Chapter 59: A Glimpse
"It's not a bad deal for you either. If you just stay by the Young Duke's side like this, you'll be able to meet the true master of the prophecy."
At the mention of meeting Ratel, a tiny sliver of doubt still lingered in El's glittering golden eyes.
"Are you saying that if I follow that Fides child and wait at the Temple, the master of the prophecy will come find me on his own?"
I nodded.
"Our paths might cross slightly, but I'll make sure they align perfectly. To do that, you need to stay by the Young Duke's side and make sure he doesn't die."
"Does the Fides child staying alive have something to do with the master of the prophecy?"
To be precise, my goal was to bring Ratel and Duke Fides together in one place, but there was no need to explain that much. Besides, El didn't seem particularly well-disposed toward the people of the Fides Duchy.
"If it ruins the Imperial Family's plans, he'll welcome it gladly."
El nodded slowly with a puzzled expression, then suddenly looked up at me as if something had just occurred to him.
"Then what happens to you after that? I mean, once the master of the prophecy safely arrives?"
"I'll have to quietly disappear."
It would be nice if I could vanish as if I had never existed in the first place, though that seemed unlikely now that I was far more involved than I had anticipated. Still, I had no intention of letting this golden opportunity to escape slip away. Once this was over, I would live somewhere far from any conflict, in a way quite similar to how I lived in the world outside this book. A life with no grand purpose, just moderately tiring and moderately weary.
The young imperial bloodline didn't seem to have much interest in me, since I wasn't the master of the prophecy. Seeing how he remained silent even after hearing my answer.
"But will the master of the prophecy really come to the Temple on his own?" the boy, who had been lost in thought, suddenly asked.
He seemed truly desperate to meet the protagonist. For someone who had made the colossal blunder of mistaking the protagonist's identity, he was being remarkably cautious now. I nodded at this boy, who might have actually appeared in the original novel if he had been this thorough from the start.
"He will definitely come."
Assuming he is indeed the protagonist of the novel I know.
"Do you feel some sort of kinship?"
"How much do you know about me?"
Since exchanging questions that neither could answer, Jing had been feeling a one-sided awkwardness around Ratel.
They spoke, and they ate. Occasionally, they checked to see if any wild beasts or minor monsters were lurking nearby. To an outsider, it might have seemed as though nothing had happened at all, Jing thought.
"Did you two get into a fight or something?"
But then, hearing someone ask so bluntly made him realize it wasn't as seamless as he hoped.
"It's nothing like that, so please, shut your mouth."
Young Jing, who had developed a strong sense of camaraderie with Jing after their last conversation, was not one to be discouraged by such a mild scolding.
"Oho, if it's not that, then Jing must have done something wrong, eh?"
His intuition was terribly off, too.
Interpreting Jing's silent treatment in his own way, Young Jing began gearing up to chatter.
"Anyway, in these kinds of squabbles, the older one is bound to lose. Besides, if you did something wrong, isn't it only human decency to apologize?"
"Why don't you go preach that human decency to Ratel instead?"
Jing said this hoping the noisy fellow would leave him alone, but Young Jing's eyes went wide as if the suggestion was utterly preposterous.
"Are you crazy? What if I get killed? I have a wife and kid to think about."
So he thought Jing was an easy target. Jing knitted his brows, then resumed tending to his horse.
"Well, if you say so..."
Young Jing trailed off on purpose, but contrary to his words, he gestured toward a section of the forest with his chin.
"If you change your mind, you can head over toward that part of the woods."
How on earth do you know that? Jing's thoughts must have shown on his face, because Young Jing shrugged.
"I saw some of the other guys steering clear of there earlier, saying the lunatic went that way."
With those parting words, Young Jing picked up his pack and left.
Jing, who had been packing his things sluggishly, hesitated for a moment. He picked up his canteen, poured out the water he had just filled it with onto the ground, and stepped into the forest with the empty bottle in hand. He headed in the exact direction the busybody had pointed out.
The forest was dry, bearing the full brunt of autumn, with fallen leaves blanketing the path. It wasn't easy to spot a black head of hair in a forest stripped of its green.
To be honest, facing him was bound to be incredibly awkward. But once they departed, there wouldn't be any time for a long conversation until they reached the Capital. There was something he absolutely had to say before then.
Jing gripped the canteen in his hand. If he asks why I'm here, I'll just say I ran into him by chance while fetching water. As he made up his mind, a black head of hair finally came into view.
"Ratel!"
Jing called out to him, his voice a mix of tension and embarrassment. That embarrassment quickly morphed into a sense of betrayal and sheer disbelief, however, when the black head of hair he had finally found vanished as if it had grown wings.
Ratel had clearly heard Jing's voice, yet he began to run at a breakneck pace.
This brat, acting all fine and dandy, but he was feeling awkward too!
From what Jing knew of Ratel, if the boy had a grievance, he would express it in the most insolent way possible; he was never one to run away. Seeing such a person bolt so desperately meant he was definitely bothered by their last encounter.
"Ratel!"
Half-driven by the determination to speak with him before the carriage escort departed, and half by the sheer stubbornness to catch him since he was running away so hard, Jing forgot his age and sprinted. The canteen in his hand had been tossed aside long ago.
Ratel was fast, but Jing hadn't spent his entire life swinging a sword for nothing. Sensing Jing's sheer tenacity—the refusal to lose sight of him even if the distance didn't close—Ratel gradually slowed to a halt. When he turned, his face was a picture of utter dismay.
It was rare for Ratel to show his discomfort so openly, which made Jing's temper flare.
"What is wrong with you?! Why on earth did you run away?!"
"I didn't run away."
Jing's eyebrow shot up at the shameless response.
"If you weren't running away, was that just a game of tag? Because I don't recall agreeing to be 'it'!"
Ratel's face crumpled like a piece of cheap paper.
"Did you come all this way just to find me?"
Though the situation was different from what he had envisioned, Jing knew this was his chance. Taking a deep breath to mask his embarrassment, Jing spoke.
"No, I was just on my way to fetch some water when I spotted you. I figured I'd come over since I had a few things to say."
Muttering excuses that lost all credibility given that his canteen had been discarded long ago, Jing took another deep breath and delivered his prepared speech.
"What I mean is... if you have nowhere to go, I could look into finding a place for you to stay... Are you even listening to me?"
The boy was looking around distractedly, clearly not in a state to listen to a word he was saying.
"Yes, I'm listening. You said you'd look into something for me. I'm fine. No thank you. Is that all you wanted?"
The rapid-fire rejection made Jing feel as if a blood vessel in his temple was about to burst. He had never actually experienced a ruptured blood vessel, but he doubted even a real one would make his vision go as dark as it did now.
Had he ever been so utterly dismissed in his entire life? And by a brat who was barely older than his own son, no less. A fierce determination surged within Jing to teach this insolent punk some proper manners.
"Look here, there are boundaries people must respect—"
Just as he opened his mouth to launch into a lecture:
"He... help... Someone, please..."
A faint whimpering sound drifted through the air. It was unmistakably the voice of a young child.
"Ratel, did you hear that just now?"
At Jing's question, Ratel let out a long sigh.
"It's probably nothing. I'll go check it out, so you should head back, Jing."
"If it were nothing, there's no way you'd move to check it out yourself!"
Ignoring Ratel's warning, Jing pushed past him and took the lead. Unable to hide his anxiety, Jing hacked through the thick brush as he forged ahead. It had definitely been a child's voice.
"Damn it, I just hope it's not a wild animal attack."
"No, that might actually be better."
Jing frowned at Ratel's quiet remark.
"What do you mean by that? If a child crosses paths with a wolf, they won't last a minute."
"Didn't you hear it earlier?"
"Of course I did. The child was crying for help."
"Yes." Ratel quickened his pace as he answered. "I also heard the sound of water. They probably fell in while playing near a pond or a lake."
"But that's also a disaster! What if they drown?"
"Yes. A real disaster."
Though his words sounded grave, his mind seemed to be entirely elsewhere. Suddenly, a thought flashed through Jing's mind—that perhaps the reason Ratel was rushing was entirely different from his own.
"Ratel, are we going to save a drowning child, or are we going to save them from something else?"
"..."
He didn't answer. For someone who possessed a bizarre set of manners, it was rare for him to stay silent. Jing's brow furrowed deeper.
"What are you hiding this time?"
With those final words, they rounded a massive tree, and the pond they had been searching for finally came into view. There was no need to search for where the child had fallen. They were right before their eyes.
The child's eyes were closed, peaceful as if in a deep sleep. Curled in a fetal position, they were enveloped by a small pillar of water that rippled gently, as if protecting the tiny human.
"Ratel, what on earth is that..."
Jing's finger trembled as he pointed at the small pillar of water rising from the pond. His heart hammered against his ribs as if he had witnessed something forbidden.
Yet, looking at the exact same sight, Ratel's expression remained perfectly calm.
"It's a relief no one else is around. It would have been a massive pain if there were more eyes," Ratel muttered, stepping closer to the pond to look down at the child.
"The power is quite immense, but because they're so young, this happened. Children rely more on instinct and can't control it."
Every single word that came out of Ratel's mouth refused to register in Jing's mind. Yet, Jing recognized this phenomenon. He couldn't possibly fail to recognize it. It was the very power that had once brought him to the brink of death.
"Manis... is the power of the Imperial Family. It's a power that manifests only on the rarest of occasions even among high nobility, so how..."
Ratel's voice cut off Jing's disbelieving murmurs.
"Do you truly believe they are the only ones who possess this power?"
He wanted to say of course, but the living proof to the contrary was breathing right before his eyes. Jing reeled from the chaos of having a truth that defined his entire life shattered, but Ratel did not wait for him to recover.
"What do you want to do? Do you want to pretend you didn't see this, or do you want to dispose of the child? You decide, Jing."
Ratel spoke as if stating a simple law of nature, like water flowing downward. Not a single tremor of hesitation or agitation could be found in his eyes. He merely checked the breathing of the child cradled in the water.
"They could be the child of a high noble..."
No, that wasn't it. As long as they shared noble blood, the nobility would never abandon a child—even an illegitimate one—until the Tinas Ritual was performed, just in case they manifested Manis. If they were to abandon them, it would only be afterward.
Frozen for a moment by the sheer inhumanity of it all, Jing stared at Ratel as the boy touched the child's forehead. He was utterly bewildered. In all his years, he had never once heard of this power manifesting among commoners.
...Then what is the point of the Imperial Family? Can they even be called gods?
Jing's heart began to thud violently once more, with an intensity incomparable to before. Within him, a powerful urge to eliminate the source of this discomfort reared its head.
"What do you want to do?"
Ratel's voice drifted into his chaotic mind. Why was he asking such a thing? Jing looked at Ratel in confusion, but the boy simply demanded an answer with unwavering eyes.
Jing couldn't make a clear judgment on what he wanted to do. The violent urge to make the child—the source of this profound confusion—disappear, and the sense of responsibility to protect them, tore at him simultaneously.
"I..."
Do I want to get rid of this child? No, that wasn't it. He did not want to kill an innocent person ever again under the excuse of having no choice. As if finding a thread in the tangled mess of his thoughts, his mind suddenly cleared.
"Let's just pretend we didn't see anything. Don't tell anyone else—especially not the priests of the Temple or the knights. There's no telling what they would do to the child if they found out."
Having squeezed out his answer, Jing let out a heavy sigh and looked at Ratel. Ratel's expression was incredibly bizarre. With his mouth tightly shut, he looked somewhat disgruntled, or perhaps as if he were holding back something he wanted to say. Jing had no way of knowing what it was, nor did he have the mental capacity to try and understand.
"This time, I will ask," Jing said, taking a deep breath.
"Because you and the Elder are the only ones who ever ask me such difficult questions. And every time you do, I feel a strange change occurring within me."
He didn't know when it had started.
"And it seems you know the reason behind this sense of déjà vu."