Memories of a Shy and Dainty Cavalryman's Homecoming (3)
The moment the carriage door flew open, Nathan Maia leaped out shouting, “Let’s play!”
Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last nearly as long as he’d hoped.
He had expected them to charge in with wounded pride, like the gang that used to rule the sewer district—clinging to their egos with pure spite and malice. Instead, the alley filled with nothing but the wise daughter-in-law’s groans and wails. She really was wisely driving everyone insane.
He’d tried to amuse himself with the joke, but it wasn’t very funny. The moment those groans echoed, the entire pack of thugs had turned tail and fled.
“Damn it.”
He thought he’d gone easy on them. He hadn’t even drawn his longsword, afraid the fight would end too quickly.
The sunset had already turned dim. It was the hour when children headed home after playtime. For a boy whose blood was still lukewarm with excitement, there was no greater tragedy than having no one left to play with.
Having lost his sense of purpose, Nathan grew sullen again.
The Eleim whose spine he had dislocated was now sobbing loudly while sitting in a lotus position on the back of a Sapiens.
“You think you can walk the night streets safely after doing this—!”
“You sound just like that Hono-whatever guy. Go ask him what I answered. You’re headed for the infirmary anyway.”
“If we had money to go to a clinic, do you think we’d be carrying painkillers by the bottle—!”
“Now you’re making me feel bad. There’s a place called the Graveyard House that’s great at setting bones. Want an introduction?”
The thug hurled every curse he could think of at Nathan—racial privilege, inferiority complex, hexes, and even the story of how he’d bet on the Sapiens’ death at a back-alley gambling den and lost a hundred times in a row.
“You son of a bitch.”
Nathan quietly shifted his weight onto the thug’s waist, forcing him to shut up.
“Aaaargh!”
Nathan scratched his head. Since he’d already shut the guy up, he decided to scare him a little more. If the thug realized there was no escape, maybe he’d at least pull out a fence spike and come at him.
“A hundred-battle veteran of the Arena of Punishment has special privileges.”
“Ugh… what?”
“Starting today—the day of my release—for the next full week, I have complete immunity no matter what I do. As long as I don’t go around slaughtering people on the streets and throwing the Heavens into chaos, no one can interfere with me.”
“Bullshit!”
“That’s what the warden of the Arena of Punishment told me. It’s the law of the Celestial Gods. That Uranus guy you people worship and can’t live without supposedly created the rule when he built the Heavens fifteen hundred years ago.”
“You’re just trying to intimidate me because I don’t know any better, you damn ape!”
“It’s not a lie. An ancient law from the old days isn’t that strange. The same thing happened in ancient societies on the Lower World. The right of vengeance. Since there’s no clear way to determine right and wrong, once someone endures their punishment, they’re granted the right to crush their enemy. It’s the bare minimum to relieve resentment and keep people from rebelling against the community’s rules.”
“Speak in the Heavenly tongue, you bastard!”
As the explanation grew complicated, the thug began to writhe like an allergy sufferer.
“I don’t know what it is, but that law wasn’t made for you, Sapiens!”
“Apparently they didn’t know back then that your kind would drag the races living on the ground up to the Heavens. So they never specified which races it applied to. Turns out it applies to me too.”
“What the hell kind of nonsense—!”
The Eleim, who had slowly begun to follow the logic, suddenly froze.
“It is nonsense. Even I can see the holes riddling this law. If an old law creaks because it’s outdated, it should be revised to fit the present so no innocent victims appear. But they say the laws set by the Celestial God can’t be touched? The principle of infallibility or something. The Shepherd of the Heavens is never wrong; it’s always the fault of his people. That’s the doctrine of the Celestial Church, I hear.”
“…Speak in the Heavenly tongue! Stop using difficult words!”
“There’s no proper way to stop me, either. No one has ever survived a hundred battles before. Do you understand what that means? Even if I go around hunting you people down and tearing you apart, no one seems to get it?”
Nathan sprang to his feet and hauled up the crying Eleim by the collar. The sheer monstrous strength of lifting him with one hand made the elf scream.
“Even if I build a damn bonfire tonight, strip your bones, and roast you, I’ll be fine. No one will interfere.”
The thug hadn’t quite understood the talk about the right of vengeance or infallibility, but he definitely understood the bonfire part. Imagining himself turned into barbecue, the Eleim began thrashing and calling for his mother.
Truly, motherhood was a great thing. To still cling to his mother even after passing a hundred years of age. Then again, the mother who had given birth to these bastards was likely still alive well past a hundred herself.
Whether the age-wasting bastard cried like a child or not, Nathan muttered indifferently.
“So what the hell am I supposed to use this freedom for?”
“You won’t use it. You’re going to die here.”
The sharp thwip of a hand crossbow firing.
The sobbing Eleim instinctively sensed death. But Nathan hurled the elf he was holding behind him and swept aside the incoming bolts with the back of his hand.
“I was pretending to use him as a shield, but you people really have zero affection even though you’ll be stuck together for hundreds of years? It’s going to be awkward to look each other in the face from now on, huh?”
The elf who had been thrown behind him scrambled to his feet, frantically patting himself down to confirm he was alive, then began glaring resentfully at his older brothers.
The elves who had fired the crossbows looked visibly flustered. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
“You idiot! I told you to aim for the head!”
“He aimed for the head perfectly. You’re the one who missed. Yeah, you.”
Life blazed back into Nathan’s face.
Pipes and hammers weren’t much fun. Neither were daggers hidden in canes or knuckles tucked inside hats. But that—that looked like it might be a little entertaining.
A crossbow. A weapon with rather painful memories attached.
I wonder how many I can dodge now.
“So many mouths cursing me to die, yet not a single real person among them. My stomach’s twisted up so badly I have no choice but to survive, right?”
Just because he was outside the arena didn’t mean the fighting would stop. To Nathan, the whole world was nothing more than a small arena. And the fact that had once made him shudder now brought him joy.
If you can’t avoid it, enjoy it.
Having enjoyed it far too much, Nathan swept back his white-streaked hair and licked his lips.
“Shoot. What are you waiting for?”
“This son of a bitch—!”
More gang members carrying crossbows appeared. They weren’t as sturdy as Morbi’s, but they had numbers. It was threatening enough.
Yet Nathan simply waited. He let them surround him completely.
“Go on. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. I said shoot.”
Nathan welcomed the new game with a wide grin.
The elves wearing pressed-down hats ground their teeth. Twelve automatic crossbows were aimed at him. There was no way out. Anyone pierced through the organs beneath their living flesh would die equally. Even a hundred-battle veteran.
“Boys, he says fire! Kill h—”
Right before the order left his mouth, the thug’s chest caved in with a sickening crunch.
A silhouette shot forward like lightning and sent one elf flying out of the alley.
Nathan’s gaze followed the elf as he tumbled over the railing and into the lake—like a child watching a toy roll out the window.
The moment the encirclement collapsed, the terrified shooters scattered in every direction. But one unlucky bastard was grabbed by the scruff and slammed to the ground by the intruder.
The unidentified figure in a pressed-down cloak stomped on the elf with clear emotion. The crisp sound of bones shattering beneath a shoe was oddly refreshing.
Nathan observed the movement closely.
“Hey.”
The accuracy was terrible because it was mixed with emotion, but the movements belonged to a trained expert. Someone who hadn’t missed a single day of training.
“Who the hell are you to ruin someone else’s fun? You gonna play with me instead?”
The cloak, breathing hard, stood up and turned around.
Nathan happily studied the motion. The skeleton beneath the cloak. The posture. The habits. The rhythm of breathing. He meticulously dissected every detail, preparing for battle. Hoping—perhaps—that instead of running, the stranger might want to exchange a few blows with him.
But the cloaked figure said nothing. The crude mask with only eye holes cut out made it impossible to read any expression.
While Nathan looked the stranger up and down, the cloak suddenly began to choke and wheeze as if struggling to breathe. Soon, a suppressed groan leaked out from behind the expressionless wooden mask.
“Ugh… uuuugh.”
The sound was familiar.
Nathan, who had been glaring with murderous intent, froze. His pupils, which had contracted sharply from adrenaline, slowly widened again.
Then water began dripping steadily from beneath the mask. Along with the sound of stifled sobs.
In an instant, Nathan Maia was thrown back four years.
“Aspen?”
That height, that frame, that posture. The hand that instinctively drifted toward the hilt of a longsword whenever she was troubled. Even the faint scent. It was the person he had dreamed of.
The long wait was over. Emotions bottled up for four years burst forth.
Yeah, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I believed you’d be safe. How have you been, Aspen?
Even under Nathan’s desperate gaze, Aspen did not open her mouth.
Unable to endure it, Nathan took one step closer. Aspen took one step back.
“Ah…?”
When Nathan took three steps, Aspen retreated three steps. When Nathan suddenly lunged, Aspen leaped lightly onto a low building and sprinted away at full speed.
Her flexible athleticism hadn’t deteriorated in the slightest. Nathan felt considerable relief. At least she hadn’t been badly hurt.
But the moment that relief faded, fury surged in its place.
Nathan Maia snapped back to the present.
“Agh, fuck. Seriously.”
He scratched roughly at his white-streaked hair. He was even angrier than when he had seen his own face hanging from a noose on a badge.
When Nathan jumped onto the low roof after her, Aspen threw herself off the building—into the very lake where she had kicked one of the thugs earlier.
Splash. Splash.
The wet hood covering her eye holes made Aspen shake her head vigorously. Then, with only her head above water, she stared at Nathan.
Nathan stared blankly down at Aspen in the lake water before finally speaking after swallowing a mountain of curses.
“Aspen. First of all… I love you. I missed you so much. I’m sorry for thinking about punching you the moment I saw you. I didn’t realize it was you.”
He picked up a piece of cement from the edge of the rooftop and hurled it hard into the lake. With a loud plunk, water splashed onto Aspen’s mask.
“And what the hell is this bullshit? You want to see me go crazy?”
What on earth had she been eating for breakfast to act like this? Had she caught some kind of mental illness that required distance after not seeing each other for so long?
Just as he was about to tear out a handful of his own hair in frustration, Arqueba’s words—“until midnight”—suddenly flashed through his mind.
He didn’t understand why, but what did that have to do with this ridiculous game of tag?
Shaking his head, Nathan prepared to leap into the lake.
Then he stopped, struck by a chilling premonition.
The moment he jumped in, he might die.
What is this? Who is it? Is it Aspen? Did Aspen just try to kill me? Or is that an assassin imitating Aspen?
No. That is definitely Aspen. And Aspen would never kill me. There’s no reason. There mustn’t be.
But what if, while I was in prison, something—anything—happened that gave her a reason—
“No. No. No way.”
Nathan struggled to turn his frozen mind.
Reason. Yes, reason. The Aspen he knew was someone whose words might be emotional, but whose actions always had purpose. She was playful but knew when to be serious. He had lost his temper at her jokes many times as a child, but this was not the time for pranks.
This was their reunion after four years. Even Aspen herself had been crying.
“Right. She wouldn’t be doing this to make me angry—”
Nathan froze solid. Still pointing at Aspen with his back turned.
Aspen was looking up at the sky from the water.
Only then did Nathan realize where the premonition of death had come from.
He looked up.
The night sky writhed with thick storm clouds. The torn clouds were knitting back together, regaining their original form. A small flash of lightning flickered in their center.
Animal instinct.
Nathan took a couple of experimental steps—toward Aspen, who still had only her head above water.
The sensation was like walking a tightrope made of killing intent. As the warning from his instincts grew stronger, the torn clouds opened their maw again. The growing flash of lightning roared silently, as if about to fall.
Over that bizarre sky, the translucent figure of a giant with hands pressed together in prayer overlapped.
The moment Nathan hurriedly retreated four steps, the giant vanished. The storm clouds that had been debating whether to unleash lightning scattered like filth washed away by water.
When Nathan retreated ten steps, the night sky became completely clear again.
“Motherfucker.”
It was a phenomenon he had experienced once before.
Exactly once.
The Celestial God’s divine punishment. The lightning that had crushed the abandoned building that was once Mornid’s small castle vertically.
Nathan apologized to everyone in his heart. To his father, who had told him never to reveal his weakness of getting excited. To the late Captain Alessandro, who had made him promise to always maintain dignity as a Lion Wing Knight. And to Aspen, who had always felt sorry that he kept learning nothing but curses.
But sometimes, there were moments when surging emotions simply could not be expressed with refined words alone.
“Ah—! Mi—! Fuuuuuuck—!”
Keeping distance prevented the lightning from striking.
Having confirmed that Nathan understood, Aspen sneezed and swam back to shore. Of course, she climbed out a good distance away from him.
Squeezing the water from her drenched hair, Aspen glanced at her watch.
Only three hours remained until midnight.
‘Three hours. I can endure it. Calm your heart. You endured four years. You can endure this much. You must endure…’
“Aaaaaah—! Miiii—! Fuuuuu—! Ck—!”
‘…Agreed.’
Aspen nodded and kicked a stone on the roadside.
For once, she was proud of having taught her junior such colorful language.