“Ah…”
When I came to my senses, I realized I was covering Ariel’s eyes.
What was I doing?
It was a horrific sight for me, but for Ariel, it was probably something she’d seen to the point of exhaustion.
“Sir Johan? I… I can’t see ahead. Before, I could at least see vaguely, but now… has it already…?”
Apparently, with her senses nearly paralyzed, Ariel thought she had gone completely blind, not realizing that it was my hand covering her eyes. She panicked.
Even her struggling was so feeble, like a drunken sway, that it just made me feel sorry for her.
“Is everyone alright? Ah, and that person…?”
“…She’s not injured. Just plain exhaustion, that’s all.”
As I gently patted the struggling Ariel to calm her down, the one responsible for the gruesome scene before us, Tillis, walked toward us with steady steps.
A soft smile on her lips. Graceful movements. A calm and gentle voice.
Tillis approached in a manner truly befitting the title of “Saintess”.
Who could possibly be wary of that? Who would be afraid?
Ariel who was nestled in my arms was already half out of it. She was too far gone to be wary of anyone.
Flinch!
I barely managed to stop myself from stepping back.
Damn it, I really didn’t want to run into her.
The very idea of getting personally involved with her was enough to make me sick.
“It’s a relief to hear you’re safe.”
Tillis let out a breath of relief and smiled warmly.
A smile that made her seem like a genuinely kind person.
But this woman had just killed someone.
How could anyone feel reassured by someone who could smile so calmly after taking a life?
“Lady Ariel, please close your eyes for a while. Now that the Saintess is here, you are safe. What you need most right now is rest.”
“…Is that really okay?”
“Yes.”
Ariel must have already been at her limit.
She had been holding onto the last thread of consciousness only because she didn’t trust me to handle things.
If I hadn’t pulled through, she probably intended to step in herself.
But now, it was over.
“Then… I’ll just rest… a little…”
With those words, Ariel finally let go of the consciousness she had been clinging to so desperately.
I gently laid her down as she began to drift off into sleep, then looked at Tillis who was watching us silently.
Perhaps she was perceptive after all. Tillis didn’t say a word until Ariel had fallen asleep.
Thanks to that brief pause, I had a moment to gather my thoughts.
So, what should I do now?
Tillis was the first to speak.
“There’s something I’d like to ask if you don’t mind?”
“…Go ahead. You saved our lives. Ask anything you want.”
“Then…”
Tillis smiled brightly at my response and extended her right hand.
The moment I saw what she was holding, my whole body turned cold.
In her hand was the unconscious Yuna.
Judging by her condition, subduing her hadn’t been easy.
“Do you know this person? She seemed suspicious, so I brought her with me.”
“Yes, she’s a friend of mine.”
Normally, I would’ve hesitated, unsure whether admitting that I knew her was the right thing to do.
But maybe I was still too naive because I couldn’t bring myself to deny it.
The answer came out without a second thought.
Funny, isn’t it?
I had ignored everything for a year, and now I was acting like this over someone I had known for barely a few days.
“Is that so?”
Tillis tilted her head slightly at my response, then immediately asked a follow-up question.
“Then, are you also aware that this person may have killed countless people? She’s likely stained her hands with an enormous amount of blood.”
“I suppose so. I had a vague suspicion… but it seems the Saintess can sense things like that too.”
“Yes, it’s an intuition born from experience. And that intuition is telling me this person has killed at least a three-digit number of people.”
Now came the real question: what would I do?
The scales hidden beneath her gentle smile had started to tip.
This was the turning point.
If I said even one wrong word, I would likely follow the same fate as the barbarian who had just been blown to pieces.
No—maybe not just me.
Thinking that other lives could hinge on what I said made me afraid.
“How many students in the Cradle do you think haven’t stained their hands with a single drop of blood? Yuna merely took initiative and protected us, that’s all.”
“Hmm… is that so?”
I balanced her scale with a weight called “the greater good”.
Yes, Tillis judged people by only one standard.
Whether they were good or evil.
That was the only criteria Tillis ever used.
A merciless monster of black-and-white logic.
“But this person….she was watching the students from afar. She could’ve helped, but she just stood by. Were you aware of that?”
“Yes, I know.”
I tried my best to avoid telling lies.
No matter how good an actor I was, I could never completely deceive a seasoned monster like her.
I had to persuade her with the truth alone and avoid lies at all costs.
“……She’s also my Master.”
“Your Master?”
“Yes. She was probably just watching, thinking I could handle this much on my own.”
“Hmm?”
Tillis glanced back and forth between Yuna and me and kept pondering.
There was still one piece missing.
Then I’d have to provide that piece myself. Standing before overwhelming fear, I took a step forward with all the courage I could muster.
“So please, let Yuna go, Saintess. If you don’t… I won’t just let this slide.”
I had no weapon, and I wasn’t strong enough. Even so, I showed my resolve to fight.
It was a threat that had no bite.
But even so, it was enough to show my clumsy courage.
Tillis saw the world in strict black and white.
Which meant she had already made her judgment.
“Looks like I made a serious mistake. I apologize.”
That I was one of the good ones.
It was the moment the scale of her dual nature tipped completely.
***
Tillis had certainly taken note of me, but at least I got through the situation somehow.
Just knowing that she remembered my face was enough to send chills down my spine.
And that alone was hard enough to deal with…
“Puhihi!”
Ariel in front, Yuna behind.
With both of them slung over my shoulders, it was getting really cumbersome.
Their weight made it hard to even breathe.
I wouldn’t say which one was heavier for the sake of their dignity.
“That was seriously close, wasn’t it?”
“Yuna, I’m struggling here, so could you please just stay quiet for a bit?”
If you keep squirming like that, I won’t be able to breathe.
“If the conditions had been right, I could’ve killed her.”
“Uh-huh, sure.”
“It’s not like my senses were particularly sharp or anything.”
“I mean… you did get caught. Isn’t getting caught kind of the end for an assassin?”
“I only got caught because I didn’t know! Now that I do, I’m confident I won’t be next time!”
“Yeah, I’m sure you are.”
You’re surprisingly competitive, aren’t you?
Unfortunately, I didn’t think Yuna could actually beat Tillis.
There was just too big a gap between them…
Of course, I didn’t say that out loud.
Telling a grumbling kid they can’t do something was like digging your own grave.
So I kept my mouth shut, and Yuna started whispering in my ear.
“Hey, try calling me ‘Master’.”
“Did you hit your head or something?”
I’d used that as an excuse to save Yuna.
She probably knew full well it was just something I said to defuse the situation, but she was still having fun with it.
“Hey, Johan.”
After fussing behind my back for a while, Yuna eventually went limp, probably having run out of energy.
Then came a whisper in my ear—
A voice that sounded different from usual, enough to make me tense up.
Yuna always struck when the mood turned like this. What was she about to say this time?
“Why didn’t you abandon me? If you think about it logically… wouldn’t that have been the right thing to do?”
“……”
That’s right. Normally, pretending not to know anything would have been the best choice.
Putting up a wall completely.
If I’d done that, Tillis wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect me or question me.
But I crossed a dangerous line.
If things had gone even slightly wrong, not only I but even the unconscious Ariel could have been put in danger.
It was something I wouldn’t have done under normal circumstances, something I would have drawn a line at.
But I did it.
“…If I were really that cold-hearted, I wouldn’t have even joined the Cradle in the first place.”
Other people’s misfortunes weren’t my concern. After all, they weren’t me.
But then, what about Yuna? Could she really be considered a complete stranger?
Unfortunately, I had the audacity to think of her as a friend.
Even if she was a lunatic.
It wasn’t like I had much of a social circle to begin with, so I couldn’t help it.
“I see~”
Even without seeing her face, I could tell Yuna was grinning right now.
Should I not have said that? No, maybe it was better to make it clear while I had the chance.
“Now you understand, right? I’m not cut out to be your disciple.”
I couldn’t even control my emotions properly. How could I ever be an assassin?
Whether I wanted to or not was one thing, but my personality wasn’t suited for it to begin with.
“Nope. That’s not true.”
But Yuna actually hummed as she replied.
“It’s exactly because you’re like that that you do have potential. If you were a cold and dry person, it would’ve been harder… So, tell me, how do I look to you?”
“What do you mean, how do you look?”
“I don’t look like a cold and ruthless person, do I?”
“…No, you don’t.”
“That’s what matters. Assassins who’ve killed off their emotions….you can always tell. People like that are treated as disposable from the start and shaped that way. I guess you could say they’re… cost-effective?”
“Talking about cost-effectiveness with human lives can’t be considered normal.”
“Well, so what? They’re strangers anyway.”
“……”
Yuna spoke as if it were ridiculous.
Did she take human life lightly? No, the nuance was different.
This was a direct jab at me.
That’s why I had nothing to say. She had thrown my own words back at me.
“I might be a terrifying killer, but at the very least, I’ve never killed anyone without a reason. The people I’ve killed were pretty much… trash.”
“I know.”
Yuna, the Safe Clown, was a character closer to a dark hero.
She didn’t accept contracts for money, but based on who the target was.
Whether the rage was justified, whether the target was a sinner who deserved to die.
There was also the problem that the Empire was in such a fragile state, it made it hard to argue whether someone like her had the right to judge others.
It had come to the point where even vigilantes had become inevitable.
I didn’t know the full story behind Yuna… but I wasn’t naïve enough to claim that killing was always wrong in this harsh world.
I had killed a few people myself.
“That’s why I’m saying. There’s no one more perfectly suited than you.”
“Can you please take my social background into account when you make those judgments?”
“Nope, don’t wanna.”
Her standards were completely random.
Was it possible that she just liked me?
Thinking that made me feel a little embarrassed.
“But hey, Johan. There’s something I’ve been curious about. Can I ask?”
“You’re asking that now?”
Didn’t she already say everything there was to say, things she should and shouldn’t have said?
What could possibly require permission at this point?
“What’s your goal?”
It was an abstract question.
“Goal? What kind of goal?”
“Mm… like a dream or an ambition. Something like that.”
“I don’t really have one. Just by breathing, I’ll become the lord of a county, so what’s there to think about? All I have to do is survive and graduate. Then I can get out of this hellhole of a capital.”
“I see~”
Yuna grinned again, just like earlier.
What now? I had given her a relatively honest answer.
“Don’t you think that’s kind of strange, though?”
“…….?”
“You acted like an ordinary person who was afraid, running away over and over again.”
“What, should I have just fought back and died?”
“But earlier, you didn’t act like that. That woman was the most absurd monster I’ve ever seen. And against that kind of monster, you saved me.”
“……”
“Sometimes, you act like someone who isn’t afraid of death. That’s a little… unsettling.”
I couldn’t let my guard down.
Not a single person around me was easy to deal with.
Lobelia who approached me without me doing anything was the same. Such people would pierce through things I had never revealed to anyone, all over seemingly insignificant matters.
Yeah, I wasn’t afraid of death.
Because I had already experienced it once. I had died once, and come back into this world.
I knew what lay beyond death, and so I didn’t think it was something to be feared.
That’s why I wasn’t afraid of dying.
“That’s just your misunderstanding. I’ve always acted consistently.”
“I see~”
What I feared was saying goodbye.
That was the only thing I had ever been afraid of, all this time.
***
At that same moment—
Coran Lekias, the Head of the Imperial Technology Research Department, detected something strange while examining the mechanical components of Ex Machina.
“Hmm, let’s take it apart.”
“…Huh?!”
The researchers shouted as if in a panic at Coran Lekias’s order.
It was only natural. One wrong move could trigger the machine’s self-destruction.
It wasn’t just their lives at stake. They couldn’t help but worry that an entire piece of groundbreaking technology might be lost.
“I doubt there’s a self-destruction mechanism built into the structure. More importantly… hmm, we’ll have to dismantle it to find out.”
A sharp intuition.
Judgment honed through years as a researcher.
Trusting the department head’s decision, the researchers began to take the machine apart.
Just as Coran Lekias had said—
There was no self-destruction mechanism installed in the machine.
The complex interior of the huge mechanical device was revealed.
Countless gears and a steam engine.
“Th-This level of precision…!”
The researchers burst into cheers.
It was a sign the investigation would take some time.
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