Chapter 31 - Fairy and Tender Memories
It was when Louis was eight years old.
The day she declared she would become a housekeeper. The night he poured out his anxieties, clung to her, and wept.
Louis's consciousness surfaced. Before he knew it, he was lying in bed, the bedding warmed by his own body heat.
But he could not feel the softness of Elenoa, who should have been beside him. Feeling disappointed, wondering if she had already left, he was just about to drift back to sleep when—
He heard a song.
It was a voice like glass, piano, and bells, intricately weaving together various clear, high tones without a single impurity.
At the same time, he recognized the sensation of his head being gently stroked.
His hair was softly brushed back, inducing a lazy mood that made him want to indulge, to forget everything and sink into a deep sleep.
Shaking off the temptation to fall back asleep, the boy opened his eyes. There, a fairy sat.
Without stopping her hand that stroked Louis's head, she sat on the edge of the bed, gazing out the open window at the sky where the full moon clung, playing a song with a mysterious resonance. It was likely not human language.
She was beautiful.
She had been astonishingly lovely from the very beginning, of course.
Her translucence, far beyond what any human could achieve, made it seem as though she might simply dissolve into the air and vanish.
『Ah, you're awake』
『……It was a song I couldn't understand』
『Well, humans can't understand it. Because it's a fairy's song』
Although a fairy's spoken language was nearly identical to that of humans, their lyrics seemed to be different.
『……The rest of it』
『Hm?』
『That song is calming』
Smiling mischievously, she began to sing again.
Literally stretching her wings, the silver hair draped over her back swayed lightly.
『There are plenty of other songs, you know』
『Then, please, one song at a time. Until I fall asleep』
『Okaay. Understood』
Fairies shine brightest in the light of dawn or under the moon. Louis felt he remembered someone saying that in a book he had read.
Then, light footsteps approached, and the door opened quietly. Peering shyly through the gap was a small girl.
『Did Lumina-chan wake up too?』
『……Mn』
Lumina nodded apologetically, hesitating to enter.
She must have come because she was lonely on her own. But sensing his younger sister's unchildlike hesitation, worried that she might be a nuisance if she entered her brother's room, Louis, an unchildlike older brother, called out to her.
『……Will you come over here?』
『Yes!』
Lumina's face lit up with joy, and she closed the door, rushing toward the bed.
But Louis was on one side of the bed, and Elenoa was sitting on the other, leaving no room to enter. As Lumina began to look troubled again, Elenoa beckoned her with her hand and lifted her up.
『Elenoa?』
『Imitating a mother. Human children grow up so fast, I wanted to try this just once』
Elenoa began to stroke Lumina's hair, having placed her on her lap so they faced each other. Louis felt a lingering regret as the hand that had been stroking him moved away, but he resigned himself, thinking, I am the Big Brother, after all.
Louis felt like a bad child for resenting his younger sister, so he pulled the bedding up over his head to hide his face. Doing so, Elenoa now patted him gently from above the covers.
『You're sleepy, aren't you? Shall we stop the singing time?』
『No. I prefer it until I fall asleep. You said one song at a time, earlier』
『……Understood!』
『Really?』
A fairy's lullaby. It was a voice that anyone without miasma would find pleasant.
The voice reached only those at a very close distance; for the rest, only its lingering echo drifted around them like a gentle breeze.
It lacked the warmth and emotion found in his birth mother's spring-breeze-like lullabies, but Louis loved Elenoa's voice, quiet and delicate like the winter sky.
He longed for it every time he heard it.
And yet.
＊
Using the wand made from her hair, Louis arrived at an abandoned warehouse located at the southern end of the Royal Capital. It was an old building made of red bricks, surrounded by several broadleaf trees.
An orange light, perhaps from a candle or something similar, leaked from the upper windows.
There was a large iron door, but he entered through a small wooden door beside it.
The moment he did, what he heard from inside was—
"—gh!"
A sound like a small bird being strangled to death.
"Elenoa!"
There was no mistake. That was her voice.
The interior was simple, with no partitions whatsoever. At the back of the rectangular room, numerous wooden boxes of unknown purpose were stacked.
Using the wooden boxes as chairs or tables, they seemed to have been 'playing' there.
The trio smiled defiantly at Louis's appearance.
"Please don't make such a fuss. We just gave her forehead a little flick."
The 'thing' held in the short man's hand hung its head limply. It was human-shaped and palm-sized. From the feet of that doll, red liquid dripped down with a splashing sound.
"Oh, what a waste."
The man with glasses brought a small bottle. Although half of the bottle was already filled with liquid, he pressed the mouth of the bottle against the 'doll's' feet, carefully collecting it drop by drop.
Muttering that he wanted more, the short man applied force with his hand, trying to squeeze the liquid out of the 'doll.'
Instinctively, Louis extended his arm.
A blade of wind mercilessly severed the man's hand. Thud. It rolled beside the wooden box they had been using as a table. The cross-section of the arm froze in surprise, but soon blood gushed out.
The dumbfounded man found his hand on the ground and screamed.
The 'doll' that fell from the man's hand was lifted by a gentle breeze and carried to Louis.
On Louis's palm, the 'doll'—a familiar female fairy, in an unfamiliar state, was dropped.
"……Elenoa?"
—Something was wrong.
That was his first thought.
Her white one-piece dress was bright red.
Her beautiful hair, which should have reached her waist, was gone. It had been cut at the nape of her neck, and in some places, it looked as though it had been torn down to a length of just a few millimeters.
Her right eye was tightly closed, and a trail of blood ran from the edge of her eyelid. Was this perhaps the effect of the 'forehead flick'?
Kahyu, kahyu. An eerie sound came from her throat. Her breathing was clumsy. Occasionally, a unpleasant sound like "ka," escaped as if choking.
"Elenoa."
The small body rolling on his hand twitched spasmodically.
Her right arm was twisted, the skin swollen and soft like blue rubber.
Her slender legs were darkened around the shins, swollen to several times their size. They were hot to the touch.
When her left eye opened slightly and looked at Louis, her shoulder twitched. That was all. It seemed she tried to touch Louis, but she screamed in a hoarse voice from the pain that assailed her. She could no longer even extend her arm.
After that, short, repetitive vowels, "a, a," were emitted from the back of her throat as if convulsing. It did not seem to be her own will.
The men who had reduced the beautiful her to this state were each sneering with amusement. The man who had lost his arm, though covered in cold sweat, could not hide his look of delight. It was eerie, indeed.
"How about it, Louis-sama. Your maid is quite cute, isn't she, playing nicely with us lowlifes?"
Kafu. From her throat, gasping in pain in Louis's hand, bright red blood was vomited out.
"If she weren't so small, I could have shoved it down below, though."
"Well, we received something in return, didn't we?"
"……In return?"
Louis, in a daze, lifted his face.
"We 'harvested' this much Rank A material. How terrible, Louis-sama! To think you were keeping such a high-quality fairy in secret, hidden from the Research Institute."
—Harvested?
Louis stared blankly at the stout man.
The man displayed his spoils.
Silver threads grasped in his fist, and dragonfly-like wings.
What was in the man's hand looked filthy. The base of the wings was stained red, wrinkled in places, and torn. Louis's knowledge told him that even so, their efficacy had not diminished.
Next, Louis returned his gaze to the dying fairy.
Covered in blood, she had no wings left to fly with.
With a voice that could barely manage to breathe, she said,
" Lu mina cha"
That was what she said.
How much had she screamed until that transparent voice went hoarse?
Repeatedly subjected to atrocities that could no longer be considered sane, mocked when she desperately tried to escape.
While being twisted into a grotesque laugh.
How many times had she called out to Louis for help?
He had not sensed her crisis, not even as a premonition. As a result, the beautiful fairy had been stripped of everything, reduced to mere dregs.
Louis stared blankly, saying nothing, simply gazing at the men. Perhaps interpreting his silence in their favor, they seemed to feel pleased.
It was their first victory. They had finally outwitted the monster they had long found annoying. In retaliation for taking what they wanted, they had taken something precious from him!
Louis continued to watch the men, excited by their own great deed. With eyes that cast a dark, dark shadow, as if absorbing even the light.
Eventually, his mouth curved into a bewitching arc. He had discovered three suitable 'subjects' right in front of him, recalling that his experiments had been at a standstill.
—That's right. There were no test subjects. Until now.
In his head, something snapped sharply again.
＊
After transferring the trio, whom he had petrified as a temporary measure, to the Research Institute, Louis looked at the fairy.
If she was still breathing, there was hope. Yes, it was not good to give up.
With injuries this severe, he had to treat her quickly. But dealing with a fairy was different from dealing with humans; the larger the wound, the more 'connections' were required. It was best if those connections were things related to the person themselves.
Louis touched the wand to the wings he had kept in his bosom, and the wings and hair he had recovered from the man's hand. They melted smoothly into the wand. A wand containing a part of the fairy herself had the highest affinity.
—I will not let her die.
"……'Spell Expansion'"
Louis carefully placed the fairy on the ground and stepped back a few paces. Then, drawing five magic circles centered on the fairy, he shrunk and arranged them in a circle, and drew a large magic circle that unified them into a single pillar.
—I will give you as much mana as you need.
He continued to stack magic circles of different contents directly above each other with equal spacing, until there were twelve.
Each was a highest-rank multi-layered magic that governed phenomena such as 'Healing,' 'Amplification,' 'Shape Memory,' 'Regeneration,' and 'Harmony.'
"'Using mana as sustenance, regenerate'"
Drawing even one required a considerable amount of mana, yet he drew multiple, inserted magic to cancel out the repulsion generated between them, adjusted the delicate structure in an instant, and stacked them in the optimal order.
Layers of blue glowing circles built a tower.
At the very bottom center lay the squeezed dregs of the female fairy.
"'×××××'"
Fluent ancient language, so difficult that even ordinary mages would struggle to comprehend it, was released from his mouth.
As he pushed the wand in, it sank and melted deeply into the magic circle from its tip.