46. Live In Reality

Dinner ended in silence. For whatever reason, every one of us had eaten in a gloomy mood, not a single word passing between us.

Leo was the first to finish. He excused himself and left his seat.

And then it was just me, alone at the emptied table, still working through my food. The only sound in the room was the scrape of my spoon against the bowl. Then a voice broke in.

For some reason, Eve had taken it into her head to comfort me. It didn’t bother me in the slightest, which was exactly why the out-of-nowhere remark left me at a loss. So I turned it over in my mind as I finished my food.

Have I ever felt lonely in my life?

It was a question I’d never once stopped to consider. Run enough raids and the day ends with no room left for loneliness. When I lay down in bed, I’d pour everything into falling asleep, and when I opened my eyes again, I’d play the game once more. For five years, that was how I’d lived.

If I hadn’t been possessed into Arden, would my life have turned out different?

To that one I could answer right away.

Probably, yeah.

I never did clear the raid on the Lord of the East, the last of the Four Heavenly Kings, but I’d have conquered it someday for sure. And it wasn’t only the raids. I would, without question, have seen this game through to the end. Because that was my promise with that person.

Which is exactly why I’m—

At any rate, once I’d finished eating and stepped out of the dining hall, an unexpected figure was waiting for me.

“It’s been a while.”

.

.

.

“I was actually meaning to come find you myself, so I’m sorry for making you come to me first.”

The one standing there was Rose, the examiner of the Trial of Wisdom.

She took me by the hand and led me to the Silent Hall, where she lived.

Same as ever.

Half a year had already passed since I sat the Trial of Wisdom, yet the place hadn’t changed a bit. The musty smell of paper mingled with a strange floral fragrance that tickled the tip of my nose. And there was the bizarre sight of the giant tomes, easily over three meters tall, that had sprouted arms like people and were dusting themselves off with brooms.

“Once you set a book down, it tends to be a good long while before you pick it up to read again.”

“Sorry?”

“What I mean is, deciding to come find me is easy. Actually doing it is another matter entirely.”

“Anyway, you did want to see me, right?”

I lifted the teacup Rose had prepared and gave a smile. The tea was less sweet than it was sharp and bitter. It wasn’t my style, but it wasn’t bad either.

To think she’d come find me first.

Whatever the reason, it had saved me some trouble. The conclusion I’d reached after talking with Eve all through the night came down to exactly this.

Let’s build up favor with the capable NPCs — so this works out perfectly.

What if the puppeteer I’d met inside Lillian’s trauma launched an assault?

I’d better be prepared.

However tedious and bothersome it might be, managing my connections was essential. So when I set the teacup down, I let Rose speak first.

“There’s something I’ve been curious about, so I called you here. Now that I see your face, it seems to be the very same thing that brought you to me.”

Could it be that Rose, too, had caught on to something being off? It wouldn’t be strange if she had. With the magic she possessed, it was entirely plausible she’d sensed the world acting suspicious.

“…It does seem that way.”

At my grave reply, Rose cut straight to the heart of it.

“You told me before that you’d taken down the ‘Blood Lord’ alongside an elf named Beron. A lie, of course.”

“Yes, a very effective lie. Thanks to it, I passed the Trial of Wisdom.”

Last time, the moment I brought up Beron’s name, she’d gone stone-faced and thrown me out. Back then I’d been too rattled to think much of it, but now it was different.

“I came to finish the conversation we never properly had that day. You probably found it unsettling too.”

So Rose had come to put a cap on the matter of that day.

Honestly, I’m not all that curious.

It was a real letdown, but I couldn’t let it show. Either way, my objective was to raise my favor with her.

“What is your relationship to Beron, Lady Rose?”

I asked point-blank.

“What makes you think I know that fellow so well?”

“The instant I brought up Beron’s name, you threw your pass and everything aside and tossed me out.”

I looked her dead in the eye.

“One look is faster than a hundred words.”

Rose leapt down from her broom into midair. When she stood beside me, I was struck all over again by how small she was. She was so short that the top of her head only came up to my waist. Maybe that was why she always wore that enormous, towering, broad-brimmed conical hat.

“Why have you suddenly come down—”

Swish.

Her hat slipped off, and her bound silver hair came spilling down like a waterfall. But my gaze caught on something that stood out even more. There, between the strands, long ears tapered to sharp points.

Rose fiddled with one of them as she spoke.

“Does this explain it?”

I nodded. To think Rose had been an elf all along.

“Beron was my own older brother. Though never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that being driven out by Father would be the last farewell between the two of us.”

Wow. And not just any elf, but his own little sister, at that.

A remark Beron had once made to me came flooding back.

— My comrades, who sang of peace and wandered through nature, were all abducted. And yet the one they call chieftain feared change more than he feared the vanishing of his own people.

So Beron had been the son of the elf chieftain.

“Um, Lady Rose.”

After hearing Rose’s shocking confession, one question rose in my mind.

She’ll probably get angry if I ask.

I wavered over whether to say it, then spat it out anyway.

“As far as I know, Beron was a figure from a hundred and fifty years ago, so that would make your age exactly… gah!”

The staff cracked across my shin with perfect precision.

“Asking a lady her age, have you lost your mind? Do you wish to wander the past for all eternity?”

“…My apologies.”

Rose gave a single dry cough and picked up where she’d left off.

“Not long after, the very thing my brother had feared came to pass. Humans pushed deep into the forest, and the World Tree that had sheltered us was engulfed in flames and reduced to ash.”

She shut her eyes, as if dredging up an agonizing memory.

“Once the World Tree was gone, every living thing, plant and animal alike, lost its place and became prey. All I could do was run.”

The daughter of the elf chieftain. The princess of the forest. In a burning forest, titles like those meant nothing at all.

“Not even knowing where I was headed, I ran with no destination at all. I didn’t look back. Because the moment I turned around, it felt like I’d be caught.”

This was a tale from very long ago, I gathered. The World Tree of this world had lost its function ages past.

“One day, the one I’d believed to be a comrade sold me out to save their own skin. The hunters came bursting in, and Father shouted at me.”

In my head, the scene Rose had lived through that day played itself out.

“I’m all right. I’m all right, so go on ahead. Go, and find your brother.”

“…”

“Why Father’s dying words were to find my brother, I’ll never know. My brother was the one who argued we should take up arms. Was it a wish for me to carry out his revenge in his stead?”

I started to tell her that wasn’t it, but the look on her face stopped me, and I held my tongue.

“A great many things happened after that. For a time I lived as a beggar, and for a time I was taken in by a certain woman. Then, the moment that woman died, I was cast back out onto the streets. Having lost my purpose in life all over again, I remembered Father’s dying words to find my brother. So I set out to find him, just as Father had told me.”

An age when the hunting of elves ran rampant. Rose must have fled for her life, desperately, combing through one city after another in search of Beron all the while. Having lost her comrades, her family, and the very ground beneath her feet.

“I heard that an elf who’d been making a name for himself in the Empire had suddenly gone silent in the Arne domain. With nothing left to lose, I set out on the road.”

Beron had been an assassin raised by the Empire. Paradoxically, because he carried out his assassinations far too brilliantly, his infamy reached even the Arne army. When it became impossible to keep working as an assassin, he deliberately let them capture him, so that he could carry out one final assassination, the Saintess’s, and then take his own life. And it was Rose, tracing the footprints he’d left behind, who arrived at House Arne.

“Because the Empire had declared it would protect the elven people, elves could finally stop hiding their ears. But I didn’t follow suit.”

“You didn’t trust the Empire.”

“…Once you’ve been betrayed after putting your faith in something, that’s enough to last a lifetime.”

In humans? Or in family? I couldn’t work out who the betrayer she spoke of was. Her life seemed to bear far too many wounds.

“Even after reaching the Arne domain, I kept the fact that I was an elf hidden.”

Even with the Empire’s proclamation, the Arne domain had suffered countless casualties at the hands of the elf assassin Beron. They wouldn’t have looked kindly on elves.

“I endured. Hiding my ears, smearing mud and water over my skin day after day to cover its telltale pallor.”

The people of Arne would never have dreamed there was an elf hiding right under their noses.

“And that’s how you came to settle into the house.”

Rose crooked a finger. At that, the red book slotted into the bookcase, Astraea, the Red Saintess, slid free and came to rest atop her hand. She stroked the worn cover gently, as if it were some precious treasure.

“At that time, I made a contract with the head of the house and resolved to guard this place.”

Rose turned a page. The one I glimpsed bore a portrait of Beron. It looked to have been drawn by her own hand.

“Through my magic I watched over my brother any number of times… but he took his own life in that prison without ever even attempting the Saintess’s assassination. That’s how I knew your words were a lie.”

“I see.”

“You must have heard it from the current head of the house. That I don’t know the truth of that day.”

Rose gazed into the swirling red tea in her cup as she went on.

“I’ve gone into that book dozens, no, hundreds of times. Trying somehow to uncover the reason the Saintess vanished.”

Rose had needed to know the house’s history through and through, because that was her role.

“I found the demon the Saintess had hidden away, but…”

Rose bit her lip.

“At the decisive moment, the scene cuts out, like a film snapping mid-reel. I never took my eyes off it for an instant, yet in the space of a single breath the two of them were gone, as though they’d never existed in the first place.”

To think the puppeteer who’d worn Eve’s face, that whole crew, had already meddled in the past. That was information I hadn’t seen coming.

“In the history you entered, the Saintess survived and the demon was destroyed.”

She gazed absently at Beron’s portrait, then spoke.

“And my brother… survived too.”

Beron had survived. To help me, he’d somehow talked the enemy Arne soldiers around and made his way back to me. And the Saintess hadn’t died either. She’d only been knocked out.

I wonder how the history of that world played out.

That I would never know, but this much was certain.

“Beron’s dead anyway. He’s one of the departed. He can’t come back to life.”

The gaze she wore held nothing but despair and emptiness, the look of someone about to throw their life away at any moment. It was the same face the losers I hated most always wore.

“Who said anything of the sort?”

“Yes, Lady Rose, your eyes are saying it. That if you’d been there in that age, maybe you could have saved your brother. Aren’t they?”

I paused a beat, then went on.

“And that’s not all. You’re sitting there regretting it. Why couldn’t I save my brother?”

Rose gave no answer. Silence doesn’t necessarily mean agreement, but this once, it did.

“Taking his own life in that prison was the path Beron chose. The Beron I knew wouldn’t regret it. At the very least, the Beron I saw wasn’t the kind of guy to wait around for someone’s rescue or blame the past.”

“…”

“He fought by his own choice, and he met his death by his own choice.”

That I’d been able to meet Beron at all was thanks solely to Rose’s magic. And that magic was nothing more than experiencing the world of the past.

“Just accept it already.”

Ironically, it was precisely because she held the power to see the past that Rose remained shackled to its ghost.

“Beron’s story has come to an end.”