46. Live In Reality

The meal came to an end the same way it had gone, in silence. For whatever reason, the lot of us had eaten in a gloomy mood without exchanging a single word, and when Leo finished first, he excused himself and left.

I went on eating alone at the now bare table. The only sound was my spoon scraping against the bowl, and then—

For some reason, Eve was trying to comfort me. But I wasn’t bothered in the least, so the remark, coming out of nowhere like that, just left me at a loss. So I mulled it over as I finished my food.

Have I ever felt lonely in my life?

I’d never once stopped to consider it. 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 some more. That’s how I’d lived for five years.

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

That one I could answer right away.

Probably, yeah.

I’d never managed to clear the raid on the Lord of the East, the last of the Four Heavenly Kings, but I’d surely have conquered it someday. And it wasn’t just the raids. I’d have seen this whole game through to the end, no question, because that was my promise with that person.

Which is exactly why I’m—

In any case, 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’d actually been meaning to come find you myself. Sorry you had to come to me first.”

It was Rose, the examiner of the Trial of Wisdom. She led me by the hand to the Silent Hall, where she resided.

Same as ever.

Half a year had already passed since I took the Trial of Wisdom, yet this place hadn’t changed a bit. The musty smell of paper mingled with that strange fragrance of flowers, tickling the tip of my nose. And then 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’ve set a book down, it tends to take a good long while before you pick it up to read again.”
“Sorry?”
“What I’m saying is, deciding to come find me is easy, but actually doing it is another matter entirely.”

“Anyway, what you’re saying is you missed me, right?”

I lifted the teacup Rose had prepared and smiled. The tea was less sweet than 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 saved me some trouble, because the conclusion I’d reached after talking with Eve all through the night was precisely—

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.

So, just in case, I had to manage my connections, however tedious and bothersome that might be.

At any rate, when I set the teacup down, Rose spoke.

“There’s something I’m curious about, so I called you here. Looking at you now, I’d say it’s the same business you meant to come see me about.”

Could Rose have caught on that something was off, too? It wouldn’t be strange. With the magic she possessed, she could quite plausibly have sensed the world acting suspicious.

“…It does seem that way.”

My reply was grave, and Rose cut straight to the heart of the matter.

“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. It’s how I passed the Trial of Wisdom, after all.”

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

“I came to finish the talk we never properly had that day. I imagine it’s been nagging at you as well.”

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 Beron to you, Lady Rose?”

I asked it point-blank.

“What makes you think I know that fellow so well?”
“The second I said Beron’s name, you dropped everything, pass and all, and threw me out.”

I looked her dead in the eye.

“One look is faster than a hundred words.”

Rose leapt from her broom into midair, and when she stood beside me, her small height struck me all over again. The top of her head only came up to my waist. Maybe that was why she always wore that enormous, broad-brimmed, towering conical hat.

“Why did you come down all of a—”

Swish.

The hat slipped off, and her bound silver hair came spilling down like a waterfall. But my gaze was fixed on something that stood out even more. There, between the strands of hair, were long, sharply pointed ears, rising to a peak.

Rose fiddled with one of them as she spoke.

“Does this explain it?”

I nodded. To think Rose had been an elf.

“Beron was my own older brother. Though I never dreamed that when Father drove him out, it would be our last farewell.”

Wow. And not only an elf, but his own little sister.

Something Beron had once said to me suddenly came 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.”

Her shocking confession had left me with one question.

She’ll probably get angry if I ask.

I wavered over it, then spat it out anyway.

“As far as I know, Beron lived a hundred and fifty years ago, so exactly how old does that make you… gah!”

The staff cracked across my shin with perfect precision.

“Asking a lady her age — have you lost your mind? You must want 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. Titles like those meant nothing at all in a burning forest.

“I ran blindly, with no idea where I was headed. I didn’t look back. It felt like the moment I turned around, 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, someone I’d believed was 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 him to carry out Father’s revenge in his stead?”

I started to say that wasn’t it, but one look at her face and I held my tongue.

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

It was an age when the hunting of elves ran rampant. Rose must have fled desperately for her life, combing through this city and that one in search of Beron all the while, having lost her comrades, her family, and the very ground she stood on.

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

Beron had been an assassin raised by the Empire. Paradoxically, he’d carried out his assassinations so brilliantly that his infamy reached even the Arne army, and when it became difficult to keep working, he deliberately let them capture him. That way 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.

“The Empire had declared it would protect the elven people, so elves could finally stop hiding their ears. But I didn’t follow suit.”
“You didn’t trust the Empire.”
“…Putting your faith in something only to be betrayed — once is enough.”

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 hid the fact that I was an elf.”

Proclamation or no proclamation, the Arne domain had suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the elf assassin Beron. They wouldn’t have looked kindly on elves.

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

The people of Arne would never have dreamed there was an elf right in the lamp’s own shadow.

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

Rose crooked a finger. At that, the red book tucked into the chest of drawers, Astraea, the Red Saintess, slid down and came to rest on her hand, and she stroked its worn cover as gently as if it were some precious treasure.

“That was when I made a contract with the head of the house and resolved to guard this place.”

She turned a page. The one I glimpsed bore a portrait of Beron, and it looked to have been drawn by her own hand.

“Through my magic I watched over my brother time and again… but he took his own life in that prison without so much as attempting to assassinate the Saintess. That’s how I knew you were lying.”

“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 find out why 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…”

She bit her lip.

“At the decisive moment, the scene cuts out, like a film snapping mid-reel. I didn’t take my eyes off it for even a second, yet in the blink of an eye 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 intervened in the past. I hadn’t seen that 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 gone — he can’t come back to life.”

Her gaze held nothing but despair and emptiness, like someone about to throw their life away at any moment. Rose wore the same face as the losers I hated most.

“Who said anything of the sort?”
“Your eyes did, Lady Rose. They’re saying that if you’d been there back then, maybe you could’ve 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 ending 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 to rescue him 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 the power to see the past that kept Rose shackled to its ghost.

“Beron’s story has come to an end.”