Episode 119

I dreamt a dream.

[Ugh, uuuuuh---.]

The low cry was vivid.

[Shion, where are you, where are you…….]

The woman wept.

The place where her beautiful raspberry-colored eyes had been was empty, and tears of blood flowed freely.

[…Poesia is gone, Shion, I can't see our Poesia…….]

Her cry tore at Shion's heart.

It tore and tore until only blood vessels and resentment remained.

I wanted to answer, but I could not.

One cannot speak to the past.

But cruelly, if the past was merely past, why did it still rip my heart to shreds?

[Did she go to you? Shion, why don't you answer? I can't see anything now, our Poesia is gone forever, Shion, Shion, please answer me, my Shion…….]

***

“It's a windfall, Amethus!”

Shion emptied a large pouch onto the floor.

Gold coins came pouring out.

There were still forty such pouches left.

The Bururade Peninsula Alliance’s Special Inspector, Meh al-Hmed, had paid Shion 30% of the confiscated goods in Maesh gold coins.

Shion laughed loudly, looking at the pile of gold coins that would be easier to count by weight than by number.

“Eat as much as you want today!”

The table was full.

In front of Shion were pumpkin pie, and pumpkin pie, and bread made by Serena, and pumpkin pie.

In front of Amethus were meat, vegetables, and bread.

A man with uninteresting tastes, even in food.

“Where else would you see such a treasure?”

“Stop it, Shion.”

Amethus sighed.

Why did you spill the gold coins?

He began to pick up the coins and put them back in the pouch.

With forty pouches full of gold coins, one could buy several mansions.

But Amethus was merely indifferent.

“What do you plan to do with such loose change?”

They were in the basement of the Art Gallery Lamponé, a secret place that not even Meh could find.

There were several rooms here and Amethus opened the door to a storage room and threw the pouch of gold coins inside.

Thrown carelessly, gold coins spilled from the pouch.

But it was barely noticeable that any had spilled.

The place was already full of gold and jewels.

Treasures more valuable than those in Del Conti’s secret warehouse, in a larger room, and more densely packed.

Adding forty pouches of gold coins was like pouring a cup of water into a bathtub.

“Well, it is loose change. I was thinking of donating it.”

Shion had already erased his smile.

He had only pretended to be excited for a moment; mere gold could not make him happy.

“The Original Ladder Church is planning to build a school for artisans. I’m thinking of sponsoring it in Viscount Rampo’s name.”

“Do that. It's money that does no good to consume.”

Wait. Amethus paused.

“…Then shouldn't I have set it aside instead of putting it in the storage?”

“Yes. Go ahead and pick up the coins and put them back. All forty pouches.”

Damn it.

Amethus cursed.

He seemed much more human than he did seven years ago.

“More importantly, what about that? You didn't go to the sewer just for some loose change, did you?”

“Of course I brought it.”

Shion Pollinglight chuckled.

“Those guys probably think I don't know about the ledger warehouse in Section 27.”

A black shadow oozed from his chest.

Mana Armor Valziart regurgitated what it had swallowed.

It was Del Conti’s ledgers.

Del Conti would think it fortunate to have protected at least one of the two warehouses.

But reality was cruel; they had failed to protect either.

They didn't even know they had failed to protect them.

“I brought only the most important ones, picked out. It'll take them a while to notice they're missing.”

Del Conti would never know how these ledgers fell into Shion's hands.

Shion had no intention of telling them either.

Just that for these seven years, he had made many preparations.

That for him, this was all too easy.

“Take a look, Amethus. See if anything stands out.”

Amethus took the ledgers and quickly read through them.

His jade eyes were deep.

As he read through all the ledgers, his intuition remained silent.

“Nothing problematic.”

“Then it should be fine.”

He closed the ledger with a snap and returned it to Shion.

“But Del Conti, they’re involved in something ridiculous.”

“One of the three guest retainers, Tibel Bartole, must have incited it.”

“What kind of woman is she?”

“She seems to have a backer, doesn’t she?”

“It would be strange if she didn’t.”

The Regressor Prince grinned.

It was his way of saying he knew but wouldn’t answer. Amethus didn’t press further.

Although they had grown closer over the years, he was, after all, a subject, and Shion was his master.

He was not a man whose loyalty would lighten just because his tone of speech had.

“…Actually, I am worried, Your Highness.”

“It’s been a while since I heard you call me Your Highness.”

Shion snorted.

The security in the basement of Art Gallery Lamponé was perfect.

There was no worry of anyone else hearing what he was called.

“What is it you have to say that you'd go so far as to call me that?”

“Are you not playing along with them too much?”

The jade-eyed man asked sharply.

“If either you or I put our minds to it, we could eliminate someone like Del Conti in half a day. People like guest retainers are not even a laughing matter. So why do you bother engaging with them? What do we gain from doing so?”

“Justification and legitimacy.”

The answer was firm.

“Power alone is not enough, Amethus.”

“There is no reason not to use the power we have. Our destiny is still a long way off.”

“Yes, you would have no choice but to think that way.”

Shion stroked his chin.

“Hmm, right. I did say I wouldn't hide anything from you… Are you done eating?”

The table was already empty.

“Shall we aid our digestion? Let's take a short walk.”

***

The streets of Merion were full of life.

Shion and Amethus took out small perfume bottles and sprayed them on their faces.

It was an artifact that prevented others from hearing their words.

“It's a good city.”

A natural smile hung on Shion’s lips as he looked at the streets.

“Then, and now.”

A nostalgic gaze.

“Still, it reminds me of that time. The Merion of that time was truly… beautiful.”

Shion’s ‘that time’ referred to before his regression.

The Regressor Prince, who had turned back time by 19 years, had shared this secret only with Amethus.

“To me it's the past, but to you it must be almost the same as the present here, so why was it so beautiful?”

“I wonder, Your Highness.”

“Don't use honorifics outside, Amethus.”

“Alright, Shion.”

Blue eyes sparkled.

“Why did it seem so beautiful? It must have been because it was the home I barely managed to find.”

It was a long time ago.

Probably around when he was eighteen.

So that would make it another 19 years ago.

Even though seven years have passed since the regression.

“I was really just a child back then. Fleeing the Succession War, running away as if begging, somehow I drifted to the West… It wasn't until I came to Merion that I could finally live like a human being.”

If the hometown of the 5th Prince Zionis was the capital, Lutilium, then the hometown of Shion Pollinglight was here in Merion.

They were the same person, but with different hearts, so the hometowns they held dear were different.

“So how could it not have been beautiful?”

He recalled a beautiful moment in his life.

So his blue eyes couldn't help but become beautiful.

Whenever Shion Pollinglight’s eyes were tinged in that way, Amethus felt a true sense of unfamiliarity.

On Shion’s surface was the smile of a liar.

Deep within that smile was a scream.

But, occasionally, from a place even deeper than the scream, a glimmer could be glimpsed.

“Look at the people on these streets. They're the same faces as back then.”

He couldn't say he knew every single person passing by on the street, but he was still familiar with them.

Shion was so glad and so happy that his face turned sad.

“More than half of them, Amethus.”

“…More than half of what?”

“The faces that I buried with my own hands back then.”

“……”

Shion’s face contorted.

It was a strange feeling.

They were dead.

Faces he had buried by digging the ground with his own hands.

Those he had sent away without even the strength to wail were now laughing and talking as if nothing had happened.

Shion had no idea what kind of expression he should make.

“……”

His eye sockets felt as if they were melting away.

It was because of the terrible sadness.

The many things he kept locked away would sometimes burst out like this.

“…Let’s move, Amethus.”

He took a step.

“No matter how we’ve made it so no one can eavesdrop, this is not a story to be told on a main street like this.”

Their steps were swift.

They moved at a speed impossible for humans, yet they went unnoticed.

They reached the outskirts of the city and climbed the city walls.

Shion jumped thirteen times, and Amethus leaped in a single bound to the top of the wall.

***

He looked down at the city from atop the wall.

It was full of lights.

Each one twinkled, holding someone's heart.

That's why it was sad.

It was heart-wrenchingly painful.

For Shion, who remembered a future where all those flames would be extinguished, it was an unbearable pain.

“There were four disasters in the West.”

In a place where no one could hear, he spoke of a future no one knew.

Amethus politely bowed his head.

His speech had already returned to being formal.

“I have heard this already, Your Highness.”

“Listen to it again and again. If you are to follow me, you have an obligation to do so.”

My head throbbed.

“I thought it was a natural disaster. It was too vast, and too… cruel to be the work of man.”

The smell of blood rose from his throat.

An unforgettable hellscape.

The four disasters were the names of the despair that had loomed over Merion, over the West.

“The fourth, the final disaster, I've told you about.”

“You said it was the invasion of the Cordis Empire.”

“Yes, it wasn't until Emperor Ferbias crossed the great mountain range and led the campaign himself that it was revealed the previous three disasters were also the Empire's doing.”

The Regressor Prince clenched his teeth.

He swallowed back the secret that had risen to his throat.

Spitting it out would be a relief, a release, but he did not live for his own comfort.

“…And by then, by the time I realized all the disasters were man-made…”

He covered his face and clawed at his own skin.

He couldn't bear it otherwise.

The Screaming Hunchback’s cry threatened to burst from his throat at any moment.

“…one in four people in the West had lost their lives. Can you even imagine what that means? It’s easy to say, but for one in four to have died, what on earth does that mean, what kind of loss is that……”

“……”

“They died, Amethus. There were too many deaths.”

A vein stood out on his neck.

‘The Heated Iron Bloodline’ squirmed beneath his skin.

“Even if it’s natural for people to die, why did they all have to die in such miserable ways? Couldn't they have died as human beings?”

A nightmare I had witnessed.

A hell nestled in the human heart.

I came to learn that it is easier for humans to choose to live as beasts than to die as humans.

I keenly realized that I, too, was the same, beyond reproach.

“My stomach is churning, Amethus. It’s churning so much I can’t stand it. It feels like my insides are being wrung out.”

He suppressed another bout of shouts and roars.

The swallowed emotions rot inside.

It is the favorite food of ‘The Screaming Hunchback.’

The hunchback thus grows ever stronger within Shion.

“…But it didn't happen. They are all alive and well like that. Could it be that I’m the only one who’s crazy, Amethus?”

“If Your Highness is mad, then I shall go mad as well.”

“You have a way with words.”

The blue eyes were straight again.

“Cordis, it's all Cordis. It's their doing. I must stop the things they will do, the four disasters.”

“I will follow you, Your Highness.”

“Therefore, for that purpose……”

Shion Pollinglight looked down at the beautiful city.

It once belonged to Verchello and was now in the clutches of Del Conti.

But soon…….

“First, let's swallow Merion whole.”