Nephthea (2)
Dear Dohesi,
How have you been? It’s only been a day since I left the village, yet I already miss you. I know that even though you’re always so strict with me, you actually care for me more than anyone else. Thank you, truly. Oh, but please stop scolding me about drinking. We’re both proper adults now, aren’t we? How about we compromise and you allow it twice a week?
— Noriel
I exhaled a ragged breath and pulled my focus back together. The stray thoughts still refused to fade.
Hello, Asera. Are you growing well? Every time I think of you, I feel like a father raising his daughter. Don’t get hurt out there, eat properly, and remember never to follow strange adults, okay? Of course, you could turn a healthy grown man into paste with a single finger, but you’re so kind that it still worries me. Now, repeat after me. When you meet a suspicious person—
No thank you. I don’t like that. Please don’t—
— Noriel
“Um… why are you doing that over there…?”
The voice slipped through the silence and forced my eyelids open. Nephthea, fresh from the bath, was staring at me with eyes full of suspicion. She had even wrapped herself neatly in an expensive white bathrobe. Where on earth had she pulled that from?
“If I got even a little closer to you, you would have screamed. So I stayed tucked away in the corner, and you’re still unhappy?”
“W-well…! It’s because you were sitting in such a bizarre position that I got goosebumps the moment I saw you…!”
“It’s called circulating energy. It helps shake off impure thoughts and maintain a clear mind.”
“Aah…! So you really were having negative thoughts about me…!?”
“…I’m just not going to say anything anymore.”
No matter what I said, every answer seemed to come back as an accusation. From now on, I would ignore everything. With that resolve, I straightened my posture again and closed my eyes.
…Was I still a man after all? In this situation, Nephthea kept flickering behind my eyelids. No. Prison life was something I would have to decline. In times like these, I should think of my perfect ideal type instead.
Ta-da. The image of Asera with her flowing silver-white hair appeared in my mind. Yes, compared to this impossible person who never listened, our sensible and upright Asera was—
—Thump. Rustle.
The bed sank heavily and the blanket slid across the sheets. I instinctively cracked one eye open. Perhaps the fatigue from the whole day had finally caught up with her. Nephthea was leaning to one side, surrendering herself to the soft bedding.
“Is it all right to be that defenseless in front of someone you suspect of being a spy?”
“…I thought about it, and if you really were a spy, you probably wouldn’t have volunteered to be monitored like this.”
“Then why don’t you just go sleep somewhere else?”
“Because of you, the innkeeper has marked me as suspicious!”
“? How is that my fault? You’re the one who insisted on following me and causing trouble—”
Whump.
Before I could finish, something soft and heavy slammed into my face. A pillow. I even caught a glimpse of a cute heart embroidery on it. This brat. I had my eyes closed for meditation and she attacked me like that.
I snatched the flying pillow and shot upright. Nephthea was already face-down on the bed, blanket pulled over her head, pretending nothing had happened. Then, as if the creeping exhaustion had won, a voice much weaker than before leaked out.
“I still… haven’t let go of all my suspicions. You haven’t explained how you know information that only Her Majesty and I should know….”
“That’s… haa, it really is difficult to talk about.”
“Uuuu, if it weren’t for anything involving Her Majesty, I would have given up ages ago….”
Nephthea’s words trailed off. She already sounded half-asleep. Maybe that was enough. I gathered the pillow that had flown at me and an extra blanket, then moved to a corner of the floor. There was no way I could lie down beside her on that bed. Taking a direct hit from a King-class mage’s spell would either kill me instantly or leave me crippled. The moment my back touched the cold bare floor, another exhausted mumble drifted over.
“…I’m bored. Should I tell you about the monsters I raise in my lab?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Earlier I heard your name is… Noriel? It’s similar to the name of one of the monsters I keep in the lab….”
“Do you not understand the word ‘sleep’?”
“Wow. Even your unfriendly personality is similar…! For some reason it makes me feel close to you…!”
Nephthea continued rambling about her monsters right up until the moment she fell asleep. Her mouth simply wouldn’t rest. I seriously considered throwing her out of the room at least ten times.
The cool air of dawn carried a chill through the window. I washed up quickly, shouldered the pack I had prepared, and got ready to leave. Nephthea was sprawled out, dead to the world. She must have really taken a liking to that blanket with the hearts on it. Please, just go back on your own by evening.
When I trudged downstairs, the innkeeper was already preparing the shop.
“You’re up early. Ho ho, how did it go with the two of you last night?”
“We’re really not like that. She’ll probably head back once she wakes up.”
“Goodness, I’ve heard young people these days are wild, but to do it in just one night…”
“…Just give me a bowl of stew, please.”
I sat at a table and soon a steaming bowl arrived. The warm broth sliding down my throat melted away the stiffness from sleeping on the floor all night.
“You came to sell at the Moonrise Festival again, didn’t you? You have a real talent for business, always showing up like this.”
“I just got a bit lucky. If things go well this time too, I’ll treat you to something big.”
“Hehe, even if it’s just words, thank you. It starts today, so the streets will be packed. If you want to do business, you’d better hurry.”
“Thank you.”
I pushed open the inn door and stepped outside. The cold morning breeze tickled my skin. The streets were adorned with colorful decorations everywhere, and diligent merchants bustled about, competing for the best spots.
The Moonrise Festival. At this time of year, the moon swelled to an enormous size while countless stars lined up around it in formation. It looked as if the moon and stars stood in a majestic procession. The festival celebrated that breathtaking celestial spectacle. As a bonus, even the Eye of the World that always stared at me grew faint, buried beneath the moonlight and starlight.
Ah, something I hadn’t known in the original story. It seemed this was the only village left that still held a festival for the grand cosmic show.
If the stars in the sky shone only once every few hundred years, everyone would stop what they were doing and look up at the night sky.
Someone had said that in my previous life. The Moonrise Festival followed the same principle. Once people realized it was a natural phenomenon that arrived every year without fail, they gradually took the wonder for granted. Now it had devolved into an ordinary annual event that only drew a handful of merchants and spectators.
“Hoo, let’s just suffer hard for one day.”
I took a light breath and adjusted my pack. If my memory was correct, today was when the symptoms of that plague would begin spreading wildly through the festival crowd. A once-in-a-lifetime gamble that could cure someone else’s misfortune and seize an opportunity to change my own life. I would ride this momentum all the way to the reward called success.
—Jingle.
“You vanished so perfectly that I spent all day looking for you… and you were just in a place like this…?”
“Go away. I’m in a bad mood right now.”
“Ugh! How much did you drink?!”
It was over. You know that feeling when the stock chart shows nothing but blue downward arrows? That was exactly how I felt.
“Ughhh.”
To get straight to the point, the plague did not spread at all. Not a single sign. It remained perfectly clean and peaceful.
“Huh? A disease from the north? I’ve only heard that a cold is going around…”
“Someone sick? No one came to pick up medicine today.”
“…Young man. It’s not good to ruin the mood like that when everyone’s enjoying the festival.”
I wandered from the clinic to the apothecary until the sun went down, but I couldn’t find a single person showing symptoms. In other words, just like the gluttony incident, the original story’s trajectory had twisted again.
Aah, my hope of becoming a wealthy lord had completely evaporated. Despairing, I crawled into the nearest tavern and started pouring alcohol down my throat. That was the state I was in.
Scrape.
The chair across from me dragged back as someone sat down. I barely lifted my head and saw Nephthea, who had tracked me down after all.
“Haa… I had a mountain of questions to ask, so I went through the trouble of searching for you, but if you’re in this condition I can’t even get angry…”
“I told you to leave. Look, I can’t play along today.”
“Just what did you do in a single day to end up like this…?”
At her exasperated sigh, my gaze dropped to the floor beneath the table. There lay Mr. Gray Moss—the future I had believed in and invested in, the one I had dragged all the way to this distant village. It was trash now. Trash. Ugh.
I didn’t need any of it anymore.
“Excuse me! Two beers over here, please.”
“…? You drink as well?”
“My, even if I look like this, I’m a proper lady. There aren’t many people at the royal castle who can tilt a glass with as much grace and refinement as I do.”
“Then why are you doing it with me of all people…”
She grabbed the handle of the beer mug that had just been set on the table and continued.
“Even though we only met yesterday, how can I just ignore someone who looks this dead inside? In times like these, listening to someone’s complaints is the humane thing to do. Here, cheers.”
“…Thank you.”
I had expected her to interrogate me again with fiery eyes about spies and such, but she didn’t cross any lines. Huh? Maybe she was actually a more sensible and decent person than I thought. Gentle comfort. That warm feeling settled quietly in my chest. Slightly lightened by Nephthea’s human kindness, I cheerfully clinked my mug against hers.
—Clink.
“So anyway—! No one except Her Majesty would believe me! Hic.”
“Yeah… must have been tough.”
“It wasn’t just tough! It was absolute, utter hell…! Hooong…! Hic, huuuuugh…!!”
Six minutes. That was how long it took for this person to completely lose her mind. After two mugs of beer, Nephthea’s reason flew away. She planted her forehead on the table, clutched her mug, and began sobbing outright.
“Hic…! Is there anyone who understands this sorrowful suffering…?! Aah, Your Majesty! Please give me strength…!! Hic.”
She was making such a unique and noisy scene that the eyes of everyone in the tavern stabbed into my skin. Ah, I wanted to abandon her. This person. …Should I really ditch her?
I was secretly trying to rise from my seat while she sniffled when—
Hic.
“…Mister Noriel. Do you know about the… Creation Society?”
Creation Society?
“…Is there anyone who doesn’t?”
“Hehe, right? There probably isn’t a single person on the continent who doesn’t know that name… hic.”
The sudden topic. The unexpected story caught my ankle. A tiny spark of interest flared. I quietly sank back into my chair.
“But you know, even though their name is so famous, no one actually chases after them in earnest… Do you know why?”
“…Because there’s no information?”
“Because it’s suicide. It’s like pouring oil on yourself and walking into fire. Like tying your own feet and jumping into water.”
Nephthea kept muttering as if in a trance.
“Hic. When a human peeks at knowledge from a realm they should never step into… do you know what that feels like?”
“It’s like all the darkness in the world is watching you… an abyssal, primal terror.”
For a moment, her previously loose expression froze coldly. It was hard to believe she had been drunk just seconds ago.
“Perhaps—this is only a hypothesis—but the birth of Weblaim, whose cause we could never identify, might be their doing as well. If even that was one of their Authorities…”
Clack.
Nephthea flinched and clamped her mouth shut.
“Ha, haha…! I must be crazy. What am I saying to a civilian…?!”
“You’ve already said quite a lot.”
“…Hic! Please forget everything I just said…! If you don’t, Mister Noriel might end up in danger…”
Bang!
This time she slammed her head onto the table as if someone had flipped her power switch. After a long silence I checked her complexion and found, absurdly, that she had already passed out.
I let out a short sigh and sat up straight. The Creation Society. Why had that taboo name suddenly slipped from Nephthea’s lips? Of course I knew them. At this point in time, I probably knew them better than anyone else on the continent. But it was certainly not something to casually bring up over drinks.
I flinched. An instinctive chill made me scan the surroundings. It was probably… just my imagination. Fortunately, I saw no suspicious signs or gazes.
“……”
I quietly looked down at the sleeping Nephthea. Just what was she chasing after all by herself? As expected, even this information was absurdly ahead of the original story. There shouldn’t be anyone on the continent yet brave enough to oppose them. Had some variable I didn’t know about already begun to diverge?
For some reason, her shoulders looked far more precarious than when we had first met.
…?
“Wait, am I supposed to take her with me…?”
Insane. If she was going to pass out, why did she follow me in the first place? A sigh surged up from the depths of my chest. I hoisted the completely unconscious Nephthea onto my back like a piece of luggage. At the same time, I used my other hand to pick up the now-useless Gray Moss.
I still didn’t know for sure. Because I hadn’t given up on hope yet…!
Jingle—.
Carrying two pieces of baggage, I struggled out of the tavern. The moment I met the night air, the smell of alcohol wafted strongly from Nephthea draped over my shoulder.
“If you were going to pass out after just two drinks, why the hell did you drink in the first place…!”
“Hic. The one who’s really stupid… is you, Mister Noriel, carrying around that pitch-black trash… hic!”
“Excuse me?! Trash?! This is because of the plague that was supposed to break out in the north—ah, forget it. Damn it.”
There was no point in arguing with a drunk person. On one shoulder, a collapsed drunkard. In the other hand, my investment that had turned into garbage.
“Hehe, Mister Noriel has a pretty nice face… but the problem is you have zero charm…”
“Stop grabbing my ear and pulling on it…!”
Tears stung my eyes at the miserable reality. I wiped the tears blurring my vision and dragged my heavy, heavy steps toward the inn.
Clink.
A clear sound rang out. It was the chime of an earring dyed blood-red.
“……”
Deep within the thick darkness, a pair of eyes resembling carved twilight slowly revealed themselves. Their owner watched the two figures without the slightest movement. Or, to be precise, only one of them.