The Hero (4)
It was an idle day, with nothing in particular to do.
He had never been the type to indulge in extravagance to begin with, and with the Demon King subjugation pension arriving like clockwork every month, money was never a concern.
True, he was a recipient of House Dragonia's patronage, but he hardly owed them anything for it.
For Leopard, Dragonia was nothing more than a convenient backer—a shield to keep troublesome matters at arm's length.
To be perfectly accurate, it was the head of that house who had clung to him of his own accord, volunteering to be his shield, begging him that if anyone ever picked a fight, he should invoke the name of Dragonia rather than the name of the Hero.
There seemed to be no shortage of people who worried about the Hero's reputation more than the Hero himself did.
"Is this the place?"
Leopard stepped down from his carriage and walked into the back alley.
The sun hadn't even set yet, and already the street was lined with shops glowing red with their lanterns lit.
His steps stopped when he spotted the signboard reading 'Lyuba Tavern.'
The tavern where the shameless harlot claiming to be the Saintess supposedly worked.
It was obviously a desperate lie spat out as an improvised dodge to escape being dragged off by the Inquisitors, but that didn't matter.
Time was the one thing Leopard had in abundance, after all.
He had every intention of teaching that harlot exactly what happened to those who sold the Saintess's name so carelessly.
"A beer, if you would."
He walked straight into the tavern and placed his order.
Once he'd taken a seat and slowly looked around, a few patrons met his eyes and went pale as ghosts.
Anyone who knew the rumors of the madman who ran wild with House Dragonia at his back couldn't fail to recognize him—a young man with golden hair and an eyepatch over his right eye was hardly a common face.
But only a tiny handful actually fled from their seats. Most of the patrons didn't spare Leopard so much as a glance, too busy tipping back their mugs.
So. A silver-haired harlot raising a demon child.
Leo scanned the shop again and again as he drained his beer.
Come to think of it, Ariel had silver hair too.
He dismissed it as pure coincidence and was fiddling with the request slip when—
His eyes went wide at the sight of silver hair swaying in the lamplight.
Found her······.
The very last person he had expected to find.
He had stumbled upon the true Saintess.
The woman the Church had been so desperately hunting that they'd entrusted the search to Leopard himself.
He had accepted the commission, of course, but he had absolutely no intention of handing the Saintess over to those Church bastards.
Leopard couldn't tear his eyes away from her.
The woman he'd lost so long ago was right there.
The woman who had lost her laughter was radiating a brilliant smile.
Leo, dazed for a moment, froze solid the instant their eyes met.
He'd thought about what to say when he reunited with Ariel every single day—and he forgot all of it.
What if she's heard the rumors about me?
What will Ariel think when she sees what I've become?
He was even afraid his clothes might give off some smell.
"······Yes. May I head up to bed now?"
"Go on. Get some rest. Good work tonight, Yulia."
But she simply turned away without a word.
For an instant, it felt as though the world had collapsed around him.
She's pretending not to know me. On purpose?
If so, then why? What possible reason could there be?
No matter how he turned it over, he couldn't understand it.
Is she ashamed of me?
Was she so ashamed of me that she didn't want to acknowledge me?
Leopard let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity of it.
Ariel, who once couldn't sleep a wink at night without me—daring to snub me?
Well. It was an entertaining development, wasn't it?
Yes. This was far more fun than some tearful, touching reunion.
Leopard chuckled darkly to himself and picked up his beer mug.
From this point on, it was a game.
What would it take to make Ariel admit she knew me?
That was the game—guessing the answer.
Crash!
"Kyaa?!"
"This beer's warm."
That was how Leopard chose to begin—by hurling his beer mug straight at the floor.
.
.
.
He pulled every filthy stunt imaginable, but she didn't bat so much as an eyelash.
Two brash customers had tried to drag Leopard out during his rampage, and both had already been carried off to the healer's.
No blood showing—just bones, quietly twisted out of place.
He'd exercised a certain restraint, stirring up a ruckus without letting it escalate to the point where the customers all fled screaming and the shop had to shut its doors.
"Heyyy. Everyone else, get lost. Don't need a lineup anymore. You there—silver hair! Get over here and sit next to me. Yeah, you. Hurry up and sit. I tip generously, you know."
"Thank you for requesting me, sir. I'm Yulia."
'Thank you for requesting me?'
The tone was briskly, entirely businesslike.
Rage surged up so hot that his hand nearly rose on its own—but the moment he saw Yulia's gleaming eyes, that impulse drained away in a heartbeat.
Just what reason could she have for treating him so coldly, so mercilessly?
Well, I did wrong by her once. That must be why.
Leo tried to take a step back and be patient······
'She really doesn't know me.'
But that patience ran dry in no time at all.
Look as he might, this was no act.
Her gaze regarded Leopard as a complete stranger—or rather, as something vile and abhorrent.
If this were acting, she should have pursued a career on the stage instead of sainthood.
A loose woman peddling a practiced smile.
A tavern slut baring the skin of her neck without a second thought.
She was no longer the Ariel Leopard had known.
And if so, then he had to let her go, clean and simple.
What had drawn him to Ariel was never just her alluring body.
He had no interest whatsoever in the filthy harlot who had stolen Ariel's flesh.
"Let go of me. I'm having you thrown out."
"Thrown out? Me? By you? Go ahead and try."
"I'll report you to the guard."
"Calling the guard over one paying customer? Do that and this place gets flagged. Your protection fees to the guard go up. Don't. It's a nuisance to your boss."
"You've been warned. If you don't let go right now······."
Yulia's hand wandered across the bar table and closed around the ashtray.
Poised to bring it swinging down at any moment.
Clearly not her first time swinging one.
How could she be so frigid toward a customer who'd even promised a fat tip?
Did she think she was some high-class courtesan just because she worked in a cheap dive?
An impulse rose in him—to snap that pretension in one stroke, to defile it.
"Mommy!"
"······?"
The moment a small child shouted, Leopard's eyes went wide with shock.
Come to think of it, the woman claiming to be the Saintess had said she was raising a demon child.
She'd picked up a demon child and······
'Dragon horns?'
That was no demon.
He could say so with certainty—he had seen the horns of demons of every age, from infants to gray-haired elders, slaughtered by the thousand during the war.
And yet, from those blue eyes of the dragon child, Yulia looked back at him.
Her own daughter, beyond any doubt.
A wave of nausea rolled through Leopard's gut.
"Well then, with the little one here, shall we head up to the second floor, Yulia?"
"······."
He couldn't hold back any longer.
His rage toward Yulia had somewhere along the way curdled into lust, and it was gnawing at him.
While I was gone, she went and bedded a dragon of all things.
He knew she was no longer the Ariel he remembered—but even so, he could never forgive it.
A body defiled by a dragon's had to be overwritten by mine.
Muttering it to himself over and over, Leopard seized Yulia's wrist and yanked her roughly toward him.
How do I drag that self-important bitch down into the gutter?
How do I make this woman cry those pretty tears?
What punishment fits the crime of stealing my woman's body?
Even as he entered the room and took off his shoes, Leopard was grinning from ear to ear.
His prey was a rat in a trap.
His head was stuffed full of nothing but thoughts of how he would cook that rat.
Right up until the rat bit down on him, hard.
"Even in times of peace, a useless sword still draws breath."
"······."
A useless sword.
It had been a long time since he'd heard those words.
Everyone who ever spewed that kind of insult was dead, every last one of them.
But this time, his opponent was someone he could never kill by his own hand.
"Everyone will grovel and smile to your face, but behind your back, every single one of them is thinking exactly that. And it's infuriating, you know? How magnificent it would have been if you'd gone out in a blaze of glory slaying the Demon King in the Human-Demon War. But no—you had to be blessed with a long life and survive, disgracefully, spending your days playing the madman and being nothing but a nuisance to decent folk. What is this, hm? Wasn't it House Dragonia sponsoring you? They see you as nothing but a strong-armed mercenary thug, I'd wager. No? A time bomb that could go off at any moment. Yes. That's what they think of you."
He hadn't heard words like those once since the Great Purge.
After the Hero's deification, he'd believed no one alive had the gall to speak that way anymore.
And to think it wasn't some man, but a woman.
A woman with such a lovely face, no less.
It hurt.
And in the same breath, Leopard felt a strange, illicit thrill blazing up from somewhere deep in his chest.
She was no cheap harlot after all.
Nor was she that clueless woman who thought herself so refined.
She was something far, far more interesting.
A flower beautiful enough just standing there—but that shone most radiant at the moment her neck was twisted and broken.
Yulia, without question, was that kind of flower.
"I don't need memories. I don't want to remember a bastard like you."
"Your wishes are irrelevant."
"Maybe if we make love, you'll remember?"
"As if that could ever happen!"
"Never know till we try. Shall we do it like before? Let's find out whether you moan exactly the way you did back then."
If it had been the usual Leopard, he would have taken his time.
He would have savored the hours, waited until the flower burned with its most beautiful color, and only then reached out to snap it.
But this once, he couldn't wait that long.
Break her body first, then her mind, and scatter the pieces.
And if she didn't break the first time—so much the better.
He would simply repeat it, without end, until she did.
Leopard noticed, sometime in the middle of it, that his crotch had gone damp.
Excitement had his breath coming far too fast.
"Tia will be coming up soon, so······."
"······."
But the moment those words reached his ears, Leo's head snapped up, cold shock washing over him.
The arousal died in an instant.
The moment he pictured that repulsive mongrel, the lust curdled back into fury.
"Damn it all."
The mood was ruined.
Leo clicked his tongue and turned away.
His hands were trembling with rage.
No matter how he reasoned it, he didn't see that fury settling until the dragon who had defiled his Ariel lay with its head cut off.
"I'll come back. Stay well."
Fine then—back to the original plan, then. More care, more patience.
I'll let her bloom a while longer before I pick her.
Even as disgust churned in his throat and he quietly gagged, Leo brainwashed himself into believing this had been the plan all along.
"And don't even think about running. I know how to find you, wherever you go."
Stepping out of the room and descending the stairs, Leo felt like a defeated soldier limping from the field.
Played.
He who held every one of her weaknesses in his hand—and he'd been played perfectly by a mere tavern slut.
"You bad man!"
"······?"
Waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs was that abominable mongrel.
Ariel's child.
No—the child born of the harlot who had stolen Ariel's body.
He ground his teeth, swallowed the bitterness, and tried to walk past—but the thing planted itself stubbornly in his path.
"Whad did you do to Mommy?!"
"Nothing at all."
"Liar!"
"I'm telling you the truth. Go ask her yourself."
"How dare youuu!"
A small, clenched fist flew at Leopard's face.
But Leopard simply batted away the flurry of blows as though playing with a toy.
Tia, panting and wheezing, could do nothing but glare at his receding back and huff in frustration.
"Whew."
Out in the back alley, Leopard pulled out a cigarette.
Just as he lifted the lighter, strength suddenly drained from his legs, and he slid down against the wall in a heap.
"Hahh······."
Too late. Far too late.
He should have come looking before there were any… byproducts.
The defense mechanism of she isn't the Ariel I knew anyway, so it doesn't matter had shattered long ago.
Drenched in a thick, heavy tide of defeat and helplessness, Leo buried his face in his knees.
Somehow his lower half had gone thoroughly soaked as well, cool against his skin.
The heat in full bloom—it must be near her ovulation day.
Or perhaps already in the midst of it.
"Ahh······. Ariel······."
A sound that might have been a sob or a moan leaked out from between his knees.
The reunion with his Saintess had been an utter disaster.