A Strange Feeling

Bishe let out a low, pained groan, and her monocle slid down askew along the straight bridge of her nose. Keith swallowed dryly, without a sound.

…Is it working?

Only now was he seeing the benefit of having a subordinate who reeled off his own affairs at length without anybody asking. Every quarter Enri fell in love with a new woman, and though nothing ever came of it, he suffered the fever of it to the hilt. On top of that he would blather on, down to the last detail, about how that fever was withering him to death. Sitting through it had been an ordeal, every time. And to think it would prove this useful.

Thank you, Enri.

Watching Bishe’s reaction keenly, he offered up several more signs. She had screwed her eyes shut partway through them, and now she pushed her monocle back into place.

“Very well. I am beaten.”

It meant she would let it pass. For now.

“I am glad my heart reached you.”

“And what good is it, reaching me? Kindly save such mortifying words for Viscountess Deluosa.”

“What sort of words?”

“Goodness—! …gracious. Ahem-ahem.”

Bishe half-shrieked and pressed a hand to her chest. Pai was standing blankly in the doorway of the study, and when Bishe dodged her look, Pai turned her eyes on Keith instead.

“Is there something I ought to be hearing, Mr… Keith?”

“There is not.”

“…”

Perhaps so flat a denial looked suspicious. Pai tilted her head.

Bishe stole a glance at Keith’s flustered face.

Love, is it.

She announced, stiffly as ever,

“Then I shall go on ahead and draw up the Victory Festival papers. The two of you, do talk.”

She withdrew, leaving only Pai and Keith in the room.

“…Er.”

“…Um.”

“The lady first.”

“Ah, mm. It’s nothing much, but the mood in here feels as though I ought to be saying something important. I didn’t interrupt the two of you, did I?”

“You did not. It was merely… No. Nothing.”

An awkward silence fell. Pai scratched her cheek and cleared her throat.

“Lady Ardine has woken. The moment she was up she asked for something to eat, so we had a meal sent up to her room. Her physician saw her as well, and he says she is fine.”

“That is good news.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Would it be better if I went to look in on her?”

“Mm-mm, no. I had the feeling she would eat and go straight back to sleep.”

“I see…”

“S— still, by tomorrow morning you’ll be able to take a walk together. I’ll drop a word to the young lady about it.”

“…”

“That’s everything I had to report.”

“Yes.”

“Er, then…”

— Ba-dump.

Those clear aquamarine eyes slipped behind their lids and came slowly back into view.

“I’ve got to take Reni out for its walk, so.”

— Ba-dump!

Keith’s heart pumped hard. He was so startled that the hand resting on the desk curled into a fist, and sweat seeped into the lines of his palm.

“Enjoy your supper… and I’ll see you tonight.”

“Tonight…”

“We’ve got… that to do, after all.”

She gave a playful wink as she whispered it, then bobbed a small curtsy and left the room.

Keith stared after her, drinking in the arc her platinum hair swept through the air and the straight, slender line of her back like a man coveting something he had no right to, until the sound of the door closing brought him back to himself. His heartbeat settled, but in the stillness that came after, it felt as though a hole had been punched clean through his chest.

“…This is strange.”

Truly, it was a strange feeling.

Every labyrinth has only an entrance.

That holds true only from the human side of things. It was demons who made the labyrinths, and to a demon the human entrance is an exit. They came pouring out of the labyrinths like ants swarming sugar and laid the human world to waste. For them the entrance is the door where the labyrinth joins the demon realm.

When they lost the Second Demon War and fled, they left the exits alone and sealed only the entrances. And so, structurally, the labyrinths became no different from a cave with a dead end.

There was no moon that night.

Two shadows were rustling their way toward the Great Labyrinth.

“This way.”

Just as Keith had feared, the forest gave off a grotesque, dismal air. No human had trodden it in hundreds of years, and all that while it had been steadily drinking in demonic energy as well. The trees stretched up twisted into freakish shapes, and thick roots tangled and knotted together until there was not a hand’s breadth left to set a foot on. The cries of beasts he had never heard in his life came at odd intervals, and certain plants breathed out a noxious gas.

A crumpled, warped forest. The place might have been thrashing with its whole body to tell them they were not welcome.

“Ugh…”

Hamel brushed the gooseflesh off his arms. The damp air clung to his skin, so unpleasant that he kept holding his breath without meaning to and then letting it burst out again.

Pai, though, breathed and moved as comfortably as if she had been born in the place. She explained,

“The Black Forest is one enormous living creature in itself. It periodically changes the shape of the organs inside its body.”

“…”

“Right now we’re… let’s see… somewhere around the large intestine, I’d say?”

“…”

“Chin up. A little further on and we’re at the butthole.”

“Must you use such a filthy comparison…”

The angelic face had gone pallid. He had the look of a man who would throw up on the spot if anyone so much as brushed his back.

“The Great Labyrinth is at the end of the forest, so butthole is right. It’s a precise comparison.”

She threw her head back and laughed, then pressed on at a quicker pace. The deeper in they went, the more the conversation died away; she had run out of things to explain, and Hamel was too busy panting.

“You’re keeping up all right?”

“Sl— hgh— slow— this— hhaagh.”

“We really are nearly there.”

That was all Pai said, over and over, the way a seasoned ginseng-gatherer lies to first-time mountain climbers that they are ‘nearly there.’ Her pace was quick besides, and sweat burst out even in the dip of Hamel’s upper lip. He licked the salt of it off with his tongue and shouted,

“Slow— ly, would you! This is elder abuse!”

“It’s only elder abuse when it suits you.”

“Huff, huff…”

“This is the last fork. As I remember it… mm, this way is right.”

She had it right. In less than five minutes the maw of the Great Labyrinth showed itself. Rank dark-green vines choked the entrance, hanging so long and so densely that it was impossible even to see inside. It looked for all the world like a woman with her hair hanging loose and wild.

Hamel faltered without meaning to.

So the Great Labyrinth really is the Great Labyrinth.

An overwhelmingly ominous air poured out of it, enough to reduce every labyrinth he had picked at until now to children’s play.

“Let’s go.”

“What?!”

Pai moved off without hesitation, leaving a badly startled Hamel behind her. The swords slung at either hip clattered, and she drew the main gauche worn at one side.¹

“…Whoa.”

Hamel forgot for a moment the situation he was in, and marveled. He had never seen so beautiful a blade; the only ones he had ever seen were the long swords that swordsmen carried about with them.

Pai Deluosa’s main gauche held cruelty inside its beauty. Exactly as she herself did.

When a blade with so soft a curve went shearing through a thicket centuries old, Hamel caught himself smoothing a hand over the back of his own neck.

— Gulp.

It was a curiously menacing feeling.

Pai cleared the thicket away quickly, then swung the main gauche to flick off a sticky purple liquid. It left spots on the flat rock beside her like drops of blood, and the stone hissed and boiled.

“Urgh.”

Hamel had a weak stomach, and he felt worse than ever. His nose had gone numb to the faint stench; now it registered a fouler one still, and the urge to retch surged up.

“Ugh, bleurgh…!”

In the end he could not hold it and brought up a rush of bile. Small mercy that supper had been nothing but a simple vegetable soup.

Only at the sight of that state did Pai let out an ‘Ah,’ as though it had dawned on her belatedly.

“The stench is awful, isn’t it. That’s Devil Bee for you. Cut it and it lets off liquid and gas, so…”

“Urgh, khek. Cough, cough!”

“Still, it only smells foul; it isn’t harmful… Sorry. I should have warned you.”

She rubbed Hamel’s back while he retched helplessly. When the heaving had settled a little, she offered, as though in consolation,

“Shall we rest a while before we go in?”