Chapter 31

I had asked Leonis for a sword as a winning prize, but honestly, I never expected him to actually win. I had just requested it as a way to give him extra motivation if there happened to be a goal.

But to think he actually won. He was surprisingly skilled, wasn’t he? I looked at Leonis with fresh eyes as he approached me after receiving the congratulations of the crowd. I had been discovering new sides to my stepbrother continuously for the past two days.

Of course, since I hadn’t known a single thing about him until now, anything would have been new. Still, watching him was far from boring.

“Meriel. This way.”

I followed his polite gesture. The gazes of the young girls that followed my movements were undoubtedly filled with envy.

Since I had no intention of being on the receiving end of unnecessary hostility, I had already revealed among the women—while the men were out hunting—that I was Leonis’s older sister and a married woman. Well, there was no need to mention I was a widow. That would only bring down the mood.

Perhaps because of that, the girls treated me like a comfortable older sister rather than a romantic rival throughout the time we spent together. To think they would treat an elder like me so well without ostracizing me, even when I had just inserted myself into their group. Everyone always said that kids these days had no manners, but it seemed that was all just prejudice.

Of course, some of them subtly asked about Leonis’s tastes, but since I naturally knew nothing of the sort, I used our mother, Anne, as a model and answered with, “I don’t know the specifics myself, but wouldn’t it be something like this?”

I suspect that for a while now, things that appear somewhat mature and elegant will become quite popular among these girls.

Whether one is old or young, it is only natural for men who carry themselves well to be popular, so I fully understood why Leonis was popular with his peers, separate from the fact that he seemed subtly naive.

“The swords are over here.”

I stood with Leonis in front of the display case and looked over the various types of swords.

“Which one catches your eye?”

I stumbled a bit since I didn’t know much about swords, but it didn’t take me long. Referring to Leonis’s opinion, I chose the one that looked most similar in size to Felix’s sword.

As the winner, Leonis was handed the sword first, and he immediately placed it into my arms. Perhaps because it was an object that had nothing to do with me, the feeling of holding the heavy lump of metal was utterly alien. Still, it wasn’t bad.

“Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it. I am glad I could keep my promise.”

I hadn’t exactly shared a promise with Leonis, but I didn’t see any reason to bring it up in such a nice setting. I just told him “thank you” again and held the sword tightly.

If I can just shake off this bizarre mood and go back to Felix, I’ll apologize for everything and give him this sword as a gift.

F.

On the evening after I finished the barrier work for the day, I was sitting across from the Saint inside a tent. The issue regarding my bad luck still hadn’t been resolved. I had to solve at least one of the two—either get rid of the blessing or avoid the misfortune.

“There is also a method of seeking forgiveness from the Messenger of God whom you have incurred hatred from.”

“I still don’t really understand what this ‘Messenger of God’ thing is.”

“Come to think of it, my explanation of that was a bit lacking.”

According to the Saint, divine beings generally had souls so vast that they faced many restrictions when trying to interfere in a world with energy smaller than their own. That was why they sometimes created Messengers. They could be thought of as errand runners or agents, bestowed with a portion of the god’s power and utilized more freely.

“If they have something so convenient, is there any reason for priests to exist?”

“It’s the opposite. They create Messengers precisely because they cannot establish temples and priests. This is usually the case for external gods who have difficulty with missionary work because there is already a god rooted in the land.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m a mere human, but such stories from another world still didn’t quite resonate with me.

“It’s easier to understand if you think of it as whether they put all their eggs in one basket or distribute them across several. A Messenger possesses stronger power than a priest, but they are inevitably unstable. If something happens to the Messenger, the damage to the main deity is significant, in proportion to the power they divided.”

“That makes it even harder to understand. Why would something like that hate me? I’ve never even encountered anything that looks that impressive in the first place.”

“Really?”

“What’s with that reaction?”

When I asked, feeling disgruntled about why she had to go so far as to ask back as if she were suspicious of me, the Saint stared at me with deep, sunken eyes and said, “The traces of where the Lallanne territory vanished—you remember them, don’t you? I didn’t explicitly say it to you back then, but in this world, beings capable of using such unbridled power are actually quite rare.”

Ah.

At that moment, a signal went off in my brain warning me that hearing any more would be dangerous. But because I didn’t know how to react, I couldn’t do anything at all. I could only stare blankly at the Saint’s moving lips.

“But even if I hadn’t told you, it was something you could have naturally deduced if you’d thought about it for a moment, so I will not apologize. You saw with your own eyes that even after gathering mages and prayer-chanters from all over, they couldn’t even breach the territory’s barrier, didn’t you?”

Iel.

“How could a mere human do something like that… not just the barrier, but making that entire land, teeming with anomalous phenomena, disappear entirely in a single moment?”

A sudden, terrifying realization struck me.

Back then, when I looked at the traces of the gouged-out territory and asked if I couldn’t do something like that, the Saint had said it might be possible if I utilized mystical energy. But she never affirmed that it was truly possible.

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. In the end, she had blurred the line between the impossible and the possible with ambiguity. Then, she mentioned transplantation magic and blessing prayers, planting hope and inducing my interest. Leading up to this current situation, I finally realized that I had been walking step-by-step like a puppet, following the Saint’s lead.

“It is such an obvious fact, yet you wear a face that suggests you hadn’t even thought of it. Why is that? No matter how ignorant you are of mystical energy, I believed you were not a person obtuse enough to negate the experience of having gone inside the barrier yourself.”

I had been played.

But the Saint probably didn’t even realize what kind of fatal blow she had dealt me. She had merely needed confirmation for her own hypothesis.

“It is truly a strange thing. Unless, that is, you have been deliberately looking away all this time.”

It is terrifying to be forced to face the true intentions hidden deep inside, even from myself. From the moment the lid I’d kept shut was opened, the honest confessions that poured out helplessly began to cloud my mind.

Ah. Iel… Meriel.

Truthfully, I lied. Because it was easy to talk. If all it took was that much to keep you by my side, that was a damn cheap price to pay, wasn’t it? Isn’t that right?

It wasn’t that I didn’t care whether you were Iel or Meriel. It was just that I couldn’t stand the thought of you—your very existence—directly slipping away from me. It’s because you, who had already abandoned me and left several times, eventually remained as a source of fear.

No, no. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to resent you. You must have had your reasons to abandon me, so you did. It’s just that I’m the one who can’t let you go.

I waited, optimistic, thinking that if I could at least hold onto your body, I might eventually be able to accept all of you. By covering one eye and forcibly dulling my senses, so that I could accept you only as Iel.

That effort wasn’t entirely ineffective, but it didn’t bring about any significant change, either. Sometimes I felt like you were one, yet at other times, when I came to my senses, I felt you split into two. This, too, must be because I am particularly sensitive.

Thinking that it was all because I was strange made it unexpectedly easier to endure. As you said, the dissonance is less noticeable within a peaceful life.

Yet, despite that, the intricately tangled guilt simply wouldn’t disappear, so it seems I thought I had to at least protect you. I believed that you must never, under any circumstances, suffer because of me. That is why, even when suspicions or questions regarding you arose, I would simply empty my head and diligently keep the lid shut on every dissonance I felt from you.

In the end, I couldn’t even manage to do that properly.