Lena (2)
What matters most in the formation of a relationship between two people? Especially between total strangers? One could cite any number of examples, but personally, I'd say consistency. Trust without consistency to back it up means nothing.
For that reason, we put a hold on taking any commissions for a week and stayed at the inn instead. What would happen if we went out to clear a request and then broke our promise to Lena? Knowing how suspicious a type she was, one slip and she might vanish forever.
Perhaps our efforts paid off, because Lena showed up punctually at the promised hour, every single time.
Whoosh— whoosh!
The hour when the dawn dew gives way to the morning sun. As always, I was sweating it out in the small training yard attached to the inn, swinging a blade wrapped in sword aura. After a week of resting without taking a single commission, I was afraid of losing my edge.
"Ah, look at the time."
I was honing my swordsmanship in a state of no-mind when I realized the appointed hour for breakfast with Lena had already arrived. Today was the day I planned to bring up something important. She had a habit of showing up early whenever I was starting to wrap things up.
"Good morning."
"There she is. You never miss a mealtime, do you?"
"It's free food."
Now considerably tidier in appearance, Lena poked her head through the door connecting the training yard to the inn and offered her greeting. I'd been afraid of what people would say if I kept meeting a girl who looked like a beggar, so I'd scrubbed her down and clothed her properly—and now she was transformed beyond recognition. It had been worth seeing her face every day; remarkably, she'd even started using polite speech.
As Lena stared fixedly at my gleaming silver blade, I steered her toward the inn by the shoulders.
···
Crunch! Munch, munch···
Lena crammed her small mouth full of food and gulped it all down. Small as she was, the amount she actually ate was modest compared to all the racket—but watching her eat so heartily filled me with an unaccountable warmth.
She's gotten a lot tamer these days.
Her prickly way of talking had softened long ago. Now Lena simply glowed like any ordinary girl her age. Looking back, that rough attitude when we first met may have been a defense mechanism to protect herself.
Slurp···
I studied Lena at leisure as she buried her face in her soup. Perhaps from years of going hungry, her frame was so small it was hard to believe she was fifteen. But with her purple hair neatly combed and her skin clean, she no longer looked shabby. If anything, her slightly wild air gave her the look of a hunter's child.
"Finished eating?"
"Yes."
"Then give me your wrist—"
"Here."
Today again, I took Lena's wrist and checked the flow of her mana. It was a faint trickle of presence, but it had improved since before, and thanks to how often I'd been examining her, I could now read her condition far more clearly than at first.
Shaaa···
There was no denying it—this girl's mana was forming a steady current. It wasn't as firm and resolute as an Awakened's, but at the very least, it was clear she was controlling her mana on an unconscious level.
And on top of that... her condition has been improving at an alarming rate lately. At this pace, her awakening might not be far off.
I felt Lena's mana trickling along like gutter water. Considering that it had been thread-thin when I first checked during our initial meal a week ago, it was remarkable progress. And the changes didn't stop there.
"She's gotten bigger, hasn't she?"
"Her height is the same, but she's gained considerable weight. However much her nutrition has improved... in just one week?"
"You two sound like you're talking about livestock. I'm not about to be eaten, am I?"
Aside from her tidied appearance, Lena herself had changed night and day. Her face, which had once held no trace of baby fat, had filled out pleasingly, and the flesh had begun to cling to those gaunt forearms that had once resembled dried twigs, along with a little muscle. Could a person really change this much in a single week?
"Scientifically, it's categorically impossible. It's likely connected to the improvement in her mana flow."
"She hasn't Awakened yet, though. A strange business indeed... Lena, there's something I'm curious about. May I ask? It may come across as a bit rude."
"What is it?"
"The truth is···"
Sensing the moment had come, I steeled myself to ask the question I'd planned from the start. Lena suffered from an incurable illness for which, short of Awakening, only a temporary treatment existed. Having lost her parents and gone without treatment, how on earth had she held on all this time? Cruel as it was to say, by all rights she should have died long ago. It was a question that could easily offend, which was why I'd phrased it carefully—but Lena's reaction was nothing short of matter-of-fact.
"Hm... so there was someone who knew about me. I did wonder why Mister kept being oddly kind. Was it that person?"
"Yes. If you'd rather not talk about it, just ignore the question. Only···"
"You mean my current condition is strange, right?"
"You knew?"
"Wasn't that why you kept poking at me in the first place?"
So she'd caught on. Well, of course she had—repeat the same routine every day for a week, and there was no way she'd miss it. I nodded readily.
"That's right. Disappointed?"
"No. It was the only unusual thing about a worthless little brat like me, so I'd more or less guessed. Well... it's not some grand secret, so I'll tell you. Think of it as paying for all the meals I've eaten so far."
Lena took a deep, long breath and began unspooling the past, her voice flat and mineral-cold, as if recounting a stranger's story.
"Even after both my parents died··· I kept focusing solely on meditation, trying to awaken my mana. Father always stressed that it was my only way to survive."
"Treatment?"
"I was lucky. The person who treated me was kind. I clung to them crying and begging, and they treated me for free."
But that kindness lasted barely a year. The healer had to move elsewhere, and from then on, Lena had to survive alone.
"I heard later that meditation is a training method with almost no effect. But I was so sick my body wouldn't cooperate—there was no way I could manage any kind of physical training."
"So you only ever meditated?"
"Yes. Aside from eating and sleeping, I was always lost in it. And amazingly... at some point, it started working."
Lena had talent. No—considering that the very cause of her Severed Vessels was her affinity for mana, in a way it was only natural. Whatever the case, Lena could control her mana through years of accumulated meditation alone. If things continued like that···
"...But that progress didn't last. Strangely, the more I trained, the more my mana stopped obeying me and flooded my body all over again. Naturally, my condition got drastically worse."
"That's odd."
"I scraped together every coin I had, cobbled and not, and tried draining the mana out with other healers, but my control over it never came back. In the end, it circled right back around to my Severed Vessels symptoms flaring up again···"
Lena let out a gloomy sigh far too heavy for her age and went on.
"So the money ran out, and just as I lay brimming with mana waiting for the day I'd die—laughably enough, my body got better on its own. I seized the chance and tried building my control back up through meditation, but the moment I reached a certain level, the exact same thing happened all over again."
"···"
"Sounds like nothing much when you hear it, right? That's the whole story. I don't know what's what, but when I gave up training to Awaken, my Severed Vessels stopped getting worse. I burned through the money my mother left behind, and··· eventually drifted all the way to the red-light district. Helping out with odd jobs kept me fed, at least. Sometimes people would come by the slums and share food, too."
With that, Lena fell silent. Looking utterly defying as she pretended to hold her chin high, her eyes just faintly glistening—she'd said everything she had to say.
"...I'm sure you didn't want to talk about it. Thank you for telling me."
"You wanted to know whether I could Awaken, didn't you? Sadly, I'm just a defective product."
"No. It helped me reach a decision, actually."
"A decision?"
Lena stared up at me, bewildered. I had combined a week's worth of observation with gut instinct and reached my conclusion: recruit this girl into the party.
···
It was no impulsive decision. I'd made it after watching Lena's every move and consulting with Noah. Naturally, Lena had no way of knowing any of that, so her expression twisted into something bizarre.
"...I'm sorry, what? Me, as a party member? Are you in your right mind?"
"Of course."
"Why would you want someone like me? If this is pity, cut it out! I don't need that!"
Lena's face laid bare a strange mixture of humiliation, anger, and the barest flicker of hope. Yes—this was the reaction I'd expected. Hope had never existed in the world she'd survived in. And yet, something didn't add up.
"You still haven't given up, though, have you?"
"!"
"I can tell from the quality of your mana. Weak, yes—but stubborn as old rope. You kept trying, didn't you?"
"That's—! So what if I did? It's all pointless anyway! I'll just get sick again! It's always been that way!"
"Being able to train at all in your current state is remarkable. The talent is more than enough."
Shameful as it was to say myself: Lena possessed mana so faint that even I, with senses surpassing the Beastfolk, hadn't noticed it until I touched her directly. Watching her refuse to give up to the very end, despite thread-thin mana and a body that worsened with every attempt at training—her willpower and her mana control were truly exceptional. And to transform beyond recognition from nothing more than a week of square meals? I couldn't help wondering how far she might go, given the right support.
"And we're not without a plan, either. Noah?"
"Extracting her mana is possible at any time. It is no great difficulty for me."
"...Were you a healer in a past life, Unni?"
"Quite a capable one."
"That's impossible... even in a city this size, there were only five people who could treat Severed Vessels···"
Lena didn't keep the same guard up around Noah, a fellow woman, that she kept around me. Thanks to that, Noah had been free to make physical contact with her as needed—and after analysis, concluded that periodically draining the excess mana and healing her body was entirely feasible. To a high-performance AI, the intricacies of the human body were nothing at all.
As if to prove it, Noah gave Lena's body a light treatment on the spot.
"I don't know what that strange symptom of yours is, but at the very least, with Noah's treatment, things won't get any worse. You've never tried training continuously while staying under treatment, have you—because of the money?"
"...No."
Lena answered in a daze, running her hands over herself here and there in disbelief. Noah's healing must have reached all the way to the ends of her vessels. Having lived so long in a starved, wasting body, the fresh coolness flooding through her had to feel incredible.
"Of course, we can't take you on as a full party member right away. You'll need at least enough skill to formally register with the Guild. What we're offering is to help you build up to that level."
"...And if I do manage to join the Guild—what are the conditions? Something like having to live as your slave?"
"No, quite simple. You become an exclusive member of our party. That means traveling with us, always. You'd best brace yourself—we have no intention of staying in Bolston forever."
"Ha."
Lena let out a hollow, stunned breath. She looked utterly thrown. It was understandable—hope had come crashing down on her all at once: not only a way out of the poverty that had driven her family into the ground, but a possible end to the Severed Vessels that had tormented her her entire life.
"...You're not messing with me right now, are you?"
"I'm not."
"If this is a joke, I'll curse you for the rest of my life. No, forget that—I'll just die right here on the spot."
"Well, then you won't have to worry about dying."
Lena's breathing quickened. Her pupils dilated until they could grow no larger. Clenching her adorable little fists, her voice leaping out of her throat, she stammered out her words—and seized the impossible fortune with both hands.
"I'm— counting— on you!"
There we go. Recruitment successful.