Requiem of the Betrayed - 4
"You always say that, and then you take one more step."
I had called myself a monster, and what came back was a strange answer. Victoria bowed her head again, hiding her face. As if that could conceal her expression from me. She pushed away the last outstretched hand as well. It was about time for her to cry. But contrary to what I expected, Victoria did not cry.
"Every time. That's how it's been. You call yourself a monster and keep walking forward. So if I back down now, I'd be something less than a monster. Is that it?"
What?
No. That isn't what I meant. I only meant that I'm a monster, so don't imitate me—do whatever it is you want to do. Hello? No matter how much I've acted like a good person, that was never the real thing, was it?
But Victoria lifted her head wearing an expression I knew. It was the face from the first time we met. The look she had worn when I was an enormous fish-person, and she stood drenched in blood with a tool clenched in her hand.
"You're going to be a truly harsh mother to your children."
And she rose from where she sat. An insult, probably.
Thinking of how Rebecca bore a child, I could enter a Sacrifice capable of giving birth. I don't know how it would go with me as I am now. In all likelihood, even being born would be impossible. And if I entered a male instead of a female, I still wouldn't be able to make a child. If I could, that child would probably be treated as my own flesh... Huh? Then would a man be better? If it truly worked that way, I could make any number of spare bodies. I don't know how a child would be classified, so it's only a possibility. Even so, I have no intention of doing it.
When I think of Rebecca, her consciousness itself remained even after I entered her. Hand someone the chance to dig through my memories? Have I lost my mind? Who knows where the information might leak? Rebecca even moved on her own when she had no light. Bodies I use as vessels fall into some strange state and keep moving. You couldn't quite call her dead merely because she had no light—Rebecca gave birth like anyone else, and she lived far longer than a human ought to. Rebecca, with her unhappy past, lived as my ally. If she had hated me, she would have broadcast my weaknesses to the whole world. Looking back now, that was a truly dangerous moment.
Anyway.
After saying that, Victoria left the corpse behind and walked toward the exit. She was leaving this place. She must mean to go home now, so I followed. But Victoria went in a strange direction. If she kept on straight, there was nowhere I knew of that she would have any reason to go. Don't tell me she's going to take revenge? She isn't walking toward the places where the flames are rising, though. Where on earth is she going?
I followed Victoria, her face set hard. We crossed a wide road and passed down narrow alleys. Places the mob had already swept through and left in ruins, she simply walked past. The streets forced a slight detour, but she was walking in a straight line. Where is she going?
After we had walked for a while, Victoria stopped. There was a river there. Compared to the Han, the river that surfaces most often in my faded memories, it was a small thing, barely a sixth the size. And of course it wasn't water purified to any decent degree, the way that one was. It was filthy with household sewage—polluted water that stank.
That water rose into the empty air. The dregs settled to the bottom, and only a clear stream climbed toward the sky.
Aha. This is revenge.
Of course. She's already done it in Berne City. Drag the water in and crush them to death with it. Wonderful. Now then, just how many casualties will there be? The bottom of the population pyramid. They are the ones who became the mob. Even a blind strike that treats them all as the same kind will kill them in droves.
A warmth party!
And the mob, Harvesters still among them, is crossing even now into the districts where the upper class lives, killing people and looting without restraint. Here and there they clash with people who look like they belong to the public safety forces, but they don't meet them head-on. They hurl weapons from a distance, fall back, then go loot wherever those forces aren't. At some point, did the purpose of killing the social evils who use clockwork machines simply disappear?
Through their eyes I watch the citizens running wild. At the same time, through Belle's eyes, I watch Victoria doing something. The water that had been flowing along the river keeps rising into the sky. The river hasn't merely bared its bed. Every last trace of moisture has vanished, and what remains is crumbling apart like the sand of a desert.
That's right. No matter how foul the filth, once the moisture is gone it becomes powder. To that extent, the river itself is rising into the sky. Like a colossal serpent climbing heavenward, it follows the river that cuts across the capital and ascends high into the air. The air is already dry enough to call bone-dry. It isn't only me. Harvesters quite far away can feel it too. But no one has recognized what it is. If anything, they're simply pleased that things burn so nicely when they set their fires.
Rumble.
No.
The river had surged into the sky, and now storm clouds packed the heavens and thunder rolled. Huh? I thought she meant to lift all that water and then slam it down, the way she did last time. That doesn't seem to be it. Rather, the more water is fed in, the larger the storm clouds grow. And a little later, they have blanketed the entire night sky.
The water that rose is falling now.
Tap.
Tap.
Pit-pat-pat.
Rain began to fall from the sky. The people who had been looting screamed and ran for anywhere they could escape it. They were screaming, but not because something was attacking them. It isn't cold enough for ice to freeze solid, but on a cold dawn it is cold enough for a skin of ice to form. Rain as cold as a sheet of ice began to fall.
Shaaaa.
Along with that cold rain, the rage blanketing the capital cooled. The festival heat that had driven people into a crucible of frenzy drained away, leaving only people soaked through and shivering. A winter night, the sun long gone. The flames that had lit one another's faces were gone. Even the fires that might have flared again once the rain stopped were gradually dying. The rain was so loud that voices from any distance vanished beneath it.
The empty place where the festival's heat had been. Into it seeped a reality as cold as the rain now falling. In the ears of the Harvesters scattered through the capital, a sound like this reached them.
Like drunks doused with a bucket of cold water, they looked at one another with pale faces. What ran down those faces along with the freezing rain was despair and fear. Meanwhile Polaris, back at the mansion in the capital, was grumbling that there was never a day the weather forecast got it right.
While Victoria was tending to the corpse at the clockwork knight school, the protesters blockading the Royal Academy dispersed as well. They weren't dispersed by force. According to what Kanna—who had held that spot until Sorindiges left school—heard from her subordinate, they broke up on their own when flames and black smoke rose all across the capital.
Ah. Yes. Of course. There were no Harvesters among the protesters in front of the Royal Academy. I don't know whether only people of the middle class and above had gathered, or whether it was simply chance that none of them were there. If the people who had been there were middle class or higher, they would come home to houses standing empty. Even so, the riot that had looked as if it would go on unless something extraordinary happened had vanished. One person making the rain was certainly something extraordinary.
I went to Victoria's side. She had been looking up at the sky all night, until the moon began to sink.
"You aren't doing it like Berne City."
"If I did, I didn't think I'd ever be able to look anyone in the face again."
Mmm. An extremely high appraisal. And an appraisal born entirely of a misunderstanding. I know Victoria is saying it because she mistakes me for someone terribly good. But I'll let her misunderstand. Outwardly, and inwardly.
I want the humans of this country to spread in every direction. I only also want Harvesters, and their children, woven in among them. The larger a society grows, and the more Harvesters sit at its peak, the more warmth I obtain. Of course, massacre events like riots are fine too. In extremes like these, Harvesters display powerful abilities. Bad in its own way, good in its own way. Everything leads down a road where I can obtain warmth.
No—if I put it plainly, it's this. So long as humanity flourishes, I will obtain warmth. The Great Depression is fine. World wars are fine. I know that someday humanity overcomes them and fills a planet with people. The Earth boiling over is a little frightening, but I believe even that will be overcome in time, and that they'll go out into space. In this world, there really are worlds like that. The problem is that Harvesters truly live for only the briefest moment before they're killed. Anyway.
I speak to Victoria like this.
"A harsher tomorrow is waiting, so let's go to bed."
Victoria lowered her head. Her skin, white to begin with, had gone quite pale.
"At a time like this, I wish you'd tell me about a hopeful future."
And, as if she isn't all that angry with me, she comes closer, muttering.
"Decades from now, you'll be telling your grandchildren that something like this once happened."
"That's too far in the future!"
She grumbles that I have no heart. She wants so much. But I don't give her the answer she wants. Because that's the fun part! Victoria whined that I was too much of a wall, and together we returned to the lodgings.
The rain kept falling until the moon sank, the night passed, and dawn arrived.