INTERMISSION
Our Last Battle or the Night of Shed Tears
1
Thirty years and some months ago, Salinger had been her one and only challenger.
Standing in front of him with her arms spread open was a descendant of the Founder, a beautiful girl—the one he called Mira, his greatest archrival.
“Salinger, you’re made of brawn. I suppose that’s the reason you lack brains.”
“……”
“Any normal person wouldn’t come out of that looking the same. Not after a blast of my astral power.”
In a giant meadow of a nature preserve, Salinger laid on his back, freely bleeding over the grass and being approached by a golden-haired girl. She held brutally large knives in each of her hands. Her shoulder-length hair fluttered in the wind. Her pace was as precise as an engine. As she walked, her eyes showed no emotion, like a machine.
“You’re a felon who’s stolen over a hundred astral powers in our Sovereignty. In fact, you’re trying to steal mine, too. It would be most appropriate to execute you on the spot.”
“……”
“But I got my adrenaline rush, so I guess I’ll allow you to live. For as long as you’re my sparring partner,” she said as she licked a scrape on her shoulder in the place of disinfectant.
She was practically feral. Even her clothes weren’t the usual attire for the astral corps but a top that only covered her chest. The smallest rectangle of fabric necessary to make a skirt was wrapped around her hips.
She started to tug off those things that barely served as clothes right in front of Salinger.
“I’m going to wash off all this sweat in the water back there. If I go back to the palace caked in blood and dirt, I’ll worry the vassals. What about you? You seem like you don’t like being dirty.”
“…Who would…bathe…with you…?”
Before he even finished, knives almost grazed his face where he lay down, still immobile. Technically, they took a layer of his skin with them.
“Then you hold on to my knives for me. They’re custom, you know.”
She didn’t have on a thread of clothing. Even with a man right in front of her.
Around fourteen or fifteen, she didn’t seem to be embarrassed about showing off her beautiful skin in the slightest. She also wasn’t elegant in the least.
Was she really part of the royal family? Was this the candidate to be the next queen?
Anyone would have doubted it. But if they witnessed her in battle, those doubts would have been dispelled in seconds.
After all, she was the strongest queen candidate in history—Mirabella Lou Nebulis IIX.
“Salinger, how could you just let me outmatch you?”
“Salinger, you are so rough with your astral power.”
“Salinger, is that really the best sneak attack you could come up with?”
Mirabella met him not with pity but with disdain.
When he would collapse, a bloody mess, after fighting the princess known as the war automaton, she would fix a cold glare on her sparring partner.
Then one day, she changed entirely.
The Nebulis Sovereignty. Central state.
Salinger could steal astral powers. Famously wanted for his abilities, he had been wandering around town incognito and bought his food at a bulk food store. He was on the way back to his base of operations.
He was pondering how he would next challenge his opponent.
“Oh…”
Midday at the intersection…a girl stopped in her tracks.
“Salinger?”
“…You’re—!”
While Salinger loitered about town, Princess Mirabella saw through his disguise as she walked around in her own camouflage.
“I never thought we’d meet in a place like this…”
He hadn’t healed yet. But what did that matter? The battle would begin as soon as they crossed paths. That was the tacit agreement between them.
At least…that was supposed to be the understanding.
“Ah…ah-ha-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
He couldn’t have imagined that his archrival would start to laugh out loud, clutching her stomach and doubling over.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Wh-what are you doing, Salinger? W-were…you planning on making me laugh to death?! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“…What did you say to me?”
“I—I mean, you—the Salinger—are walking around carrying a shopping bag from the grocery store! To think you were blending in with the normal people, checking out vegetables and meats and lining up at the register!”
“……”
Now that she’d said it…Salinger remembered that he was, in fact, holding grocery bags in both his hands.
“Just imagining the same haughty man who has the gall to tell me, Mira, today is the day I’ll make you kneel before me, lining up with housewives at the grocery store register… Ah-ha-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I can’t take it! You win!”
She couldn’t contain herself, throwing her body down to roll around on the ground. She didn’t care that she was in the middle of an intersection in broad daylight or that the people walking by were all staring.
“Wh-what a frightening scheme! I can’t believe it—you’ve incapacitated me!”
“…Mira.”
“And you’ve even got a bargain sticker on your pack of meat! I presume you must have had a heroic match against those housewives for it!”
“Shut up!”
Tears had formed in her eyes after she’d noticed the bargain-price sticker through the translucent grocery bag.
Incidentally, the sticker had been a coincidence. Salinger hadn’t put much thought into it when he had picked the thing up. It had just so happened to have the unfortunate fate of being a bargain item.
“…Tsk.” He started to walk away. He’d lost the will to fight with the girl rolling on the ground, laughing.
Plus, attracting this many eyes was sure to bring the military police.
“Oh, please wait.” Following him from behind was none other than the girl herself. “I suppose these sorts of serendipitous things happen. So do we have a truce today?”
“Zip it. Consider your life spared,” he spat.
“Okay. I was so close to dying of laughter.”
“……”
“Hey, wait! Could you keep it a secret from the royal family that I was hanging about in town?”
“…What?”
He’d never intended to tell anyone in the first place. If he even approached the royal palace, the astral corps would have pointed their guns at him.
“I got in trouble with a secretary for falling asleep during a meeting. I was so upset I stormed out of the palace. That’s kind of my MO, I guess.”
“…You did?” He looked hard at the girl who was more than half a head shorter than him.
“A conference is a place designed to take naps. My duty is to fight, so I need to get some shut-eye during meetings to recover my strength after going to the battlefield.”
This was unexpected.
He saw her as a bloodstained war automaton and thought of her as the ghastly berserker on the battlefront. He had assumed she would perfectly perform her duties as princess. Precise like a machine. Indifferent like one, too.
But she was falling asleep during meetings? And she’d sulked and ran off after getting scolded by her retainers?
“It’s like you’re human.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I’m counting on you to keep this secret.”
Then she left. Her footsteps were silent as usual. There was no one who would have been as quick to turn their back on him than her.
“…A war automaton can laugh?”
It had been his first time seeing her do that.
The girl wouldn’t let so much as an eyebrow twitch when she was showered in Salinger’s blood. Just now, however, she’d been laughing so much that her face had crumpled. And most of all…she had looked cute while doing it.
He had thought her face was rather proportionate but like a pretty doll. He hadn’t sensed any human charm from her before.
“Tsk.” He clucked his tongue again and hurried along.
He’d been captivated by her. Salinger punched a wall in front of his eyes, as though that would change his reality.
“Only for today. Don’t think I’ll overlook you next time.”
2
This was supposed to be a duel of life and death.
Salinger would challenge Mira to steal her astral power, and she would drive him back. Even after they had met in the streets, that had not changed.
So since when had things become different?
When had he started to treasure these moments they fought? When had he started to genuinely wish this relationship would continue forever?
Everything changed thirty years ago, during the attempt to kill Nebulis VII.
Salinger had found himself involved in a peculiar plot. While in pursuit of the culprit involved in the scheme, he’d heard of the plan for a coup d’état against the queen.
But there were two targets.
“So you’re telling me they’re after the queen and…the candidate with the highest chance of winning the conclave, Mirabella…?”
Someone was after Princess Mira’s life.
And that someone was another descendant of the Founder.
“…A battle between blood. Pathetic, all of you. Who gave you permission to lay a hand on my girl?!”
Guided by an unfamiliar emotion, Salinger headed straight to the Queen’s Palace.
Mira was stronger than anyone he knew. All the Founder’s descendants, however, were powerful beyond compare, and any plots involving a coup d’état would be on a massive scale. If they launched a surprise attack, even Mira would be in danger.
—Someone…
—Someone needs to fight by her side.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Mira. It’s not because I feel sorry for you. I’m doing this for myself.”
That was what he told himself.
And when he sneaked into the Queen’s Palace, Salinger witnessed something…
Queen Nebulis VII had collapsed onto the ground.
“…No.”
He’d been too late. Someone had caught onto the details of the coup…and the mastermind had rushed forward with their plan.
Salinger had been slightly too late. And that was when he saw the monster that had attacked the queen.
“What is that beast?!”
It was someone from one of the royal bloodlines—the Hydra. He saw one of them transform into a monster right before his very eyes.
Test Subject F.
A mutant witch had started attacking him, emanating a force that he couldn’t describe. Their fight lasted minutes, but each second felt like an hour as he faced the hardest struggle for his life.
“Salinger?!”
When the mutant witch had escaped his clutches, all who were left in the room were the queen and Salinger…and Mira, who had come running to the scene.
“Her Majesty…”
The queen, collapsed, and Salinger.
Based on what she was seeing, Mira could only assume he’d sneaked into the palace to steal astral power from the queen.
“Salingeeer!”
For the first time in her life, she growled at him. The princess, a warring automaton, was experiencing the new sensation of pure, unbridled rage.
“…Did you attack the queen?!”
“……”
“Answer me!”
Had Salinger told her the truth, history would have changed course.
But he hadn’t been able to. He was too proud to tell her and immolate himself by begging for forgiveness.
Please believe me. He couldn’t imagine allowing himself to be so disgraceful as to offer her an explanation.
Mirabella could not believe him when he continued to be silent—because of her position and dignity as a princess.
Dividing the two were status and morals.
That was where they bid each other farewell.
She broke down in sobs. As she cried, she pulled out a blade and pounced on him.
“Salinger! Why would you do such a thing?! What compelled you to do this?!”
“…Mira.”
“I thought of you as my archrival—my only one. I enjoyed being with you, even as adversaries. I wanted to spend more time with you. Why would you defile our time together?!”
They were no longer rivals. Salinger was a felon for hurting the queen, and Mirabella was the judge and executioner. Their relationship had devolved into one of good versus evil.
“…I never wanted to fight against you in this state of emotional chaos!”
At the end of their battle, Salinger was captured and sent to Orelgan prison spire in the thirteenth state. He was charged as the fiendish sorcerer who had invaded the royal palace to steal the queen’s astral power.
He didn’t intend to tell her the truth. He had never meant to get involved in the royal family’s squabbles in the first place. Salinger didn’t care whether the current administration went down and ended up in the hands of the Hydra.
He only cared about her. And he had lost her trust. That was all there had been to it.
The leading actor of the past—Salinger—silently watched the scene unfold below him…as Iska the Successor of the Black Steel and Alice the Ice Calamity Witch approached the same fate.
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