Chapter 91: A Body Set Free
"Hana. Stick your foot out."
At Bora's word, I extended my right leg, still locked in its cast. I was sitting on the bed, and every shift of my body set the mattress swaying beneath me.
"Hmm..."
Bora looked my leg over, then set her hands on the bandage-wrapped cast and began, slowly, to unwind it. The cloth came free under her fingers, and I was glad to see the bare skin of my right leg again after so long.
I lost count of how many times her hands worked. At last the bandage was gone, and only the plaster on my foot remained. Bora carefully peeled it away and set it down on the floor.
"Whoa!"
I wiggled the toes of my right foot. Air against them felt strange. How tightly must they have bound me, for it to feel like this?
"Hana, it doesn't hurt when you move, does it?"
At her question I shifted my right leg this way and that. There wasn't any real pain. So the doctor who'd ordered the injection wasn't a quack after all. Even so, the next time I went to the hospital and ran into him, I fully intended to land a righteous blow.
"Yeah!"
The cast had been a nuisance for days, and a bare leg put me in a fine mood. A stiffness still lingered, though—probably from moving the joint again after so long. I worked the leg a little further, carefully.
"Want to try standing, just a little? Hana?"
As she spoke, Bora took my hand. If I couldn't manage, I was to hold on to her and brace myself. I was scared, so I gripped her hand and climbed down from the bed. I'd been hopping about on my left leg alone, and the feel of my right foot meeting the floor was unfamiliar.
"Ngh!"
It had been so long since I'd walked on both legs that I lost my balance a little and nearly went down. Fortunately I had Bora's hand, and I didn't go sprawling onto the floor.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. It doesn't hurt."
I nodded and tapped my right foot against the floor a few times. Before, a tingling like electricity running through me should have climbed the leg—but now there wasn't a trace of it. I felt no pain at all, and nothing about moving the leg was uncomfortable.
"That's a relief."
I was healed. A great many things had happened, but I'd come through them with ease, and now, feeling like a body set free, I wandered the room with both arms flung wide like an airplane. Nothing could have been better.
Swish, swish, swish.
To celebrate my healed leg, I roamed the inside of the building. There were still a great many places I had never been. Like an adventurer roaming a dungeon, I ranged through every corner of it, and of course I greeted everyone I met with proper manners. A deep bow from the waist earned me a warm reception.
The women reacted even more warmly. Some reached to stroke my hair; others went so far as to pinch my cheeks and tug. I rode the elevator down to the first floor. There was something I needed to do there.
On light feet I crossed the lobby and reached the convenience store. At last, the month-long ban had been lifted. I could have slipped in before, but I would've felt too self-conscious. A good child was supposed to do as she was told.
No—I wasn't a child. I was an adult, and so I ought to be all the better at keeping promises. Thinking that, I opened the convenience store door and stepped inside.
"Welco—? Ack! Hana, you little rascal!"
The moment my eyes met the part-timer straightening the shelves, she came at me in a fury. I froze like a mouse before a snake. I had it coming.
She dropped into a squat in front of me, caught both my cheeks, and squished them this way and that as she spoke.
"Hana! Do you have any idea how badly Researcher Bora chewed me out?"
"I'm sowwy..."
With my cheeks being yanked every which way, the words came out slurred as I admitted I was in the wrong. I'd gone and bought beer in secret, and gotten myself scolded for it.
"So what did you come to buy, Hana?"
"Snacks... I came to buy snacks!"
"Oh, did you? Sneak beer in like last time and I'll tan your hide!"
"Okaaay..."
With that, she went back to tidying the store. I stole a glance around, then took a shopping basket in hand. I meant to buy more snacks than I could carry in both arms.
Raiding the break room when the snacks ran out had its own fun, but there was a limit to the variety, and so I had no choice but to throw myself on the convenience store's mercy. It sold a far wider spread of snacks and drinks than the break room ever did.
Basket in hand, I swept the aisles and scooped up snacks. Snacks and I were one and the same—the more, the better. And in the midst of it, I found something special.
Whoa!
A snack with none other than Rumi's illustration printed on it. Fire lit in my eyes as I dropped the Rumi snack into the basket. I had no intention of throwing that wrapper away. I'd keep it apart from the rest. The illustration had simply stolen my heart.
Once the basket was packed full, I set it on the counter. The part-timer narrowed her eyes.
"You didn't slip anything strange in there, did you?"
"No! I only put snacks in."
I said it with my head held high. Unlike last time, I hadn't put any beer in, so there was no call for guilt.
Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound of the barcodes scanning was a delight. Every single beep sent my mood a little higher. When the total was done, I walked out of the convenience store with two or three enormous bags in my arms. It felt like a thoroughly worthwhile day of shopping.
"World Tree..."
One day, without any warning, the World Tree had vanished. For Rinea, the elf shrine maiden who attended it in the forest, the news struck like a bolt from a clear sky.
Stroking the World Tree—whose sheer size set it unmistakably apart from the other trees even at a distance—Rinea longed for the one who had departed.
The body of the World Tree remained. Its soul, however, was gone. The old texts had recorded as much: now and then, the World Tree's soul crossed into another dimension. In time, they said, it would return—but when that time might be, no one knew.
A World Tree left with only its body still bestowed its boundless support upon the elves, unchanged. To Rinea, though, who could commune with it directly, it was nothing but a husk.
Rinea was an elf who had not long been a shrine maiden. She was lacking in every way. She was small, and she did not possess the rich wisdom and experience of the shrine maidens who had served before her. And then, on top of all that, the World Tree's soul had vanished.
It was not her fault, of course, but the guilt was not something she could help. She wished for nothing but the swift return of the World Tree's soul. Failing that, she wanted to meet that soul again. It did not matter where.
She would have pursued it even into hell. Not that she meant the World Tree had gone to hell. Rinea shook her head this way and that, gathered herself once more, and set back to her work. Someday the World Tree's soul would return, and if the grounds were not properly kept, would it not be disappointed?
Luna, the friend she had been close with since childhood, stepped out from behind a tree in greeting.
"Rinea! You're up early again today?"
"Yes! If I am to serve the World Tree, I must rise early!"
"I brought food for today!"
A shrine maiden could not stray far from the World Tree's side, and so the elves of the village a little way off brought food at regular intervals.
"It's wild boar meat!"
"Wooow..."
What Luna had brought was a great cut of wild boar. The sight of the meat set Rinea's mouth watering all on its own. It had been cleanly butchered, and it made a splendid figure.
Luna set the tub of boar meat on the table and looked around.
"This place hasn't changed, has it?"
"No. It is where we serve the World Tree, so I tend it with all the care I can and devote myself to the work."
As she spoke, Rinea stroked the bark of the World Tree. Its trunk was thicker than most buildings, and so tall that even when she tilted her head back, she could not see the end of it.
Rinea had lived more than a hundred years, yet she was not pleased with how slowly her body grew. Another hundred years would likely have to pass before that growth was done. Elves possessed long lives, but set beside humans, their growth was miserably slow.
Fifty years of training as a shrine maiden had left her theory sound, but her experience was thin beside it. That was why the vanishing of the World Tree's soul had shaken her so deeply this time. Fortunately, because she had learned of it in her studies, she was able to compose herself to some degree once a little time had passed.
Talking with Luna, Rinea passed the hours as she did every day, laying up a store of stories she hoped to tell the World Tree when it returned someday. Hearing tales of the world outside was always a joy.