Chapter 86 - The Fairy and the Two Women
"Well then."
By the time Claire and Hasumi had lowered their guard, Elenoa was slumped face-down on the table.
"This is no time to be sleeping. Wake up, you cold-blooded fairy."
"Yes, I am a cold-blooded fairy."
"Take your time, but can you explain what is happening right now?"
With a perfect balance of carrot and stick, the interrogation disguised as a tea party continued. Elenoa, the suspect, hung her head and spoke her heart to the two women pressing in on her. Her relationship with him, the circumstances, the current situation. She did not speak of her past life, of being formerly human, or of games.
Perhaps they grasped the main points and feelings even from her fragmented explanation, Hasumi said, "I knew it."
Unable to read what "I knew it" meant, Claire and Elenoa looked at each other.
"I read the court mage's journal in the Ruined Capital Grenole."
"The one I couldn't read?"
It was a journal that existed in the game as well, one that vanished after being read once. But unlike the game's content, it seemed to contain the dark history of Louis and Elenoa. At the site of the decisive battle with Hero Hasumi, she had certainly said something like that.
Elenoa had not been able to check the contents, so she did not know how detailed it was, nor what feelings of his had been written there.
"I only read it once, so I don't remember the details. But if that was true, I thought it was only natural for him to become the Demon Lord. I felt that much hatred overflowing from it."
"...Hatred."
It was an unfamiliar word. Rather than expressing fierce loathing, it gave a damp, deep-rooted impression.
"But," Hasumi continued.
"No hatred lasts for two or three hundred years. The human mind is not made to live that long. Our lifespan is barely a hundred years, and anything beyond that inevitably weathers away."
Living a hundred years, barely, while forgetting the unpleasant things and various other things in life, breaking down as we go.
"If you think about it that way, perhaps the fact that fairies, who live long just by absorbing good mana, are not prone to deep thinking, is also a way to maintain their mental stability... Just a thought."
Hasumi gave a wry smile, noting that this did not explain why Elenoa was worrying like this. But Elenoa could not retort. Only she knew that human thoughts existed within her.
"We have strayed from the topic. In the stories of my country, there are tales of malicious vengeful spirits causing curses, and I thought Louis might be the same. Do you have such stories here too?"
"You mean that the souls of humans holding grudges cause harm? I have read something like that somewhere."
Perhaps sensing what she meant, Claire nodded, saying, "I see." Elenoa, wanting to confirm the answer to the hypothesis taking shape in her head, deliberately did not interrupt.
"Louis has not changed since he assumed the position of Demon Lord. Not just his physical age, but his love for Elenoa and his hatred for humans remain fixed as they are now."
That is why he desires Elenoa as if they were newlyweds at all times, and that is why he always hates humans. For as long as he is the Demon Lord, eternally. Like a living grudge that continues to curse humans.
"I think that is what it means for a human to become a Demon Lord."
It seemed like a very cruel thing.
Did Louis know this fact? Even if he did, he would have chosen that path.
"Hero... Hasumi, were you thinking about such things even after returning to that other world?"
"Yes. I was wondering why things had come to this, why the two of them had done such things. Hearing Elenoa's story now, I thought it was probably something like this... I apologize for it being just a whim."
Hasumi placed her hand on her chest.
"Because he threw his true feelings at me at the end. Head-on, painfully so."
She said it with a face that looked as if that place still hurt.
The final battle had been extremely fierce. Elenoa had only watched it from behind a single door. When Louis's negative emotions were exposed, it was not Elenoa who was there, but Hero Hasumi and her companions.
'You should know that there are things that feelings alone cannot change.'
Hasumi's entire body had probably been covered in blood and wounds at that time, but the place that hurt the most was likely her chest. Unconsciously, Hasumi's white fingers slowly rubbed her chest from below her collarbone.
"Unlike Louis, who does not change, Elenoa changes. As a fairy, you grow slowly, or rather, you forget. You dislike humans, but the hatred is no longer as intense as it was then. Perhaps this discrepancy has become prominent now, causing this misunderstanding."
Hasumi stared at Elenoa.
"For the current Elenoa, 'sadness' is closer than 'hatred,' isn't it?"
Yes, sadness.
The depths of her heart cramped.
She did not know if such feelings, woven with various memories—love, heartache, shed blood—could be expressed simply with the word sadness, a feeling akin to pain.
The loss of Lumina, the fact that Louis, who was once the light of humans, was hated, Louis himself who declared he would sacrifice anything for Elenoa, her own incompetence that had made him so, and everything else in this unreasonable world. The present, where things had come to this, swept away by time like a turbulent current.
—I had always been sad.
Elenoa rubbed her arm. She remembered the pain of her arms and legs being trampled until they crushed. The pain and sense of loss from having her wings plucked out, that night she lost her younger sister figure. To her on that day, human power had been overwhelming.
Even those memories of pain would eventually weather away.
While Elenoa herself forgets, Louis does not forget that hatred and despair.
And then Hasumi's follow-up attack.
"The thing that removed his restraint was his promise with Elenoa. Even if Elenoa had no such intention."
—A world where Elenoa does not suffer.
—A world where you are not hurt.
"But, just as Louis got angry for Elenoa's sake, someone who got angry at the Demon Lord will try to protect the world. Absolutely."
"That is true. Even if it takes hundreds or thousands of years, someday a human stronger than Louis will be born."
It must be so. Louis was surely prepared for that as well.
"Someone much stronger than me will defeat Louis. He has become an existence that deserves no other fate."
"Even so, can you truly wish to live with him? Seriously?"
The two pressed her while speaking. The two who had once held feelings for Louis.
Elenoa could not gauge whether they were still overwhelmed by those feelings. They might be sitting here, suppressing their own feelings, enduring the urge to slap Elenoa once.
Yet, she also felt that they were genuinely worried somewhere. Elenoa was convinced that Claire and Hasumi were far kinder than herself, whom Louis praised as gentle.
Her answer was decided.
"I want to be with him."
That alone was unshakable.
Even if the two tried to hold her back.
"Someday, a difference may appear in your love as well. It will only be painful for both of you. You have already reached a point where you can no longer understand each other."
"That may be so. But, it might be alright."
She did not understand it herself, but she had a conviction that there was no need to worry.
For the two hundred years she had continued to accept Louis's heavy love, she had not been a couple for nothing.
"Even if my love for Louis eventually becomes different from his, before that truly happens, he will surely turn me to stone, keep me in this world as the Elenoa who loved Louis, and display me in a comfortable place."
While boasting, it seemed like a wonderful thing.
Claire and Hasumi did not interrupt.
"And if Louis eventually becomes truly lonely and is no longer satisfied with just my stone statue, he will crush and kill me then. And after that, Louis will come with me."
Therefore, Elenoa would never grow tired of him.
"If we didn't have that much resolve, we would have given up long ago."
Yet, she also thought this.
—I want to be by his side.
—I want to live next to him.
—Why is such a simple thing so difficult?
"Elenoa, do you know what they call that in my world?"
"What?"
"'Acting like the legal wife.'"
"............"
At Hasumi's sarcastic remark mixed with a smile, even Claire fell silent. Elenoa thought that she was the legal wife, regardless of acting like one, but it was a trivial matter before their steady gazes.
The one most angry in this place was Hasumi.
It was natural. Considering what Elenoa had done.
"As I said earlier, I have not forgiven you. I no longer consider you a friend. But I am grateful that you let me live."
Hasumi flicked the forehead of the dejected Elenoa.
"So, let us end this here."
Their relationship, in which they could not exchange words until the end in the cruel final battle. So that they would never meet again, even if they were reborn.
It was over.
Elenoa quietly accepted the calm and healthy declaration of severance. A poor, wry smile seeped onto her face, not knowing whether she should laugh or cry at a time like this.
"By the way, there was one last thing I wanted to ask. Did Elenoa hate me?"
"I didn't hate you. If anything, I liked you."
"I'm glad. That is enough to hear."
For now, Elenoa put her lips to the tea that had been poured and had sat for some time. Surprisingly, the Earl Grey, hot as if freshly brewed, felt refreshingly pleasant in her dry mouth.
She cut the apple pie with a fork she hadn't even been holding and put it in her mouth. The apple filling was caramelized, and the faint scent of cinnamon passed through her nose. As she savored the fragrant sweetness, the sourness gradually came.
They were using delicious apples suitable for cake.
It was a good taste that pleased even a fairy.
At Elenoa, who honestly savored the deliciousness, Claire suddenly smiled.
"I'm relieved that you are properly aware of it."
"...Yes."
Be aware of who Louis's actions are for.
It was she who had first condemned Elenoa, who was simply swept along by fate.
The wind blew.
The atmosphere that had stagnated in this space finally began to move. It gently swayed Claire's red hair, Hasumi's chestnut hair, and Elenoa's silver hair. The two looked at each other at Elenoa's profile as she narrowed her eyes at the breeze and gazed into the distance.
Claire, who had been giving a wry smile with an atmosphere of "what a troublesome one," paused for a moment, and with a face like a girl about to cry, said, "I was finally able to have a proper heartbreak." Her quiet voice did not reach Elenoa's ears, transmitting only to Hasumi, who felt the same.
Waves formed on the calm water surface.
The gentle waves coming from beyond the horizon shallowly soaked the legs of the table.
—Elenoa,
A voice came from somewhere.
The two did not blame her. They just quietly remained there.
Elenoa felt she had to go.
"Is he calling you?"
"Yes."
The three understood that this was surely their last conversation.
"I see. Then, farewell."
"...Farewell."
Instantly, the legs of Elenoa's chair sank.
She tilted backward while still seated on the chair.
Splash,
The backrest, which should have hit the water surface, sank into the water as it was, and Elenoa fell into the water along with it. In stark contrast to the rising bubbles, she went toward the bottom. At some point, she had been thrown from the chair. Amidst the silver hair swaying in the water, she watched the chair she had been sitting on and the cup she had been using recede into the distance.
—Elenoa,
—Where,
While drifting in water that was neither cold nor warm, she heard his voice.
She turned her body. Before her eyes was a bottom of whitish sand and something shining.
So it was in a place like this.
The corners of her mouth relaxed.
Elenoa carefully picked up the Fairy's Moon Clock half-buried in the sand and headed upward.
Although she must have sunk quite deeply, the water surface was close.
There were no Claire, Hasumi, or tea party sets there; instead, there were dense trees and a beautiful lake.
'Llake Nochant Shore'
It was a special place for the Stylus siblings and Elenoa.
The sky was pitch black.