Ch.51Sky of Sorrow (2)

Scritch.

I sifted through the snow pile beneath the tombstone. The process of removing the snow was performed slowly, almost reverently, as if I had forgotten the cold.

Despite this, since the snow hadn’t accumulated thickly, the damp earth soon revealed its bare self.

I hesitated many times.

I also clenched and unclenched my fists in agony.

It took an extremely long time to shake off my hesitation.

Thud.

Eventually, having steeled my resolve, I placed my hand on the ground. Then, curling my hand like a rake, I began to dig up the soil beneath the tombstone.

“Ugh… hnngh…”

I was digging up the grave of someone who had found peace. I was destroying the resting place of Rodrick, whom I had considered a father, by my own hands.

An unforgivable sin according to the Empire’s customs. I desecrated Rodrick’s grave, betraying all human decency.

“Sorry… I’m sorry… Rodrick…”

With each handful of soil I dug up, memories of the past flashed before my eyes. The days when the Pinwheel Mercenary Group was still intact, when I felt warmth in those mundane days—they came to me like visions.

[Hey, everything else is fine, but why is the mercenary group called Pinwheel? It’s childish, makes us look weak.]

He complained after telling me to name the mercenary group myself.

It wasn’t hard to understand. Though mercenary groups with rough images often get criticized, clients tend to trust such images more. What a contradictory principle of the world.

The reason I pushed for such a childish name, giving up these advantages, was simple.

[I wanted one.]

[What?]

[A pinwheel.]

I clearly remember the Foundation Day when my mother passed away.

From the mouse with gray fur eating stolen rotten fruit in the corner of a shabby slum, to the sound of celebratory cannons echoing through the district. And how the blue sky where the cannon sounds glided was cloudless and pure blue. I remembered everything that came into my view.

Among them, what remains especially vivid is the scene I witnessed while following my mother.

Children gathered in groups, running with pinwheels in their hands. Whatever was so fun about those pinwheels spinning in the wind as they ran, those boys and girls were busy laughing and chatting without restraint—they were etched into my mind.

For the first time, I felt a desire to possess something. I wanted that pinwheel so badly.

Looking back, the essence of that desire wasn’t the pinwheel itself. In truth, I wanted the human warmth of being able to blend in normally while holding a pinwheel.

The Pinwheel Mercenary Group was created on such a wish.

Hoping that someday I too could resemble those children I had only watched from afar on Foundation Day.

[Good grief, a guy who wouldn’t even glance at piles of gold coins.]

[Indeed.]

Why was my mother so obsessed with luxury? My efforts to understand her never bore fruit.

I just wanted a pinwheel rather than money and power. If I could just have a pinwheel and wander around normally, that would be more than enough…

But I couldn’t even fulfill that small wish.

A wish that comes as naturally as breathing to some was buried deep in the pile of dirt I was now digging through.

Because I was the child of a deposed emperor.

Because I was a filthy child who should never have been born.

The wish I held in my hands was flattened terribly by the original sin I carried.

Thud, thud.

I kill my emotions and continue digging up the soil.

Dirt seeps under my fingernails. The bugs sleeping beneath the soil wake up and protest. Asking who I think I am to threaten their home.

I deliberately ignored them. Until I reached my goal. Continuously.

Thunk.

A hard sensation transmits through my fingertips.

It was a faded coffin.

I had wanted the bodies to be interred as they were, fearing that cremation would make Rodrick and Eshtiel disappear completely.

“Sob… ah… ugh…”

I couldn’t muster the courage to open the coffin. It was uncertain what state Rodrick would be in when he greeted me.

It would be better if he had maintained the appearance from when he was found dead, but if I witnessed his body decayed with flesh melting away, I felt I might lose my mind.

Ah.

Aah.

Please.

God.

Give it back.

Give me back my monochrome world. Give me back the self who couldn’t feel anything, who felt no emotion even at my parents’ deaths.

Bless me with the ability to maintain an expressionless face even when seeing the corpse inside, even when seeing a completely ruined corpse. I beg of you.

I wish I could turn to stone.

It would be nice if I could transform into a common stone lying in a field.

If all objects in the world lost all their color, it might be a little better.

“Ahugh…”

I was wrong.

I’m sorry for being born.

I apologize for the sin of bringing misfortune to those around me by living.

So please, grant Rodrick who will face me the gift of human form. I pray that you strip away the appearance of a decayed and rotting corpse.

Please…

…

……

When the sunlight was obscured by clouds.

Finally, as the coffin opened and Rodrick revealed himself,

I screamed, vomiting out every last bit of sanity I had been desperately holding onto.

◇

Nothing.

I couldn’t find anything.

To ensure I hadn’t missed anything, I even checked all the clothes Rodrick had worn.

Personal items Rodrick used. Codes used in the mercenary group. Traces that might have been seized from the assassins. None of these elements existed.

From the beginning, thorough investigations had been conducted before burying Rodrick and Eshtiel. It was natural that the results were the same since I had examined them so meticulously.

“Of course… of course…”

Yet the fact that it wasn’t natural was also a problem.

Indeed, the Empress knew Rodrick well enough to call him a friend. The premise that he, an assassin known as the Plague, had gone to his eternal rest without leaving anything behind was contradictory.

So where did Rodrick leave a clue?

Desperately holding onto my fading consciousness, I logically reconstruct the situation.

‘Rodrick was on the run with Eshtiel. Winter in the mountains would have made it easy to hide something, but he would have known it would be meaningless if I couldn’t find the clue.’

In other words, if Rodrick hid a clue, it would definitely be in a place I could notice. Even in a winter mountain where one’s sense of direction becomes confused.

But how?

In such an environment, where could there be a place he would believe I would definitely find?

At least not on himself.

I had thoroughly examined him before burial, and just now I had scrutinized him while desperately holding onto my sanity. Yet there was no plausible clue.

Was there an accomplice?

Was there someone who was close enough to help Rodrick in that situation, and physically nearby?

Just as my thoughts reached that point.

“…… Ah.”

My neck turned with a creak.

I desperately support my sanity that’s about to collapse again. Deliberately ignoring the tingling sensation throughout my body, I examine the absurd hypothesis.

This can’t be right.

This shouldn’t be happening.

There was.

Someone who was close to Rodrick, both internally and physically, definitely existed.

I knew it all along but didn’t consider it. I’ve been avoiding it because I desperately didn’t want to believe it.

The child I had seen was the most innocent and fragile in the world, so I presumed it absolutely couldn’t be possible.

With trembling lips, I call her name.

“Eshtiel…”

The only girl who fled with Rodrick.

The count’s daughter who knew him well and always bickered with him. Eshtiel was the precious treasure of the Pinwheel Mercenary Group, raised delicately despite her harsh childhood.

Could such an Eshtiel possibly carry a clue about the assassins?

Even with Rodrick by her side.

Is that even remotely possible?

I know Eshtiel well. I know she’s an innocent girl who would cower at the sight of a menacing blade.

Am I supposed to dig up Eshtiel’s corpse?

Is this allowed, just to resolve my doubts?

“Eshtiel… Eshtiel, Eshtiel… how, how should I… how can I…”

Face you with a sound mind?

With what heart can I hold you, rotted and decayed?

“Augh… aaagh…”

Even as I ask these questions inwardly, my feet slowly move toward the coffin where Eshtiel would be laid.

Each step feels as heavy as carrying a mountain ridge. It seemed impossible to reach this short distance even if time were infinite.

But reality was cruel.

In just three or four steps, I was kneeling before her coffin.

“Haa… haa… hnngh…”

My breathing was excessive.

My head was dizzy.

In my distorted vision, like a pond sprinkled with sand, my hands touched Eshtiel’s coffin.

Finally, Eshtiel’s coffin opens.

Creeeeak.

“Ah… uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

I screamed as if my throat would tear.

Tears fell endlessly.

My chest hurt as if being violently stabbed at the sight of my little sister, now so wretched, with no trace of her living appearance.

It hurt so much I felt I might faint.

It felt as if my heart was being burned alive.

“Eshtiel… Eshtiel…!”

I embraced her decayed, crumbling form.

I gave warmth to her, who was so cold it felt like she might freeze.

That was the only futile thing I could do as her brother.

“I’m… sorry… sorry… Eshtiel…”

How much pain must she have felt?

How scared must she have been?

How terrifying and miserable must that day have been for a child so young who should have only seen and heard good things, dying so horribly?

“I will… I will definitely make them pay. I, I… will definitely do that.”

So. I hope you understand, Eshtiel.

Your brother will hurt you just this once.

“I love you.”

With that, my hand pierced and rummaged through Eshtiel’s abdomen.

Squelch.

A cold, sticky sensation traveled from my hand to the top of my head. That terrible sensation made me feel like all the blood vessels in my body would burst.

I found it.

Something round and hard.

I found it in the location of her stomach.

It was a button.

A meticulously crafted pure silver button.

There was no reason for such a thing to be in Eshtiel’s stomach. More precisely, there shouldn’t have been.

“Ugh… haa… ah…”

My breath caught with a choke.

What must she have felt?

What were you feeling when you swallowed this button?

Rodrick probably handed over the button he had seized.

You must have needed to hide it somehow.

Because evidence had to be left.

If Rodrick had kept it himself, it would have been taken after his death. So he must have entrusted it to you, telling you to swallow it.

And despite your fear, while Rodrick was fighting back, you swallowed the button.

…

No, perhaps Rodrick failed to leave a clue.

Maybe you swallowed an assassin’s button that fell during the battle on your own.

Or maybe you searched the body Rodrick had killed and swallowed what you found.

Come to think of it, you were always a child with your own strength.

You weren’t just fragile. Perhaps because you grew up in a mercenary group, you sometimes showed a tomboy-like side.

… In the end, there’s no way for me to know the exact details.

What matters is that you held this tiny button for me in the cold ground.

Yes.

The knight order secretly operated by the Ruat Viscounty.

This button, engraved with an emblem never shown to others, which even I only witnessed by chance.

Suddenly, I recalled my first meeting with Eshtiel.

It was in the past, at the laundry place where she was being oppressed, crying out to me.

[It feels like the world hates us. So there’s no one. I’m all alone. I don’t want to be left alone… sob…]

Eshtiel must have seen through the truth early on.

That the world hates us.

It seems that way indeed.

Otherwise, how could even the reason for my second life be completely denied?

I cannot accept it.

I cannot possibly accept the reality that Rodrick and Eshtiel, not I, had to pay the price for the world’s hatred of us.

If that is the way of heaven, I will tear it apart.

If the world hates us, then I too am entitled to hate the world.

Isn’t that how human nature works?

Just as my father and mother were hated by many, many people hated them in return.

Hatred is clearly something to be returned to each other.

Then I too must return it.

To the world that oppressed us.

To my world that has been turned upside down.

I will return it all.

Dark clouds rise.

A handful of darkness multiplies and soars into the sky, covering the heavens as time passes.

First the winter mountain.

Then the nearby village.

By sunset, beyond the horizon.

“Fall.”

Raindrops begin to fall.

They diligently wet the earth one drop at a time, increasing in density.

It was rain carrying the meaning of mourning.

What carries rage will come next.