Chapter 35
“Only if I’m in trouble—only if I have to be—only then will Senior Ian……”
As Seria’s muttering continued, the light in her eyes gradually faded. The sight of such a lovely girl repeating similar words like an enchanted doll was chilling in itself.
It was around then that I sensed an indefinable sense of danger.
It could have been called a kind of instinct. A voice from somewhere deep inside me, telling me that I had to stop her.
I instinctively called her name.
“Uh, um… Well, I suppose that’s true, but, Seria—are you all right?”
“Ah, ah, ah! Y-yes! Y-yes! W-what was I saying?”
Only then did Seria abruptly come to her senses. Thinking she had been rude, she fidgeted and lowered her gaze.
It seemed she had done it without realizing. Had she not fully come out of her meditation yet?
That happened sometimes. The more deeply one became immersed in meditation, the harder it was to return to reality.
I shook my head as though it were nothing.
“Nothing, really. You were just repeating what I said, weren’t you? Haven’t you fully come out of your meditation yet?”
“……W-was I?”
Perhaps embarrassed by how vacant she had seemed, Seria’s face flushed again. Her emotions were especially easy to read today. Usually, I had to look closely to understand what she was feeling.
That was probably thanks to how much closer Seria and I had become. Thinking that, I lightly patted her shoulder.
“For now, let’s swing our swords a little. I don’t think I’ve fully woken up either. I feel a yawn coming on……”
Then I let out an exaggerated yawn. I wanted Seria to feel a little less embarrassed. Perhaps realizing my intention, a gentle light softened her eyes as she gazed at me.
As though she could not help it, she quietly opened her mouth.
Her voice was warm. Though the qualifier ‘for her’ still had to be added.
“……Yes, Senior.”
After that, Seria was back to her usual self.
As though what she had shown moments earlier had been a lie, Seria devoted herself to training with her usual solemn, cold expression.
Her swordsmanship was concise and true to the fundamentals, no matter how many times I watched it. That probably meant she had trained for a very long time. Recently, I had also been gradually increasing my own training hours, following her example.
Even so, our styles were polar opposites. While I enjoyed tricks and unorthodox moves, Seria often adhered to the orthodox form itself.
Some might have pointed to that as a weakness, but the orthodox style was a compilation of the swordsmanship considered most suitable over countless generations. Naturally, even among swordsmen of the same level, those who adhered faithfully to the fundamentals tended to be quite strong.
It was simply difficult to remain so faithful to the fundamentals. Everyone had their own innate disposition, and following the fundamentals exactly meant completely suppressing it.
Seria was demonstrating the simplest way to do that right now.
Train until the muscles remember, until it is carved into the unconscious, and drill the swordsmanship into yourself.
It was a terrifying amount of effort. Her resolve went beyond seriousness; it felt almost desperate.
I suddenly remembered a conversation I had shared with Seria not long ago.
On the day her mother was driven out, Seria said that her half-sister had told her these words.
‘If you fail to prove your usefulness too, you’ll end up like that.’
What had Seria thought as she watched her mother reach toward her daughter while howling and being trampled underfoot, as she watched everything she had being dragged away in misery?
It seemed certain that the memory of that day had instilled some kind of emotion in Seria. Perhaps that was why she had swung her sword so desperately all this time.
Sometimes, a memory pins a person in place like a curse.
From that day on, life becomes shackled and happiness becomes a luxury, as though one can never escape that place. I could only pray.
I prayed that the memory of that day had not been such a terrible nightmare for Seria.
But no matter how much I thought about it, I could only worry. Experiencing something like that in childhood would almost certainly leave a serious emotional wound.
Seria had not brought it up with me since then, however. So unless it was truly time to speak of it, I decided not to bring it up either.
Looking into someone’s innermost memories carried that much responsibility. I still could not be certain that I had the right to do so.
That was when I discovered one more strange thing about Seria.
Seria held her breath and infused her sword with aura, but its color was subtly different from before.
In the past, a clear blue aura had formed. Now, however, it had darkened slightly. It was almost like a somewhat brighter indigo.
Aura represented a swordsman’s mental image. Most swordsmen created a mana core in their bodies while fixing their mental image, so it was rare for the color to change.
Even when it did change, it usually happened slowly over a long period. Since the color of one’s aura was practically a manifestation of one’s mental image, it was an extremely important matter to swordsmen.
Once they reached the ranks of the masters known as Sword Experts, each swordsman’s aura developed distinct properties, and those properties differed according to its color.
Swordsmen called this their ‘unique color.’ If there were thousands of Sword Experts, one had to assume there were thousands of aura colors as well. That was why an aura’s color was sometimes treated like a swordsman’s fingerprint.
But such an important color had changed, so I could not help feeling flustered. I immediately called Seria.
“……Um, Seria?”
“Yes, Senior?”
Seria tilted her head and looked at me as though wondering what the problem was.
There did not seem to be even a trace of doubt or fear on her innocent, guileless face. So I asked, even more puzzled,
“Your aura’s color seems to be different.”
“Ah……”
Only then did Seria seem to notice. She opened her eyes wide and stared at the color of her own aura.
Yet even after noticing such a significant change, Seria’s reaction was utterly matter-of-fact.
“……I suppose so.”
“‘I suppose so’? Do you realize how serious this is?!”
I groaned as I tried to reason out why Seria’s unique color had changed.
Had anything changed in her recently? If her mental image had changed, there had to have been an extremely decisive shift in her mind. Not merely at the level of her outward consciousness, but something powerful enough to affect the unconsciousness deep within her.
It had only darkened slightly, but even a change that small required a shock on the level of altering one’s way of thinking or values.
The higher one climbed, the more important one’s mental image became. I had heard that Seria had barely set foot in the realm of Sword Experts, so a change in her mental image could have had numerous effects on her combat style and existing swordsmanship.
That was why I was so bewildered by Seria’s reaction. Her swordsmanship remained the same, yet only the color of her aura had changed?
Despite my reaction, Seria smiled faintly with her eyes as though it were nothing important. That only left me even more flustered.
It was the first time I had ever seen her smile with her eyes.
“There’s no problem I can feel at the moment, so please don’t worry, Senior Ian. I’ve only just reached the Expert realm, so the properties of my aura haven’t even awakened yet.”
Seeing that beautiful face smile with its eyes, I was a man, after all, and could not help feeling my heart tremble a little. It felt like I had been ambushed. I avoided her gaze for no reason and cleared my throat.
“Ahem, ahem… E-even so, your aura’s color has changed, so you should be more worried. Wait, come to think of it……”
Recent events flashed through my mind.
Seria holding back her tears.
Could it be that her heart had changed because the memory of her mother had been trampled upon? Thinking that, I felt my mood grow a little heavier.
I might only reopen her wounds. After hesitating for a moment, I finally opened my mouth with a sigh.
“Seria, about… your mother.”
Perhaps she had not expected me to bring it up, because Seria opened her eyes wide in surprise.
Then her gaze turned toward the floor, and the strength drained from her body.
Her eyes were lonely and desolate. She pressed her lips tightly together.
I carefully asked her in return,
“……Are you all right?”
“I’d like to say yes, but……”
Seria shook her head with a bitter look in her eyes.
Of course. She had suffered such a terrible wound in childhood. It would have been a lie to say it had not left a scar. Recently, dozens, even hundreds, of people had rushed in and probed at that very spot.
It would have been strange if the wound had not festered. My mood grew heavy as well.
“There’d be no point lying to Senior Ian… No, truthfully, I’m having a hard time.”
“So learning the sword was……”
“It was something that happened after that day.”
As expected. If that was the case, it made sense that the color of her aura had changed. It was a problem close to the very source of why she had taken up the sword. If that wound had been aggravated, something like this could happen.
I did not bother adding that deduction aloud. This was Seria’s turn to speak.
“Do you remember what my sister said to me that day, Senior Ian?”
“Yes.”
I nodded, breathing out as though expelling a breath caught in my throat.
“I remember what she said.”
“That was what I thought then. ‘Ah, if I want to survive too, I have to prove my usefulness.’ Being thrown out of one’s home at that age feels like that, doesn’t it?”
My head sank in silence. In truth, I did not know. Although I had undergone harsh training since childhood, my family had fundamentally been harmonious.
I had grown up loved, so there was no way I could understand the feelings of someone who had not been loved.
That wound, that emptiness, and every struggle of the girl who had to grit her teeth and survive alone at that age.
I did not know. But rather than say so, I chose silence. It meant I was trying my best to empathize with her feelings.
Seria seemed busy sorting through her memories of the past. Her sword slowly rose toward the sky. The tip of the blade flashed in the sunlight.
“I’ve proven myself with the sword. Because without the surname ‘Yurdina,’ I’m nothing.”
“You’re already an excellent swordswoman even without being a Yurdina.”
“Though I’m not as good as Yurdina’s finest swordsmen.”
Through that exchange, I finally began to understand Seria’s feelings a little better.
My mouth opened again. By then, my voice had grown considerably calmer.
“……So you wanted to defeat your sister? To prove to your family that there was no Yurdina better than you?”
“No, it’s a little different.”
Several emotions showed in Seria’s eyes as she said that.
Faint fear, expectation, and resolve.
“I want to prove it to myself, not to my family.”
I remained silent as I looked at Seria.
Why did that strong, haughty-looking girl seem so weak and unstable?
The expression ‘a glass ornament’ suited her perfectly. She was beautiful and delicate, yet seemed as though she might shatter if touched, making it impossible for me to relax.
“That I was no longer the little girl who could only watch and cry as she had that day.”
That was why.
That was why I could not help worrying about her so much.
I genuinely wanted her to achieve what she sought.
Training ended a little early that day. Seria and I spent quite a long time talking, however. By the time we finished training, the warmth had returned to her eyes.
It was fortunate. That was why I did not know.
I did not know what flaw my tentative conclusion—that her unique color had changed because of her mother’s memories—contained.
If that had been the case, it would have changed while the bullying was at its height. And Seria would not have acted as though she had noticed it for the first time today.
Then there was only one answer. From the previous day through dawn that morning, she had experienced some intense emotional change.
But at the time, I did not know that. And perhaps I would remain unaware for quite some time afterward.
*
When Seria and I left the forest, the day was bright and clear.
The sun, now fully awake, spread its golden blessing evenly across the earth. The clear sunlight dazzled me, so I narrowed my eyes and raised a hand to shade them.
It was time to part ways with Seria. I usually ate breakfast with Celine or Reto.
Today, however, Seria once again lingered by my side, fidgeting. The moment I took a step, I felt a firm tug pulling me back.
My startled gaze turned toward Seria. At some point, she had taken hold of the hem of my clothes. When my puzzled gaze landed on her, Seria seemed to realize it only then.
She released my sleeve with a start. Her face began to flush.
“I-I-I… S-Senior Ian. This, um, th-that is… ugh… I mean……”
Judging by the way she even bit her tongue again, she must have been terribly flustered. I found the sight so cute that I chuckled.
“What, do you want to stay together a little longer?”
“Th-that……”
She waved her hands in embarrassment at my blunt question, then finally seemed to give up and lowered her head. A voice heated by shame slipped from her lips.
“……Yes.”
Seria seemed to be surprisingly prone to loneliness. I had assumed that spending so much time alone would have made her more individualistic, but perhaps the opposite was true. Now that she had made her first friend, being alone felt even lonelier.
It was not as though she had to eat breakfast with Celine or Reto. Although we implicitly gathered at certain times, we often skipped it if someone had a bad hangover.
In that case, eating with Seria would not be so bad. I was also worried about whether the bullying had really stopped.
I was just about to nod when—
“Ah, Ian… no, useless oppa!”
Someone called out from far away and waved. The bright smile and lively energy were palpable even from a distance.
It was Celine. She waved at me with a delighted expression, then, perhaps remembering what had happened yesterday, called out to me while pretending to sulk.
‘Useless oppa’? Wasn’t that going too far? I looked at Celine in disbelief.
Seria flinched and stiffened.
Celine was the same. She had been approaching me with her characteristic quick, pattering steps, but when she realized who was standing beside me, her expression crumpled into a deep frown.
Then she gave Seria a cold look, but soon seemed to decide to ignore her as usual and smiled at me again.
Though that smile did look slightly annoyed.
She smacked my back several times with her palm in greeting. But her strength was no joke, and I involuntarily let out a series of strangled breaths.
“Ghk, ghk! H-hey, Celine……”
“What a coincidence, huh? A complete coincidence, Ian oppa. You’re going to eat now, right?”
I fell silent for a moment at her words. I had been planning to, and was just about to suggest that Seria and I go eat breakfast.
However, in this situation, it felt awkward to make the suggestion with Seria so clearly uncomfortable at Celine’s blatant display of dislike.
Seria looked tense. Since Celine had made her dislike so apparent, it must have been difficult for someone as inexperienced with interpersonal relationships as Seria to judge the proper distance. She could not simply ignore Celine and live as though she did not exist, especially since Celine had so many points of contact with me.
In the end, I decided to make Seria feel a little more at ease. I sighed in surrender.
“……Uh, I was planning to.”
“C’mon, c’mon. Let’s hurry, then~ Half of Ian oppa’s life is mine anyway, right?”
What was that supposed to mean? I felt increasingly uncomfortable with Celine’s strange choice of words today, but soon let out a hollow laugh and decided to follow her as she dragged me away.
Yes, that was what I was going to do.
If I hadn’t once again felt someone tugging on my sleeve.
The source of that force was Seria.
Celine must have felt it too and stopped short. Her ocher eyes turned toward the person behind her. Seria stood there, still gripping my sleeve.
Seria was no longer the girl who had stiffened nervously whenever she saw Celine and fidgeted helplessly. I did not know what emotional change had taken place in the meantime, but her eyes were so calm that they almost felt icy.
Though her body still trembled slightly.
For the first time that day, blue eyes and ocher eyes collided.
And at that moment, I had the illusion that the temperature around us had dropped several degrees.
At least, that was how it felt to me.
The atmosphere felt as though something serious was about to happen.