Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 14 - Chapter 5.2

“You’re talking like we’re some sort of noxious pest…”

“Listen, we allowed you to enter as a special exception. It was either you, or let the United Magic Association dispatch a different mage. The Security Corps only had two options.”

“So you’re saying the better option was to let me into the city? I see.” I nodded. “Your city’s top brass seem to be more flexible than you folks on the ground.”

Pitting mage against mage. A very logical decision, I think.

“They just want proof that something is being done. They’re far away from the danger and can say whatever they want.”

“…………”

So at the end of the day, you’re saying: “I don’t have any intention of making friends with a noxious pest like you.” How unfriendly!

“We will supply you with the necessary food and housing. But you are not to meddle under any circumstances.”

“Got it.”

If that’s what you want, that’s what I’ll do. In short, I’m just here to hang out, is that it? Well, that works out great for me. Slacking off is my specialty, you know?

“Hmm? Oh, if it isn’t Creta! What are you doing in a place like this?”

Right after our gloomy exchange had convinced me to mind my own business, a man approached us from across the street. Lifting up his umbrella, he eyed us curiously.

He looked to be in his early twenties—fairly tall, with a slim build. Perhaps due to the dampness in the air, his hair was a wild swirl of curls, twisting this way and that. He was dressed casually, but I couldn’t see a single crease or speck of dirt in his shirt or slacks, and his suspenders stretched straight up over his shoulders. All this gave me the impression that he was very meticulous.

“Long time no see. I heard you’re working at the Security Corps these days.”

That said, the man had a friendly face, and there was a gentleness and warmth in his smile as he beamed at Creta.

“Oh yes. It has been a while, Tyros…!” Creta still had her back turned to me, but I could see her ears flushing bright red.

“Yeah, it really has… Who’s that?” The young man called Tyros turned his gaze on me.

“Ah, this— This is, um…” A beat later, Creta looked at me in a panic. Her face was so red that it seemed like steam might rise off her skin at any moment. “Um, well…” The flustered, panicking girl looked back and forth between me and Tyros and croaked out a reply that was nothing if not suspicious. “W-well, who do you think she is?”

“Ummm…” Tyros’s gaze wandered down from my face, stopping at my hands. “She looks like someone with whom you have a very…unusual connection.”

“H-how did you know that…?!” Creta opened her eyes wide in astonishment.

I mean, it’s only natural that he would suspect something, when we’re merrily walking around in the middle of the day wearing bracelets that link us together with a chain.

“…………” What a mess.

I’m really, really worried about where this is going.

I let out a big sigh. “I should have said this earlier—my name is Elaina.” As I put my arm around Creta’s shoulders, I introduced myself to Tyros. “I’m her buddy.”

“Buddy?” Tyros cocked his head.

I nodded. “At the Security Corps, new recruits work together in pairs. In order to strengthen the unity of each team, we have to stay together around the clock, from ‘good morning’ until ‘good night.’”

“Oh! Is that what’s going on? So then, what’s with the bracelets?”

“They’re to strengthen the unity of our team, of course. Right, Creta? That’s right, isn’t it? Hey?” I pressed Creta for an answer.

She stiffened up and nodded several times, “Y-yeah, r-right!”

“I see…” Tyros seemed to buy my slapdash explanation. “Anyway, it really has been a while, Creta. I wonder when we last saw each other…”

After that, the focus of his interest returned to Creta, and a conversation unfolded between the two of them that consisted of roughly equal parts catching up and polite chitchat.

“I know,” he said. “Since we’ve run into each other again, would you like to grab a bite to eat sometime soon?”

“Y-yes!”

“You would? Great! Then we’ll have to pick a restaurant… Oh, come to think of it, a good place opened up just recently along the main street. How about there?”

“Y-yes!”

“What day is good for you? How about tomorrow?”

“Y-yes!”

“Okay. Let’s meet there tomorrow, then. I’m looking forward to it!”

“Y-yes!”

Incidentally, Creta was so nervous, she could only answer “Y-yes!” so the polite chitchat was rather limited.

At any rate, after they made plans to meet up for food, Tyros waved and said, “See you then,” before disappearing down the street into the pouring rain.

“…………”

“…………”

The only people left on the rainy avenue were me and Creta, who, despite telling me not to get involved or do anything suspicious, had done nothing but behave in an exceptionally suspicious manner the entire time.

“I’m really worried where this is going,” I said with a sigh.

“Ugh…” Turning her still-flushed face away from me, Creta said, “…I never would have expected to run into him in a place like this. I didn’t stand a chance.”

Looking at Creta’s face, it wasn’t difficult to imagine what Tyros meant to her. It seemed quite obvious she adored him.

However…

“Let me tell you one thing, Creta.”

There were plenty of things I wanted to tell her and to ask her, but I figured it would be some time before I’d have the chance to speak with her openly, face-to-face. And so I stood next to her and, without making eye contact, settled on one of them.

It doesn’t bother me that you treat mages like noxious pests, but…

“Even noxious pests have their benefits, depending on how you make use of them.”

“…………” Beside me, Creta made a puzzled expression. “…What does that mean?”

I don’t know how to explain it. I meant exactly what I said.

“The two of us are in the same boat here. We should try to get along, even if it’s only for show…buddy.”

On top of being tied to someone with a chain, I also wasn’t allowed to stay at an inn. My movements were extremely restricted.

After walking through the rain for a little while, we arrived at the house where Creta lived. She had one room in a shared house facing the street. There wasn’t a single speck of dust inside, but it seemed more empty than tidy.

“Do you live alone?” I asked.

No one welcomed her home, and my voice echoed through the lonesome space.

“This job puts me in a lot of danger, so I live separately from my family,” she said as she set her rifle down and started to take off her uniform. “The Security Corps deals with criminals who have no regard for people’s lives and dangerous offenders like this mage who snuck into our city unnoticed. I don’t want to put my loved ones in harm’s way.”

“I see.” I nodded, then turned my gaze to one corner of the room.

There were several photographs displayed on a shelf—photos she had taken with her parents; a picture of a dog; a photo of Creta, smiling with her friends; photos of beautiful scenery; and a picture of Creta blushing and looking at the ground next to the object of her adoration, whom we had run into earlier.

The photographs really stood out in her room, which otherwise had very little in the way of furnishings.

“Everyone who lives in this city, no matter who they are, has people who are important to them,” she said, following my gaze. “And we need people who are prepared to shoulder the burden of protecting them, so that everyone can live their lives smiling, just like the people in those photos.”

“And you are shouldering that burden?”

“Not just me.” Creta shook her head slowly. “Me and my colleagues at the Security Corps work together to protect everyone.”

“…………”

She seemed a bit too young to bear the burden of such an incredibly weighty responsibility. As she gazed at the photos, Creta suddenly seemed very small.

“It’s a good thing that I live apart from my family. My parents hate mages even more than I do, so I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of sleeping under the same roof as one. Even if we are bound together by a chain.”

“Oh really? Speaking of this chain, couldn’t we take it off for a little while?”

“Were you listening to anything I just said?” Creta looked at me like she was looking at a piece of garbage. “As I told you at the start, it’s my duty to keep an eye on you. We won’t be taking it off.”

“Oh really?”

“Really.”

“By the way, how do you intend to wash the clothes you just took off?”

I pointed to the ground by her feet. Her uniform hung like the shed skin of some animal from the jangling chain. As long as one of her hands was bound, she couldn’t get her jacket completely off, no matter how she struggled.

“…………”

“…………”

There was a brief silence. Then, with extreme reluctance, Creta spoke.

“…All right, listen up. I’ll take it off only when we need to change clothes, but don’t you dare get any funny ideas…!”

Glaring at me like a feral cat raring for a fight, Creta pulled a key from her breast pocket, unlocked the chain, and removed her discarded clothes from between us.

“I more or less sensed this the moment we met, but you can be a little bit absent-minded, can’t you, Creta?”

“That’s none of your concern,” she said, abruptly turning away. “So long as we can solve the murders, nothing else matters.”

“Speaking of which, do you have any suspects?” I tilted my head questioningly.

Something had been bothering me ever since I first entered the city. The man from the Security Corps, and Creta, too, had been talking as if I would be leaving in only a few days. They seemed to think everything would all be over quite soon, in fact.

Creta nodded. “We pretty much know what they look like, thanks to eyewitness testimony.”

“Oh, this is awful, just awful!”

A woman wailed in the faint moonlight streaming into the basement room.

She was wearing a red dress. Her long purplish-red hair swayed as she gazed up into the moonlight with eyes as red as blood. Grasping the day’s newspaper, the woman sobbed and moaned.

“I’ve worked so hard, and yet the city still refuses to acknowledge the presence of mages.” She let out a deep sigh.

The woman had begun her activities three years ago, though she’d only gone public in the last month. Despite being born in a city without mages, she maintained a deep interest in them.

Mages—they could fly through the sky on their brooms, and with a flick of their wands, they could control fire, water, and even lightning. Mages could make anything at all happen with the flick of their hand. The woman was consumed with fascination for them, though she had only ever seen them in books.

Any book about the history of the city of Astikitos could explain why there were no magic users there.

“Before I was born, when my parents were still children, mages slaughtered innocents, and the people of Astikitos drove them out. For that reason, the city has been without mages ever since.”

So it was written in the city’s history books.

“But that history is a lie.”

The woman gathered magical energy into the tip of her wand. “Mages didn’t disappear from this city at all. The truth is, most of us have just been convinced we can’t use magic.”

She waved her wand and manipulated her magic.

Stab, stab. Grind, grind. Crunch, crunch. Crush, crush.

Red droplets sprayed everywhere, and the woman’s breathing grew ragged.

“If the streets were filled with mages, who can do anything, the city’s power structures could be toppled at any moment. That was why we needed to come up with a reason to exclude them, right? Because it was more convenient to get rid of them.” She waved her wand. “The story that mages carried out a massacre long ago has always been a lie, hasn’t it? This city’s whole history, start to finish, is nothing but lies. All you did was disarm any citizens who had the power to oppose your rules.

“The fact that I can use magic is the best proof of all,” she said, resting the tip of her wand against her lip. “This is fate. I was chosen to liberate the mages from your false history.”

I have to put an end to the conspiracy within this city. I have to take back freedom for the mages.

The more the Security Corps covered up her work, the hotter her sense of purpose burned.

“Right? Don’t you think so, too?”

Wonderful, just wonderful.

She mumbled to herself, smiling as she gazed at the spreading pool of blood.

The fourth victim was a city official, just like the other three before him.

His corpse had been mangled unnaturally inside a bed that had itself been folded in half. The spectacle was no different from what I had seen in the other photographs.

Security Corps personnel had rushed to the crime scene, Creta included, and all of them were clearly frustrated by the increasing frequency of the crimes.

“We’ve had another eyewitness account of the woman in the red dress.”

“Why can’t we catch her?”

“I still think it would be best to make our information about the culprit and her crimes public—”

“Ugh… Bleeehhh…”

I was looking at the corpse from a distance.

He had probably been killed slowly, over a long period of time, as someone tried out various magic spells on him. Several of his nails were peeled off, and his fingers were bent in impossible directions. A section of his skin was burned, and there was evidence that he had been cut into using blades of different shapes and beaten with blunt weapons. Though this was the fourth murder, the perpetrator apparently had yet to decide on their preferred method of torture.

Just by looking at the marks left behind, I could tell what type of magic had been used to inflict each wound. I got the impression that the perpetrator used quite an excessive amount of magical power to cast each spell.

But there was one aspect of the crime that stood out as different from all the previous incidents.

I gazed at the wall on the other side of the bed.

Silence is a sin.

That single phrase was written there in dried blood.

It was clear that the words were directed at the members of the Security Corps investigating the murders. I hadn’t seen anything like it in the files on the first three incidents.

Each time, the killer would abduct the victim, kill him someplace private, then carry him back to his house and fold him into his bed.

These crimes were obviously meant to make a statement, and it seemed the culprit was becoming frustrated that they weren’t attracting more attention.

“…You’re not going to make any public announcements?”

I raised the same question with Creta that I had asked right after entering the city.

“…………!” Holding a hand over her mouth, her eyes watering, Creta shook her head. “As soon as we let you into the city, Elaina, we abandoned that possibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“If it got out that the Security Corps was relying on the cooperation of another mage, we would lose the confidence of the citizenry. As soon as the top brass decided to ask a magic user for help…we had no choice but to deal with the incidents in…secret, euuugh…”

“…You’ll feel better if you just go ahead and puke.”

Hesitantly, she gave me one short nod. “Sorry…!”

I accompanied her to the bathroom and rubbed her back. It seemed like my duty as the person chained to her.

“Bleeehhh… Uuugh…”

She sobbed into the toilet. I couldn’t tell whether it was a reaction to vomiting or if she was crying as well.

After that, we interviewed witnesses as part of our investigation. But just as before, although there were many eyewitness accounts of a woman in a red dress, no one could say where she had gone or who she might be.

Time passed, and we still didn’t know who might be next or when it would happen.

“Seems like your job is pretty hectic, Creta.”

When evening came, Creta was still depressed.

She was finally sharing a meal with the object of her adoration, and yet she was hanging her head gloomily, her eyes downcast.

“Sorry…”

“No need to apologize. It’s just…” Tyros sat opposite her, resting his chin in his hands and looking at us. “Did something happen today?”

“More or less,” I said, nodding.

Tyros hadn’t exactly refused the idea of me casually joining the two old friends for their meal, but from the way he was looking at me, I could tell he was wondering what I was doing there and if Creta’s “buddy” really had to stay with her, even at a time like this.

But we were bound together by a chain, so there was nothing we could do.

Personally, I had no desire to participate in Creta’s private affairs, and I had confronted her before dinner about it. “That reminds me, you had a meal planned with Tyros today, right? What should we do about the chains? Do you want to take them off during your meal? Or would you prefer to have me sit with you?”

But in response to my questions, she had answered only “Yes…”

Her head was obviously in the clouds, and her reply was so absent-minded, it was obvious that her thoughts were far, far away.

“Hmm? Which is it?”

“Yes…”

“Creta?”

“Yes…”

“Will you take off the chain for your dinner date?”

“Yes…”

“Or do you want me to sit with you?”

“Yes…”

“Or maybe you’d rather cancel the dinner entirely?”

“Yes…”

“I see, I see. This won’t do at all.”

Supposedly, Creta became like this after every incident. According to the director general of the Security Corps, she had gotten extremely depressed following each of the previous murders.

I think he’s too easy on her.

According to him, Creta was particularly down in the dumps after the fourth murder—even more so than usual.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t properly introduced myself to you yet, have I, Elaina? I’m Tyros. I’ve known Creta since we were in school together, and now I work in the city government.”

I wonder if Creta has linked Tyros to the string of murders in her mind. The victims have all been government officials, after all. Her sweetheart might well become the next victim.

“Oh, you work in the government, do you?” I opened my eyes wide, trying to look impressed. “Isn’t that a tough job?”

“Parts of it can be, but, well, it’s nothing like what Creta does.” Tyros’s eyes shifted to Creta, then back to me. “I can’t even imagine how heavy a responsibility a job like hers is, protecting the people of this city. Compared to what she shoulders day after day, my job seems pretty cushy.” Tyros smiled. “Speaking of which, did something happen?” he asked Creta, who was still subdued.

“…………” After a short, hesitant silence, she finally began to speak, though her words came slowly. “Every time I see another unfortunate victim, I become keenly aware of my own powerlessness.”

The three previous incidents, as well as the latest one, were by no means her fault. It wasn’t like those people had died because of something she did.

The fact that she still felt responsible just proved what an incredible burden her job was.

“Every time someone suffers,” she continued, “I wonder whether there wasn’t some way to prevent it—if we could have stopped it at some earlier stage, or something like that.”

She knew she couldn’t change things that had already happened. And yet she couldn’t help but wish for a different outcome.

She was still forbidden from revealing the details of the murders to members of the public, so the words she used to describe the situation were very, very abstract.

Even so, her feelings made it through to Tyros.

“Creta, I’m sure you already know this, but—I was dating a certain girl up until four years ago.” He started telling an old story, his tone detached. “A classmate of mine from our school days. She had an incredible smile and a strong will. She was dependable and never wavered in her convictions. Even now that she’s gone, I’ve never forgotten the time we spent together.”

“…………” Creta nodded slowly.

“When she passed, she left a huge hole in my life. My anger and sorrow grew and grew, every day. But there was no one for me to take out those feelings on.”

He went on to tell Creta that he understood how she felt, to a painful degree.

“How did you recover?” she asked.

He smiled. “I decided that, rather than worrying about yesterday, I’d live for tomorrow.”

It was a very small, trivial change, he said. “Instead of worrying about what I should have done in the past, I decided to think about what I wanted to do tomorrow—what I wanted to try next—and live that way. That’s it. It isn’t anything so big that I can sit here all self-important and lecture you. But, well—just by accepting that one little change, I’m getting along pretty well these days.”

Basically, he’d changed the way he thought about things.

“So you decided to worry about the future instead of the past. Is that it?” I asked him, simplifying the idea into my own words.

“That’s right,” he said, nodding firmly.

Then he smiled, concluding his painful, heavy tale. Grasping Creta’s hand from across the table, he said, “Dwelling on the possibilities of yesterday will only prolong your suffering. So, Creta, you’ve got to create new possibilities, for tomorrow and beyond.”

That evening, after going back to Creta’s place, we each took a turn in the bath. We passed the time idly, then lay down to sleep. Creta took her own bed, while I collapsed onto the sofa.

“I know your feelings are still raw, but at least there’s a low chance of another incident taking place tonight,” I said. “So for now, I suggest you relax and get some sleep.”

I couldn’t see Creta from the sofa, but from the way she’d been behaving all day, it was obvious that she was extremely exhausted.

“…How can you be so certain?” Her feeble voice came from the other side of the sofa.

There had been a period of about three weeks between the first incident and the second, then a week between the second and the third. But the killer had waited only three days between the third and fourth murders.

I had seen how anxious the whole Security Corps, Creta included, were feeling at this escalation in pace, but…

“This criminal seems compelled to stage elaborate crime scenes, so I believe they will want to wait until the circumstances are right. Besides, they probably want to see how the Security Corps and the public reacts. We’re dealing with someone who likes to show off. I highly doubt they will get impatient and commit another murder tonight,” I told Creta in an attempt to console her.

“…Thank…you,” came the same deflated voice.

“I’m just telling you what I know.”

There’s no need to thank me.

“I’m not just talking about this conversation. I put you through a lot of trouble today.”

I suppose a lot happened. She threw up, then she had to take me on her dinner date, and so on and so forth. Nevertheless…

“Really, none of that was out of the ordinary.”

“…………” She was silent for a little while, then at last, she said, “If nothing else, I treated you rudely right after we first met. And despite all that, you’ve—”

“Don’t worry about yesterday; just live for tomorrow. Isn’t that what the person you adore said?”

“…………”

In this city, young people like Creta had all been raised from the start to hate mages. And in that case, it wasn’t just her who needed to reconsider, but the city itself. There was no need for her to feel responsible.

“Listen, magic users are just normal humans, okay? It’s not like every one of us are the kind of barbarians written about in your history books.”

“…You’re right.”

“But the mage involved in these incidents is definitely a bad person.”

“You’re right.”

“So what will you do tomorrow?” I asked.

Sounding slightly more certain of herself, she said, “I’m going to make sure there isn’t a fifth victim.”

The following day, the Security Corps changed up their strategy and made protecting city officials a priority.

They knew roughly what the culprit looked like, thanks to eyewitness accounts, and it seemed they planned to lie in wait beside the potential targets and pounce the moment the murderer tried to approach their fifth victim.

I didn’t have any idea whether such a plan would succeed, but it was determined that Creta, who was attached by the wrist to some strange traveler, would only get in the way, so she ended up on the sidelines.

“Actually, this suits me fine,” said Creta.

Casting sidelong glances at the Security Corps officers rushing around first thing in the morning to receive their assignments, Creta and I remained sitting in the Security Corps office, going over the previous incidents one more time.

“Let’s think about tomorrow and beyond,” Creta said, spreading a map out on the wall. She picked up a pen. “The first victim’s house is here, and the second is…” Mumbling to herself, she made four marks on the map. “Up to now, our investigation has focused on asking around the immediate area of each crime scene.”

Since the Security Corps wanted to keep the citizens as ignorant of these incidents as they could, they had chosen to limit their investigation to the smallest possible area.

I crossed my arms and stared at the map.

“It’s great that you’ve figured out what the culprit looks like, but it seems you still don’t have any idea who they are. You’ve been investigating, but you’re not allowed to ask around freely, so you haven’t been able to home in on the suspect. That’s the present state of things, right?”

“Yes.” Creta nodded.

“Could I borrow your pen?”

I took her pen and drew a circle around the house of the first victim.

“One thing about magic users is that, no matter who they are, there is an upper limit to the amount of magical energy they can command. And no amount of simulation or practice can prepare you for how things will turn out in the act. This is a culprit who has gone out of their way to make a big scene with the bodies. It’s reasonable to think the first victim’s house isn’t that far from where our killer lives.”

Our culprit abducted their victims, then killed them in an isolated location before returning them to their own homes, staging the crime scene, and leaving. They’d been committing one crime after another using this elaborate, flagrantly attention-seeking method.

I’m sure they’re being as cautious as possible to make sure they don’t run out of magical energy in the middle of their work.

I drew similar circles around the houses of the second, third, and fourth victims. The large circles, crudely drawn on the map, overlapped ever so slightly.

“…………” Creta stared at the map with a complicated expression on her face, then nodded. “So basically, you’re saying this section where the circles overlap is suspicious, right?”

“I think so,” I said, nodding.

Fortunately, we had already established what our culprit looked like. We knew their sex, their hairstyle, and even what clothes they wore.

And so…

“Let’s spend today nailing down what kind of person our culprit is and where they came from.”

Once we narrowed down the area of our search to a particular neighborhood, we began asking around together.

Just what kind of person is our culprit?

As we canvassed the area, we refined our vague criminal profile into something more distinct, using the clues that had come to light so far.

Creta questioned people as we passed.

“Excuse me, we’re searching for someone, and—”

Since the killer was targeting only people in important positions, like city administrators, we had to assume they had developed a distrust in the government or its organization.

The killer’s approximate age, too, was clear from eyewitness accounts.

“She’s probably a little bit older than me and this gray-haired young lady.”

The fact that the suspect was seen wearing a flashy dress, combined with the audacious way she’d committed her crimes, right from the first victim, told us she had great confidence in herself.

The killer had the intelligence to inspect the houses of the victims, investigate their daily routines, and plan each part of their crime. They had also been able to hang around their wealthy victims’ homes without rousing suspicion, which meant they likely belonged to the same class.

And judging by the extremely brutal nature of the murders, it was obvious that they took a certain degree of pleasure in killing.

According to Creta, the majority of those who killed for pleasure treated animals in a similar way before ever laying hands on a human.

“Is it possible that there was a spate of suspicious animal deaths in this neighborhood several years ago?”

Creta was following clues from a variety of directions in an attempt to figure out the killer’s identity.

Mages didn’t exist in this city, but it wasn’t like Astikitos never interacted with the outside word.

“And is there any chance you might have caught sight of someone with a grimoire?”

Such an item would have no meaning to the people of this city, even if they somehow got their hands on one. But to our killer, it would amount to a textbook for murder.

We went around asking people our questions, choosing each interviewee with care. We stopped by a restaurant frequented by the wealthy, then visited a large bookshop that carried materials related to magic. We made the rounds, keeping a low profile throughout.

“Hmm… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone like that.”

Person after person gave the same response.

“Let me see… I don’t remember anyone like that…”

We went steadily about our canvassing.

“Animal abuse? No, I can’t really think of anyone like that…”

Then, after about three hours, when we expanded the scope of our search—

“If I remember correctly, I think there’s a girl living nearby who fits that description.”

—a wealthy middle-aged man nodded in response to our questions. He told us he had a passing acquaintance with the young woman in question.

“She’s kind of creepy, you know. She’s always going on about how ‘the people of this city are being manipulated by their government.’ I think her name was—”

Ever since she was small, Ekina had lived her life constantly aware that she was different from the people around her.

She ate her meals alone, whether at home or at school.

She spent her days off alone, too.

She hardly ever spoke with other children at school. It had always been that way, ever since she was young. Ever since she was little, she had been able to do everything by herself. Her grades were good. She could even cook.

But being able to do everything by herself was the same as saying that she couldn’t get along with the people around her. Day by day, the gulf between her and other children her age grew deeper and wider.

Why was she so different from them?

Her inquisitive mind eventually settled on the existence of mages—those magic users who had been chased out of the city. The more she researched them, the more absorbed she became in the world of magic.

She procured a wand on the black market, and the first time she picked it up, she knew it was her destiny.

“I’m happy, so happy.”

The city was abuzz. Ekina’s work had not yet become public knowledge, but that didn’t mean her actions weren’t having any effect. The fact that she now saw people from the Security Corps throughout the city was proof enough of that.

Ekina was sure that if she killed one or two more people, the government would make an official announcement about her crimes. They would have to recognize the presence of magic users.

She just had to wait a little while longer. She had made it so far. Soon, her ideal would be realized.

“Perfect. How perfect.”

She wondered who she should choose as her next victim.

She walked along, filled with excitement. And there, down the road, she spotted him—a young man with black hair.

His name was Tyros, and he worked at city hall.

We immediately reported the information we had collected to the director general, who shared it with the rest of the Security Corps.

It was obvious that there would be another victim if we didn’t hurry, and we had already established the whereabouts of the killer.

“I hope I can entrust this job to you, Lady Witch,” he said. Just as we had agreed at the beginning, it was now my turn to act. “You and Creta must go to the killer and render her powerless in a way that will attract as little attention as possible. You must stop her, even if you have to kill her. But if possible, we’d prefer that you keep her alive.”

They wanted me to attract as little attention as possible, though there wasn’t much I could do if the killer decided to make a scene. In short, I was supposed to engage her in peaceful conversation, avoid giving her any openings to use magic, and quietly get her into handcuffs somehow.

What a stupid expectation. I can tell he doesn’t know the first thing about magic.

“Well, I’ll do the best I can.”

I didn’t say I’d be able to pull it off.

Now that we had identified our culprit, there was no longer any reason for Creta and me to stay chained together. But the people in charge of the city still held mages in strikingly low regard and wouldn’t give us permission to take the bracelets off. What’s more, it seemed like ignorance had given them rather high expectations about what a witch like me could do, and they didn’t see how the chain would make it harder for me to capture this bloodthirsty killer.

In the end, Creta and I wound up walking down the street in the wealthy part of town, our hands still connected by the chain.

Members of the Security Corps were already lying in wait around the mage’s home. According to their reports, they’d been able to confirm by looking through the windows that the same suspicious woman witnessed at the scene of each murder—Ekina—was inside.

All that remained was for us to attack.

“What do you suppose will happen if we fail?” Creta asked quietly, tightly grasping the sling of her rifle. There was an unexpected quaver in her voice.

“I’m guessing the guys outside are here because they don’t trust me, right?”

“…………”

If we failed and allowed Ekina to get outside, they would probably open fire on her immediately. I didn’t know how they intended to cover that up, but they had probably decided it was preferable to finding a fifth victim.

“Sounds like we better not fail,” I said.

Before long, we were standing right in front of Ekina’s house.

Knock, knock.

It was a large, impressive building. The door was equipped with a door knocker, and when we knocked twice, a pleasant voice rang out from inside.

“Coming!”

We both fell silent.

Before long, we heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Before I could settle my breathing, it was open.

“Who might you be?” asked the woman at the door.

She had long hair in a deep reddish-purple and eyes the color of blood. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and wore a red dress. Her appearance matched the eyewitness accounts perfectly.

“Are you Ekina?” Creta asked.

Though she hadn’t introduced herself, her uniform told the other woman everything she needed to know.

“…You’re from the Security Corps, right? Can I help you with something?” Ekina looked bewildered, but it was all an act.

“Actually, there are a few things we’d like to ask you about. Is now a good time?” Creta stepped forward and put her foot in the doorway so that Ekina couldn’t shut the door and escape.

“What’s going on, Ekina?”

Just then, from farther inside, we heard a man’s gently inquisitive voice. I’d heard that voice before.

“Visitors?”

It was Tyros, smiling softly from the other side of the door.

“The mage probably has someone helping her,” I had said a few days earlier. “It’s difficult to imagine that one young woman committed this whole series of crimes by herself.”

Creta and I were looking at our map, trying to narrow down the culprit’s whereabouts. Creta seemed confused by my sudden remark.

“How can you be so sure?” she asked me.

While I listened to her talk about the crime scenes, I remembered something about the fourth victim’s corpse. Then I thought back on the appearance of the other three bodies.

“Magic is kind of like handwriting,” I said, “in that it shows the individual quirks of each user. For example, imagine a spell that lets you shoot fire. The way you apply your magical energy, the amount of energy you pour into the spell, and how long you hold the spell all determine the size of the blaze you create. These things demonstrate the quirks or unique qualities of each individual user.”

With mages who learned through self-study, the quirks tended to be more exaggerated. For better or worse, a mage who learned at school tended to have less idiosyncrasies in their magic.

“…So you’re saying the spells that left those wounds on the victims were really distinctive?” Creta cocked her head.

I offered her neither confirmation nor denial.

“What I mean is, to be precise, there are two different signatures here.”

The Security Corps probably didn’t know enough about magic to notice. I laid out the photos of the first three victims’ corpses and pointed to the wounds on their bodies.

“I don’t think our killers’ magical abilities are very advanced. The victims’ bodies show signs that they were burned by fire, but just taking a quick look at the pictures, you can see that two different techniques were used—one where the fire spread over a wide area, and another where it burned just one small part of the body. It looks like they also froze these guys in ice, used magic to twist parts of their bodies, and did all sorts of other things to them. But like I said, there are signs of two different ways of casting spells—one where they used a huge amount of magical energy to cast all at once, and one where they restrained themselves to a certain extent.”

And the difference between the two hadn’t lessened, even after several incidents.

“I’m just guessing here, but—it seems to me like this collaborator of hers might be the one abducting and carrying off the victims.”

The collaborator had probably been using magic when they abducted the men. They needed to reserve some magical energy to do so and, thus, had to hold back during the torture. The suspicious young woman mentioned by the eyewitnesses didn’t have to worry about carrying the victims and could blast them without holding back.

It seemed reasonable to assume the pair had been working together and sharing responsibilities during the attacks.

“Well, it’s just a guess,” I said.

“…………”

Creta looked down at the floor, heaved a big sigh, and muttered, “That’s horrible…”

“We don’t know for sure. But yeah.”

I could only offer her hollow consolation.

“Our killer, Ekina, apparently lives with a man.”

Once we’d determined our suspect’s identity and the Security Corps had surrounded her house, the director general shared with us what he’d learned. “He’s about the same age as her. Probably her boyfriend or something, though we don’t know whether he’s aware of Ekina’s true nature.”

“The mage probably has someone helping her.”

That conjecture, made while we were still studying the map, now sent my imagination in unpleasant directions.

“Supposing this man knows about her crimes, what should we do with him?” Creta asked the director general.

What if he knows about her crimes? What if, despite knowing everything, he’s still sheltering her? What if he’s working with her to help commit the crimes? What should we do?

In truth, we didn’t need to ask.

Without changing his expression, the director general answered, “You should treat him the same as our killer.” He was very direct as he spoke to Creta, driving his point home. “Under no circumstances are you to treat him like a human.”

“Come to think of it, I haven’t introduced you two yet, have I? This is Ekina, my girlfriend.”

The moment we established that Creta and Tyros knew each other, the couple stopped treating us like Security Corps members who had dropped by unannounced and began acting like we were all regular friends.

Ekina invited us inside, and we sat on the sofa across from her and Tyros.

Creta was staring at Tyros as I watched Ekina.

Steam wafted off the freshly poured tea on the table between us.

The two of them appeared to be a normal, happy-looking couple, and nothing more.

“I got to know her last year, and we opened up to each other right away because of our similar tastes and hobbies,” said Tyros. “I guess it’s been almost six months since we started dating.”

Ekina, who was sitting beside him, smiled happily and nodded. “Yes, that’s right.” Then her gaze fell on Creta. “But this is quite the surprise. I never imagined he had an acquaintance in the Security Corps.”

“…………” Creta was looking at Ekina with a stern expression. “We were in school together, though I was a year younger. So it’s not so much that he knows someone in the Security Corps, but that his school fellow just happened to join up.”

“And the Security Corps protects our city from bad people, right? To think you work at a place like that. It’s wonderful, just wonderful.”

Ekina smiled and placed her hands on her cheeks. From her behavior, I couldn’t tell if all this was an act or if she really meant what she said.

“What sort of work do you do, Ekina?” I asked.

“I work in city hall. The same as him.” She turned to me with a smile so beautiful, it looked fake. “One year ago, personnel got shuffled around, you see, and he wound up in my department. That’s how we got to know each other.”

“Oh.”

I was about to ask her what department she worked in, but she beat me to the punch.

“Though we work in city hall, our department mainly handles odd jobs and other miscellaneous tasks. The two of us manage imports.”

“You mean you manage goods coming into the city?”

“Yes. We inspect them and make sure nothing weird is mixed in and other miscellaneous tasks.”

“What do you mean by ‘weird’?”

“Like drugs that are banned in our city, or suspicious money of uncertain origin, or magical implements. You know.”

She told us their job was to prevent such suspicious articles from making it to market in their city. “Although, compared to the work you two do protecting our city, ours is quite an easy job.”

“…………”

Neither Creta nor I had an answer to that.

Silence filled the luxurious room as the aroma of the tea gradually dissipated.

“It’s going cold, you know. Your tea. Aren’t you going to drink it?” asked Ekina.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t thirsty or that I didn’t like tea. But there was no way either of us was going to reach for our cup.

Instead, I raised my head and asked, “Are there often things mixed in?”

“Huh?”

“Weird things, mixed in with the imports. Does it happen often?”

“Hmm? Yes, indeed it does… This is a peaceful city, but I suppose there are always a certain number of people up to no good. We see them often—drugs, money, magical implements.”

“And what do you do with those things when they come in?”

“Naturally, they’re disposed of.”

“I see.” I nodded, and Tyros tilted his head questioningly.

“By the way, Creta, Elaina. What business brought you all the way out here? I don’t imagine you stopped by just to make small talk with my girlfriend.”

“Well…” Creta hesitated. Trying to escape Tyros’s gaze, she stared down at her hands. “Tyros, how long have you been living with Ekina…?” she asked.

“About six months, I guess.”

“And do you know everything about her? Do you know what she does every day, what sorts of things she likes, how she lives her life…?”

“Hmm……? I think so.”

“I see…” Creta sighed and lowered her head. The sigh was deep and long. She sounded somehow resigned.

“Come to think of it, Elaina, Creta, could I tell you something?” Raising her voice just a little, Ekina clapped her hands and continued her silly small talk. “At our job, we frequently decide to pretend like the strange things we find never existed in the first place. Doing that makes it much easier to hide troublesome items from the public, you see.”

She slowly lowered her hand, bringing it to rest on top of the sofa.

Then she produced even more silly small talk.

“But the job of picking out these strange things is quite difficult, and there’s a lot of labor involved. That’s because, at a glance, a lot of them don’t look any different from normal goods.”

Before I realized it, Ekina and Tyros both had their hands down on top of the sofa. Their palms were resting one on top of the other, their fingers tightly entwined in a lovers’ embrace. It was as if they were checking to make sure the other was still there.

“I’ll ask you again,” said Ekina. “Why did you come here today?”

Locking eyes with Ekina, I gathered energy at my fingertips.

From the other end of the chain binding my wrist, I heard a metallic kachak. Creta must have been reaching for her rifle—I could sense the cold hunk of metal that made up the gun moving ever so slightly at the edge of my vision.

Once again, the interior of the luxurious room was engulfed in silence.

“We came to do our job.”

I readied my wand and, at almost the same moment, found two wands pointed back at us.

I couldn’t smell the tea anymore.

“Don’t you think there are probably some magic users living in this city, even now?”

Tyros said those words to Ekina on the day they first met. He’d just joined her department.

“They can fly through the air and do whatever they please,” he continued. “They sound incredible. I can’t believe we drove them all out of the city. I think the people in charge just make everyone believe there aren’t any mages here so that no one will stand up to them.” As he grumbled his complaints to Ekina, Tyros tossed several copies of a grimoire that had been discovered in a shipment of other books into an incinerator.

Ekina looked at him like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Oh, crap. I bet she already thinks I’m a total weirdo.

“Sorry. Forget what I just said.”

Trying to laugh it off as a joke, he went back to work disposing of prohibited books. Flames swallowed up the precious volumes, which no one in the city was allowed to read, and they disappeared forever.

“I won’t forget.”

Standing next to him, Ekina shook her head.

There was someone else in the city who thought the same way as Ekina, and he was now in the same line of work—one that would put him in contact with magical implements.

And he, like her, had always been special—better than other people. Even their tastes and hobbies matched.

She thought it was destiny. The two of them were drawn to each other with unrelenting force. For both of them, the other was the only person in the whole world with whom they could share every aspect of themselves.

“I’ll bet you everything that’s written in our history books is a lie,” he said. “Mages have always existed here, and still do, but because they’re so powerful, their existence has been censored all this time.”

The two of them were convinced.

“The people of this city have been led to believe they cannot use magic,” she insisted. “Their magic was stolen from them, and the government is covering it up so that they don’t even realize it’s been taken.”

It was much easier to pretend like troublesome things never existed in the first place.

The couple were convinced that, just like Ekina and her colleagues were supposed to weed out the bad things and make them go away, top officials in the city government had been covering up certain inconvenient facts.

“We have to wake up the people of this city.”

And that sense of purpose that brought the two of them together had eventually driven them to commit the series of murders that had started up around one month prior.

“Now it’s time to tell the truth! Exactly who was it who gave the order to write lies in our history books? Under whose guidance were we all made to believe there are no mages in this city?”

Since both of them worked at city hall, they were able to commit their crimes relatively easily. It was no problem for them to look up who the top officials in the city were and where they lived.

It was no trouble at all for the two of them, who had learned some magic, to stalk these city officials on their way home from work, abduct them, and then take them to a basement somewhere and torture them.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Help me, please! Please—”

Their first victim had been a letdown. No matter what they asked him, he just kept apologizing, and they weren’t able to extract any useful information. Disappointed, the two of them used his body to practice their spells.

Their second victim cursed at Ekina and Tyros with every dirty word he could think of. The couple thought he was cursing them because they were right—that he feared just how right they were.

Neither the third nor the fourth victim told them what they were hoping to hear, but each time they killed someone together, their trust in each other grew stronger and deeper.

Despite all the effort they put into beautifully staging the sites where they left the bodies, their actions still hadn’t come to light.

“Even the Security Corps is being controlled by the government,” said Ekina. “The fact that our work hasn’t been reported on is the best proof of that.”

“You’re exactly right. We’ve got to try harder,” Tyros said as he used magic to fold a bed in half.

The two of them divided up their work. Tyros carried the victims while Ekina led the way so that he wouldn’t be spotted, and once they arrived at the designated location, they worked together to torture their captives. When they were finished with each victim, Ekina led Tyros back the same way they had come, and Tyros once again carried the body. Once they arrived at their victim’s bedroom, they worked together to decorate the crime scene, cooperating just like they had during the torture.

“Why are you so worried about being seen?” Ekina asked.

The reason all the eyewitness accounts from the crime scenes were of Ekina was because she led the way so that Tyros could carry his burdens unnoticed.

It wasn’t that Ekina was unhappy with the situation. She was just anxious.

What if, in his heart of hearts, Tyros didn’t share Ekina’s convictions? Maybe she was the only one who believed they were working together. The feelings of loneliness she’d harbored as a child passed through her mind once again.

But in response, Tyros whispered, “I’m doing this to protect you,” and embraced her. “I’m sure those jerks in the government will try to cover up what we’re doing. I’ll be your shadow so that I can fight to protect you when the time comes.”

Tyros gazed proudly around the scene of their fourth murder and accompanied his sweet words with a ring, which he slipped onto her finger.

Everything seemed like destiny.

“Thank you,” Ekina said, leaning into him.

She was sure that together, the two of them could meet any challenge. To them, their actions were righteous. The two of them lived in their own private world, into which no outsiders could trespass.

From then on, as long as they stayed together, they could overcome any hardship. Ekina was confident of that.

And then, two days later—

Just as he had promised, Tyros died fighting to protect her.

Ekina was the first to shoot off a spell. From her wand, she hastily produced several poorly formed icicles and flung them through the air. I immediately smashed them to pieces and sent her wand flying out of her hand.

As soon as Ekina realized she couldn’t win, she raised both hands and surrendered.

When Tyros saw her, he also tossed his wand away with a defeated expression and put his hands up.

Oh, thank goodness. Looks like it’s already over. I’m glad we were able to resolve the matter so easily.

Relieved, I turned to look at Creta and saw that there was a knife sticking into her gut.

Right before tossing his wand aside, Tyros had used magic to send the weapon flying toward Creta’s stomach.

And by the time we realized he wasn’t done, Tyros was already closing in on Creta. In his hand was another knife.

I turned my wand toward him, intending to stop him in his tracks. By then, however, he was already within arm’s reach of her.

But that also meant he was pressed up against the muzzle of her gun.

The sound of a gunshot rang out.

Tyros swung the knife with the last of his strength. It grazed Creta’s cheek and fell onto the sofa. Moments later, Tyros’s limp, lifeless body fell on top of it.

“…Ah.”

There, before Creta, Tyros lay dead.

He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe, he didn’t do anything. A pool of blood spread out gradually from his midsection, staining the area around Creta’s feet red.

Creta stared down at him in a daze.

“Ah-ha.”

Someone was laughing across from me.

“Ah-ha-ha, ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Ekina had sunk to the floor, laughter spilling out from her like a broken toy. She laughed on and on without stopping.

Even after the guards from the Security Corps rushed into the house, drawn by the sound of gunfire, and restrained her, Ekina never stopped laughing.

The other officers carried Tyros’s body out of the house and dragged Ekina away. Even as they pulled her along by the arm, she kept on laughing.

And as she brushed past Creta, she spoke.

“You killed a human just now, you know.”

And that’s how we solved the murders, which were never meant to come to light, without attracting any attention. The people of the city were startled by the sound of a gun suddenly going off in the middle of the day, and there was a lot of speculation. But in the end, the Security Corps claimed it was an accidental discharge and issued a formal written apology. The actual incident was treated as if it had never even happened.

“Lady Witch, we are deeply grateful to you for assisting with our investigation.”

Creta received an official commendation from the Security Corps for successfully resolving the incidents. Finding the pair of murderers who had been going around killing city officials and safely apprehending them were huge achievements for her.

“Our city government is also very pleased. We all expect great things from you in the future.” The director general of the Security Corps did not hold back his praise.

To me, he said, “In the end, it seems we didn’t even need the help of a mage like you. We’re very sorry for wasting a few days of your valuable time.”

The sarcasm in his voice, as well as his hatred for mages, was obvious.

“…………”

I didn’t even feel like responding. I just shook my head and left it at that.

Once the case was closed, my business in the city was finished.

I immediately started preparing to leave. We went back to Creta’s house, gathered my things, and hurried toward the gates.

Creta and I had to move together, as we were still chained to each other by the wrist. I was still under constant surveillance and would be until I left the city.

Creta was with me all the way to the city gates. And the whole way, she remained silent.

“…………”

As soon as I was through the gate, I donned my robe and put on my pointed hat. I was now back in my usual traveling outfit.

Then, just before we parted, Creta took my hand, inserted the key into my bracelet, and released me from the chain.

Her cold hands wrapped around mine, now free once again.

“Creta?” I called her name.

“…………”

She raised her head. She looked very, very frail, like she might disappear at any moment. I wondered what to say to her.

It’s just as I thought. There’s nothing I can do, is there?

“Elaina?” She spoke in a trembling voice. “Could I get you to lend me your hand?”

“…………?”

I nodded, and she put my hand against her cheek.

“If they saw me being friendly with a mage, I’m sure the people of my city would misunderstand it in the worst way. So please,” she said, “just lend me the sensation of your hand.” Her cheek was cold, and her eyes were gloomy and dull. “It’s exactly as you said, Elaina. Mages are people, too,” she said.

Even magic users live normal lives, no different from other humans.

I remembered saying as much to her.

“But—I didn’t know confronting that reality would be so painful or so difficult.”

A tear rolled down her cheek and warmed my fingertips.

“Creta.” I traced her tear’s path and scooped it up with my fingertip. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t—”

I couldn’t do anything.

The scab where the knife had grazed her was still there on her cheek.

“I’m fine.” She noticed me looking at her and smiled. “The pain will go away, and I’ll be fine.”

“…………”

“Tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe some time after that, I’m sure even the scar will fade away. So I know I’ll be fine.”

Though her words were hopeful, tears kept flowing endlessly down her cheeks. I kept my hand where it was so that the tears wouldn’t touch her wound.

I knew, however, that this was only empty consolation.

“Hey, did you hear? Until recently, a woman named Ekina lived right around here!”

“Hmm? Oh, right,” said a woman to her friend seated across from her. “They caught her, though, didn’t they? What about it?”

There was plenty of small talk happening at the café that afternoon: advice about work, discussion of hobbies, gossip about other residents, bad-mouthing of people who weren’t there, speculations, and conspiracy theories.

“Did you hear? That Ekina woman was actually a mage!” said the woman’s friend, looking smug.

She peered back at him, fed up with his exaggerations and groundless rumors. She couldn’t stand the way he said such things like they were absolute truth.

“Hey, hey, don’t tell me you don’t believe me. This time I’m serious! I saw it myself. I watched the guys from the Security Corps taking her away.”

“She could have been arrested for anything.” The woman had known Ekina during their school days. The girl had kept away from others, always laughing to herself. Everyone thought she was creepy. Even her own classmates used to say that one day she would go too far and be unable to come back. “How do you know magic was involved?”

“People heard a gunshot the day Ekina was arrested, right?”

“Yeah, they did.”

“Well, that gun was fired at her, to take her down. But Ekina’s still alive, right? That’s because she’s a mage!”

“What kind of logic is that?” she said, brushing him off.

She had lost all interest in talking to him, but the man didn’t seem to notice, and he carried on.

“I just know the government is up to something big—something secret. And now they’ve captured a mage and put her under their control…” It was all part of some massive scheme, he insisted.

“There’s no way any of that’s true.”

The woman couldn’t believe how absurd her friend sounded. She sighed and calmly shut him down, but he had already stopped listening to her.

“This city is using mages to tamper with the minds of its citizens. They want to control us all…”

And so the man expounded on his wild delusions as if they were beyond all doubt.