Chapter 65
There had definitely been circumstantial evidence.
The way she had suddenly closed the distance to become unusually friendly with me.
I had simply let it slide because I had roughly figured out her personality, but honestly, anyone looking at it would have found her behavior suspicious in the extreme.
What had remained a tiny question in the back of my mind had just been confirmed by that reaction.
It was likely that not only I, but Mist and Bellias as well, had noticed Ariel's unusual reaction.
I had deliberately let her see my gaze gradually shift toward Ariel as I spoke with her.
"All right, let's lay everything out, with no more hiding."
During the [Mirage] drug incident, it was remarkably suspicious that priests of the [Church of Light] had already been in the Imperial capital under the guise of volunteer work before the drug had spread.
Their immediate action in treating drug addicts.
Finally, when she first met me and left, despite knowing that I was the heir to the Nebula Duchy, she had been the one to act first to maintain our connection.
"Honestly, Ariel, even you have to admit it looks suspicious, right?"
"I have nothing to say."
Phew.
Ariel let out a deep sigh and looked at my face with a somewhat troubled expression.
"Yes. Abel, your suspicions are justified. No, if anything, it's amazing that we're having such a calm conversation at all."
"Well, that's how much I trust you."
A woman who acted without hesitation when it came to saving people.
A woman who chose to treat drug addicts even knowing it meant taking the long way around.
I had asked her why she had made that choice then, and I still remembered her answer clearly.
"You said, 'Does a person need a reason to save another person?'"
"That..."
"Those were your words back then."
That's why I trusted her.
...
Ariel quietly stared at my face as I made that assertion.
How should I describe that expression?
Trouble, wistfulness, and fear?
Why was she looking at me with that expression?
"Yes, I'll tell you..."
Her voice was suppressed, as though a heavy weight were pressing down on her throat.
"I am..."
What could she possibly be so afraid of?
Her hands trembled slightly, and she unconsciously licked her lips as though her mouth had gone dry. They were all physical reactions that appeared in moments of fear and tension.
"I'm a regressor."
Ariel told me mournfully.
***
Ariel squeezed her eyes shut and began biting her lips so hard they bled without realizing it.
Regression.
The miracle that had occurred when she touched a holy relic just before dying.
After Ariel returned as a child about eight years younger, the first thing she did was gather the orphans around her to survive.
Children are weak.
An obvious truth, in all times and places.
Then they had to band together.
They had to band together; only then would at least a path to survival open up.
It was also an expression of her determination not to return to that hellish count's household while once again relying on luck.
After gathering the surrounding orphans and forming a small organization among themselves, the next thing Ariel did was use her knowledge of the future to make money.
Children know nothing.
The most foolish prejudice adults held.
Ariel exploited that gap.
'Let's sell information!'
What she did was simple.
She scattered the gathered orphans throughout the city and had them drop sheets of paper containing the information they had heard at prepared locations.
Then Ariel gathered those papers in one place and selected the information worth money.
Finally, she established a route for buying and selling information through a fictional information broker who used children as messengers.
Then how did she get the paper?
Having incurred a large debt to a merchant thanks to her knowledge of the future through regression, Ariel could obtain paper as freely as she wanted.
And so time passed.
Gradually, an organization came into being—what did the Empire call it again, a family?
As such a family came into being, she gradually began to feel a strange burden.
What was a family? In other words, it was family.
But she could not find a sense of security among the other people in the family.
The disparity in mental age created by the miracle of regression.
Moreover, even actions that came naturally because she knew the future were met with suspicious looks from the other children.
Then it happened.
'This is...'
A plague.
As civilization advanced and medicine developed, the danger of infectious disease had long since subsided.
But to the poor, a plague was still akin to a disaster they could not resist.
It was a misjudgment.
A misjudgment that the infectious disease due in five years would not come because she knew the future.
Knowing that, Ariel hurried back to the hideout and began shouting that they had to leave.
The problem was that, while she knew this infectious disease was the plague that would sweep through the slums, the other children did not.
'Wait, Ariel. Why are you so scared?'
'Calm down.'
'We have to avoid it!'
'No, I mean, calm down. You're too worked up.'
'It's a plague, a plague! An epidemic!'
'...Proof?'
'What?'
'Proof.'
The child who said that looked around.
Their hideout, overflowing with the things they had built together under Ariel's leadership.
The children loved this hideout.
No, they loved it to the point of obsession.
Naturally. They had thought they would never have anything of their own, yet by joining forces, they had built a home of their own.
They were children.
They had grown up in the slums and become cunning to survive, but at heart, they were children.
One could say that the difference between children and adults was whether they endured doing things they disliked or simply refused to do them.
Ariel was an adult.
She knew both that a plague was frightening and that it was a disaster that would lay the slums to waste.
But the children around Ariel were still children.
'Where did you find that out? No, to begin with, is it even a plague?'
Children were unable to endure present inconvenience for the sake of the distant future.
From the outset, Ariel's words were riddled with holes in the children's eyes.
Where was the certainty that a plague would occur? And from what Ariel had said, the area where the plague had broken out was the opposite of where they lived.
'Wouldn't it at least spread quickly through the city?'
The children knew how frightening a plague was, too.
So they also knew that the city would not simply let the plague spread.
If they listened only to Ariel, left the hideout they had built, and fled elsewhere?
Then it was obvious that this hideout would fall into someone else's hands.
It was so obvious that it needed no explanation.
'Ah...'
Ariel noticed what the children were thinking and squeezed her eyes shut.
Yes. From a common-sense perspective, the children had a point.
The problem was that the city intended to delay beginning treatment for the plague as long as possible.
It was a fraud.
A fraud to unleash a controllable plague using corrupted dark magic, then receive aid money from other countries and consolation money from the Holy Kingdom.
'No, no...'
How could she explain this?
That the person in power in this city was a madman?
That he was a madman who had unleashed an infectious disease to stage a show for aid money, consolation payments, and various forms of support?
But how could she expose that?
Her heart grew frantic.
In her desperation, Ariel ended up making a somewhat impulsive choice.
'I... I'm... a regressor...'
Had becoming physically younger made her mentally younger too?
Even now, she knew it had been far too impulsive.
But at the time, Ariel, barely nine, had no room to think about that.
If she couldn't stop it now, everyone here would die.
A miserable death.
Moreover, a wretched death destined to occupy only a short paragraph in a newspaper about the slums suffering irreparable damage after the plague spread.
Ariel could never accept that death.
'The leader of this city is a madman! He is! He's using dark magic to cause a plague!'
'...'
'Please, please! Believe me! You all know I sometimes act strange, right? It's because I regressed.'
It couldn't be.
She had gathered the children merely to survive, but even so, Ariel regarded this family as her real family.
Perhaps it was loneliness.
Before her regression, Ariel had been abused in the count's household and met a miserable end with no one around her.
Because she knew loneliness, the warmth at her side was precious beyond words.
Precious enough that she considered the children she had lived with for only about a year her family.
But.
Zzt.
The price of the miracle called regression erupted from a place she could never have imagined.
'What, was it a joke?'
'What?'
'Good grief, you don't joke about something like that...'
What were they talking about?
'Sigh...'
The side effect of regression.
'So you did this stupid thing to motivate us?'
The side effect that, if she disclosed her regression or anything related to it, caused the listener to hear it distorted.
'Ariel, I'm sorry about Victor's death too.'
Victor.
Because they couldn't get medicine.
Their own family member, whom Ariel and the children had buried themselves.
Why was that child's name suddenly coming up?
'But this isn't right. Ariel, pull yourself together. You're our boss.'
A chill.
Goosebumps rose.
It was the children's gazes, which were fixed on her with concern after hearing her words distorted.
.
.
.
Fortunately, they managed to avoid the threat of the plague.
Thanks to quickly realizing that, although information about regression and related matters was heard in distorted form, she could still guide how it was interpreted.
As time passed, she came to understand the side effects of regression more clearly.
Words, pictures, writing. All of it became distorted.
Sending thoughts through telepathy magic was also subject to distortion, as was any act of conveying information.
The price of writing down the miracle called regression.
That was what Ariel thought.
...
"..."
Ariel quietly looked at Abel, who said nothing.
In truth, Ariel had been reluctant to reveal that she was a regressor.
It wasn't that she felt an aversion to divulging a secret.
She simply hated that she instinctively felt a sense of distance from people who heard even her secrets in distorted form.
That was why she had been even more reluctant to tell Abel.
She hated the thought of an unconscious distance growing between her and someone with whom she had maintained a friendship of sorts and whom she could consider a friend.
"Hmm..."
With the feelings of a prisoner awaiting a death sentence, Ariel watched Abel slowly open his mouth.
"So."
"..."
"You're a regressor, right?"
...?
"Pardon?"
What had he just said?
"Huh? You said you're a regressor?"
...The side effect isn't taking effect?
Thump.
Ariel's heart began pounding violently when she realized that fact.