episode_0045

Donarr and Shalby, unable to get much information from Trus due to Pan’s interference, watched the carriage where Trus was imprisoned and talked.

“What do we do now? That bastard seems determined to keep resisting.”

Shalby clicked his tongue, watching Pan loitering nearby despite Oudur being an official guard.

Pan was openly acting slightly menacing towards people approaching the area to drive them away, so not even an ant could be seen near the carriage, where few people passed by to begin with.

“We can’t do anything else. We’ll have to give up on hearing Trus’s story. And if he really did it, we need to consider the possibility that he might lie.”

“That may be true, but.”

Shalby furiously scratched the back of his head out of frustration.

It was a truly meaningless action because of the helmet he was wearing, though.

Donarr watched him and then asked.

“Do you think Trus isn’t the culprit?”

“Huh? What are you suddenly talking about?”

“No, I was quite close with him, but you didn’t seem to have much conversation. It’s just weird that you’d bring something like this up first.”

He crossed his arms and pondered, seemingly deep in thought at Donarr’s words.

“Now that I think about it, you’re right?”

“Hey, are you saying you didn’t realize that yourself?”

When he said that incredulously, Shalby chuckled.

“Of course not. It’s just… what do you call it? An occupational hazard. You remember I often handled the transport of prisoners among the prison guards, right?”

“No.”

“Ugh. You thick-headed bastard.”

Shalby, who had hit the back of Donarr’s head at his firm denial, took a moment to inhale before continuing.

“Anyway, whether they’re guilty or innocent, I only feel satisfied when there’s evidence.”

Shalby still remembered.

Even though most of the prisoners he escorted claimed innocence and many provided evidence, even without evidence, they were sentenced and imprisoned or effectively given a death sentence based on the claim of just one person.

In truth, back then, powerless and busy just trying to live, he had lived like a machine, acting according to their orders.

At times, the opposite was also true.

In fact, those who committed truly heinous crimes often got off with trivial excuses.

As a prison guard, he had always lived watching those who were branded as criminals.

Even when the conscience he had crumpled deep in his chest stabbed him and left him in tatters, he pretended not to know even though he knew, and pretended not to have feelings even though he did, all for the sake of survival.

At times like that, he couldn’t be more grateful for his armor and helmet, which always felt stuffy.

Because by simply lowering his visor and hiding his face, he could look like everyone else and appear like an emotionless steel doll.

“Oudur is probably the same way as me.”

“Oudur, too?”

“That guy, he’s a former prison guard, just like me.”

He chided Donarr, asking why else Oudur would be guarding Trus.

“Anyway, I really didn’t want to use this method. But since this is all that’s left, I guess we have no choice.”

“What? There was another method?”

Donarr began stretching, saying that since he was the same way, why hadn’t Shalby told him sooner?

Shalby stopped him.

“First off, we’re not beating up Pan and charging in. Stop stretching.”

“We weren’t?”

“Yeah, what we need right now is objective information.”

Even if they charged in and got information from Trus like that, it would obviously end up being a subjective story and could only be used for reference.

It’s not like there’s any concrete evidence left, either.

If that’s the case, there’s nothing else to do but gather more varied stories and find an answer as close to the truth as possible.

“We’ve heard the suspect’s opinion. Shouldn’t we hear the victim’s opinion too?”

“…Shalby, are you in your right mind?”

As Donarr’s expression turned serious, Shalby sighed.

“I know perfectly well what I just said.”

When Shalby led Donarr away, saying he would take all responsibility in case of trouble.

Donarr grabbed his shoulder.

“No, that guy is my friend, after all. If we’re going to take responsibility, we should take it together.”

“Ha, you idiot.”

The place they arrived at was Trus’s carriage, where Belka and Asher were still staying.

“So you came to find us?”

“Yes.”

Currently, they were kneeling in front of Asher and Belka.

“Get out right now! Are you suspecting Belka?!”

Of course, they had expected this reaction, but they could only give a bitter smile at Asher’s momentum, which looked like he was about to devour them.

They had come prepared to be hated because of this, but being hated by a child was quite a heartbreaking thing for them.

In the end, just as they thought that asking any more would only reopen wounds and were about to stand up.

“Asher, it’s alright.”

The girl, Belka, who had been covering her face with a mask and quietly keeping her mouth shut like a doll until now, opened her mouth.

Their admiration for her beautiful voice lasted only a moment before they looked at the girl, struck by the words contained in that voice.

“But Belka, if you’re just saying it’s okay again.”

“This time is different. They just want the truth.”

The girl stopped Asher, who was trying to drive them away, and asked them.

“What kind of answer do you want?”

At her question, Donarr swallowed and asked.

“Are you absolutely sure that Trus is the one who did that to you?”

Shalby quietly waited for the girl’s answer beside Donarr.

They were already in a situation where they had come prepared to be hated by the children.

They hoped the girl’s answer would be a definitive key.

Finally, when her mouth opened.

What was left for them was an even more ambiguous hope.

“Well, she did say it seemed to happen while she was sleeping. There’s no way she’d remember…”

Currently, Donarr was driving the lead carriage, guiding the procession.

Holding the reins of the Hildisvini, a giant creature resembling a horse, and giving signals about speed with a flag considering their stamina, a cloth stained with red sand dust was wrapped over his armor, just like the other drivers.

Even amidst the sand dust that flew up every time the Hildisvini kicked the firm sandy ground, he skillfully drove the carriage, recalling the girl’s answer.

“I don’t know if he really did that to me. All I can be sure of is the feeling that someone did something like that to this body.”

In the end, they had to leave the carriage feeling hollow.

But Donarr knew that it wasn’t over yet.

The reason was that they hadn’t actually asked Shif, who had acted as if she knew Trus was doing something and had guided him to Trus’s carriage.

But it was already time to drive the carriage, and since it was Donarr’s turn to pull the carriage this time, there was no time to ask Shif.

“Ha, this is driving me crazy.”

No, he had plenty of time to ask her the truth.

However, he couldn’t.

Even though he already had an idea of what had happened, he didn’t have the confidence to ask.

What if, just what if, what he was guessing was the truth.

How on earth was he supposed to treat Shif, and with what face could he possibly meet her?

He drove the carriage with complicated feelings.

“This is so stuffy I’m going to die. I can’t even open a window.”

Logi couldn’t even think of replying to his friend muttering such words beside him, and was absently recalling the story he had heard.

It was truly by chance that he had heard the drivers talking.

At the story of Trus dying, his confused thoughts and pounding heart simply wouldn’t stop.

Why on earth? Why would the story turn out like that?

It was then, while Logi was lost in thought.

“Oh yeah. Hey, did you guys hear the news?”

Someone exclaimed as if something just occurred to them, then said in a whispering voice as if to tell a secret story.

They pretended to check for the adults inside the carriage, but the adults were already asleep.

In fact, the carriages they rode in were assigned to each person, but the children had gathered in the carriages with their friends under the pretense of wanting to play together.

The adults found the children noisy and chaotic inside the carriages bothersome, and the clever children used the adults’ thoughts incredibly well.

Because the adults were of the mindset that it didn’t matter as long as only other adults were with them in the carriage.

They would ride in the carriages of adults who often slept due to severe motion sickness and do secret things or share stories among themselves like this.

“They say that bastard Trus committed rape.”

“What? That simple-minded uncle? Who?”

The adults seemed to have discussed keeping the news from the children, but the children already had the knack for picking up words that came from the mouths of loose-lipped adults.

“You know the new kids who arrived recently. The girl wearing the mask among them.”

“That kid? Wow, isn’t that crazy? That?”

“Still, she was obviously incredibly pretty just by looking at her, wasn’t she?”

“Then did he see her bare face? I was curious about her bare face.”

“It makes me a bit envious that that uncle did that with a kid like her.”

But Logi felt a piercing pain in his heart at the children’s words, which were spoken without any weight.

The children seemed to be hesitant about it but also appeared envious.

Because children looked up to adults, and the things they did somehow seemed cool.

So even as he felt relieved and wanted to boast a little, he felt doubtful that they could truly envy even such a thing and got goosebumps at the thought that he himself had such thoughts.

Logi remembered what he had done.

It was definitely more pleasurable than anything the boy had experienced.

But his words also came to mind.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. Now you’re an accomplice, see? If you tell anyone, you’re finished.”

He felt like he was going to vomit right away.

“I’m going to sleep for a bit.”

“What’s gotten into you? Are you sick?”

“I think so.”

Logi, who had vaguely replied to the child asking about his condition, lay down on a nearby bed and thought.

‘This is the worst.’

During the hours the sun was up, the carriage procession ran and ran without rest.

Whether someone wished for it or not, the sun slowly tilted, and eventually, at the sight of the sun setting, the carriage procession circled around as planned and slowly came to a stop.

The drivers who got down from the high driver’s seat looked around cautiously as if on guard, then knocked on or opened the carriage doors, and people who had been inside the carriages for most of the half-day came out one by one and stretched their stiff bodies.

Asher was among them.

“Huuah, I wonder if it’s okay to sleep this much during the day.”

“Motion sickness uses up a lot of stamina, after all. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

When he, who had fallen asleep to avoid motion sickness as the carriage moved, expressed concern, Belka straightened his dishevelled clothes and said.

“Still, the motion sickness wasn’t that bad today.”

As Asher said, he didn’t get severe motion sickness today.

It wasn’t that he didn’t get motion sickness at all, but the dizziness, shortness of breath, and feeling like he was going to vomit at the slightest smell had simply been limited to feeling sleepy.

“Right? It was strange. A kid who was acting like he was going to die any minute from motion sickness just yesterday.”

Shif, who had seen how much Asher suffered from motion sickness yesterday, also found his current state surprising.

The motion sickness must have been so awful that he had clung to Belka whenever the carriage moved, grimacing and asking if they couldn’t just ride horses to Lantua by themselves instead.

Fortunately, his motion sickness had weakened, but the method was a bit strange.

“It’s thanks to Belka!”

Even if his words sounded strange, Shif recalled how noticeably stable he had become simply by using the girl’s lap as a pillow when he was suffering from motion sickness.

Shif had a lot to say about the truly ambiguous and strange method, but her eyes widened at a thought that suddenly occurred to her.

She couldn’t be sure, but if her thoughts were correct, everything made sense: how these children could travel the wilderness even on horses weak to heat, how the girl became interested in the magic book, and how Asher experienced less motion sickness.

The girl’s true identity was probably…

Just as Shif thought that far.

She realized the girl’s golden gaze was looking at her.

She got a chilling feeling from the look that seemed to have read her thoughts, but the girl merely put her index finger to her lips as if to say it was a secret.

Soon the girl put on her mask and hid her face, but just as Shif was staring blankly at Belka, taken aback by the alluring sensuality felt in that action, which could not possibly belong to a young girl.

“Noona? Noona!”

“Ah, what is it?”

When Shif snapped out of it at Asher’s voice calling her, Belka was no longer looking at her.

Instead, Asher was looking at her worriedly.

“Are you getting motion sickness too, Noona?”

“Just, there was something I was thinking about.”

She mumbled a vague reply to his words and changed the subject, saying she needed to prepare dinner.

She hoped the children would eat safely inside the carriage if possible, but the trial would start after the children were sent to their carriages or put to sleep after dinner.

“Asher.”

“Uh, yes?”

Asher turned his head at the girl’s voice calling him and saw her, who had stopped walking.

Shif had already left earlier, saying she was going to prepare dinner.

“Something came up that I need to see to for a moment.”

“Are you talking about the restroom?”

“No, but it’s something necessary.”

Belka’s words were sudden, but her actions and words were familiar to Asher.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know what she was doing when she said things like that, but the girl would stubbornly refuse to tell him when she was like this.

“You’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?”

“Yes.”

As expected, Belka nodded.

Nevertheless, Asher couldn’t reproach her.

Because every time the girl said something like this, she looked as if she herself was being hurt by those words.

She only left Asher with the words to stay with the men who had come to find them, and walked off somewhere.

“Hey, hey! She’s over there.”

On the way to get dinner.

Logi flinched at his friend’s voice and looked where his friend was looking.

Sure enough, at the end of that gaze, he saw the sight of the red-dressed girl standing alone for some reason.

Too cold to evoke fire and too soft to evoke blood, a sweet and beautiful girl who simply reminded him of a red flower.

Although that dark red dress was currently covering her body, just by looking at her, Logi recalled the white, soft skin beneath and the girl’s hidden valley that had swallowed his thing.

It was at that moment, feeling his thing swelling in his pants and Logi becoming flustered.

“Huh? Hey, she looks like she’s coming this way?”

Startled by those words, he raised his head. He saw the girl slowly walking towards this direction.

At that moment, Logi felt like his eyes and the girl’s eyes had met.

Even though it couldn’t possibly be true because of the mask covering the girl’s face.

Logi got goosebumps at the feeling that the gaze seemed to be reproaching him.

Cold sweat ran down his back at the thought that that girl knew what he had done.

He wanted to deny it, but if it wasn’t true, then why was she approaching this way?

His heart began to pound rapidly at the fact that the girl was approaching him.

He couldn’t tell if the reason was excitement or guilt.

Only the thought that he had to run away filled his head.

“Hey! Where are you suddenly going?!”

He heard his friend’s voice calling him from behind, but Logi didn’t stop running.

If he didn’t run away from this spot, he felt like the girl would tell everyone what he had done right in front of them.

Running like a frightened rabbit, the place he arrived at was in front of the carriage he had ridden today.

“Damn it.”

Normally, he wouldn’t have been this out of breath.

Perhaps because he ran in a hurry, he quickly became breathless and let out ragged breaths.

Whenever it concerned that girl, Logi’s chest would violently heave.

He knew that nothing would be solved this way, yet.

“What am I doing?”

Logi suddenly felt pathetic.

The girl reproaching him and her coming towards him might just have been their paths crossing by chance.

He had jumped to conclusions and ended up running away.

If that wasn’t the case, how strange must he have looked from the girl’s perspective, running away like he was fleeing?

Since when had he been such a coward?

“Let’s go back.”

Just as he sighed and was about to go back to his friend, who must be waiting for him.

His body froze at the faint footsteps and someone’s panting breaths.

“Haah, cough cough! Why are you running away?”

Following that, when Logi turned his head at the sound of the girl’s beautiful voice, he saw the red-dressed girl, Belka, breathing heavily.

Her stamina didn’t seem to be very good, and at the sight of the girl asking him, coughing and seeming to choke on her breath even over a distance other children could easily run, Logi’s heart began to pound violently.

Excitement? Guilt? Those feelings were faint.

What was making his heart pound the hardest right now was fear.

“Th-then why did *you* follow me?”

A thought entered his mind, a ‘no way’ thought.

What if the girl approaching him wasn’t a mistake but the truth?

What if the girl looking at him was true, and even the reproach contained in that gaze was true?

His heartbeat grew so loud it felt like a large drum was beating inside his ears.

“Haah haah, there’s something I want to ask.”

But even the ever-growing sound of his heart couldn’t stop the girl’s beautiful voice from entering his ears.

“What? What on earth are you curious about!?”

Even with a little thought, Logi could tell how hysterically he had answered and how suspicious his behavior looked, but he no longer had the composure for that.

He was so afraid of the girl’s gaze, her actions, and what she would ask him.

The moment the girl opened her mouth felt incredibly slow.

He wished the girl wouldn’t open her mouth.

He was desperately hoping that what she would ask wasn’t what he was thinking.

But the girl’s mouth opened.

Like the unchanging truth that the sun rises and sets.

“Are you… not going to say anything, just like this?”

The girl’s way of speaking was somehow strange and might not have been understood, but because Logi was involved, because he was the one involved, he could understand.

Belka had said that she knew what he had done to her.

At that moment, it felt like something snapped in his head.

“Ha, haha. Hahahaha!”

It wasn’t a misunderstanding.

The thought that the girl was approaching him, the gaze he thought was looking at him, and the reproach contained within it.

This girl knew everything and came to find him.

So she was telling him to say everything.

Thinking that, he now felt like nothing mattered anymore.

He no longer wanted to know why he felt tormented like this.

“You… Ugh!?”

It seemed the girl was trying to say something more to him as he laughed like a maniac, but Logi didn’t want to hear her words anymore.

When he grabbed the girl’s wrist tightly, she couldn’t continue speaking due to the pain, but Logi dragged the girl into the carriage just like that.

He should have done this from the start.

Telling himself that since he had already done it, doing more wouldn’t change anything.