Delusion (6)
Delusion (6)
I walked Serepina back to her dormitory, still hiccuping with tears.
She stayed tucked against my chest and said nothing.
Like a child, she just kept crying silently.
The weeping had stopped, but the red stain around her eyes lingered. She hesitated a long while in front of her door.
"Ravin, come inside for a moment. Have a cup of tea or something."
"No, it's fine."
I shook my head.
"I'll go now."
The moment I turned away, she caught the hem of my sleeve.
There was no strength in her grip.
"I read the letter."
Her voice was quiet.
But I couldn't recall anything about the letter's contents.
"Did you."
"I'll handle all the preparations for the park. Let's go together."
I thought about it for a second.
I nodded.
"I'm really leaving now."
I gently took hold of the hand clutching my sleeve and peeled it away.
Then I walked off.
After that day, time simply passed.
Ravin went through the same routine as always.
Lectures during the day, forcing himself toward sleep at night.
Every so often, Levina visited.
She would hand him things she called gifts—all of them extravagantly expensive luxury items.
An intricately carved ebony pipe, exotic tobacco leaves, a bottle of hard liquor with an unfamiliar label.
She would set them on the table without much conversation, sit for a little while, and then leave.
Estelle always welcomed Ravin with the same warmth.
To her, he had become someone she could not do without.
They hadn't known each other long, but somewhere along the way, that was what he'd become to her.
He made a half-hearted meal of the apple Estelle handed him, hesitated, then spoke quietly.
A conversation he'd meant to bring up someday.
"Do you remember what happened at the Forbidden Archive that time?"
Lying sprawled on a long chair, he stared at the ceiling as he asked.
"Ah, that. I remember."
Estelle was perched on the altar, swinging her legs.
Her voice was light, the same as ever.
"Watching those idiots who thought they could summon something and control it just because they were devil-worshippers—that was pretty entertaining."
"Thanks to you just watching, the unlucky bastard who happened to be in the archive that day—me—took the blame for it."
At that, Estelle paused.
She set the apple down and glanced at him, looking slightly sheepish.
"Right, I did hear something like that, roughly. But honestly, if it was loud enough to reach my ears, your reputation was already at rock bottom to begin with."
Instead of answering, Ravin pulled out his pipe—the one Levina had brought him a few days ago, calling it a gift.
He packed the tobacco leaves down tight, then took a small box from his coat and sprinkled on a little powder he'd obtained separately.
Struck a match.
A small orange flame flared, then caught on the leaves.
Smoke climbed through the pipe and was drawn into his mouth.
Slowly, he exhaled.
The haze blurred his sight for a moment.
"It was rock bottom, all right. And thanks to that, I got kicked out of the family, and although nothing's official yet, my engagement will probably be broken soon enough."
He said it lightly, like he was talking about the weather.
Estelle looked at him and seemed about to say something, then closed her mouth.
She didn't want to risk earning his dislike by saying the wrong thing.
Without warning, a memory surfaced: sharing cheap cigarettes with Estelle in the past.
He'd never actually enjoyed those cheap, harsh, tasteless things, even though he used to walk around with one dangling from his lips every day.
So why had it felt so refreshing back then?
When he first became 'Ravin,' he'd tried to make the most of whatever he could remember.
And once his spirit had started to break, a little here and there, he'd simply done his best to avoid every incident and just—
just get by however he could.
He didn't have any skills beyond grinding through a few lines of text, and he'd figured that rather than sticking his neck out, it'd be enough to get reasonably close to the main characters of the original story.
He couldn't even pull that off properly, which was how he'd ended up scouring magic books in the library, then forbidden magic in the Forbidden Archive, searching for any way back—only to land in this mess.
At some point, even the desire to return had vanished.
In its place, his mind had filled with the idea of being loved by someone, and not wanting to be hated.
Living as 'Ravin' and hoping for that might be pure selfishness.
Would Estelle listen?
Would she do anything for him, the way she'd said?
Did she still see her little brother in him?
At least for now, she never brought up her brother, and she didn't seem to be projecting her brother onto him anymore.
Unlike before.
In the past, Estelle had closed the distance so quickly he couldn't gauge it. This time, when he drew near, her face would flush, she'd grow flustered, and she'd pull back just a little.
Ravin decided to take that as a positive sign.
He rose from his seat and walked over to Estelle on the altar.
Held out the pipe he'd been smoking.
A faint thread of smoke was still curling from its end.
"Do you remember what you said last time? About helping me?"
Estelle stared at the pipe for a long while.
Her face colored slightly, and hesitantly, she brought it to her lips.
She took a deep pull of smoke.
A small cough, then a shy little laugh.
Watching her, Ravin made up his mind.
He'd convince himself that Estelle was fond of him.
Whether it was true or not.
"I remember. By the way, this thing—smoking it is making me smile without meaning to. What the hell did you do to it?"
She asked playfully.
"Does it matter what I did?"
"If I don't like it, I might have the Church punish you."
It was probably just a lighthearted joke to Estelle.
But the moment those words brushed his ear, a memory of burning alive lanced through Ravin's mind.
The hollow sight of his wrist being severed by Serepina right before he died.
The agony of being bound to a pillar as his body slowly charred.
And Estelle, nowhere to be seen the whole time.
He knew it couldn't possibly be her fault, yet he felt dizzy all the same.
Ravin snatched the pipe from her lips.
Then, without hesitation, he pinned her down.
"Come to think of it, it all started with you."
He pressed her shoulders down and spoke low.
"I'm not blaming you. But it did start with you. The reason I'm living like this."
Their legs tangled lightly, their bodies pressed close.
Estelle could have shoved him off, even thrown him across the room if she wanted to, but she only squirmed a little, offering no real resistance.
"...This is a bit inappropriate. Just—get off, first."
She wriggled slightly, but her face stayed red and she made no serious move to escape.
When Ravin didn't respond, her voice grew a touch more insistent.
"I said back off! Ravin, are you—are you seriously going to make me kick you out of here?"
The way she kicked up a fuss pulled a dry laugh from him.
"Estelle. In the first place, aside from me, you haven't got anyone to talk to. No one you can have a real conversation with. No one you feel any real affection for."
"And that's why you're acting so smug?"
Estelle's voice dripped with sarcasm.
"I guess you'd know all about it, since you've always had a gaggle of women around you."
Her face was flushed, but she spat the words out with a strange undercurrent of jealousy.
"......."
"If you really don't get off, then from now on, I— well, I just won't see you. For a while."
Estelle's voice trailed off as she averted her eyes.
The threat rang hollow.
Ravin brushed his fingers softly across her cheek.
Then, stroking her hair, he murmured.
"Really?"
At that, Estelle bit her lip in embarrassment and drew it in.
"You're the kind of person who can't be happy without me. Your personality is just built that way. You said it yourself: who would ever like you? Who's left to like Estelle—not the Saintess—besides me?"
He whispered in her ear.
She reminded him of the girl from the previous cycle, but she didn't look terribly different, either.
"There's no way you can manage without me. These days, I'm the only one you have."
"Ravin......"
"Whether I've used sorcery, whether it turns out I really am a devil-worshipper, whether it actually was me who killed people in the Forbidden Archive, whether I'm truly a despicable punk, a heretic—what can you even do about it now?"
He caught her chin and forced her eyes to meet his.
"Estelle, you can't do without me. I don't know why, but whenever you see me, your heart hurts, you feel tenderness, you feel love."
Ravin spoke with a certainty he didn't feel.
He shoved aside the thought that he might be wrong, and kept the last resort in the back of his mind: if things went sour, he'd just use it.
"......"
Every time she heard his words, her heart ached deeply.
Since the moment they first met, until now, and on into the future—Estelle had somehow accepted it without quite knowing why.
And yet it was all true.
The words were wrong, but because Ravin spoke them, they were right—at least for Estelle.
She didn't want Ravin to hate her.
She didn't want him to hate Estelle—not the high-and-mighty Saintess.
Ravin pressed his face closer to the curve of her neck and brushed his lips against her skin.
"Nn, ah—"
Estelle's breath caught, and she pulled her shoulders in as if ticklish.
"You're the only one who can help me. And for me, you're the only one, too."
Even as Ravin thought he sounded like some kept man, the memory surfaced of being called 'Satan's whore who seduced the Saintess.'
His left hand traced slowly up the smooth waistline of her priestess robes, then stopped just beneath her shoulder, below her chest.
With a faint smile, he leaned in so close their lips were nearly touching, and murmured to Estelle.
"There's someone I want dead. If that person dies, I'll do anything for you."
Estelle stared blankly for a long moment, lips parted.
She let out a breath, drew another, and asked again.
Cheeks flushed, eyes slightly unfocused, she looked up at Ravin.
"...Even a kiss?"
He didn't answer.
He lifted his hand from her shoulder, got slowly to his feet.
A strange, unclean feeling made him straighten his clothes once.
He looked down at Estelle, still lying there with a reddened face, and gave her his answer.
"Yeah."