6
We’d been separated for over a month.
I was going to see Elletear again after so long. I felt elated and slightly nervous. Even I knew that wasn’t like me.
“This is Kelvina’s lab…?”
It was an old house. After years of being exposed to the elements, the exterior paint had started to peel. It was an eerie relic. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was rumored to be haunted.
I unlocked the door I’d been told to enter ahead of time and headed into the building.
“Is it in the basement?”
Was Elletear locked up in this gloomy place? First, I’d complain to Kelvina. As I decided that, I descended the stairs.
“Who are you?!”
There, I found a monster.
It had the silhouette of a human girl.
However, it was clear like a jellyfish so I could see the door behind it, and its hair seemed almost like a gemstone or molten metal. A human’s muscles and skin couldn’t be see-through like a ghost’s, of course.
……What is this monster?!
……Where is Elletear?! And Kelvina?!
“Hm? Where did you come in from?”
The beast turned around.
When it looked at me, it gave me a belligerent and provocative smile.
“Well, not like I care. You can burn violet.”
“An abomination…”
I pushed off a nearby table and just barely retreated to the basement’s wall. I let out a gasp. Calm down. What had surprised me was that this thing had leaped on me when I’d expected to see Elletear.
If we were going to fight…
“I have no reason to hesitate. I’ll settle this in a flash.”
“Hah! Now you’re talking!”
The monster flung out its arms.
“Wait, Vichyssoise.”
A voice resounded from behind the monster.
Kelvina yawned as she approached. Her white lab coat, which looked as threadbare as it had a month ago, covered her shoulders. She’d come from a back room.
“He’s one of our allies, that man.”
“What? This guy? But he’s wearing an Imperial forces uniform.”
“He’s Elletear’s dog.”
“What?! Then he’s from the Sovereignty? I don’t feel any astral energy coming from him.”
“He has no astral crest.” Kelvina pointed at my leg. “He burned off his astral crest with the solution.”
“What?! Ah-ha-ha-ha! You really did that?! You’re a hoot! Were you that desperate to sneak into the Empire?!”
The monster laughed. It was a discordant shriek I couldn’t even call pleasant as a form of flattery. I silently knit my brows.
“Kelvina, what is this monster?” I asked.
“She’s a witch, just like what Elletear wants to become.”
“…What?”
For a moment, my brain froze. I thought of the goddess of beauty that was Elletear and this horrible witch. I simply couldn’t connect them together in my mind.
“I’m the monster?” I heard the low rumble of Vichyssoise’s laugh. “Why don’t you call your master that? She’s right in the back, where Kelvina came from. Just take a look.”
“Elletear!”
I dashed off. Was it because I’d wanted to see her this entire month we’d been apart?
Or…
…were my feet compelled to take me to her, because I couldn’t believe the mad scientist and the witch?
I entered a small room at the end of a hall. When I saw the old exam table, I stopped without thinking about it.
Elletear writhed on it in the nude like a beast.
She scratched at her throat.
Her lustrous hair was in disarray, her eyes were wide-open, and she let out strangled screams.
“Elletear?!”
“…”
She stopped screaming right then. The room went quiet. As she lay on the exam table, she weakly turned to me.
“Jo…heim…?”
“Elletear! It’s me! Are you all right?!”
I ran to her. She didn’t even try to hide her body, slick with sweat. She probably didn’t have the strength to. I covered her with my jacket.
“Kelvina! What did you do to Elletear?!”
“I’m pretty sure I already told you. She’s going through the procedure to turn into a witch.”
I heard footsteps. Kelvina was joining us in the room.
“Her body has already started to transform into something that isn’t human. If I was to liken it to anything, it probably feels as though her entire body has been infested with parasitic insects that are eating her alive.”
“Will she end up like the witch from earlier?”
Was she going to turn into a monster? Though I had to squeeze out that question between clenched teeth, Kelvina scoffed at me.
“She’ll become something even more atrocious.”
“…What…?”
“We’ve given Vichyssoise the calamity’s power diluted to 0.0002 percent, which resulted in that. Elletear has a concentration five hundred times that.”
“Five hundred?!”
“That amount wouldn’t kill a normal person—it would obliterate them entirely. It’s amazing that she can withstand it. So no wonder she’s in this state.”
“You!”
My entire body moved on impulse.
I kicked aside the chair in front of me and grabbed Kelvina, who was just past it, by the throat.
However…
Even as she turned blue from asphyxiation, Kelvina’s expression looked serious.
“We can’t have a misunderstanding now. Elletear was the one who wanted me to administer it.”
“Guh…”
As my hands trembled from anger, I let go and reluctantly released Kelvina. She wanted to destroy the Sovereignty. That was why Elletear wanted to become a witch. I knew that for certain.
“Joheim…,” she rasped.
I turned around to see Elletear lying face up and trying to reach out to me. Whether from cold or pain, her hand spasmed weakly.
I took her hand.
Her eyes asked me to do it, and I’d awkwardly obliged.
This was a first. She had never offered her hand to me before. And I’d never taken it into mine before, either.
“………”
“Ngh!”
Elletear silently looked up at me. I realized what she meant with that motion.
It wasn’t enough.
Hug me.
It hurts too much.
Her eyes were wet with tears. Her face was flushed from fever.
Even without words, it was clear to me what she wanted. It was only natural. If I couldn’t figure out something as small as this, then I had no business being her guard.
But still…
“…”
I hesitated.
Elletear was barely covered by my jacket where she was lying down.
We were so close together, almost skin-to-skin, that for the first time since meeting Elletear, I realized the different positions we were in.
……The person in front of me is the first princess.
……In comparison, before Elletear picked me up, I was nothing but a bum.
Was I allowed to do this?
Could I allow myself to hold this noble princess in my arms?
I hesitated for a moment.
The princess leaped from the exam table with such force she flung aside my jacket.
“Huh?”
When I came to my senses…
I realized Elletear had leaped into my arms fully nude.
“Were you lying back then?” she asked me.
“Huh?! ……It wasn’t a lie! I was just…!”
I…
“I want to be here for you…”
I enveloped her delicate shoulders in my arms and hugged her.
I held her close, and she held me. I held Elletear with all my strength as she—still writhing in pain—clawed at my back.
“Joheim… I’m sorry…”
“I don’t remember anything you need to be sorry for.” As her voice seemed close to fading, I simply answered with exactly what was in my heart.
“I only feel grateful to you,” I said.
“…”
“Thank you for choosing me.”
That evening, I held Elletear as she groaned.
Skipping to the end, Elletear hadn’t changed at all since that night.
She never turned into a witch with a monstrous appearance. I was relieved by that. I felt complicated emotions about it.
“It takes time to nurture something great.”
It was as though she had seen straight into my thoughts.
Kelvina had a serious look on her face as she looked up at a monitor on the ceiling.
“If you felt repulsed by Vichyssoise, then you should be prepared. That was nothing. Elletear will look even more ghastly and hideous. Right now, she’s in a transformation period. It’s like a larva in a cocoon, but you can’t assume that a beautiful butterfly will emerge.”
“…”
Each of her words rubbed me the wrong way.
However…
This was Kelvina’s way of being nice. My master would become a monster. She didn’t want me to go in unprepared.
“I don’t plan on being swayed off course.”
“All right then.”
She kept looking up at the ceiling.
“Joheim, do you know what a catalyst is? It’s a scientific term.”
“I never got an education. I was never interested.”
“Well, listen to this lesson. Say you have a chemical reaction in which combining substances A and B results in substance C. So, a catalyst serves the role of accelerating the chemical reaction, resulting in A and B turning into chemical C.”
“I said I wasn’t interest—”
“You’re the catalyst.”
“What?”
“It was my mistake. I mean, at first, I had no interest in you at all.”
I heard her shoe clunk against the ground. Kelvina turned around.
“Substance A, Elletear, combined with substance B, the calamity’s power, results in substance C, a witch. You don’t belong in this equation, but you have a role. You keep Elletear stable as she transforms into a witch.”
“…”
“The catalyst is emotion. It’s a source of emotional comfort. Because you are here, Elletear is suffering much less.”
“…”
“You should be by her side later, too. It’ll be good for my research.”
I couldn’t reply. I turned my back on her as she stared at me.
“I don’t care about your research. I’m staying by Elletear’s side, for our sakes.”
Then I started to walk. I went to her room at the back of this gloomy underground lab.
Tap.
As soon as I knocked on the door, I heard a response.
“Come in.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Terrible, but not as bad as the other times I’ve felt terrible.”
Elletear wore a plain shirt. She sat on her bed and bent forward, holding her head. She was also holding a hand mirror.
“What?”
“I was ready…” I heard a crack. The mirror had slipped out of her hands and shattered. “…But I’m afraid now that the time has come.” She would become a monster. The time when she would abandon her incomparable looks and status to be reborn into a monster was approaching. “No, Joheim.” Elletear raised her head. “What I’m afraid of isn’t turning into a monster. What frightens me is that you’ll be frightened as you see me in the process of my transformation. I can’t help but imagine it…”
She smiled but was crying.
Her gorgeous lashes were wet, and her eyes were red and puffy.
“…I’m sorry.” She staggered up. She leaned against a wall in a dark corner of the dark room as she breathed out. “I could bear anyone in the palace betraying me or gossiping about me behind my back… But it’s odd… If you see me when during my transformation into something hideous and scream…for the first time in my life, I feel I would regret my decisio—!”
I stopped her mid-word. I grabbed her and pulled her toward me, enveloping her with my own body.
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of me.”
“…”
“Rely on me. Use me. Take pride in me. Believe in me. I’ll prove to you that you weren’t wrong to choose me… I’ll always stay by your side…”
“Thank you…” Elletear’s voice returned to her.
She hugged me back as I hugged her.
“You’ve become a fine knight—my knight.”
So I was a knight now.
Come to think of it, that was what she had said when we’d met.
“Have I really become your knight now?”
“Yes. You’re the ‘Flash’ Knight Joheim. My one and only knight…”
From that point on, Elletear stopped eating.
She no longer needed to drink water or sleep, and she steadily, moment by moment, left the bounds of what it meant to be human.
Meanwhile…
The day finally came when I had my audience with Lord Yunmelngen.
“So you’re Joheim, then?”
I was in the Lord’s office, the deepest part of the Imperial capital.
I was greeted by a silver beast.
They seemed to have a face that looked like something between a cat’s and a human girl’s. I also saw peeks of foxlike limbs from their clothes. I could hardly call them human, given their fur-covered tail.
……So this is the Lord.
……The result of astral power and a human merging together during a vortex a hundred years ago.
Had this been the first time I was seeing them, I would have undoubtedly cried out. But I’d already had an unfortunate encounter with Vichyssoise, the monster, and had built up my tolerance.
“Hmm?”
The Lord looked down on me silently as I knelt.
Lord Yunmelngen’s eyes opened to near-perfect circles.
“I wonder what this is… It’s very faint, but I feel astral energy on you.”
“Huh?!”
Impossible. Anxiety, a feeling I’d forgotten, made sweat drip down my back.
Had I been seen through? Had it sniffed me out?
I’d burned off my astral crest.
None of the Empire’s sensors had been able to detect me.
……Of course the Lord would know.
……The Lord is a monster in a different way from Vichyssoise, just as I can see.
So what would I do?
The Eight Great Apostles had ordered me to kill the Lord immediately if my identity was uncovered, but would I be able to manage it against this opponent?
“You seem dangerous.”
“…”
I chose to remain silent.
I was a thug when it came down to it, after all. I didn’t have the wit to think of something clever to say to fix this.
The Lord watched me for a while.
“Hwah… So, about that first seat you’ve been wanting…”
The silver beast let out a long yawn.
“You’re right that it’s been empty for a long time. I’ve sent Crow out, but who knows when he’ll be back. So, I’ll grant your request.”
“Huh?! You’ll grant it…?”
The first seat of the Saint Disciples.
I didn’t know why it had been unoccupied for so long. But after making a direct request for it, certain that I would be turned down, I’d been granted it.
I had been prepared to be rejected.
“Now you’ll be the closest at my side.”
The recumbent Lord rose up.
They crossed their legs and sat, watching me from a step above.
“Remember this. When you look up at me, I’m also keeping a close eye on you. Don’t be too inconsistent with your actions.”
The Lord had seen through me and knew the Eight Great Apostles were backing me. If I was reporting back to the Eight Great Apostles about the Lord, the Lord also expected to see what the Eight Great Apostles were attempting to do through me.
But that was exactly what I wanted.
“Understood…”
The Lord and the Eight Great Apostles would keep each other in check.
But I was on neither side. Because I had only one master in the world—Elletear.
After that, we only had a short time left together.
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