Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 6 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Someone I Hate

We started by telling each other about our circumstances so that we could come to a mutual understanding. I told her of what had happened at Fort Tilia two months ago, and about what we had done there. Seeing that Katou and Rose hadn’t been present, this role was entirely up to me. Iino looked like she wanted to cut in a few times when I described what her fellow exploration team member, Juumonji Tatsuya, had done, but she did at least hear me out until the end without interrupting.

Next, it was her turn. She started with her journey into the Depths to rescue the remaining students. I wasn’t really interested in that part, so I asked her to keep it brief and focused on the details from after she’d returned to Fort Tilia.

“I see. You passed through Serrata,” I remarked in the middle of her story, then cocked my head. “You caught up to us awfully fast.”

Iino had returned to Fort Tilia a little over a month after leaving for the Depths. Around two months had passed since we left the fortress ourselves, so considering the time she had spent there, Iino had taken around twenty days to catch up with us. Not only that, she had stopped by Serrata and had even gone all the way back to Fort Ebenus to inform the leader of the exploration team. We hadn’t been in a rush ourselves, but it was still surprising she had caught up with us in just twenty days.

Iino, on the other hand, didn’t see it as a big deal. She casually scoffed at me. “I was accompanied by the Imperial Knights and the students we rescued in the Depths, but after that I was on my own. My legs carried me to Serrata in two days.”

“You ran? It’s supposed to take a fast horse four days.”

“Going from Serrata to Ebenus also took me two days.”

“That’s the Skanda for you...” I muttered.

The journey from Fort Tilia to the Depths would normally take around a week. It should’ve taken her at least that long to get back since she was with the home team members she’d rescued. So, deducting those twenty or so days since she left Fort Tilia, that left only about two weeks. Iino said she had only taken six days to go to Serrata, Fort Ebenus, and back to Serrata. Considering that she’d taken ten days to reach us here in the Kitrus Mountains, it had actually taken much longer than one might guess.

I was astonished by this, but I moved things along nonetheless. “So, when you stopped by Serrata, this Louis guy told you I was one of the people who attacked Fort Tilia?”

Louis Bard was the man who led Margrave Maclaurin’s territorial army. He was apparently the cause of this entire misunderstanding. Or maybe, considering his position, it was the man behind him.

Katou looked at us curiously. “The description of Margrave Maclaurin you received is quite different from what we heard...”

“What? Are you saying I’m lying?” Iino said, shooting a glance over to Katou.

“I didn’t say that.”

“So Louis is lying? I only spoke with him for a short while, but he’s definitely a sincere man.”

“No need to snap at us, Iino,” I said, cutting into their conversation. “The girl who told us about him, Shiran, isn’t the type to lie. Who knows which of the two is actually right? Different people will see the same person in different ways.”

Personally, I wanted to believe Shiran, but Iino was being insistent. It was possible that this Louis guy was a fine man overflowing with integrity and that the current situation was nothing but a disaster born of a simple misunderstanding. This was probably what complicated the situation so much. Or maybe he really was a despicable swindler who had tricked Iino. I had no way of knowing, but this wasn’t much of a problem.

The real problem was that Louis...or more specifically, the man behind him, Margrave Maclaurin, thought I was the culprit behind the attack on Fort Tilia. How exactly had things ended up like that?

The commander of the Alliance Knights, who knew of what had happened, was currently being taken to the imperial capital as the one responsible for Fort Tilia’s fall. Maclaurin had been the one to restrain her. Judging from how he and Louis knew about Juumonji and Kudou—regardless of them treating the news like wild and irresponsible rumors—it meant that the commander had told the margrave of what had transpired.

In that case, did it mean he didn’t believe her? It wouldn’t be all that strange. House Maclaurin had a history of discord with the Five Northern Kingdoms, including Aker. Above all else, my ability to tame monsters was difficult to accept in this world. It was actually somewhat inevitable considering that the one other monster tamer, Kudou, was actually the one who had attacked the fortress.

Or perhaps this was a simple miscommunication between Maclaurin and Louis. In any case, it turned out that my decision to head to Aker with Shiran, who would be in extreme danger were she to be captured, had in fact been correct.

No matter how vast Maclaurin’s influence was, his reach couldn’t extend into the borders of another country. If he tried doing something so overbearing, it could easily lead to war. Then the Holy Order would step in, bringing him to ruin. That was what I’d heard before, at least. So long as we stayed in Aker, I would be out of reach of the margrave who claimed I was Fort Tilia’s assailant.

“Majima. If you have nothing to feel guilty about, then you should surrender yourself to the Empire.”

The margrave’s reach was exactly why Iino’s suggestion was absolutely out of the question.

“Setting aside Louis for the moment,” she continued, “you said you fought against the culprit behind Fort Tilia’s attack, right? If that’s actually true, then I believe you did the right thing.”

“The right thing...?” I repeated with a scowl.

“Yes,” she replied with a nod. “So, if that’s true, you should return to the Empire and help us with our investigation. By doing so, you can prove your own innocence.”

She certainly had a point there.

“But if you’re lying,” she added, “then I can’t leave you at large. In either case, you should come and face a fair trial.”

“A fair trial, huh?” I muttered back, looking at her face. I felt like I now had a grasp of the principles that drove her. “In short, it’s your job to secure anyone suspicious. Any judgment after that you’ll leave to some other appropriate authority.”

She wasn’t being irresponsible by any stretch. She acted on her own standards, so I couldn’t say her way of doing things was necessarily wrong. There were no cops out there who pretended to be judges. They captured those under suspicion of being criminals, investigated them, and put together evidence. Iino thought that that was all she needed to do. In truth, she had tried to suppress us, not judge us. There was just one problem, though.

“But what guarantee is there that it’ll be a fair trial?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“This isn’t Japan. There’s no guarantee, right?”

“That... That certainly may be true,” she said with hesitation.

Iino had acted entirely under the assumption that I’d be treated fairly. She dropped her gaze to the ground without objecting. Mysteriously enough, I felt slightly disappointed when I saw her like that. Did Iino come here simply because she hadn’t thought things through enough?

“Fine.” In complete betrayal of my expectations, Iino immediately raised her head and pierced me with a sharp glare. “In that case, I’ll accompany and protect you until a fair judgment can be made. Will that do?”

I was silent. Her tone implied she was completely serious.

“Until then, no matter who it is, I won’t allow them to lay a hand on you,” she continued. “If their judgment is irrefutably suspicious, then I’ll protect you with my very own hands. I promise.”

“Do you even understand what you’re saying?” I asked.

“Don’t look down on me. I said no matter who. That means anyone,” Iino declared.

There was nothing in it for her, yet she didn’t show a hint of hesitation. I couldn’t sense any deceit in her behavior. This was only regarding her claim itself, though. Even if she was serious, she could chicken out when the time came.

However, I recalled what had happened during the landslide. Iino had immediately tried to save Katou. It proved she wasn’t the type to lose her nerve thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of her actions.

There was one other thing too. I glanced over at Katou. At the time, she had used the imitation flash runestone to steal Iino’s vision and stab her in the thigh. Iino hadn’t retaliated. On the contrary, she hadn’t even tried to shake Katou off on reflex. She had fallen down the cliff and into the river with Katou still in her arms.

If the famed Skanda of the Colony had shaken her off violently, it would’ve snapped Katou’s body like a twig. Iino hadn’t retaliated precisely because she knew this. Her behavior on the spur of the moment demonstrated her nature as a human. At the very least, Iino’s intentions weren’t a sham.

It would be unfair of me to treat her statement as mere lip service. Katou had said during their face-off on the mountain road, “Even if we weren’t treated as saviors here, I’m sure you would’ve acted exactly the same.”

In all likelihood, even if Katou hadn’t managed to defeat Iino with her quick wits, we would have had this exact same conversation. If I then raised my distrust toward the Empire, I could see her making the same suggestion to take responsibility and escort me all the way.

Iino Yuna was rather simple-minded and a troublesome burden to me...but she wasn’t someone who got carried away by the flow of events. She had conviction. I couldn’t criticize her for it either. That was because...

“You seem to be misunderstanding something, so let me make it clear,” I said to her as she glared at me. “I didn’t fight Juumonji and Kudou at Fort Tilia because I thought it was the right thing to do. I did it simply because there were people there I wanted to protect.”

Shiran and Kei, whom I had deepened my relationships with, and my best friend Mikihiko had all been at Fort Tilia. It was because I wanted to protect them that I had fought so desperately. I did feel righteous indignation at all the lives that had been lost, but that wasn’t my only driving force, unlike Iino right now. My abilities were far too meager, and I didn’t have the luxury of fighting for the sake of justice. It was already difficult enough for me to protect what I wanted to.

That was why I would do anything to protect the girls. If the law of this world bore its fangs at them, then I would become evil. If I ended up as something neither human nor monster, much like Shiran had once warned me about, I wouldn’t regret it. That was the path I chose to walk. This was what I had resolved to do the moment I decided to stay with the girls. However...

If I had overwhelming power like Iino did, maybe there would have been another path before me. I could at least have considered the possibilities. I didn’t believe my choice was honorable or anything. But what of it? If I could protect everything under the sun with a smile, be it precious to me or not, there would be nothing better. That would be the perfectly virtuous answer, but there was no sense of reality to it. Nevertheless, right here, Iino Yuna embodied that perfect ideal, in a manner of speaking.

“Ooh, I get it. That’s why,” I said, smiling bitterly as I realized something. I finally figured out why I felt strangely irritated by Iino and why I wasn’t able to control my emotions. It was oddly refreshing. “Hey, Iino. It seems I hate you.”

“Wha—?!”

I was jealous of her. Someone I hated had hurt the people dearest to me. It was obvious I’d feel irritated.

“What’s with that?!” Iino shrieked, looking completely taken aback. She immediately flared up in anger. “Is that why you won’t come back to the Empire with me?!”

I shook my head. “No, that’s an entirely different matter.”

I wasn’t such an idiot that I’d let my personal dislike of someone cloud my judgment. Even if I disregarded my feelings and thought about it calmly, going with her to the Empire wasn’t even worth considering.

It was entirely possible that if we went back with Iino, she would treat us fairly and without unwarranted contempt. But even the Skanda couldn’t one hundred percent guarantee our safety. There was no reason for us to willingly step into danger.

Besides, even if Iino possessed a righteous sense of justice, it was doubtful whether she would protect monsters like Lily. Therefore, my decision was to refuse her proposal. Unfortunately for her, she had to go all the way back to the Empire with nothing to show for her efforts.

“Anyways, shouldn’t you be worrying about your own safety?” I asked, stretching my hand out toward my clothes laying atop a rock by the riverside. They had dried considerably by the fire, so I grabbed them and stood up.

“Hey! Wait a sec!” Iino said in a panic. “Where are you going?!”

“Where do you think? Lily should be here soon,” I replied, putting my clothes on. “I’m getting ready to leave.”

Katou also got up as Rose handed her her clothes. Iino was the only one left sitting.

“You don’t plan on leaving me here, do you?” she said, turning pale.

“Well... What do you think we should do, Katou?” I asked.

Katou’s head popped through her collar, and she blinked in surprise for a moment.

“Let’s see... Iino could probably get down from the mountain in about a week if she tries hard enough, right? I’m sure she can repel any monsters on her own just using her arms.”

“Are you telling me to crawl my way back?!”

“I mean, you’ll attack us if you recover, right?” Katou said, shaking her head.

“Th-That’s not...”

Iino averted her gaze. It was apparently exactly what she was going to do.

Seeing her like that, Katou let out an astonished sigh. “See? There’s no way Majima-senpai can ask Lily to heal you like this, is there?”

“U-Ugh...”

A bitter expression formed on Iino’s strong-willed features. She couldn’t do anything about the current situation. Her shoulders drooped.

“F-Fine. I promise not to capture you or anything.”

“Like we could take your word for it,” Katou replied immediately.

“Wh-Why not?!” Iino’s mouth flapped open and shut like a constricted bird. “I-It’s true! I won’t capture you! I’m not lying!”

“You say that, Iino, but you don’t actually trust Majima-senpai either, do you? It goes both ways.”

“Urgh... That’s true... A-At least take me to the entrance of the mountain. I can use the horse I left there to get back.”

Katou’s cruel responses seemed to come from her dislike of Iino. I smiled slightly at this, then turned around as Lily’s presence drew nearer.

“How much time do you think it’ll take us to bring you all the way back there?” Katou asked.

“H-How much?”

“It’s been over ten days since we started crossing these mountains. We had to stop quite a few times to repair the road, so even if we don’t have to do that, it’ll take at least three whole days.”

“Th-That long...?”

“How do you not know how long it’ll take? You walked here yourself, didn’t you?”

“I caught up in half a day once I got to the mountains...”

I listened to the two of them as I waited for Lily to show up. I realized I was feeling somewhat restless and smiled wryly at myself. I knew she was fine, but I couldn’t calm down until I saw her face. When was she going to get here? It was about time already.

“Mana, may I say something?”

“What is it, Rose?”

“Sorry for interrupting your conversation. I have something I would like to ask Iino... Oh.”

Rose stopped in the middle of speaking. We had settled down by a narrow part of the river. The thickets on the other side rustled as a girl with flaxen hair appeared.

“Lily.”

I spoke her name and she gave me a glowing smile. Lily looked me over from top to bottom, then let out a relieved sigh. She then returned my greeting.

“Master.”

Her voice was affectionate and filled with an earnest longing. We had only been separated for a short while, but a great sense of reassurance spread through my heart. There was likely a part of me that didn’t want to spend a single moment apart from her. These emotions suddenly showed on my face, and I once more realized that I’d fallen in love with her. She was my cute, precious Lily...and there was a boorish lump of metal sticking out of her eye.

“Huh?”

A sword was jutting through the back of her skull. The blade had pulverized her eyeball, and its sharp tip pointed toward me. My thoughts came to an utter halt.

“What...?”

I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. What had just happened...?

“Ah.”

Lily mumbled and staggered. Her mimicked brain was destroyed. Something yanked the sword back out. I remained baffled as I watched her body crumple to the ground. Her head started reforming right away, but her mimicked nervous system had taken severe damage, so Lily lost consciousness and couldn’t get back up.

She didn’t even know what had happened to her own body. I didn’t know either. If I had to describe exactly what I was seeing, I suppose I would say it was a calamity in the shape of a boy.

“I finally got you back, Miho.”

The boy smiled and spoke in such an innocent voice that one would never think he was the assailant. He had a childish look and an impish air about him. At first glance, his tattered clothing covered by a mantle gave him a seedy look. However, upon closer inspection, his torn clothing was the same as my school uniform, and the sword he wielded was a work of art inlaid with multiple gems.

Lily’s fluids trickled down the tip of his blade and fell to the ground. His eyes had an aberrant glitter to them as he watched it drip. He looked so dangerous that anyone who came across him in the middle of the night would avert their face and pretend not to notice him.

He waited for Lily’s mimicry to retake its shape, then waved his empty hand. Chains came out of his tattered cuff with a clang. The chains, decorated with minute ornaments, writhed about like snakes and bound Lily in a flash. The boy flicked his wrist, tugging on the chains and bringing Lily toward him.

“I’ll protect you properly from now on, Miho.”

He hugged the unconscious girl with care, as if handling something extremely fragile.

“It can’t be... You’re...” Katou muttered hoarsely.

“Wh-What are you doing here, Takaya?!” Iino yelled in agitation.

That was the name of Mizushima Miho’s childhood friend, Takaya Jun. The pitiful boy who hadn’t been able to protect the girl dearest to him now bared his fangs at us.