondered whether I ought to return to my lodgings now, but my feet followed Victoria of their own accord. Mm. Yes. I must have been curious. It would be hard to face her after this. Even so, I set off along the path she had taken.
Black smoke surged upward, and in the burning school the people who had killed those who lived there were laughing and talking among themselves. Victoria had come back to a hell like that. Would a great deal of warmth come in now?
Where a wall had once stood, she steadied her breathing and went in. I had expected her to stride through the front, proud and open. Instead she hid where trees and wreckage tangled together and the shadows lay thick. Then — shuk.
The person nearest her hacked and coughed, then collapsed all at once. No warmth came in, so they weren't dead. Someone let out a tremendous sneeze — achoo! — and then hacked, coughed, and fell as well.
When the first one or two went down, no one noticed. It was far too noisy. But once the number passed ten, the place went quiet, as if cold water had been thrown over the heat of a festival. She was probably sealing their airways with water and knocking them out, but what was she doing?
I watched, puzzled, and fear slowly soaked through their faces. They turned their heads this way and that, and then they saw me. Their eyes passed right over. Huh? I had thought they would single me out — a child from near the school — but their attention simply slid on. I had wondered whether Victoria meant to drag me into something. That didn't seem to be what she wanted.
As time passed, more and more people collapsed mid-cough. Someone whispered that it might be a disease, and the fear swelled all at once, like a balloon. In the middle of that, someone coughed, and the space around them emptied instantly. The one who had coughed went white and reached a hand out toward the others.
"S-save me—hack!"
They only collapsed, pitifully. And as if infected by that very spit, the next person coughed.
"S-someone's cursing us, aren't they?"
"Magic? Wait — was there even magic?"
"No. There's no flow of mana. This isn't anything like magic!"
"Then what the hell is it!"
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like this. Don't tell me it's a disease?"
"A disease? You call that a disease? Where in the world is there a disease that spreads this fast!"
"It's a plague."
"A plague? Why would something like that just suddenly—"
"I—I'm getting out of here!"
It started with one person bolting from the spot in a panic. People grow brave when the enemy is something they can face. A plague is not something you can fight. The confusion spread in every direction, past anyone's power to stop, and they fled screaming.
What had begun to run, instead, was a plague called rumor. Rioters who had come to see what on earth was happening took one look at the people collapsing mid-cough and ran, seized by terror. Ordinary people and Harvesters fled alike, with no distinction between them. Even Harvesters who had never been there heard that a plague was spreading and ran for their own homes without properly checking whether it was true.
Scarcely more than thirty had fainted from difficulty breathing, and a mob of well over ten thousand fled in an instant.
Surely not. Had Victoria planned this? She had driven people off with a trick that small?
Before long, the school was empty. A place people had left. A place gone vacant.
Victoria came out from where she had been hiding. She let out a long, deep sigh and swept a hand through the air. Corpses torn to shreds came flying in around her. She fitted the pieces together, one by one, and laid them on the ground. Moving through the school like that, she gathered the dead.
Here and there a rioter still remained, but each one poured out water with a sound like air leaving a bladder, and collapsed. She didn't even need water anymore. That just now — she had drawn their bodily fluids up into their lungs, hadn't she? No warmth was coming in, so they weren't dead. She truly had not killed a single person.
And me?
I went where the corpses lay, pretended to examine them, and drank up whatever warmth still lingered.
Hehe.
"Y-you. What in the world are you doing here?"
While I was at it, the first person to have fainted came to. He stared at me, shaking hard. Not a Harvester. Just an ordinary man.
"I'm gathering the warmth of the dead."
I don't lie, so I told the truth. The moment I did, he dropped to his knees.
"Please spare me! Please spare me! I—I didn't do a single bad thing!"
He said it even though the speaker himself didn't believe a word of it. But I didn't particularly care. I went to the corpses Victoria had so diligently pieced back together and touched one at the chest.
Mm. This one was empty. They must have been killed around the same time — so why the difference? Discovering a property of light and warmth I hadn't known, I moved from corpse to corpse, scraping the warmth together. Sure enough, wherever even the slightest light remained, there was warmth. There can be light without warmth. There cannot be warmth where there is no light.
If light is the soul, then is warmth something the soul possesses? Something like spiritual power? Turning it over in my own way, I followed the traces Victoria had left and rummaged through the corpses. Mm. A complete hyena. I hoped too terrible a rumor wouldn't start. Thinking that, I harvested as much warmth as I could.