Voice of Heaven (6)
“Hey, are you sure it's okay for you to be moving around? Don't tell me you're just putting on a brave front?”
“……Why on earth would I put on a brave front. I should go run a lap around the riverbank before you'll believe me, is that it?”
Oscar had shaken himself up and out of bed after barely three days.
It hadn't been a light injury, but Marin had thrown money around and brought in a high priest to see to him.
“You never know. There could be lingering aftereffects. Why not just lie down and rest a few more days?”
“I have quite a lot to do.”
“……Tch. Stubborn as ever. Fine, then let's settle the bill first.”
Marin held out an envelope.
“The million bel we agreed on. Plus another hundred thousand bel on top, because I'm grateful.”
“Thank you. I'll put it to good use.”
With this, I should get myself some proper equipment, or maybe buy a few elixirs.
This commission had made it painfully clear—if he didn't get stronger as quickly as possible, the anxiety would eat him alive.
“I'm leaving this city today.”
Arms crossed, Marin gazed out at the view beyond the window as she continued.
“Ara Sweet, that lunatic, could pull something at any moment. There's no way I could bear to stay here another second.”
“I think that's for the best.”
“What about you?”
“Unfortunately, I still have some business left in this city.”
“……Be careful. Her eyes are practically spinning white with rage right now. Who knows what she might do.”
“I'll be fine.”
All he had to do was remove the contacts and wash off the tattoo drawn on his face.
When he replied as if it were nothing, Marin shot him a suspicious look but nodded.
“Well, I suppose you'll manage on your own. Seeing what you're capable of this time, I doubt you'll end up getting beaten down in some back alley.”
“Of course not. If anything, it's the other party who should worry.”
The two grinned at each other for a moment.
Then Marin stretched both arms above her head in a long, luxurious stretch.
“HuuuumAAAAAH! Who cares anymore, damn it! From now on, I sing before His Majesty the Emperor and receive elixirs!”
“Congratulations once again. Your father will be up and out of his sickbed in no time.”
“……Thank you. Genuinely. It's all thanks to you.”
The moment he reached out and clasped her offered hand—
an unexpected question came flying at him out of nowhere.
“Gratitude aside, though—you really plan on never telling me your real name?”
“……!”
Oscar's pupils wavered, thunderstruck.
“……What do you mean by that?”
“Come on, I've been a professional singer for three years now. Did you really think I wouldn't notice one measly pair of colored contacts? I've had you figured out since the day we met.”
At this shocking revelation, Oscar gave an awkward laugh and countered.
“If you knew I was an impostor, why did you hire me?”
“Well…… when you talked about your father. The look on your face, the light in your eyes—it was like watching someone stare into a mirror. I figured, what the hell, why not trust a kid carrying the same pain I am, just this once?”
“……I'm one to talk, but Marin, you really have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.”
“Heh, so what, damn it! So are you going to tell me or not?”
Oscar smiled warmly at Marin as she leaned back to peer at him.
With everything laid bare, there was no reason left to hide his name.
“My name is Oscar Crucian.”
“……Huh? Wait, I feel like I've heard that name somewhere.”
As Marin narrowed her brow in thought, Evelyn murmured quietly.
“You mentioned it over that meal, remember? About having developed the cure for the Cadena Flu.”
“Ohh! That guy they called an insane genius?”
Marin looked him up and down with fresh eyes.
“Hmm. For a genius, though, you look awfully ordinary.”
“So do you, Marin. You don't exactly look like the world's greatest diva either.”
“What? Unbelievable. This beauty—and you're calling it ordinary? What exactly are you looking at?”
Scowling, she haughtily tipped her chin up.
“Just you wait. In a few days—no, in a few hours, you'll regret it. You'll be walking down the street and every single person you pass will look like a squid by comparison.”
“Speaking rationally, it won't be quite that bad.”
“……It's the only nice thing you can say, isn't it. You stingy bastard.”
Marin whipped her head away and muttered in a small voice.
“Goodbye. You were the finest bodyguard I've ever had.”
At that adorable reaction, Oscar answered with a bright smile.
“And you were the finest diva I've ever had.”
* * *
That afternoon, Oscar met Kilian on the outdoor terrace of a café.
“You made it. How's the body?”
“Fully recovered. Though shouldn't that be my question to ask?”
Kilian, who knew exactly how badly he'd been hurt from the newspaper articles, shot back.
“I'm fine too. My employer brought in a high priest.”
“Ah, then there's no cause for concern.”
“I just came from collecting my fee, actually. The fee's mine, right?”
“Of course. A warrior of the forest does not vilely snatch credit earned by another.”
Truly a warrior of the forest.
Loyalty and common decency just oozing out of every pore.
“Your apple juice and espresso, sirs.”
“Ah, the coffee's mine. Please, keep the change.”
He spoke with an easy, gracious smile, and Kilian's eyes went round as saucers.
After the waiter left, he lowered his voice.
“What exactly has gotten into you?”
“Whatever do you mean.”
“I'm asking when you got so good at small talk.”
“……You can't seriously be making a fuss because I exchanged a few words with a waiter.”
“I am indeed. You used to be the one person I thought was even worse at socializing than I was.”
……Seriously?
Little Oscar was the one who was like that?
To earn a comment like that from the warrior of the forest……
I can't even imagine how hopeless a conversationalist he must have been.
Oscar clicked his tongue and shrugged.
“Well, it's nothing difficult. Shall I teach you, should the need arise?”
“Is that the truth!”
Kilian shot up from his seat and pounded his chest with his fist, thud, thud!
“It is. Teach me the way of building social graces!”
“Calm down and sit first. Honestly, once you know the trick, it's remarkably easy. It's practically magic.”
“Magic is difficult.”
“Ah, my bad. Then think of it like a fight.”
“Fights are easy.”
Having gauged his counterpart's level, Oscar immediately launched into an education tailored precisely to that level.
Incidentally, teaching the warrior of the forest was something of a specialty of his.
He'd given similar lessons to the man's father, after all.
“Say you meet someone you don't know, and you're at a loss for what to say. Start with a compliment. Always.”
“A compliment, you say?”
“Exactly. The key is disarming their wariness. The more common ground you share with the other person, the better it works. Hobbies, style, things like that.”
“Ohhh…….”
The explanation sounded plausible enough that the man's face took on the look of someone making a profound discovery.
He downed his apple juice in one gulp and declared:
“I shall go make friends with the method you have taught me, and return.”
“Right, right. Godspeed.”
As Oscar watched him go with a small chuckle and reached for his coffee cup—
“……!”
A chilling shiver ran up his spine.
Like a bucket of winter seawater dumped over the crown of his head.
A bone-deep cold seeping through every seam of his clothes, as if to freeze his heart solid—and with it, alarm bells rang.
A strong one.
The first he'd faced since entering little Oscar's body.
An overwhelming presence, on a level entirely beyond reach. At minimum, a 7th-level practitioner.
Where?
As Oscar swept his gaze around, searching, his eyes landed on a woman standing motionless across the street.
She wore sunglasses with distinctive orange lenses and a wide-brimmed bucket hat.
Ash-grey hair. Height, around 173 centimeters.
It felt like witnessing, with his own two eyes, a bomb of unknown detonation time sitting in the middle of the city.
The instant he was certain their eyes had met, a carriage passed between the two of them.
“…….”
Tap, tap.
On the far side of the street where the carriage had rolled past, the woman was nowhere to be found.
* * *
“Are you being far too lenient just because he's your little sibling's friend? Shouldn't we at least collect a debt for the man he killed?”
One of her juniors, trailing behind the woman, asked.
“Leave it. He wasn't even an official member. And if he was pathetic enough to die to a Level 3 mage, better he was never accepted at all.”
As she answered while walking, the woman's pace gradually slowed, then stopped entirely.
She suddenly turned to her junior and asked.
“Hey. If I deliberately concealed my presence, could you track me down?”
“You, Senior? Not a chance. I doubt I'd even register the fact that you were standing there at all.”
“Then how many Level 3 mages in this city do you think could find me with my presence hidden?”
“……Is this some new form of harassment? You could search the entire continent, not just Baran, and find nobody.”
Right—that was the only sane answer.
The woman's eyes narrowed to slits.
“Then why do I keep feeling like that boy's eyes met mine?”
“Oh, come on. It must be coincidence.”
“……It didn't feel like coincidence.”
Head tilted at an angle, she asked:
“That Level 3 mage at the café—do you know who he is?”
“Of course. Oscar Crucian. The once-in-a-generation genius of the White Tower who restored the cure for the Cadena Flu and a whole catalog of potions. He's the hottest name around these days.”
“Oscar Crucian. A once-in-a-generation genius, hm.”
The woman rolled the words around in her mouth, then smirked.
“He was an interesting one.”
Something to look forward to.
She started walking again.
* * *
When evening came, Kilian returned.
Wrapped up in sunglasses, a hat, necklaces and rings, shoes, and more.
“What are all those things?”
“Gifts from my friends. Thanks to you, I made a great many friends.”
“……No, something's off here.”
Making new friends? Fine, fine.
But they gave him gifts like these on a first meeting?
A sense of foreboding welled up, and Oscar asked.
“What exactly was the situation?”
“I went to the back alleys, as you said, to find those with common ground.”
“……The back alleys? Why would you go to a place like that to make friends?”
“I enjoy tobacco, so I sought out those who smoke.”
“Hmm. Go on.”
“I complimented them. As you instructed.”
There it was again, that ominous feeling.
And this time, it hit like a landslide.
“……Repeat to me, right now, exactly what you complimented them on.”
“As you wish.”
Kilian set the gifts down on the table and looked straight at him—with an endlessly frigid expression.
Then, abruptly, he spoke.
“You. Nice shoes.”
“You. That necklace looks rather fine on you.”
Thwack! Oscar clapped a hand to his forehead.
“And they just handed over everything because you said that?”
“I believe they extended their goodwill in honor of our newfound friendship.”
“……That's not what it was.”
Our society has decided to call that extortion. In street slang, a shakedown.
Oscar let out a long sigh and flicked his fingers toward the door.
“Shut up and come with me. We're returning every last one of those things tonight.”
“They were gifts from friends. Why return them?”
“You didn't receive those from friends.”
“I didn't?”
“No. You didn't make a single friend today.”
“…….”
Kilian's shoulders sagged in dejection.