Episode 46: “It’s My Fault”
“…Thank goodness, Yuri…a…?”
The moment she opened her eyes, Yuria’s face was the first thing in view.
But that relief lasted only a single instant.
Because there was no body beneath that head at all.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!”
What Fiine had been holding tightly in her arms was only Yuria’s head, severed at the neck.
Her pink eyes stayed open, still — eyes that had once sparkled like gemstones, now clouded over white.
Around her neck, the emerald pendant was still fastened firmly in place.
It was Yuria. Genuinely, unmistakably her.
There was no possible way to mistake her for anyone else. And yet her mind fought desperately to deny it all the same.
“Wh— why, why…”
Memory came flooding back — everything from before she’d arrived here.
(I lost control, I collapsed, and then, Yuria…)
She’d saved Fiine, and been killed on the spot for it.
By the same hands — a black troll’s — that had killed her parents.
If Yuria had simply abandoned her, she would surely have survived.
And yet she had chosen, instead, to save Fiine first.
“…Fiine.”
A hand touched her shoulder. Burkhardt.
Looking around, she realized she was in a hospital.
The battle must have ended while she was unconscious.
“…It’s my fault. I— I’m the one who—”
“No. Absolutely not. Fiine. Don’t you dare mistake that.”
“But—!! If I’d been stronger, Yuria wouldn’t have had to die!!”
If she hadn’t lost control. If she’d been able to properly judge her own state until the very end.
If, at the very last moment, she’d still had magic power left to save Yuria instead.
—Yuria wouldn’t have had to die.
“…Why…”
She wasn’t someone who should have died in a place like this.
Someone who’d tried harder than anyone to save others, who’d kept running across that battlefield until she reached her own absolute limit — why did she have to be the one who died?
“…You did well. There are countless people you saved.”
Trying to comfort her, Burkhardt took hold of Fiine’s hand.
Even that warmth couldn’t reach her heart now.
It was true, just as he said — there were surely many lives that had been saved because of Fiine.
Ending the suffering of children who lost their parents to monsters, just as she once had.
Imperfect as it was, she’d surely done everything within her power for that dream.
But in exchange, she had lost Yuria.
Her irreplaceable, most beloved closest friend.
(I’m sorry, Yuria. I can’t chase that dream anymore. Because to me, that dream was always something meant to be seen together with you.)
If she hadn’t gone to the front line, none of this would have happened.
If the nobles who despised front-line duty, who only ever wanted rear support, had actually shown up to fight properly — she never would have had to push herself this far, never would have lost control at all.
(I can’t keep trying anymore, not in a world like this, Yuria…)
She held her closest friend, now only a severed head, close against her chest. It was cold, and carried the faint, foul smell of decay.
“Burkhardt-san. I’m sorry. …I can’t join the Magic Corps.”
*
—After that, Fiine Fellner vanished from sight.
Having already fulfilled the credit requirements, she graduated from the magic academy without attending another single day.
Four years passed after that. And then, she opened a shop.
The magic doll shop, “Lux.”
The woman running a shop built to help others redo their goodbyes has still not, herself, managed to redo her own goodbye with her most beloved closest friend.