Time Difference (1)
An empty rooftop.
I was gazing up at the quiet night sky alone when, before I knew it, Sinel had settled into the space beside me.
Perhaps the seasons were finally starting to turn. In the cold air, pale white breath began to rise from our lips.
"What are you looking at?"
Being alone didn't mean I was thinking about anything particularly profound. Sometimes I simply wanted to empty my head.
The cool wind drifting around us. The vast night sky glittering with countless stars. Passing the time in a daze with those as my only company wasn't such a bad feeling.
"……I was looking at the sky."
"Stargazing, then?"
"Yeah. The stars are clearer than I expected."
The sky itself was clearer than I'd thought, too. People always said you couldn't see stars properly in a city. But whether it was because this was the outskirts, the sky from this rooftop showed quite a few of them.
Then again, this was a backwater with barely anything that could be called proper infrastructure. Not many people would consider the glittering central districts and this place the same city at all.
"Boss… do you like stars?"
Sipping the warm cocoa in her hands, Sinel looked up at the night sky. Watching her ash-gray eyes catch and hold the starlight, I turned her question over in my mind.
Did I like stars?
Even after thinking about it, I wasn't sure. This moment hadn't been for looking at stars in the first place. Still, I didn't think I disliked them.
"Hard to say. If I had to pick like or dislike, I'd say I'm closer to liking them."
"That's a vague answer."
"Everything in the world is like that. How many things can you cleanly sort into right and wrong, black and white?"
Just look at the people living in this world. Even Bruno the Cripple, who once plunged the entire city into terror, had wanted to remain a kind person to someone. Conclusions everyone can agree on are rare. There was no need to force a black-and-white judgment on everything, either.
For me, remaining in that in-between state was enough.
"I like them."
Sinel's thoughts, however, seemed a little different. As she said it, she reached a hand toward the sky. Countless stars slipped past her fingertips.
"Because the night sky is beautiful?"
"That might be part of it."
"Doesn't sound like the real answer."
"It might have been close."
I followed her lead and stretched a hand toward the sky. Those brilliant, beautiful stars could be seen from anywhere in the city—but they would never rest in anyone's palm.
I didn't fully understand what Sinel was thinking. But I felt like I understood a little.
"Tough question. Let's move on."
"You're not going to guess?"
"Do I need to? Wondering about it is half the fun."
The moment the words left my mouth, Sinel's head—still cradling her cocoa—tilted sideways. Her ash-gray hair brushed against my chilled right shoulder. Just like that morning some time ago, the familiar scent of her shampoo drifted softly on the wind.
Under the dreamlike sky, only the two of us remained. From a distance, it would have looked like quite the romantic scene—if you ignored the fact that her goggles were digging painfully into my shoulder.
Swallowing the scream that wanted to burst out, I asked Sinel, who was still lingering in the building,
"By the way, Sinel."
"Yes?"
"Aren't you going home?"
"Going home……?"
Sinel had recently received her pay. The amount I'd given her wasn't small by any means, so finding a place of her own wouldn't have been difficult if she wanted one. But the look she gave me said she had no idea what I was talking about—as if the thought had never even crossed her mind.
"You should have enough for rent by now."
"Was I supposed to go home?"
"So you were planning to stay here indefinitely?"
She had started casually infiltrating the bed at some point, but the only space I'd ever granted her was the sofa. Once her salary came in, looking for a decent place should have been the natural next step. The office itself wasn't somewhere a person should live long-term. If I was being honest, I also hoped Sinel might live somewhere a little better.
"I ordered a new dagger."
"……?"
"A more expensive one this time."
In response to a question about housing, what came tumbling out of Sinel's mouth was a completely unrelated story about daggers. Something felt off. The routine was starting to sound very familiar—and in most cases, it led to the same ending.
"How much do you have left?"
"A hundred credits."
"……A hundred credits."
"Yes."
A hundred credits wouldn't cover a decent monthly rent. You'd have to scrape by on the bare minimum for food just to survive. Sinel had never planned on leaving in the first place. At some point, she seemed to have started treating room and board as a given.
That was the feeling I got.
"Honestly, I don't really understand what you're thinking."
"I know what I'm thinking."
"I'm sure you do. You know it perfectly well."
The problem was that she was the only one who knew. Still—she must have had her own plan. Something along the lines of Unlimited Room and Board Percival Smith, no doubt.
I reached out and stroked the head resting against my shoulder. Looks like this month was going to be another fairly noisy stretch of time spent with Sinel.
The next day, Sinel caught a cold.
She seemed skilled at fighting criminals, but fighting a cold was another matter entirely. From morning on, she kept coughing with a mild fever. Spending last night on the rooftop staring at stars with me was almost certainly the cause. It wasn't severe, but there was nothing good about a sick person being out in the cold wind.
So I made a decision.
"Which is why you're on bodyguard duty for me today."
"Bodyguard……"
I left Sinel to rest in the office and put the Sword Star in charge of my protection. Given her mercenary background, it shouldn't have been unfamiliar work. Even so, the Sword Star wore a distinctly displeased look the entire way into District 8.
Did she have some kind of complaint? I decided to ask her directly.
"Is there a problem?"
"Hmm, no problem exactly. It just feels like I've been made into a substitute."
She didn't like being Sinel's replacement. That had a simple fix.
"Having the famous Sword Star as my escort—I feel pretty secure with you at my back."
"Huh……?"
"Truth is, I've always wanted to be guarded by the Sword Star at least once."
"If you put it like that? Well then—I suppose I have no choice."
Only then did the Sword Star nod with a satisfied expression. Strictly in terms of combat matchups, the Sword Star would probably outclass Sinel. The reason I'd chosen Sinel as my escort anyway came down to one thing: Haste magic was better suited to bodyguard work than Wind Cutter.
In a fight, attacks aimed at me were inevitable. When it came to reacting to those sudden strikes, Sinel's responses were faster than the Sword Star's. I'd already been saved more than once by Sinel's quick movements.
"Hey, Percival. I've got a question."
Once we'd left the crowded street and turned into an alley, the Sword Star trailing behind me tossed out a question. In this situation, the only thing I could imagine her asking about was the job. I asked her what she wanted to know.
"What is it?"
"If you keep Haste running, does a cold heal faster?"
"……"
Now that she mentioned it, I was curious too. Haste magic slowed the user's time. Living a full day under the spell meant experiencing the equivalent of two days for everyone else. Would recovery work the same way?
I thought the odds were pretty good.
"Probably."
"'Probably'? So even the great Dark Merchant has things he doesn't know."
"Yuell. I'm not a university professor."
"Oh yeah?"
Trading pointless banter with the Sword Star, we pushed deeper in—and beyond the corner of the alley, I felt a presence.
A cramped alley thick with drifting cigarette smoke. A group of men stood there. Wooden clubs, iron pipes, baseball bats—each of them carried a different weapon as they talked among themselves. The biggest of the lot rose from his seat, weapon in hand.
"Well now. Unfamiliar faces."
Unless it was a turf war between organizations, groups that pulled out weapons in broad daylight were rare. And even that only worked in a secluded alley like this. Figuring out who they were wasn't hard.
"Vigilantes, huh."
"Oh, so you know us?"
The Back-Alley Vigilantes. They went by a respectable-sounding name, but in practice they were nothing more than thugs who shook down outsiders for money. District 8 had the worst public safety in the entire city. Running into a situation like this wasn't unexpected. Ironically, it was the price of trying to handle things as quietly as possible.
"I'd like to pass through. I'd appreciate it if you stepped aside."
"Our guest needs to get through? Of course we'll make way."
"Then I'll be on my way."
"You'll have to pay the toll first, though!"
Of course. They were never going to let us go that easily. The Vigilantes' reputation wasn't inflated for nothing. Finished speaking, the man stretched a massive hand toward my shoulder, iron pipe still in his grip.
The instant his fingers were about to close—
Click.
A short scrape of metal, and the wind whipped past.
"Sword Star Style——"
The Sword Star's voice rang out as her hand closed around the hilt. A heartbeat later, the iron pipe in the man's grip split cleanly in two and fell.
Thud.
The sound of the halved pipe hitting the ground. In the silence that settled over the middle of the alley, every eye turned to the Sword Star and the blade in her hands.
"——One Flash."