Shia Is Surely There

Tanya led me to a thicket behind the manor.

I knew there was a place like this here, but I had never actually set foot in it.

It was already past sunset, and the sun had completely disappeared.

It was dim, and naturally there was no one around, which made it feel a little eerie.

“This is the place.”

We arrived at a slightly open clearing. But there was no one there.

“It should be soon—ah, here they are.”

Just as Tanya said, golden light appeared at the perfect moment.

It was the light from the gate magic Shia used, something I had seen several times before.

But this light seemed a little weaker than hers.

The gate opened, though it was smaller than Shia’s.

From within that small circle, Aura-chan and Yuti-san stumbled out as though collapsing.

“Aura-chan!? Yuti-san!?”

Tanya and I hurried over to the two of them as they panted heavily from exhaustion.

By the time my hand touched Aura-chan’s shoulder, the gate had apparently reached its limit and disappeared.

“Aura-chan, are you okay!?”

At my words, Aura-chan caught her breath and nodded.

But she still looked completely exhausted.

“N-Nova-onii-sama… we just saw each other… didn’t we? I couldn’t maintain it with my mana alone, so I asked Yuti-onee-sama to help too… but even then… one-way was the limit…”

Apparently, because Aura-chan couldn’t maintain the gate by herself, she and Yuti-san had worked together to connect it.

I felt guilty that Aura-chan and Yuti-san had gone this far for me.

“Nova-san… please tell us… what happened?”

Yuti-san, whose breathing was steadier than Aura-chan’s, asked me.

I looked her in the eyes and explained what had happened.

How I had taken Shia to visit my mother’s grave.

How Shia had told me about her own mother there.

And how, in the middle of that conversation, Shia had suddenly started acting strangely and disappeared through a gate.

At first, Aura-chan and Yuti-san listened to my story with troubled expressions, but when I got to the part about their mother, Aura-chan’s face turned pale and Yuti-san sank deep into thought.

A little while after I finished, Yuti-san spoke.

“This is bad… She must be seeing herself in our mother.”

“Seeing herself in her? So when she said they were the same… that’s what she meant…”

Those words she had muttered just before entering the gate, as though her mind were somewhere else.

She had meant that she and her mother were the same.

“B-But Shia and her mother are different, aren’t they? Completely different—”

“That’s what you think, Nova-san. But she didn’t. From the outside, she has a brilliant history behind her, doesn’t she? She became the head of House Ark Gate at eighteen and ended the war with the Colle Lake Empire almost immediately.”

I knew that very well.

In the darkness of night, Yuti-san’s gray eyes seemed to glimmer faintly.

“You don’t think everything she did along the way was clean and admirable, do you?”

“…………”

“I can’t tell you the details, of course, but the things our mother did… trampling over everything else to obtain magic, casting people aside, earning their hatred… Shia has done those things too. And that’s why she realized it. She must have thought she was just like our mother.”

I knew perfectly well that the world wasn’t made up of nothing but noble ideals.

So it wasn’t hard to believe that Shia might have done those kinds of things as well.

“Because I… made her realize it…”

“…To be honest, I don’t know the exact reason she’s this shaken. But there’s no doubt she’s comparing herself to our mother.”

“…………”

As I stood there unable to say anything, I felt something against my right hand.

When I looked down, Aura-chan was holding it.

“Listen carefully, Nova-onii-sama. There are two ways to succeed as the head of House Ark Gate. One is to inherit the position smoothly from the previous head… and the other is to seize it from the previous head by force.”

I didn’t think I even had to ask which method Shia had used to become the current head.

“We don’t know exactly what happened between her and the previous head, not even what happened during the succession. But there’s one thing we do know. The only person who can help her now is you, Nova-san.”

“…Me…?”

“I told you before, didn’t I? You were the one who changed her. She must have spent all this time yearning for you. That’s why I think she became the head. House Fols and House Ark Gate have been at odds for generations. If there was no way for the two of you to be together otherwise, then the only option was for her to force her way to the top.”

I was the third son of House Fols, while Shia was a daughter of House Ark Gate, our sworn enemy.

There were no problems now because Shia herself was the head, but if things had remained as they were ten years ago, there was no chance the two of us could ever have been together.

That was why Shia became the head.

Maybe I was the reason she was suffering now.

If so, then maybe I was also the only one who could do something about it.

“Nova-san, can you think of anywhere she might have gone?”

“Somewhere… she might go… somewhere she might be…”

I slowly looked up at the sky and traced back through my memories with Shia.

The time we spent today at the Ark Gate estate, the time in Saria, our reunion at Father’s estate… and then, the snowman from that day.

The image of the young girl crouching there transformed into the grown Shia of today.

“…The Royal Capital.”

That was it. She had to be there.

No, there was nowhere else she could be.

When I murmured that, Yuti-san nodded, pulled a small bottle from her pocket, and tossed it to Aura-chan.

“We’ll recover our mana and force the gate open just one more time. I’m sure only you’ll be able to pass through, Nova-san. And you won’t be able to come back this way. But you’ll definitely be able to find her, won’t you?”

“Yeah. She’ll definitely be there. Definitely.”

I nodded with absolute certainty.

Yuti-san downed the contents of her bottle. Aura-chan did the same.

“This… tastes absolutely awful… so, Nova-onii-sama, if you find Onee-sama and bring her back, you have to go somewhere with me.”

“Sorry, Aura-chan… and thank you. Yeah, next time I’ll show you around Saria.”

“Oh, in that case, I’d like to join you too.”

“Of course… I’ll show all three sisters around.”

When I said that, both Aura-chan and Yuti-san gave awkward smiles.

Had I answered something the wrong way?

I wondered about that, but there was something else bothering me even more.

“But are you sure this will work? I thought you couldn’t use a gate unless you were together with the person who cast it… Even with Shia, she said I had to hold her hand or I couldn’t—”

I stopped mid-sentence as something occurred to me.

How had I gotten here just a little while ago?

Through a gate.

Now I understood that Shia had cast that spell because she was worried about me being left there alone.

I understood that now, but back then…

“Of course not. A gate simply connects one location to another. Once it’s connected, anyone can enter. There’s no need to hold hands.”

“…………”

At Yuti-san’s words, I was left speechless.

That was right. Just a little while ago, I had passed through a gate entirely on my own.

I hadn’t held anyone’s hand at all, and I had still been able to pass through.

“…You don’t need to hold hands… to use a gate?”

“Come on, Nova-onii-sama, we’re opening it!”

Ignoring my muttering, Aura-chan stretched out her hand.

Yuti-san did the same.

Golden light appeared once more and began gathering together.

It was the same gate magic Shia used. A spell that could be used without holding hands.

And yet Shia had told me we had to hold hands because…

“I’m sure…”

The light began taking shape.

“No, without a doubt…”

A small circle gradually formed.

Yuti-san supplied the answer.

“She lied because she wanted to hold your hand, Nova-san. A tiny, harmless little lie… no, a lovely one.”

“Nova-onii-sama! Go! Bring Onee-sama back… and then hold her hand again and come back here!”

Ah.

Shia really was blessed with wonderful sisters.

At the same moment Aura-chan pushed me from behind, I leaped into the light.

It was weaker than Shia’s light, and the circle was smaller, but somehow it felt incredibly warm.