Tailed
My name is Aurora Rail.
Earth, walls, steel—as long as it isn't a living creature, I can pass through anything. That's the kind of man I am.
Gulp.
My throat swallows on its own. Right now I'm gliding through the under-earth as if it were water, staring up at the surface far above my head.
Two figures stand out against the soil: a yellow-haired man, and a woman with rabbit ears. Of the two, I have business with exactly one.
Lebetri. All I ever had to do was kill that woman... They swore that if I did, they'd tell me how to hold the monsterization back...
Slowly, I turn my hand over and study it. Blue scales have crept all the way to my wrist; webbing has grown between my fingers, and my nails have stretched into hooked claws. It looks nothing like the hand I used to have—a revolting thing, no longer fit to be called human.
"Damn it."
The curse leaks out in a whisper. The monsterization is advancing even now, little by little. Left to run its course, I'll degrade into nothing more than a mindless beast.
Before that happens, Lebetri has to die—by any means necessary. It was supposed to be the easiest thing in the world. If I'd pressed the attack alongside that crybaby of a girl, this would have ended ages ago. And yet...
"Hah..."
It's all that bastard's fault. That yellow-haired leech of a man, eyes forever squinted half-shut.
Sapi.
Because he wedged himself into things, my plan has unraveled completely. Strike now, and I'd be facing both of them at once. My power may be built for assassination, but attacking right now would be suicide.
Think. Think, damn you.
I keep grinding away at it, but no good answer comes. All it earns me is a headache that won't quit.
"Argh... shit."
I barely choke down the urge to scream. If I made noise here, of all places, my position could give out.
I draw a long, deep breath.
"The moment a chance comes, I kill her."
Sapi stops walking.
"...?"
Then he slowly bows his head—and his gaze settles on precisely the patch of earth where I'm hiding. My heart plummets.
Don't tell me... he's noticed me?
Sapi's mouth doesn't move. Somehow, that silence is worse.
Fine. Then I strike first!
Strength floods my muscles. Zero point three seconds to erupt through the soil; the throat is the target. Kill Lebetri, then dive straight back underground—dozens of contingencies flash through my skull in an instant.
At that exact moment, the corner of Sapi's mouth curls upward. Just barely.
"...?"
Then he turns away as if nothing happened and resumes walking.
"What was that?"
For a long while, I can't move. Did he genuinely fail to see me? Or is he pretending? Only after Sapi's figure has vanished entirely does the tension begin to seep out of me.
"Whew..."
I let the breath go slowly—and only then notice my hand trembling, fine as a whisper.
Creepy bastard.
I can't read him at all. One moment he acts like he knows everything; the next, like he knows nothing whatsoever. I look once more in the direction Lebetri went. And without a single sound, I slip deeper into the earth and begin tailing them from below.
Coward.
I snort to myself. Even now, the bastard is crawling along right beneath our feet—swimming through the soil with his breath held, waiting for nothing more than a sliver of an opening.
An assassin, here to kill Lebetri. And yet one thing about him doesn't add up.
In not a single future has he ever struck first. At first I chalked it up to misreading. But once. Twice. The wrongness kept nagging at me. He shadows us constantly. Eyes every opening. And still, in the end, he never moves.
The most ridiculous was the future where Lebetri starved to death—the one where days dragged by without a scrap of food to be found. Our throats scorched dry; our stomachs shrank until they clung to our spines. In the end, Lebetri collapsed first.
Even then, the man never showed his face. He'd come to kill her, hadn't he? With his target dying right in front of him, he stayed hidden to the very last.
That was the moment I knew for certain.
Coward.
The kind who freezes the instant anything deviates from the plan—runs the calculations dozens of times in his head and, terrified of dying, ends up doing nothing at all.
Still, those strange feelings might have been pure coincidence. So I decided to test it. The spot where he was most likely holed up: I stared straight at that exact patch of ground. The reaction was instant.
His presence wavered. His breathing roughened. Faint traces of Ether—the residue that leaks when he uses his power—began seeping upward. One more ounce of pressure and he'd have shot right out of the ground. He didn't.
I peer into the futures for a moment. Dozens sweep past before my eyes. In a handful, the bastard finally steels himself and bursts up through the earth—but his strike is never aimed at me.
Lebetri.
His target, from beginning to end, is Lebetri and no one else. And in the futures where I let my guard slip, one ambush is all it takes for him to run her heart through.
That's the whole of it. Every future after that is identical: Lebetri dies, and he tears away through the underground and is gone.
So the answer came down to a single line: as long as I do nothing, he does nothing.
He's practically a pet.
The thought alone pulls a laugh out of me.
"Pfft."
Lebetri, walking beside me, turns a puzzled look my way.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing."
I give a light shrug. I hadn't imagined an enemy could be this transparent—a couple of glances into the future and his next move reads like an open book. The old me would never have made a slip like that. I scratch at the corner of my mouth and let out a hollow little laugh.
Guess my edge has dulled more than I thought.
I set off again as though nothing had happened. Even in that moment, the cowardly assassin was swimming blindly along—none the wiser—through a future I had already read to its end.
A forest path, sunlight sifting down through the leaves. Sapi and Lebetri walked on unhurried, as if nothing in the world were wrong.
And beneath their feet, under the black soil, someone was gliding along in perfect silence.
"..."
The enemy stalking Lebetri trailed the pair's shadows with even the sound of his breathing erased.
This time— this time, he would kill her for certain. He had, of course, been telling himself exactly that for three days running now.
The first chance: Lebetri set off alone toward the spring. It was perfect. Push up through the ground, open her throat—done. The very instant he thought it, Sapi shook his water flask and said:
"Come with me."
"...Yeah."
Lebetri turned back.
"..."
Aurora clenched his teeth without a word.
Coincidence. This one was just a coincidence.
The second time, Lebetri dropped back for a moment—about three paces—and drifted away from Sapi, too. If he moved now, he could kill her. The moment strength gathered in his body, Sapi stopped short. Then looked back, saying nothing at all.
"..."
Aurora's heart dropped through the floor. But Sapi simply said to Lebetri:
"Your chest wrap's coming loose."
"Huh?"
Lebetri began cinching the loosened bandage tight around her chest again. Aurora stood frozen where he was.
Again...
The third time, Sapi looked up at a bird in a tree. The fourth, he paused to gaze at a flower by the roadside. The fifth, he abruptly changed direction. The sixth, he told Lebetri to stop and drink some water.
Every time an opening appeared, Sapi slid into it first. Aurora's jaw ground tighter and tighter.
Why... is it always... at this exact moment?
Ten days in, and Aurora had landed not a single strike. His mind was already coming apart.
Could it be... has he actually noticed me?
The doubt flickered through his head—and he shoved it away at once.
If he knew, he would've attacked by now...
And yet. It was strange. Far too strange. Sapi moved as though he knew exactly when Aurora meant to strike—as if the whole thing had already been laid out before him.
Then it happened.
Lebetri spoke up.
"Sapi."
"Yeah?"
"We..."
She hesitated a moment, then whispered in a very small voice:
"I think we're being tailed."
In that instant, Aurora's whole body went rigid. But Sapi answered as though it were nothing.
"Yep."
"...!"
Lebetri's face stiffened. Her hand drifted slowly toward her hip, ready to fight at a heartbeat's notice. But—
"It's fine."
Sapi shrugged.
"He just keeps following us. That's all he does."
"..."
"Can't even manage an attack."
"..."
"He's a coward."
Underground, the veins across the back of Aurora's hand stood out dark red. He bit down on his lip, strung tight as a wire.
Even in the middle of all this, Lebetri pressed on.
"Doesn't add up."
"What doesn't?"
"Why you don't just catch him! That's what doesn't add up!"
Add up? Hmm... how best to explain this one? After a moment's thought, I gave my answer:
"Well, because he's just so cute when he hides."
"..."
"Basically a timid little pet dog."
Aurora's pupils shook.
Pet dog?
His hand trembled.
Me? A pet dog?
His breath turned ragged. Power coiled through his monsterized arm. Dozens of contingencies churned through his skull: burst out now—no, Sapi could be baiting exactly that—wait a little longer—no, then he'd miss the opening again—burst out—no—wait—no.
Damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!!
The calculations looped on without end. And all of it, Sapi was watching from inside the futures—dozens of them, hundreds, futures fine as spider silk.
[Aurora does not burst out this time, either.]
Sapi smiled, small and quiet.
Figures. Death's a perfectly reasonable thing to be afraid of.
And then he walked on as though nothing had happened. Sapi had never once laughed at Aurora. And yet Aurora—slowly, surely—began to believe that laugh had been meant for him all along.