Chapter 191 – Confession (1)
Startled by the sound of her brother taking a spectacular tumble, Lia stopped in her tracks.
Edan seemed to have twisted his ankle and groaned as he pushed his upper body upright.
Drenched in the filthy water from the bucket he had been carrying, he urgently called out to Lia as she tried to put distance between them again.
“Why did you come back here? Did something happen?”
Despite being unable to move because of his injured leg, Edan asked Lia with genuine concern.
“What would you like me to do?”
Ratel spoke to Lia, who was still hesitating at the foot of the stairs.
“If you’re worried, I can do more than sprain it. I can break it outright.”
At his question of whether injuring just one leg was still insufficient, Lia flinched before taking a deep breath.
“No, that’s enough. I have something I need to tell my brother anyway.”
Edan’s expression turned ominous as he watched Ratel casually contemplate whether to break his leg or merely sprain it.
“Right, you were always that kind of bastard. Every last one of you……”
Only then remembering Ratel’s sandpaper-like abrasiveness, Edan glared at us.
Being lumped together with Ratel and his dog-like personality was unpleasant, but I also had something I wanted to test on Edan.
“If you’ve made up your mind, stop sitting there sprawled on the floor and show us the way.”
Edan looked momentarily offended, but when our eyes met, he clamped his mouth shut and led us upstairs.
Perhaps he had enough sense to understand the situation, because Edan guided us to the largest and most secluded room.
Jing propped my body against the headboard before settling down on the floor.
Ratel leaned against the door, while Lia stood quite far away from Edan, beside the bed across from the one where I sat.
“……Did you come back?”
Having lost any chance of sitting down after being drenched in dirty mop water, Edan stood awkwardly and asked what he had been most curious about.
But instead of answering him, Lia spoke.
“Did you truly not know what happened to the people who entered to Limis?”
Edan frowned slightly at not receiving the answer he wanted, but faithfully answered Lia’s question.
“What are you talking about? The winners of Lucha receive the temple’s blessing and then leave to travel wherever they want.”
Lia, who had been studying Edan’s face with a tense expression, finally released a somewhat relieved sigh.
“……Is that really all you know?”
Even at this final question before she relinquished her suspicions, Edan failed to understand Lia and furrowed his brow.
Lia continued with an expression that suggested she did not know whether she should be relieved.
“Listen carefully. There is no blessing.”
Edan’s eyes widened at the shocking truth Lia revealed.
“W-What do you……”
“I’m not finished yet. Be quiet and listen, Brother.”
Lia restrained Edan when he nearly jumped in shock, then calmly continued.
“Everyone from the village is dead. To be precise, they were eaten. The temple in Limis summoned us there only because it wanted to use us as food.”
This was clearly far more serious than anything Edan had anticipated.
Otherwise, his mouth would not have been hanging open as though his jaw had come loose.
“Food? What do you mean, food?”
Edan asked after barely managing to follow the story.
“The temple’s holy relic was devouring people. The villagers had been used as its food all this time.”
Lia calmly explained to Edan everything that had happened at the temple in Limis and in the forest.
After finishing with a sigh, she fixed Edan with a piercing stare.
“You truly knew nothing? Was it really just a coincidence that you never left for Limis whenever you won?”
“……That’s not it. I truly stayed in the village because of you.”
“Don’t say it was because of me again.”
Edan’s lips tightened briefly at Lia’s fierce response before he spoke again.
“Fine, it was because of me. I must have lost my mind for a while.”
When Edan readily corrected himself, Lia narrowed her eyes in puzzlement.
“After you left and I was alone, my eyes finally opened a little. Being alone wasn’t as terrible as I thought.”
The same venom as before could no longer be found on Edan’s face as he spoke.
He looked as though he had let go of everything. Then, perhaps realizing he had strayed from the subject, he shook his head and continued.
“But what you’re saying……is honestly difficult to believe. That the temple would do something like that—no, even the idea that something like that happened is hard to believe. You’re too……young and know too little of the world for me to believe everything you say.”
After hesitating, Edan offered that timid response and looked between Lia and us.
It was precisely the answer Ratel had expected and Lia had feared, causing Lia to press her lips together tightly.
Ratel did not appear disappointed in the slightest.
And I was a little irritated.
I was slightly irritated by the effort it took to raise my heavy body.
I was far more irritated that I was doing it to listen to this idiot, who firmly believed that he had somehow grown as a person.
“That’s right. Lia got those wounds because she fell over on her own, and I’m not truly exhausted either. I’m only acting. I drained a great deal of blood from my body to make my face look pale. We returned to this village after leaving it solely to cause trouble for the villagers and you. After all, we have nothing better to do and more time than we know what to do with.”
“What did you say?”
Apparently displeased that I had interrupted the conversation, Edan glared at me.
However, his momentum quickly faded as he seemed to recall what had happened on the day of the Lucha tournament.
“Why? Isn’t that the answer you wanted? I merely repeated exactly what you were saying.”
“I’m not trying to trade childish remarks with you. Don’t you understand that this is a matter where we must properly determine what is right and wrong?”
He pretended to be logical, but he still wanted reality to conform to what he wished to believe.
“That’s why I told you exactly what you wanted to hear. I repeated what you consider to be right, so why are you getting angry?”
Edan finally closed his mouth.
That was a relief.
I did not want to hear his voice anymore.
“You know Lia isn’t stupid enough to be unable to distinguish right from wrong, yet you still seem to want your sister to be mistaken.”
* * *
Perhaps struck where it hurt most, Edan’s face turned red.
“If you want to be ready to listen to others, fix that presumptuous greed of yours first. Don’t pretend to listen while planning to manipulate everything however you please.”
Bang!
He hurled the mop in his hand onto the floor and stormed out through the door.
A moment later, the sound of him roughly stumbling down the stairs followed.
No wonder his inn had no guests if that was how he treated his customers.
“……Ran seems exceptionally skilled at prodding people where it hurts.”
Unable to tear her gaze away from the door Edan had thrown open, Lia muttered blankly.
Suppressing the comment that the books I had grown up reading were somewhat unusual, I lowered myself completely onto the stiff bed.
“May I sleep now? I feel as though I might die a little if I don’t rest immediately.”
I meant it.
Jing’s back, which had carried me here out of kindness, was too hard for me to rest comfortably against, and even if I fell asleep immediately, a few hours would not be enough.
Therefore, I was closing my eyes here because I was utterly exhausted.
It was most certainly not because I wanted to avoid a certain golden-eyed person who was staring holes through me.
“He really fell asleep.”
Lia waved her hand several times over Ran’s pale face and closed eyes, then turned her gaze toward the door Edan had stormed through.
“I’ll go after my brother. It would be troublesome if he went around carelessly telling everyone that he saw us.”
“Do that. We’ll wait for you upstairs.”
After watching Lia nod once and leave the room, Jing turned his gaze toward Ratel.
“What are you still doing here?”
“I don’t think that idiot poses enough of a threat for me to follow her. Besides, we already crippled one of his legs. Have you forgotten that we did it together?”
“Crippled? We merely roughed him up a little.”
After correcting Jing’s extreme choice of words, he looked at Ratel with a serious expression.
“What I meant was, why are you still in this room instead of leaving? There are plenty of empty rooms outside.”
Under Jing’s suspicious gaze, Ratel tilted his head to one side.
“Then why are you still here, Jing? There are plenty of empty rooms outside.”
“I’ll follow once you leave, so there’s no need to concern yourself with me.”
“Anyone listening would think I intended to assassinate Ran.”
“You did look as though you wanted to kill someone.”
“When did I ever……”
“When Lord Ran first displayed his ability.”
Ratel fell silent at Jing’s confident answer.
He was aware that he had been shaken briefly, but he had not realized Jing had noticed that fleeting moment.
The fact that Jing seemed to have noticed just how deeply his heart had been shaken only made him feel worse.
Ratel readily acknowledged his mistake and turned toward Ran, who had fallen asleep as though he had lost consciousness.
“I’m not planning to kill him, so you don’t need to worry.”
“I already know that without you saying it. If it is something the two of you must resolve, then it is indeed for the two of you to resolve.”
Ratel looked at Jing in puzzlement, having expected him to launch into a lengthy lecture about saying something so alarming.
“You’re telling us to resolve it ourselves while insisting on keeping Jing between us? Your words and actions don’t match.”
“One side is clearly avoiding the matter while the other is pursuing it. How could I simply stand by and watch?”
Jing sighed and pointed toward the sleeping Ran.
“I’m saying this because I know your habits. Be careful. It is better to warn you beforehand than to have you say something you will regret. Whether you like it or not, you two will be seeing each other for a long time.”
Ultimately, he was merely telling Ratel not to start a pointless fight and to watch his words, but the same message could feel entirely different depending on how it was expressed.
Ratel studied Jing’s face, which showed genuine concern for him, before turning his head away.
“I only have something to ask him. The Prince has probably prepared himself to explain it to me as well. So what you’re worried……about won’t happen.”
The corners of Jing’s lips rose at the stiff response.
“That is a relief. This old heart has difficulty enduring the sight of two youngsters fighting.”
Ratel watched his shameless performance with a cold expression before abruptly turning his head toward the door.
The playfulness vanished from Jing’s face as well.
“It seems you can postpone worrying about your heart.”
Ratel opened the door, stepped into the corridor, and approached the window set into the wall.
His eyes turned cold as he watched Edan leave the building below.
“He was even more foolish than I remembered. We should follow him for now.”
After confirming Edan’s movements alongside Ratel, Jing pulled up his robe’s hood and headed toward the stairs.
Ratel also saw Lia run outside after Edan, then moved away from the window and checked the room where Ran lay sleeping one final time.
Then he closed the door to the room from which the sound of steady breathing emerged.
* * *
The sound of Ratel’s footsteps receded beyond the door.
Once they had completely faded and the corridor had fallen silent, the fabric over Ran’s calmly rising and falling chest stirred.
A tiny squirrel’s face soon emerged from within.
After confirming that no one else was present, El cautiously placed a paw on the chest of the deeply sleeping Ran.
Then he whispered softly.
“I know you are awake, child. Open your eyes at once. You must keep the promise you made to me.”
As though responding to the quiet whisper, the tightly shut eyelids opened, revealing black eyes.
* * *
Thinking that I seemed to see this furry face whenever I opened my eyes these days, I sat up.
Perhaps because I had used my power several times while escaping the island, my body was still stiff. El climbed down over me and, apparently excited about something, scurried repeatedly from my knees to my shoulder while examining my face.
“My joints ache, so stay still.”
“What? Are you still in a great deal of pain? Has it not already been quite some time since we left the island?”
The creature abruptly stopped and transformed.
In an instant, he returned to the form of a young imperial prince and reached toward me with concern in his voice.
I twisted aside before his small hand could touch my shoulder.
Why was he suddenly acting like this?
I stiffened at the unfamiliar concern that suited neither of us. El also seemed to realize that he had done something uncharacteristic, because he cleared his throat and backed away.
“Ahem…… How can a body that has existed for so little time be so frail? Will you even be capable of keeping your promise to me? You must take thorough care of your health. Yes, indeed.”
I had no idea why he had suddenly begun spouting such lunacy, but one thing was certain.
I did not welcome his concern.
“Right, the promise. I’m not the kind of person who passes my promises on to someone else, unlike a certain someone.”
I spoke as though probing him and studied his face.
His complexion turned deathly pale, and the corners of his mouth, which had been raised, became rigid.
His distress was so obvious that it almost inspired pity, but the reaction I had been waiting for did not come.
Not a single drop of blood flowed from his mouth.
As expected of someone who had deceived people for a thousand years and become a god, he must have fooled even me completely.
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