A Much More Trivial, Embarrassing, and Personal Sin (2)
While being dragged away by the ear by Kilika, Hodric still made wild, exaggerated hand gestures. If translated into spoken language, it would have been the equivalent of screaming at the top of his lungs. Are you really going to be okay?
Benny turned her head that way for a moment and answered with her expression alone. She scrunched her face with all her strength and stuck her tongue out. Aspen couldn’t hide his bewilderment.
“What are you doing?”
Once the door had closed in the distance, Benny let the tension drain from the eyes that had been glaring at Aspen. Then she hopped lightly onto the iron railing where they had been standing.
Aspen, who had nearly had a heart attack thinking she was about to plunge to the first floor, breathed a sigh of relief when she skillfully hooked her toes into the narrow frame and perched there. The fact that he felt relieved at all left him momentarily choked with emotion.
Get a grip. Who exactly are you pitying right now?
Benny didn’t notice Aspen’s brief internal struggle. She was too busy staring down gloomily at the first floor, which was a chaotic mess of scattered junk.
“I’ll be honest with you. Actually, I suppose just talking is the same thing. I’m terrible at lying anyway.”
If her mother were still alive, she would have earned a solid smack on the back for this sorry state. To Benny, her own mental condition looked painfully similar. Lying was a job for smarter people.
“The confession drug you slipped into your pocket won’t do you much good. I’d spill everything even if you didn’t force me.”
Aspen’s eyebrows twitched.
“What?”
Benny manipulated the tablet in her hand. The screen hanging on the second-floor wall lit up brightly. Aspen instinctively recoiled, reminded of the giant electronic boards at the arena.
The display showed the building’s corridors in clear detail. Servants—presumably—carrying flower pots and cleaning. Members of the Peres family being assigned their rooms. And… outside the workshop where they stood, the Niko Twins were indeed engaged in an ugly brawl, yanking each other’s hair and clawing at faces.
Having witnessed her friends’ disgrace, Benny quickly switched the screen off. From long experience, it seemed Kilika had crossed the line while beating Hodric.
“What was that?”
“Insurance. I’m terrified of people hiding things from me, so I prepared it. I saw you slip the Peres family’s secret vial into your pocket, by the way. Whether you planned to drop it secretly into a cup or slap my cheek, grab my jaw, and force it down my throat, I’m not sure.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ah. I know the feeling. The urge to rip someone open and peer inside their guts. As I said before, I don’t get along with the friend called lying. That’s why I’ve never grown close to a world that uses lies in so many different grammars. The reason I observed all of you—if we skip the excuses—is simple. I was envious.”
Benny stretched in her precarious position with practiced ease. This was clearly not her first time.
“Try living trapped in this dreary world. As your senior, I can promise you that the moment you cross the hundred-year mark, you’ll go insane. You might end up spending the rest of your life with your eyes glued to the telescope I built, living like a cat staring into an aquarium. Exactly the way I was living.”
“What could you possibly lack to drive you to that? Just selling off the steel in this room would bring in a fortune.”
Benny lifted her head. Nostalgic creations swayed like mobiles in a child’s bedroom. She flicked the tip of an old mechanical leg hanging directly above her. Ting.
“Making a living isn’t the issue. The question is whether people with good intentions can win. It’s not as if you always win, but at least in the land you live on, there are ways to overcome things. I was jealous of a world that still offered such chances.”
Ting. Ting.
The rhythmic tapping against the prosthetic seemed to carry a hypnotic effect. Benny’s eyes lost focus, drifting toward the past.
“It wasn’t a product. It was hope. Hope that would let a child who lost a leg in a chemical factory walk again. But the moment I invented it, the so-called Medical Association blocked me. No, you may not. This constitutes medical practice and must go through our hands. Then they stole my idea and began selling it at an exorbitant price. A price those factory children could never earn even if they worked for hundreds of years.”
Aspen glanced down at his own right arm, now made of metal.
“That arm is technically illegal. I can’t produce prosthetics through official channels anymore. It’s been that way for one hundred and sixty-three years. I couldn’t even complain to their faces. In the heavens, age is power, and every last one of them is older than me.”
Benny tossed the tablet upward like a juggler and caught it. The flickering light was dizzying.
“For fools who don’t know how to communicate honestly, for idiots who turn nothing into everything, I created a new world where people could talk anywhere. A world free of location and distance, where inside those square frames you didn’t need to read anyone’s mood. An endlessly free world. But instead they just curse and tear each other apart. They sit there betting money while broadcasting scenes of people dying or being injured all across the heavens. Would you believe the most popular channels are the ones where they gamble with lives? There’s a reason that fat bastard Kada Sakano turned his tourist cruise ship into a betting arena.”
After repeating the throw-and-catch motion several times, Benny suddenly hurled the tablet down to the first floor. It vanished into a pile of rubber wheels, bounced away without a sound, and disappeared.
“This invention met the exact opposite fate of the prosthetics. I am legally required to keep producing tablets. The moment I stop, my company will be crushed and vanish into the back alleys of history. When I tried to halt production, everyone had already become so addicted to the channel games that I earned universal resentment.”
“Even though you’re the owner and don’t want it, that can still happen?”
“I’m a two-hundred-and-two-year-old infant who still wets the bed, while the ones throwing every law at me are dusty old coughs who’ve lived nearly a thousand years. People who spent centuries plotting how to bind the next generation before I was even born. How could I possibly win alone?”
Aspen could only see Benny’s profile. Yet her face never looked merely half-sad. The exhaustion accumulated over nearly two centuries seemed contagious.
“At least they didn’t steal the core technology. The principle of constructing virtual worlds through the reverse side of mana is something no one but me can underst— Sorry. Let’s stick to things that can be understood. Back to the main point.”
Benny flipped backward and dropped familiarly onto the floor with her back. She must have done the same thing in the same spot many times; rubber padding had been laid on the iron grate where she landed. The motion wasn’t graceful—whether from poor motor control or lack of flexibility. After struggling free from where her clothes had caught on the grate, Benny stood and awkwardly raised both hands to point at the globe on one side of the platform.
Aspen couldn’t conceal his surprise. The model displayed a detailed map of the Federation along with records of events from countless locations.
“At first I wasn’t specifically spying on you alone. I simply observed your kingdom on the ground as a hobby. In a somewhat academic way. Or rather, I should say the Federation. You’re sensitive about the term, aren’t you?”
That was true. It wasn’t a country ruled by a single king. Their nation belonged to all people and all of humanity.
“Observing the ground without permission and taking interest in humans is, in fact, illegal. I’d be in serious trouble if caught, but what could I do? It was far more pleasant to watch than my own daily reality. You all lived so simply. So passionately.”
“Is that an insult?”
“No. In every good sense that expression can carry. You aren’t bound by hundreds of rules designed to fill old men’s bellies, and when villains do evil, you smash them without fail. It’s as if the very attitude toward life had reward good, punish evil coded into it.”
Aspen thought he understood. Nathan had once told him something similar. The heavenly realm where fairy-tale paradise should exist was instead filled with things that were wrong.
“There was a time when one of the humans working at our Galarhorn stole one of my creations. I was quite shocked. I had saved him from an unfair kidnapping, and he was a friend who spoke to me casually and played with me.”
Benny pointed to an empty space among the collection on the ceiling.
“Then he took the stolen object to the outermost edge of the heavens. When the heavens passed over your country’s airspace, he dropped it outside. Several kilometers down.”
“The heavens… move? Land large enough to hold several countries moves?”
Aspen was stunned by both facts.
“And you threw a lump of metal from up here? What if it had hit someone?”
“Exactly. But more than that, what was he thinking? What if he got caught? Sure enough, he died. The outer perimeter guard unit caught him immediately and took his head. The crime of leaking heavenly property—death penalty.”
Fortunately, the prosthetic frame the thief had dropped caused no casualties besides the thief himself. It had fallen into a lake in the dead of night where no one could see.
“The humans who recovered it sold it to the ‘scholar sirs,’ calling it fascinating. The ‘scholar sirs’ were horrified, saying it was an object centuries ahead of its time. It was sad, but I also felt a surge of pride. That pride didn’t last, however, once they tore my creation apart, analyzed it, and produced something of a different use that still followed the same principles. Strangely, I felt a sense of kinship, as if they were colleagues in the same field.”
Aspen finally realized what Benny was talking about. It was an old story from before he was born.
“The founder of the metal golem… was you?”
“It’s a shame I never thought of attaching them to arms and legs, but what can you do? They said they didn’t know how to connect it to the nerves.”
The scholars had called it a great self-sacrifice. Some unknown genius had donated his invention for free. That astonishing inventor had never thought of earning money or gaining honor. The words the scholars left behind had even become the slogan of the Federation University.
This is truly a beautiful human being.
“They called that ‘humanity,’ I believe.”
Benny giggled.
“I laughed for a long time after hearing it. It’s still funny every time I hear it now.”
“Why?”
“It was an obscenely beautiful word. Like a child seeing an erotic book for the first time and bursting into laughter at the pictures of adults grunting and rubbing together. We don’t have… such dreamlike expressions.”
Benny’s smile was tinged with sorrow.
“We have everything you need. Methods to fight the abyss monsters that appear anywhere in the world. If a body is injured, replace it with steel. Means to report the state of battle from anywhere and request rescue. Communication technology faster than the druids’ battle eagles. But it’s funny. I can’t drop my inventions for fear my neck will be cut, and I can’t leave the heavens for fear of being electrocuted.”
Aspen nodded slowly at the profound and informative tale. Then he sensed something odd.
“Weren’t we talking about something else…?”
Benny flinched.
“Th-that was the background. You need to understand the premise to solve the problem, right?”
“So being honest doesn’t necessarily mean talking only about what’s necessary. I’m not blaming you, but when exactly is the main point coming?”
Benny returned to the original topic.
While ‘academically’ observing the Federation, Benny had discovered something rather wonderful a few years earlier. The Lion Wing Knights.
“That quickly became a new hobby. Watching you all go around smashing monsters.”
Aspen let out a dumbfounded sigh.
“Now we’re finally reaching the part I wanted to hear. A criminal confessing in the act.”
“What! I watched! So what? It’s not like it wears out from looking! We were three kilometers apart vertically anyway—we were never going to meet in our lifetimes!”
Yet Benny thrust her chin out defiantly.
“To us, the ground is no different from a story about another star. A world we can never reach in our lifetime. If you could see us through a telescope, you’d stare in fascination too, like observing insects!”
“That may be true, but it stings a little when you’re the one being watched.”
And as time passed, Benny gradually grew interested in one particular person. Every night, watching Nathan sleeping wrapped in a sleeping bag by the campfire—
“This woman is unbelievable.”
“Let me be clear. It wasn’t because I liked him back then. The mana wavelength on the synesthesia lens was fluctuating strangely. While recording the pattern, I kept wondering what on earth it was. It felt like a pelican trying to swallow a fish called Nathan, only to keep spitting it out because the opponent was too big.”
Benny’s observation device didn’t transmit visual data alone. It could detect sound, smell, and even the flow of mana energy in the atmosphere.
“But then Santra caught me. Damn it. She strolled into my private space like it was her own house through the transition gate, rummaged through every record, didn’t bother organizing them, and then—”
“—that’s when Santra learned about Nathan.”
“Correct. She said she’d overlook the illegal observation of the ground, but ordered me to observe Nathan in detail and report back. I didn’t think she would run and tell the Conclave members… but I couldn’t risk the possibility hidden in that ‘didn’t think.’”
“Electrocution. You really did risk your life.”
“So instead of seeing it as the gloom of a criminal, if you could view it as the passion of an unyielding scholar—”
“I’ll handle the interpretation, thanks.”
Benny’s lips pursed into a pout.
“Anyway, I didn’t realize it at the time. That recording his every move and every word would lead to affection. That watching a man named Nathan throw himself desperately at opponents he couldn’t defeat, only to overcome them anyway, would make me reflect on myself. I never expected any of it.”
Even as her heart beat faster at every triumph, even as her admiration grew, she had believed they could never meet. Therefore Benny had not been afraid of her own feelings. If the other party was someone she could never reach due to the difference in height, if they could never meet as flesh-and-blood beings, then there was no reason she would fail—just as she had failed countless times before.
But Santra had suddenly dragged the illusory Nathan into Benny’s failure-ridden world. And for some purpose, she had tormented him cruelly.
Benny had thought she was having a nightmare.
“So after rescuing Nathan, who had barely survived, feeding him, clothing him, and learning that he had been rejected by you… I thought maybe I had a chance too. Then I realized that wasn’t the case. The end.”
Benny finished sulkily.
“I’m sorry. If you’re going to hit me, please go easy. I’m prepared, but I’m not as sturdy as an orc or a lizardian.”
“You drag out the parts no one asked about and skip the rather important ones.”
With a complicated expression, Aspen leaned against the railing and scratched at the joint of his arm.
“Besides, I didn’t come here to vent my anger. What do you take a knight for?”
Benny moved to his side, brushed the dust from the railing, and leaned against it in the same posture.
“Why won’t you hit me? If I were you, I would have already slapped a woman like me. I deserve it. Using the name of Hedonic for something that would make me cry and regret it later.”
“I can’t.”
Aspen shook his head firmly.
“If I hit you, you’d die.”
“Good heavens.”
Aspen quietly studied the elf who was tangled up in unresolved matters and struggling. Then he extended his hand once more.
“I apologize for being swept up in emotion. For the ridiculous misunderstanding about your identity as well. The offer is still valid.”
“…To be friends? Really? You can let go of the resentment without even twisting my jaw?”
“I nearly trapped that child with a single word of refusal. Only after hearing it again did I realize I shouldn’t have done that.”
Aspen smiled faintly.
“I don’t know. Compared to that, what you did might be a much more trivial, embarrassing, and personal sin.”
Benny, who had been staring blankly at Aspen’s hand, took it this time without hesitation.
“Since you admit it, I’ll say it—you do know your own fault.”
“Since you admit it, I’ll say it—I got scared first because I heard you were someone with considerable power. I thought a noblewoman was using authority to commit forceful rape or something. Now that I see you, you’re no different from a mage-tower graduate student with all four limbs tied. Everything gets tangled, life keeps veering onto strange paths. That expression that says you no longer know what living is supposed to be.”
At the piercing counterattack, Benny squeezed her eyes shut.
“Stop the factual violence.”
Aspen smiled. It was the first time since entering the room.
“As you probably know, Nathan and I have no choice but to rely on you. No matter what happens, the entire heavens despise Nathan. Santra, who was at least somewhat aligned with our family, has lost her physical body and must remain hidden. She said she would transfer all her assets to you. Nothing I said was wrong, was it?”
“All correct. You’ve grasped the situation accurately. Except for one point you missed.”
Many powerful figures were salivating over the position of Great Arena Owner. As a member of the Hedonic faction, Benny had to protect that seat until Santra returned. For the sake of all Hedonic comrades who longed for freedom.
“It’s serious. Only after stepping forward did I realize I had walked onto a path of thorns. I don’t know how much help I can be in this situation, but—”
“Still, we have to do everything we can. Since we’re on the same boat, I look forward to working with you. Owner. Since we’ve already saved each other’s lives once, we could call it a good beginning, couldn’t we?”
Aspen, who had forgiven the person who had interfered in the romantic relationship, shook the hand of the owner who had suggested he beat her. It was a handshake that might not yet be firm trust, but could at least serve as the first step of companionship.
“Of course. I’ll do my best.”
For some reason Benny felt tears rising. Strangely, she didn’t want to let go of that hand. Whether because she had received forgiveness—even if only temporary—or because of her damned affection deficiency.
“The owner should naturally pay attention to the well-being of her servant, after all.”