Joyful, the Savior Has Come (7)
"I haven't forgotten the promise we made back then."
Merylda spoke as she stepped over the clothes she'd discarded, coming toward me.
"The promise that I'd marry you when I grew up, Dian."
Back then, after four days of fleeing, when we'd finally made it safely to battalion headquarters, little Merylda had told me she would marry me once she became an adult. That she wouldn't see anyone, wouldn't love anyone, until then — so I was to wait for her.
"I'm an adult now. I've graduated from the Academy, and I have a proper career."
Splashing through the water, Merylda walked up and stood before me, looking up with a face flushed crimson.
"I was so happy when I heard you were coming. I've treasured my purity all this time, waiting for this moment."
Looking at how earnest she was, I had to physically clamp down on the laugh that wanted to burst out. If I laughed now, I'd wound her deeply — that much was certain. But still. Come on. This was funny.
Back then, Merylda had been a little kid who wasn't even ten years old. Swept up in the moment, she probably hadn't even known what she was saying. And even if she was technically an adult now, to my eyes she was no different from Knightly or Olicia — still a child.
"I'm grateful for how you feel, Merylda."
"Dian..."
I caught her by the shoulders as she tried to throw her arms around me, and went on.
"But I'll have to decline, respectfully. To me, you're still that little kid from ten years ago."
"What...?"
"I didn't save you because I wanted something like this."
"But..."
"If I accepted you now, it would cheapen the meaning of my noble sacrifice."
Extreme bewilderment washed over Merylda's face.
"I-I'm sorry... That wasn't what I meant at all..."
"I know. You didn't do it on purpose. That's exactly why you still feel like a child to me."
"Is that so..."
Merylda's head drooped in dejection.
"I just... wanted to repay your kindness, Dian... That's why..."
"You becoming the remarkable person you are today is repayment enough. I don't want anything more than that."
"Ah, Dian..."
Tears began to well in Merylda's eyes.
"You're such a noble, virtuous man... and I was so foolish, trying to defile someone like you..."
"That's not true. Your intentions were pure. You were just too young to express them the right way."
"I'm sorry..."
"You don't need to apologize. I already received all the compensation I could ever want just by coming here today."
"Dian, you really are... you really are a wonderful person..."
Merylda wept.
"You deserve to be hailed as a hero... To me, you're even greater than Sir Linus..."
"I'm genuinely fine. Your tears right now mean more to me than any hero's title ever could."
"Ah..."
Overcome, Merylda clapped both hands over her mouth and trembled.
"All right, let's head back. People will be looking for us."
"Yes, Dian..."
I waited for Merylda to put her clothes back on, then we returned to the village together. The whole way back, she kept pouring out praise for my noble soul.
"Yeah, yeah."
The truth was, I had another reason for turning Merylda down. Everything I'd told her was the main reason, sure — but there was a secondary one on top of that.
The honest truth was, Merylda just... wasn't my type. Sorry.
How to put this... she was a little lacking in the curves department? Doing anything with a body like that felt, to me, like committing an unforgivable crime. In my memory, Merylda was a scruffy, snot-nosed little kid. This genuinely, seriously made me feel guilty. If you see someone stripped naked and nothing downstairs so much as twitches, that pretty much says it all.
But I couldn't exactly tell her that straight. I mean, you can't come out and say, "Sorry, you just don't do it for me," can you? If I were a web novel protagonist, the readers would be in the comments calling me a eunuch — but some things just aren't, and that's that.
I like physiques like Kirlin's or Ismera's. Anything less than that and I'm not interested. I don't want to do anything with a kid who hasn't finished growing.
And more than anything, there was a bigger problem.
Lina was currently hiding in those bushes over there, using a stealth technique.
What the hell was she even doing here?
Meanwhile, Lina was holding her breath, rubbing at the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand. Dian's attitude toward that village girl Merylda had been so moving.
Having followed Linus and Dian's carriage, Lina had disembarked at a distance and infiltrated the village in secret. She'd confirmed everything — Dian being welcomed by the villagers, his speech at the village hall. She'd gotten the general picture, but to grasp the finer details she'd gone into stealth and eavesdropped on every conversation she could find. Especially the conversations between Sir Linus and Professor Dian.
And as a result, Lina had learned a startling truth.
Professor Dian had belonged to the same special task force as Sir Linus, and they'd operated together for a considerable length of time. What's more, the two of them had first met as enlisted privates in the army corps — meaning the very beginning of the Four-Year War.
So at the very least, they'd been together until the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force was formed? Or perhaps... even through the task force itself?
But Professor Dian's name hadn't been on the roster of the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force that the Imperial Palace had publicly announced.
What on earth was going on...?
Then Lina spotted Professor Dian leaving the hall with Merylda, the village's acting administrator, and hurriedly followed them. At a stream outside the village, Merylda had offered herself to Professor Dian, naked — and Professor Dian had declined her with the utmost courtesy. The manner of that refusal had struck her so deeply that Lina, concealed behind a tree, was holding her breath and weeping.
After Professor Dian and Merylda returned to the village, Lina headed back as well, turning over that last unconnected piece of the puzzle in her mind.
If he'd been with Sir Linus since their enlisted days, then barring some disqualifying circumstance, he would have been assigned to the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force. And yet the Imperial Palace had publicized the task force's achievements so extensively without ever once mentioning Professor Dian's name.
What was it? What was going on here?
As she drew near the bustling village hall, Lina arrived at an answer of her own.
The Emperor is involved.
Professor Lina was a former special task force operative. Her real name was Linders. It was a masculine-sounding name, so she usually asked people to call her Lina. But the truth was, even Linders wasn't her real name. No one knew her actual name. After the war, when she retired from the special task force, the Imperial Palace had manufactured a new identity for her: Linders.
In fact, special task force members without exception went through identity laundering the way Lina had. The members of the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force — Linus and the others, whose real names had been revealed to the entire world — were an exceedingly rare exception.
Like nearly all black agents, Lina possessed special physical abilities that ordinary people didn't have. Formidable stamina and endurance. The art of moving in complete silence. The nerve and physique to traverse terrain that would defeat an ordinary person. And even a supernatural ability to map the structure of a space without seeing it, like a bat.
For these reasons, after first being recruited by the Imperial Security Office, Lina had spent years operating as a special task force agent. Infiltrating a particular noble's mansion to steal important documents. Being dispatched as a spy to a neighboring kingdom to gather intelligence. And so on.
Then the war broke out, and Lina — who had expected to conduct intelligence operations against the Demon King's army — was deployed somewhere she never would have imagined. The Empire's 3rd Corps. The one commanded by the Second Princess.
Until then, Lina had believed that being a special task force agent meant sacrificing yourself in the shadows for the Empire. But the orders that came down after she infiltrated the 3rd Corps were utterly absurd. What her superiors wanted from her were the detailed personal histories of key personnel in the 3rd Corps, the corps' operational plans, supply status, and so on.
Why illegally siphon off allied secrets in the middle of a war against the Demon King's army? They could have just received the plans through proper channels.
Suspicious, Lina collected the intelligence but held off on reporting it upward. At the same time, she conducted her own back-channel investigation into why such incomprehensible orders were being issued. A capable special ops agent, Lina pieced together the whole picture before long.
The power struggle between the Second Princess and the Emperor — along with the other princes and princesses — and the Emperor's determination to seize on any pretext whatsoever to dismiss the Second Princess.
What kind of insane farce was this?
Demonkin were a people whose physical abilities far surpassed humans, who treated monsters like livestock. Millions of them had gathered into an army, and the continent was in a life-or-death crisis — and the 3rd Corps under the Second Princess's command was achieving brilliant victories, emerging as the savior of all sentient races and the human alliance. If the Second Princess were dismissed here and now, the 3rd Corps would collapse, and that would mean the collapse of the entire front.
Moreover, having infiltrated the 3rd Corps under cover, Lina had had several opportunities to observe the Second Princess up close. A person who was cold, brilliant, bold, and ruthless — and at the same time infinitely compassionate, kind, and warm.
They were going after someone like that for mere political gain? Their own daughter, no less? This was insane.
So Lina deliberately fed her superiors only intelligence of little real value. As a result, her operational competence came under suspicion, she was eventually expelled from the special task force, and not long after, the war ended.
Afterward, unable to find any particular employment, Lina was suddenly offered a professorship at a place called the Special Operations Academy by the Imperial Security Office. That was when Lina understood. The Second Princess had known everything all along. That Lina was an undercover special ops agent. That she had concealed intelligence unfavorable to the Second Princess. That the professorship was a reward for that.
Having lived through all of this, Lina was certain: the reason no one knew of Professor Dian's existence, despite everything he'd done alongside Sir Linus, was because the Emperor was involved. This was an Emperor who, even with the entire continent at risk of collapse, had been watching only for a chance to strike at his own daughter. An Emperor like that would have had every reason to bury a man of Professor Dian's accomplishments over some trivial pretext.
So what should I do now?
For now... I'll keep this to myself.
If Professor Dian wasn't coming out and saying all of this himself, there had to be some enormous reason that someone like her couldn't possibly fathom. How could a mere professor presume to plumb the heart of a hero who had saved the continent alongside Sir Linus?
Just as she had deliberately concealed intelligence about the Second Princess during the war, Lina resolved to keep the truth of this unsung hero to herself, for now.
Still, though... to think Professor Dian was that kind of man... He's just so incredibly cool...
