Chapter 85 - Fairy and Dark Clouds
The man watched the fairy fall.
On the high rocky ledge that had served as their footing, he raised his prone body. The others around him were dumbfounded, and soon, a roar of cheers erupted.
"As expected of the Empire's number one marksman!"
"…………."
He stumbled as his back was slapped hard. His friend was rejoicing.
But the man could not respond in kind, nor say anything at all; he merely stared at the gun barrel from which black smoke rose. It was a musket that could only fire one shot at a time, with bullets loaded from the muzzle. Thus, the nine of them present had taken turns firing in groups of three. Among those shots, the only one that had grazed the fairy's body—her left shoulder—was the single bullet he had fired.
The man had good eyesight. That was why he had seen this work as his calling. He had been proud to fight for his homeland, but.
Precisely because his eyesight was good, he had seen the state of his prey all too clearly.
"She was protecting her stomach. The bullet hadn't hit her abdomen."
His friend made a face that asked, "So what?"
He thought it was this friend's shot that had pierced the fairy's wing. After all, he was second only to the man in skill.
"There might have been a c-child in her stomach...!"
Upon speaking those words, the heartlessness of the act weighed down on him.
She had been a beautiful fairy. Clearly raised with love, she had been a fluffy, happy-looking fairy. Even to a man who had seen perhaps two or three fairies in his entire life, her beauty was evident. If possible, he had wanted to watch over her until her figure disappeared from sight.
—And yet.
His partner, the musket, felt somewhat hollow, like an unfamiliar weapon belonging to a stranger. Yet the grip fit his hand perfectly, and he remembered the sensation of placing his finger on the trigger. That was reality. His hands were trembling. They had not trembled during training.
"A child in her stomach? That's excellent work. If it was the Demon Lord's child, then the bud should have been nipped."
"She was just flying there! What if that wasn't the Demon Queen Elenoa? How many silver-haired fairies are there? Just because it was a huge fairy, we, I,"
"Right, how many large, silver-haired female fairies are there in the world?"
His friend tapped his shoulder. His attitude said, "Calm down."
His gut felt as if it were simmering unpleasantly.
They had fired simply because a fairy was flying by; wasn't that just random violence?
The rumor that the Demon Queen Elenoa had silver hair and blue eyes was just that—a rumor. According to a book left by an authority on fairy research, silver hair and blue eyes were common colors among the fairy race. Furthermore, although they could tell that the female fairy within barely reachable range had silver hair, they had not been able to confirm the color of her eyes.
Without knowing their prey as prey, they had shot her down.
"Even if it was someone else... another fairy who merely resembled her, it was just bad luck."
"But—"
A voice resembling a fragment of objection slipped from the man's mouth. He could form no more words.
Taking pity on such a man, his friend offered consolation.
"She's not dead, is she? A fairy who grew as large as a human can withstand a shot or two."
But it was 'Silver'.
Because that was what had been fired into the fairy, she might instead be suffering gradually.
"Hey, shouldn't we go look for her?"
"Maybe. She might be alive."
"I wonder where she fell."
To another companion's suggestion, yet another companion agreed. No one spoke of what they would do specifically if they found the fairy still breathing.
It was when they had descended from the rocky ledge and were walking in the direction where the fairy was thought to have fallen.
A soft wind blew. —It was not gentle. It was strangely cold, sending shivers down the men's spines.
The men did not know that this weak breeze, barely enough to brush their cheeks, was spreading from the Demon Realm to the entire world.
They felt it was no ordinary wind.
The men scanned their surroundings.
Someone noticed that in this deep forest, there were no sounds of insects. There were no signs of animals. —It was like the calm before a storm.
From beyond the blue sky, from the horizon as far as the eye could see, pitch-black, thick clouds were pressing in. Like an avalanche, they sought to cover the earth without leaving any gaps. Piling up to an unfathomable height, expanding at a terrifying speed while swirling, it was likely a cumulonimbus cloud of such desperate scale that the vast forest seemed tiny in comparison.
The belly of the clouds crawled so low it seemed they might touch the ground, and no light reached beneath them.
"Ah..."
It was a pathetic exclamation from someone.
Before long, this land too was covered by night. The men stopped their feet under the darkness, looking up at the sky above.
A storm was coming.
＊
Elenoa was standing on water. With no leaves to serve as footing, and not even moving her wings, Elenoa stood with her feet on the water's surface, dumbfounded.
Why was she in a place like this?
The calm water surface reflected the clear sky like a mirror.
"What are you doing?"
A voice came from behind. It was not the voice of that suspicious woman, but the voice of someone she knew, properly engraved in her memory. Fiery red hair came to mind.
"Claire-san...? Why, but—"
She was supposed to be dead.
When Elenoa turned around abruptly,
"I am here too."
Hero Hasumi waved her hand lightly. She should have been sent back to her own world long ago.
Hasumi was in the same appearance as when she had traveled with Elenoa, and Claire was in the same appearance as when she had died; the two were having a tea party together. The two smiled at Elenoa, waiting for her to take a seat.
A white table laden with cakes, light meals, and tea. A three-legged chair. One chair was empty. It seemed they knew Elenoa would come here.
"Hero-sama too, why..."
"I am no longer a Hero. I returned to being an ordinary person from the moment Louis sent me back."
"I also do not know why I am here now. Well, let's just think of this as a dream, for both our sakes."
Claire rested her chin on her hand, saying, "Let's talk a little, sit down," and glanced at the empty seat.
The table was gorgeous. On the top tier of the three-tiered cake stand were fruit petit fours. On the middle tier were chocolate cakes, fresh cream cakes, cheese cakes, and apple pie. On the bottom tier were sandwiches cut into small pieces, elegantly arranged. Even the macarons and single pieces of fruit added as extras were perfectly shaped, making one hesitate to touch them.
"Sit. You may eat whatever you like. Even fairies can eat, can't they?"
"...But."
Elenoa hesitated to take that seat. Because the two before her were the symbols of Elenoa's great sins. But precisely because of that, when the two urged her with "Come on" and "Go on," she had no choice but to obey.
She swallowed hard and sat on the chair.
It felt as if she had ascended the execution platform.
The gazes of the two women tightened around Elenoa's voice and heart like a noose. The stares observing her from diagonally left and right held no resentment or hatred.
They were simply overwhelmingly embarrassing. She had separated Louis from Claire, toyed with Hasumi's feelings, and even Louis, whom she had wanted to be with so badly, had been hurt by her foolish and nonsensical atrocities. The guilt was heavy, and she could not lift her head.
Claire poured tea with elegant movements, but Elenoa could not reach out her hand.
"What's wrong? Can you not drink my tea?"
"There's no poison in it, you know?"
She was not worried about poison, but she thought it would be inevitable if there were poison in it.
"...I understand, at least a little, that I did terrible things to you both."
"Oh." Claire nodded, and
"Is that so?" Hasumi ate classical chocolate. The tip of her fork hit the plate with a clink.
"Of course, I haven't forgiven you. Neither Louis nor you. After returning to my world, I couldn't trust my friends for years, and I even became a shut-in for half a year."
"...I'm sorry."
"So while I was a shut-in, I thought about you two. Why did you save me back then?"
Back then. At the site of the final battle, it was none other than Elenoa who had stopped Louis from killing Hasumi and her companions.
"Because judging by Louis's state, there would have been no problem even if he had killed me, right?"
—Why?
Hasumi seemed prepared to wait patiently for an answer, and ignoring Elenoa's silence, she scooped up the last bite of classical chocolate. A fragment that did not fit on the fork fell onto the white plate with a plop. While chewing, as if suddenly remembering something, she let go of the fork and began placing another cake on a new plate.
Elenoa groaned,
"I even enjoyed driving you Heroes into a corner. I didn't even view you as equal humans."
Because to Elenoa, Hasumi was ultimately just the 'Protagonist of the Game'.
That journey had been an innocent yet evil farce.
"Perhaps what changed was the night before I clashed with Louis. At that time, I thought Hero-sama was going to Louis's place. I knew Hero-sama liked Louis. But."
Clack,
A plate was placed in front of Elenoa. A slice of cake was on it.
Served by Hasumi's hands, it was an apple pie with a glossy nappage that stimulated the appetite.
"That night, Hero-sama came to my place, so, at that time, ...I wonder why. I finally realized that something was wrong."
"Unlike Hasumi, I was not saved until the very end."
It felt as if her chest had been pierced by the blade thrust deeply from the side. From between her trembling lips, a sobbing "...I'm sorry" leaked out; how much value did that hold?
But Claire said just one thing.
"I forgive you."
Elenoa raised her face and looked at Claire.
"I was also at fault. I had feelings of jealousy toward you for a long time, and I was a bit mean. In the first place, it was not you who killed me, and... besides, I saw with my own eyes how you two were at that time."
What did "you two at that time" mean? —Elenoa, who had been barely conscious, did not remember that Claire had come to the House of Stylus just before Louis went to the Demon Lord's Castle.
"You two must have suffered as well. I apologize, but there are things I cannot fully understand."
What was brought to the confused Elenoa was a melting kindness.
With a softness unbecoming of a knight, with the smallest body in this place, it was an embrace so powerful it hurt.
"Elenoa and Lumina Stylus were both ordinary citizens who should have been protected. Whether they were human or not is not the issue. That I could not protect them was also my fault. I am not in a position to blame you."
"Such a thing..."
"I should have been able to convey that, but I could not."
She wanted to cry. Elenoa should have been the one to apologize to Claire, but she was barely able to savor the words given to her. "I, I too—" Just as she tried to connect the words "I had something I wanted to say," Claire sharply pointed her index finger at her.
"What I want to say to you is about His Highness Alois."
"Alois..., the Knight? And, His Highness?"
The game's capture target she had met during her journey with Hasumi. Elenoa's former favorite.
Come to think of it, she recalled hearing that he was of royal blood, a fairy half-breed, and so on. Indeed, his adoptive parents had been Claire and her subordinate, Gil. She no longer remembered if such settings existed in the original work, but she remembered being greatly surprised by the facts revealed during her journey with Hasumi.
"Louis said he erased the Knight's memories and sent him back. I don't know what happened after that. It's truly irresponsible, only thinking about himself, I'm so sorry...!"
"That's not it. You brain-full-of-sunflowers, damn dense woman."
"Brain-full-of-sunflowers."
"But it can't be helped. Elenoa was only looking at Louis. Even while traveling with me, now that I think about it, you were very 'close' with Louis, weren't you? You did a pitiable thing to Alois as well."
Elenoa could only tremble with teary eyes.
No matter how harshly she was spoken to, she was prepared to accept it meekly. She was subjected to a barrage of abuse: "Ignoramus," "In my world, even the dense protagonist would be surprised," "Fool," "Color-blind fairy," "Rank S would be dumbfounded hearing this," "Too insensitive to people's feelings," "Cold-blooded woman," and she was left speechless.