Hello, Winter Bear

“Open the windows! Smash the glass! Clear out the white smoke!”

When I gave the order, I sensed Raul spring into action.

“Call for more guards!”

I shouted instructions to Mone and Roze, who had to be somewhere nearby.

Two sets of footsteps receded.

Where were Shitoen and the chancellor?

Their visibility was just as poor.

I had to find them before someone guided them away.

As I concentrated on the sounds around me, I heard a window shatter.

A pair of footsteps faltered in surprise.

There!

I lunged forward.

The smoke surged.

The white smoke swirled in response to my movement.

For an instant, my vision cleared.

There stood Shitoen, held from behind by the chancellor.

He seemed startled by my sudden appearance before him. His arm loosened, and Shitoen leaned forward to escape.

I seized her arm and pulled her toward me with all my strength.

She flew face-first into my chest.

I embraced her with my right arm.

Her warmth and the familiar scent of her perfume filled me with relief.

She was safe.

I had secured Shitoen.

She was here in my arms.

“I won’t let you escape!”

The chancellor swung his knife down.

Still holding Shitoen with one arm, I stepped half a pace backward to evade it.

Then, from within the white smoke…

Without making a sound…

A man appeared behind the chancellor.

“Hello, Winter Bear.”

He greeted me with an unusually friendly grin.

“What?”

I was not the one who responded to him.

The chancellor did.

He questioned the man suspiciously, and I instinctively stopped moving as well.

“You…”

The chancellor twisted only his neck to look back at him suspiciously.

The man continued wearing the same cheerful smile.

The next instant, he stabbed the chancellor in the shoulder with the knife in his right hand and shoved him away.

There was neither hesitation nor reluctance in his movements.

The chancellor screamed, but the man did not even spare him a glance. He immediately stepped toward me.

He was fast.

The white smoke swirled around the man.

He reached out with his left hand.

Damn.

He intended to seize Shitoen.

Acting instinctively, I grabbed Shitoen’s clothes and threw her as hard as I could behind me, into the area where the white smoke remained thickest. I had to conceal her within it.

The man’s left hand grasped empty air.

At the same time…

I attempted to retreat another step.

But I was already within the man’s reach. The moment he realized that he had failed to capture Shitoen, he thrust the knife in his right hand toward me.

This man was fast.

There was no hesitation in his attacks.

The knife’s point was right before my eyes.

I stopped trying to escape.

If I continued retreating, I might end up moving toward Shitoen, whom I had hidden in the smoke.

I was wearing protective armor.

That should at least limit where I could be injured.

I shifted my weight onto my left foot, curled my body inward, and instead slammed myself into the man.

“Whoa there. Are you wearing protective armor?”

Despite staggering, the man somehow sounded delighted.

With a metallic clatter, the knife he had been holding bounced across the floor. He seemed to have dropped it.

All right! Now I would press the attack.

Noticing my hand close around the hilt of my sword, the man charged into me before I could draw it, still smiling as he said, “Here’s one in return.”

I planted my feet and tried to endure the impact.

Then an intense pain shot through my left leg.

It felt more like heat than pain. At first, I even thought, Hot!

Next, the inside of my boot became strangely wet.

It felt as though I had stepped into a swamp.

“Huh? Haven’t you fought our people several times already?”

The man facing me brought his face close and smiled.

Only then did I realize that he had slashed me with another knife concealed in his left hand.

That was right.

These people used two knives.

At the café where Shitoen was first attacked and at the campsite on our way back from the apology ceremony…

Every assassin at those times had wielded a knife in each hand.

The knife that had bounced across the floor. The knife he had dropped.

I had become distracted by it and rushed to claim victory.

I clicked my tongue.

But my body was rapidly growing colder.

Although hot liquid continued pouring from my left leg, what I felt from the center of my body was a freezing chill.

My entire body was genuinely trembling, and I could no longer remain standing. Though I could hardly believe it myself, I dropped to one knee.

“Ahahaha. Did I cut a nice big blood vessel?”

The man crouched down and tried to look into my face, so I attempted to smash my right fist into him with all the strength I had left.

Instead, he shoved me hard onto the floor.

I rolled onto my back and glared at the man’s face.

The man smiled warmly and amiably.

“Just die like that.”

His foot slammed into the side of my face.

After that…

My memories were swallowed all at once by a wave of white haze.