The Light That Sees Me Off and the Mage’s Trace
My waist hurt as if it might snap in two.
‘Did I… overdo it with exercise for the first time in a while…?’
I shifted my body slightly and only then realized my cheek was buried between something soft, plump, and yielding.
‘What… is this…? It’s so… stuffy…’
It was suffocating and cramped, yet also warm and comforting—a contradictory feeling like coming home. Home, yes, but not quite like being in my mother’s arms. …Mother’s chest had always been firm and a little hard.
‘Mother… so Pirel’s embrace… isn’t like…’
“Hwae…?”
Light leaking through the window lattice mingled with the faint glow seeping from whatever was providing me this soft suffocation, chasing away the last remnants of sleep. Only then did I realize what I was doing.
‘Ah… These are… Azalea’s… breasts…’
I pressed my face even deeper between the two soft mounds. The scent of an adult woman’s skin… something nostalgic…
“Um…”
A voice heavy with embarrassment drifted down from above my head like a sigh.
“Uee…”
“Kaira… th-this… is embarrassing…”
“Hyet?!”
I jerked my face free from between Azalea’s breasts and turned my head aside, cheeks burning crimson. It was too mortifying to meet her eyes.
“Y-you… were awake…?”
“Yes. I usually rise early for the dawn service. But Kaira was sleeping so peacefully… and on top of that, it seemed like you… really liked my… breasts…”
Azalea, too, had turned her head slightly away, stammering. Anyone could see how shy she was.
“So… even the adorable Kaira… likes this. Well, I suppose it makes sense. You were a man in your previous life…”
“Th-that’s not it…!!”
I flailed my arms in frantic denial, but I had no idea what excuse I could possibly give. Inside the sunlit room filled with the gentle warmth of morning, we spent a long time stealing glances at each other with only a single sheet between us. Both of us completely naked, of course.
“Um… what should I say? I suppose… I should start with an apology, Kaira?”
“Y-yes…?”
I glanced back at the saint. Azalea was fidgeting anxiously with her fingers, head slightly bowed, avoiding my gaze.
“Yesterday… I think I was just so happy to see you again after so long, and your scent was so comforting… but anyway, it was like I was possessed. I ended up doing… those things to you… and even… giving you my breast…”
“Ugh…”
I lowered my head in embarrassment too, staring at the bedsheet as I managed a tiny reply.
“…It’s fine…”
“Pardon…?”
“It’s okay… Azalea’s body was so warm and comforting… it felt like all the bad memories were being washed away. And… and, um…”
I laced my fingers together, nervously rubbing my thighs while stealing glances at her, then added in a voice as quiet as an ant’s whisper.
“…It had been so long since I felt… a man’s… thing… that I was… a little happy about it… I guess?”
I had to stop talking there.
“Hiiik?!”
Azalea squealed in delight and pounced on me, smothering my face with her soft, fluffy breasts and rubbing her lovely cheek against the top of my head. My mouth and breath were completely sealed away by her embrace.
“Mmph… uup… Azalea… nim…”
“Adorable Kaira… You’re going to have a hard time from now on, aren’t you? Rest today. Just for today. I’m exhausted from my holy duties too, and holding you like this makes me feel healed… Please, Kaira. Please… my dear friend.”
I sensed the fatigue and sorrow hidden behind her gentle voice and could neither refuse the saint’s request nor struggle free from her arms.
‘It’s so comfortable…’
I left that night, late.
“Are you sure you’ll be alright, Kaira? You could stay just one more day… No, instead of wandering without a place to settle, why don’t you just stay here with me…?”
I gazed quietly at Azalea’s genuinely regretful face. Even though our bond had only formed during less than a year of traveling with the hero’s party, I knew she truly saw me as a friend. I knew she was a kind-hearted person who genuinely cared for me.
That was precisely why I refused.
“No. The longer I stay, the longer the rumors that the saint is protecting me will circulate, and that will only worsen relations between the Empire and Poscotia.”
“I understand. But you could at least wait until Pirel returns from her duties in the northern territories, Kaira. …She’s your mother, after all.”
“…Yes. I miss her. Mother… Pirel, who has become a wonderful combat priest, and my precious little sister. The deadline I promised for our reunion has already passed. But…”
I stared down for a moment at the garden path where the shadows of the nighttime cathedral were slowly creeping forward, then finally spoke.
“If we’re both alive… we’ll surely meet again.”
“I see. Since I understand your wishes, Kaira… I won’t hold you back any longer.”
Azalea no longer tried to stop me. She simply embraced me tightly, now dressed once more in her saint’s robes.
“…Still, I do want to stop you from leaving on such a dangerous night… but I’m sure you have your reasons. After all, you’re a mage. You must be far wiser than I am.”
Of course I did. Leaving under the cover of a deserted night would make it unclear exactly how long the saint had been protecting Kaira. I didn’t bother explaining that part.
“And take this with you.”
“This is…”
It was a small wooden tag with something written on it.
This pass grants free entry and exit through the city gates during nighttime hours.
Primarily issued for urgent deployment of combat priests within the Empire.
Valid for bearer: Kaira.
“It’s nighttime, after all. It’s a pass that lets you go through the city gates. It’s usually used when we need to dispatch combat priests into the Empire in a hurry… but there shouldn’t be any problem if you use it, Kaira.”
“Azalea-nim…”
“Kaira, please listen to one last thing.”
Seeing the saint’s serious expression, I nodded tensely.
“What happened between us last night… part of it was being swept up in the moment, but… half of it was intentional. I wanted to press our bodies together and even invoke the miracle of light within you… to check whether any corruption remained. Using my own body… the body chosen by the gods as their representative.”
I read Azalea’s expression.
She had already assumed that whatever had touched me was some kind of divine entity. Even though acknowledging such a thing as a god would be blasphemous to her.
So that was it. She wanted to make contact with the most intimate parts of two people chosen by the divine. I could understand. It must have required considerable resolve on Azalea’s part—resolve to risk whether her own personality would survive contact with a godlike being.
…And she must have also needed the resolve to weigh our friendship against the possibility that I might hate her for forcing herself on me.
“But… it’s strange. I couldn’t find any trace of an angel chosen by an evil god on your body at all.”
“That’s… probably thanks to Bishop Lumina purifying me with the touch of death every day by offering her blood…”
“No, that can’t be it. I am grateful to that bishop for treating you well, even if she is from another faith. But clearly, she is merely a bishop. She is incomparably farther from the gods than I am. Such feeble power could never purify the malice of something that is not even of this world—something evil, yet still a god—that had bestowed power upon you.”
“I’m not a scholar, so… I don’t really understand anything beyond that. But it is strange… The fact that not even a speck of a trace remains on the body of someone who had drawn the attention of such a mighty being… It should be something to rejoice over, yet for some reason it makes me uneasy…”
“Don’t worry, Azalea-nim.”
I said so and buried my face between her breasts. The soft sensation pressed against my cheeks. I could also feel Azalea’s startled bewilderment at my sudden movement.
“It was an entity from another realm that lends its power to magic. It was nothing more than a fleeting whim from an incomprehensible being of chaos that lives in endless delusion within an ever-changing world. It simply… lost interest in its toy. Nothing will happen. Really… nothing at all…”
With those words, I comforted the precious saint with a lie even I could not believe.
Then, for the last time, I pressed my face firmly against Azalea’s chest, wrapped my arms tightly around her waist, clutched the nighttime pass she had issued me as a final kindness, and left the cathedral. I carried a backpack nearly as large as my own body—one that would accompany me for the rest of a journey whose length I could not even guess.
It had been a little over two days since I left the holy city of Poscotia without waiting for Pirel.
This time I did not follow the river. Instead, I planned to take a wide detour through the Empire’s northern frontier—relatively far from both the Light Denomination’s direct territories and Riaska—where the chance of pursuers catching up would be low. But because there was somewhere I needed to stop, I had turned my steps southward for a while.
So now I was walking through the forest on the outskirts of Waldenheim. My destination was somewhere around here. A place where I had once been indebted.
The forest, which had been filled only with bare branches and transparent, cold winds the last time I saw it, was now brimming with the vitality of early spring. It almost felt as if the woods were smiling warmly at me.
“It should be around here…”
It was difficult to be certain of the path from the back of a gray wind horse, so there was a chance I might get lost in the forest… but there was something I had to find even if it took several more days of wandering.
Fortunately, I did not need to wander for days.
“Ah.”
At the edge of my vision appeared a wide clearing large enough for a single house and a spacious garden—hard to believe it was inside a dense forest of tall trees.
Viran’s cabin.
I had returned here once again. The first time I had been kidnapped in my sleep and brought against my will, but now I had come of my own accord.
I stepped over the low fence surrounding the cabin and entered the courtyard where she had grown medicinal herbs. There was no sign of anyone. A chill wind uncharacteristic of spring tugged at my tied-back hair.
“Master?”
…I wasn’t sure if I should call her that. In truth, she was the wicked witch who had tried to kill me and had only given me her own book as a final capricious whim. But I was probably the only one left who would call her that.
There was no answer. No presence, either.
The small garden had not a single blade of grass, let alone medicinal herbs. In a forest like this, if the carefully prepared bare soil for an herb bed had been left untouched, weeds would have grown thick enough to leave no room to step within a month, let alone a year. The fact that it was still neatly maintained meant she had been tending it until recently—which meant she had restored her body and was moving about actively.
“Master…?”
Still no answer.
‘…Strange. The mana…’
The more I walked through the desolate courtyard, the more the heavy, mana-laden air clung stickily to me, as if pressing down on my lungs. The last time I had been dragged here, it had been an ordinary courtyard belonging to an ordinary house. Something… was wrong. For a grand mage, it seemed unlikely she would use such crude magic that simply crammed raw mana into the area.
At any rate, it seemed Viran was not here. I moved to find the source of the mana that was uncomfortably pressing against my body.
Finding the origin of the oppressively thick mana was not difficult. There was an object so steeped in magic that it was visibly glowing.
On the table beside the measuring device Master used to use lay a single letter. The letter itself was the thing drenched in magic. I had no intention of reading someone else’s letter, so I only glanced at the outside… but the moment I did, I could not stop myself from touching it.
To my last disciple
On the envelope, written in handwriting so beautiful it stole one’s breath, were those very words.