Episode Eight

I told Selene everything: that Kiaran was the mana-absorbing monster, that I had been talking with her about letting her absorb some of my mana in exchange for coming to the capital. Everything that had happened since I arrived in this room.

She kept a hard expression throughout, but watching Kiaran and me, she let out a small resigned breath.

“I understand what happened. Sion, are you really all right?”

Selene asked it with worry in her lowered voice, turned toward me.

“Yes. Not well exactly, but all right for now.”

She gave a small nod and turned her gaze to Kiaran.

“I understand the circumstances you carry. I imagine the suffering that comes with them too.”

“Even so — I haven’t forgiven you, and I won’t.”

In a voice entirely unlike the one she’d just used with me, sharp as something cut from it, she continued.

“If it were up to me, I’d kill you right now. But Sion needs you. So come to the capital.”

Kiaran, knees pulled to her chest and gaze fixed on the corner of the room, answered Selene’s words without looking up.

“Do as you like. I get that you’re angry, White Witch, but I only absorbed a little mana.”

“I didn’t think it would end up like… that.”

Her murmur sounded pained, and something in my chest ached faintly.

I didn’t know what the other people she’d attacked had been like. But from the way Kiaran was behaving, it was clear my reaction had been visibly different from anyone else’s.

“The witch’s mana was so good. If the White Witch hadn’t come, I don’t think I could have stopped myself.”

As she kept speaking, her voice began to tremble, little by little. Huddled with her face pressed against her knees, there was no hostility in her at all.

“It made me think — I really am a monster. A creature. It was just… awful.”

“…Witch. I’m sorry.”

The words came out before I’d decided to say them.

“You’re not.”

A voice came out of me with a force I didn’t recognise as mine.

She might be a monster, but she was no creature.

Watching her lose control and come at me had been frightening. But the person who had fought beside us in the dark of that abandoned settlement — she had been our companion, without any question. I could still remember the taste of the dinner we’d all eaten together in the capital.

“Selene. Release this.”

I rested both hands on the white sphere and looked up at Selene standing beside me.

“No. She’s a monster. If she attacks you again, next time—”

Selene murmured it, fist clenched.

“I know. But if Kiaran really intended to run, she wouldn’t have waited this long. If she isn’t running, we can talk.”

I would never forget the lightning Kiaran had brought down that day. However capable Selene was, I thought something at this level of restraint wouldn’t be difficult for Kiaran to break. A binding like this, for someone of her ability, shouldn’t be hard to escape.

The fact that she was sitting quietly inside it meant conversation was possible.

“And — if Kiaran were the same as any other monster, she would have killed me before Selene arrived.”

She must want to live without absorbing mana, if she could. That thought surfaced in me, and I couldn’t push her away.

Even hearing my words, Selene’s expression didn’t look convinced. Watching her drop her gaze and bite hard at her lip — that was painful to see.

After a long silence, she finally swept her hand through the air and released the magic.

“Thank you.”

I whispered it in a voice small enough that only she could hear, and crouched down beside Kiaran.

“Kiaran isn’t a creature. I won’t forget that you fought beside us against the Shaman.”

She had run around us full of energy, eyes lighting up at everything. Kiaran walking side by side with Uno had looked, to anyone who saw it, like nothing but a person.

Selene was right that I probably shouldn’t forgive Kiaran. The way she had come at me had been monstrous. And yet I felt guilty too — for not trusting her fully, for hiding things from her.

I reached out to put my arms around her small frame and pulled my hands back immediately. The hostility was gone from her now, surely — but I had almost lost my life to this softness of mine, and I had nearly forgotten it.

I pressed my hands into fists, the reach in them gone nowhere, and found the words.

“Like Selene, I can’t forgive you either. It was the worst pain I’ve felt, and if it had gone on any longer… I would really have died.”

I cleared my throat to push away the unpleasant memory rising in me. Was my voice reaching her where she huddled with her face buried in her knees, hiccupping quietly?

“So come to the capital and make it right. If you’re there, it helps me too.”

“Why… aren’t you angrier…?”

Her voice came out tangled with crying, without lifting her face. I was close to being pulled along with her, but I had to hold on.

The next time I cried would be back at the Magic Association. I hadn’t forgotten the promise I’d made with Rizett.

“…I don’t have many friends. I don’t want to lose the few I have over something like this.”

After I said it, it struck me that it might have been a little too theatrical, and my face went hot. But right now I thought that was fine.

I stroked the shoulder of Kiaran, who had broken open and was crying loudly, and turned my back to her.

Kiaran would be all right now. When we got back to the capital, I’d have to listen properly to what she had to say. I still couldn’t quite believe that this person was really a monster.

Stretching my heavy body out as I stood, I stole a glance at Selene who had been quiet for a while.

The hard expression she’d been wearing until a moment ago had eased just slightly at the corners of her eyes. But deep in those eyes there seemed to be no light at all. As though she had left her heart somewhere else. That terribly hollow face stayed with me in a way I couldn’t shake.