17 — Chapter 16

About a month after Kengo, Kururu, and I set our plan in motion.

The season was moving from spring toward summer, and as the temperature began to rise, the world seemed to grow more lively, and work at the company had become busier as well.

The opportunities to meet Kengo at the tavern had dropped off sharply, and while feeling guilty that I had not been able to participate in the research into magic stone processing, a chance to handle a magic stone transaction with the Bax Company finally came around again. With this, I had a perfectly legitimate excuse to go openly to Iiria’s mansion in the middle of the day in order to get a signature on the certificate.

Looking forward to hearing about the progress from Kururu, I headed for the mansion, when one of the swindlers who always loitered in front of the entrance unusually called out to me.

“Hey, what happened?”

“Huh?”

They always had mean-looking eyes and carried themselves with a listless air, but in contrast to that ominous atmosphere, the well-tailored clothes they wore made them seem all the more like swindlers.

One of those young men, with the same murky eyes as ever, exchanged glances with his companions and then looked at me again.

“For the past few days, Kururu-chan hasn’t had any energy.”

What surprised me were two things. First, that even the swindler youths called her Kururu-chan, and second, of course, that she had no energy.

“She’s always got this look like a demon straight out of hell and is always yelling at us to work properly, but lately there’s been none of that.”

“…”

I could somehow picture that, but what was unexpected was that these swindlers did not seem to be making fun of Kururu.

“At first I thought maybe the old folks in town had been bullying her again, but it doesn’t seem like that.”

“Doesn’t it have to be that she had a fight with Iiria-chan? Didn’t you hear raised voices and all?”

The swindlers talked among themselves like that, but they apparently were worried about Kururu in their own way.

“You work for the Nodon Company, right? Don’t you know anything?”

Since they made a living by scamming pitiful naive outsiders—claiming that you needed their guidance to be shown to Iiria and Kururu and charging a fee—they were of course familiar faces to Iiria and the others.

I did not think it was commendable work, but they did not seem rotten to the core either.

“She’s always glaring at me too. To be honest, Lord Nodon is disliked by Lady Iiria and the others.”

“Hah. But you’ve still got it better than we do. I can’t count how many times she’s hit us with a broom.”

One of the swindler youths laughed cheerfully.

“If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”

“Yeah. Please do.”

The face he made when he said that was very serious.

Then, when I entered the mansion, perhaps because I had heard the swindlers’ story, the air felt strangely cold. Well, it probably really was cool because the place was made of stone, but even so, it felt off somehow.

That premonition became certainty the moment I stepped into the courtyard.

Iiria was there alone, seated not in the hammock but in a crude chair left out in the courtyard, holding a wooden mug that seemed to contain alcohol.

“Oh my, is it already that time?”

Iiria always seemed listless, but even I could tell whether someone was drinking happily or not.

Her hair had somehow been tied together, but it was messy, and her complexion did not look good either. She looked like she had not been eating properly.

There was no way Kururu, who had been like a strict tutor, would have allowed Iiria to look like this, but Kururu herself was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll sign it, so hand it over.”

Iiria, who until now had never signed until Kururu scolded her, reached out on her own.

That smile—so faint it looked plastered on, beyond even expressionlessness—made me flinch, but for the moment I handed over the magic stone transaction papers as she asked.

While waiting for Iiria to read through the document, shifting uneasily, I was wondering how I should bring up Kururu.

In the meantime, Iiria picked up a quill pen and dipped the tip into the ink.

“So you were plotting something strange with Kururu.”

The sound effect giku really did seem like it should exist in real life, because my whole body stiffened that hard.

“I heard everything.”

Iiria dipped the tip of the quill into the inkwell and moved only her mouth, staring down at the paper in front of her without moving the rest of her body.

Then she slowly looked at me, and there was unmistakable anger in her eyes.

“Don’t lead Kururu astray. She’s a kind girl.”

A lackey of a corrupt merchant house who had proposed a magic stone trade.

That was how Iiria was looking at me.

I wanted to protest that that was not true, but Iiria seemed to understand exactly what had passed between Kururu and us.

“You were trying to help me, weren’t you? But that’s not the point I’m talking about. I…”

Her voice itself was calm, but the emotion showed in her hands.

Her hands were trembling, the quill was shaking, and drops of ink were scattering.

As though a thick scab had been ripped away and dark blood was spilling out.

“What I’m angry about is that you showed that child a hope that never existed. And of all things, a magic stone trade. I can’t believe it.”

Iiria drew in a deep breath as if trying to hold back from shouting.

“Do you understand how I felt, pretending not to notice that she was desperately hiding the fact that she was a mage?”

“What?”

Iiria’s eyes were not smiling, but only her mouth was.

Anger and sorrow were expressed most strongly through a warped smile.

“The hardest thing in the world isn’t despair. Despair is like a windless sea. You can’t move forward or back and you can’t go anywhere, but at least you can quietly remain where you are. The hardest thing in the world is…”

A clear fire of anger lit in Iiria’s eyes.

“To show someone a hope that can never come true. To make them think things might somehow work out. That creates attachment, and then you get hurt by things you didn’t need to be hurt by, and suffer over things you didn’t need to suffer over. For a while, Kururu, after you put these strange ideas into her head, looked so, so happy. Honestly, watching Kururu think she was hiding it from me was unbearably cute, and it’s also true that when Kururu looked cheerful and happy, that alone was enough to make me happy too.”

But the eyes with which Iiria spoke held emotions far murkier than even Kururu’s expression when she cornered me. It was the color of hatred.

“You were doing magic stone processing, weren’t you?”

And then, all at once, Iiria let go of her anger, her hatred, her sorrow—everything—and became expressionless, as calm as still water.

It was Iiria’s usual face, the face of someone who expected absolutely nothing from the future.

“She’s serious, and she gets absorbed in things easily, and unlike me, she’s terrible at giving up. So it seems she kept trying desperately, but the magic stone processing didn’t go well, and she kept cornering herself more and more. Once, I peeked at Kururu while she was shaving off a magic circle she had carved. In this mansion, she’s the sort of girl who would notice even a kitten secretly sneaking in, but she didn’t notice at all that I was spying on her through the crack in the door. Her eyes were wide open, she had forgotten even to blink, and she was shaving away at the magic stone as if she were shaving away at her own body. I heard afterward that she was trying to discover a completely new method of magic stone processing and make a fortune.”

Iiria slowly took a deep breath, picked up the quill she had cast aside, and with graceful movements dipped it into the ink again and began to sign smoothly.

“What tormented her was not so much the financial issue of wasting two magic stones, but the process of the light she thought she could see fading from view. She’s such a dutiful girl that she was probably also troubled by the fact that she couldn’t keep the promise she made to you, but well, in any case…”

After finishing the signature, she stared closely at the letters she had written, then looked at me.

“When I finally couldn’t bear to watch any longer and questioned her, she confessed. She hadn’t been sleeping properly or eating properly, so she’s resting now. She kept apologizing over and over, like she was delirious. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she kept saying. Even if she never brought me gold coins, even if she never humiliated all the bastards we’ve had to deal with, it would have been enough for me if she just stayed by my side and scolded me like an older sister.”

When Iiria said signing was a bother, Kururu would smack her on the head with a stack of documents.

And yet, at the ceremony celebrating the discovery of the mine, Iiria and Kururu had stood together in the storm of mockery, leaning close to one another.

With faces that seemed to say they could endure anything as long as the other was there beside them.

“So this ends here.”

Iiria placed the document on the table and pushed it toward me.

Then she took something out of the box where the writing tools had been stored.

“I’ll return this too.”

What she placed on top of the papers were the two magic stones, shaved again and again until they had become as thin as little boards.

Patterns remained on them still, not yet completely scraped away, enough to show that Kururu had continued trying out magic circles right up until the very end.

“I don’t know how big they were to begin with, but don’t forget that these are her worn-down heart.”

The smile spread across Iiria’s face was more frightening than any expression Kururu had ever given me.

“Well then, see you.”

With that, Iiria’s face lost all expression, as though her battery had run out, and she lowered her head to stare into the drink in her hand.

She gave me no chance to make excuses, not even a chance to ask a question.

I had learned that my own innocence had hurt someone, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Slowly, I took back the documents and the two paper-thin magic stones.

I glanced at Iiria, bowed mechanically, and left the place behind. That was all I could do.

I couldn’t think about anything, and I couldn’t even hear the voices of the swindlers.

The only thing that clung to my ears was the sound of the magic stones rubbing together in my hand.