Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasuka? Mou Ichido Dake, Aemasuka? Volume 2 Chapter 2 Part2

A forgotten old man once said, "To be chased by women is a honor men should wear with pride." The generations that followed after him expanded on the phrase: "But before receiving that honor, be prepared to fight for your very life."

And so, Fourth Officer Feodor Jessman found himself running through the hallways of the Fifth Division.

It must have been quite the sight to behold; he ran hurriedly but quietly, not making a single audible footstep. On occasion he pa.s.sed other uniformed officers, who would be surprised at first, then recover and step aside to watch. Imps were known for being light on their feet, after all.

Every so often, Feodor spied out of the corner of his eyes the posters along the walls that said, "No running in the halls!" Somewhere deep within his heart, he felt like apologizing. I'm sorry, he silently told the posters. Forgive me, but this is an emergency!

"W-Wait up!" the girl pursuing him shouted. She was young, perhaps in her teens, and wore a military uniform like him. Her gait was filled with long strides which, combined with her outstretched and grasping hands, created quite the unsightly display. The pitter-patter of the girl's footsteps thundered against the hard floor with such force that she almost seemed to leave a cloud of dust in her wake, not unlike a horse-drawn carriage. As often occurred during this exercise, her bright-green hair bounced up and down.

"I said wait! Can't you hear me talking to you?!"

Of course, Feodor didn't stop when he heard her words. If he'd had any inclination to halt as asked, he'd not be fleeing for his life to begin with. But that aside, in front of him there was a steadily approaching corner.

I've got this! Feodor wrenched his body weight to the side and rounded the corner.

Of course, that alone wasn't enough to be a successful escape; he merely vanished from his pursuer's line of sight for a few seconds. But a few seconds were all he needed.

"You - won't - get away!" The girl leaped through the spot where her target had disappeared. "…Huh?"

He wasn't there. In his place was a girl with orange hair and a very surprised expression forming on her face.

"Lakish?!"

Feodor's pursuer was none other than Tiat Shiba Ignareo, and the girl wriggling in her grasp was Lakish Nyx Seniolis.

"Hyaa! W-What's going on, Tiat?"

"Feodor was just here, wasn't he?" Tiat jerked the other girl closer. "Where'd he go?!"

"Uh, he… well, you see…" Lakish's eyes darted to the end of the hallway.

"That way, huh? Got it." Tiat nodded and started to leave - then swiftly spun, grabbed the door behind Lakish, and threw it open to reveal a storage room empty but for some supplies. A disgusting stench like muddy water filled the air.

She sighed. "…I failed."

"Um… Tiat?"

"Oh, it's just that you're really nice to everybody, Lakish, so I thought you might be covering for him, that's all. Sorry I doubted you." Tiat waved and ran off. Tap-tap-tap-tap. It wasn't proper for a girl her age to be making such an awful racket. Lakish watched her shrink into the distance, her mouth slightly hanging open.

When the other girl could no longer be seen and Lakish had recovered her wits, she quietly called out, "Um, Feodor? She's gone."

At the sound of her voice, Feodor opened the curtains directly opposite of her. He had been hiding in the bushes beneath the window facing the barracks courtyard. He pushed aside the curtains and dropped to the floor. "Man, that was dangerous," he said, brushing green leaves off himself. "You really saved me there."

"I-I'm glad to help… I think," Lakish said with a slightly troubled look on her face, "but really, what in the world did you say to make her so upset?"

"Oh, well… It's kind of difficult to say… actually, it's harder to say which thing it could've been…"

"If you won't tell me, shall I call her back and ask her instead? I am her friend, after all."

"Rgh…"

Lakish was usually timid, but for some reason she chose now to be a.s.sertive. Feodor scratched his head, realizing he couldn't possibly get out of this one. "Cookies and biscuits."

"Huh?"

"Which one would be better covered in chocolate? I'm team cookie, and she's team biscuit."

Lakish pressed her lips together tightly, but a small snicker still escaped her. Feodor glared at her, feeling wounded. This is why I didn't want to say anything. "But still, to chase someone around over snacks? That's pretty narrow-minded, don't you think?"

"Doesn't that apply to you too, Feodor? Running away means you couldn't come to an agreement with her, right?"

"What? But cookies are plainly better."

Lakish covered her mouth as she turned away from him, still enduring the urge to laugh.

"Tiat is my older sister," she said abruptly. "Now that the adult fairies have left the warehouse, she's the oldest remaining. She has barely any combat experience, but she tries to be a role model to the children anyway. Although she's always been anxious about her abilities, she tries her best to become a reliable and wonderful person."

"Yes…?" Feodor had already heard all this once before.

"That's why I've always thought she wanted a friend she could fight with."

"Excuse me?" He didn't understand. "In the first place, I don't recall becoming her friend. Besides, don't you already disagree with your friends sometimes?"

"Well, I don't mean fighting with friends. It's more like wanting to have a friend to fight."

Feodor shook his head. "I really can't follow you sometimes…"

"Really?" Lakish thought a little. "It's fine if you don't understand, Feodor. The way you are right now is just fine. I'll leave Tiat in your hands."

"Hold on. What kind of context makes you pick that line to end with?"

"Like I said, you don't have to understand anything."

"I'm not going to agree to something like th-"

"Found youuuu…"

A shape vaguely resembling Tiat had appeared at the end of the hallway. She practically resembled a wolf hunting its prey, both in form and spirit. Even if it was only for a second, to see a girl acting like this was just…

"Oh no."

"Don't you dare move!"

Tiat ran towards Feodor as he began to take off again, and the two of them swept back through the hallway like a spring wind. Left in their wake and covering her hair as the wind whipped at it, Lakish once again had to stifle her giggles.

Anyone can remember facts.

Anyone can forget feelings.

This world has already ended once before. Even now, it continues along the path of ruination.

The origin of this absurd story can be traced back to the ma.s.sacre brought about by the 17 Beasts that surfaced long ago in history.

On that day, the Emnetwyte that flourished on the surface were destroyed in the blink of an eye.

Even the Dragons and old spirits, beings known for possessing power beyond compare, were easily driven to their extinction. Those who held on to life and managed to survive were too chased from their homes and forced to flee to the floating islands.

Fortunately, the 17 Beasts cannot fly. As long as the survivors did not descend to the surface, they could mostly live without fearing the threat of the Beasts. So they named their tiny world Regul Aire, and began anew.

A long time had pa.s.sed since then. The world they knew perched atop increasingly thin ice.

Although the sky was relatively safe, the threat of the Beasts was never truly forgotten. If a single mistake was committed, the great ma.s.sacre might resume in the skies. Those who chose to take up arms worked themselves to death in order to build a peace riddled with cracks and holes.

Their fragile, cobbled-together facsimile of stability continued in this way for 500 years, and the people grew accustomed to peace. Somehow, Regul Aire had persisted through the centuries. Therefore, even hundreds of years from now, it would remain afloat. Such beliefs grew and lingered in an increasingly large number of minds.

A shrill, shrieking laugh cracked the air like a whip. Multiple white-faced and expressionless figures ran side by side along the street.

A group of ghosts? Startled, Feodor turned back his head hurriedly.

As expected, the figures persisted beneath sunlight instead of melting and vanishing like the legendary Spectrals fairy tales spoke of. They were just children walking about, indistinguishable from the average young beastman. The deathly pale face that had frozen him in place was merely a mask.

This is reality, he reminded himself. The sun shone through the clouds above Openhilt West Lock Street, about to set.

Feodor grumbled vaguely under his breath, adjusting his grip on the jars of milk that were about to slip from underneath his arms. It was irritating for him to be surprised by something so meager. "Is it already time for the Remembrance Festival?"

"Remembrance Festival?" Tiat asked from her position nearby him. He nodded in reply.

"You guys don't have it on your island? All the floating islands near us partic.i.p.ate."

By the way, the festival's actual name was the Undead Lunarlight Festival of Memorials and Remembrance. It was named by the great sage who created it, and as usual for such things, its proper name proved difficult to recall. Thus, everyone simply referred to it as the Remembrance Festival. The partic.i.p.ating islands were in the general neighborhood of the 20th, and each considered it the highlight of the season.

Now, the history behind the festival. The general idea behind it was that Winter, a period of death, was followed by Spring, a period of birth.. In other words, the festival fights back against this world that has already ended, proclaiming that such a relentless world refuses to give up, and that this is a wonderful thing. That is why this festival is celebrated by everyone… the original reason, at least.

"That's an interesting mask. Is it carved from stone?" Tiat chewed on a cookie as she asked the question; a reminder of the agreement they'd come to not too long ago.

"I'll only be convinced if you treat me to chocolate cookies," she'd said. "And they have to be delicious ones."

How was it that she could make it sound as if he was the one being forced to concede? Feodor had felt somehow unsatisfied with how it'd turned out, but regardless was forced to swallow any complaints.

“No, it's just wood coated in white paint. At the end of the Remembrance Festival all the masks are thrown into a bonfire to send off the dead with a decisive farewell."

"The dead?" Yet another question.

"It's said that our world connects to the 'other side' during the time between winter and spring. The dead have lost their names and faces, so those of us on this side hide our faces and throw away our names to match them. In this way, even though the deceased can't be reached anymore, we can celebrate the arrival of spring together."

Feodor shrugged his shoulders, chuckling dryly. "Honestly, it's the sort of superst.i.tion you could find anywhere. What's important is to enjoy the festival with all your heart - that's how they justify these frivolities."

"Uh huh…" The girl walking next to Feodor murmured vaguely. He couldn't tell what she might be thinking. "Where do they sell the masks?"

"Everywhere, more or less. Clothing and shoe stores usually line their shelves with these sort of masks around this time of the season. The patterns are all different and there's masks tailored to fit many different races, so you'd need to look through a lot of places until you found one that caught your eye."

"Uh huh…" This time Tiat sounded slightly curious.

"If you'd like, I can tell you a bunch of shops to check out."

"Well… I think it seems interesting, but to be honest, it'd be a bit too weird."

"Oh?"

"They're things a living person wears 'cuz they want to meet someone who died, right? If that's so, I couldn't possibly partic.i.p.ate."

“Again with that logic?” Feodor grumbled tiredly. Supposedly, Tiat and the girls like her were fairies. It was almost a certainty that the fairies didn't possess life, being the souls of those who had already died. That's why it would be odd for her to join the side of life during the festival where death and life conjoined. Something along those lines was likely what she was trying to get at.

It might not be wrong for her to think that way, either. At the same time, a purely logical argument wouldn't satisfy everyone. For his own part, Feodor rejected it wholeheartedly as an absurd reason to be excluded from the festival.

He knew of their origin, of course. Fairies were simply natural phenomena, formed by the disembodied soul of a child who didn't know they were dead. They fell into the same category as rain or thunderstorms that might form as a result of atmospheric pressure and changes in humidity. Like a storm, they could appear anywhere as long as the conditions were met.

But the similarities ended there. Storms didn't eat donuts, wield swords, admire their elders, or cry when facing near-certain death. Feodor understood the girls very well by now. That's why he couldn't possibly accept the idea that fairies weren't alive.

"You really shouldn't say things like that."

"I know, but it's not like I'm going to act interested just for you," she replied indifferently.

"Most people would want to keep their superiors happy, you know."

"Hmm, maybe, but…" Tiat paused for a minute. "I don't particularly want to see you in a good mood, and I doubt making you happy would be rewarding for me in the slightest. All in all, I think it's unnecessary." She said it honestly and without any trace of irony in her tone, as if she was discussing the weather.

"You dislike me that much, huh…"

"Yep, sure do." Tiat flashed him a b.e.s.t.i.a.l smile full of bared teeth, one resembling nothing less than a snarl. "I hate you."

Feodor clicked his tongue. What's with that?

Imps were said to be cousins of liars. Not only were they themselves experts at lying, but they could also cleverly discern the lies hidden within the words spoken by other races.

But there were no lies in Tiat's words. When she said she hated him, she was completely, unequivocally, straightforward and honest.

The phrase might also have carried sentiments of endearment, playfulness, other emotions close to her heart. Still, from deep within the depths of that same heart came the truth: "I hate you."

The boiling urge came over him to throw her words back in her face. Same here. I absolutely, positively, hate you too.

But if he did, he would seem like a poor loser. So Feodor held back.

Lyell is a dying city clinging to a floating island fated to perish in the all-too-near future.

The inhabitants have all fled to other islands. What was once a thriving mining center is now nothing more than a lonely ghost town, a mere shadow of what it once was.

On the other hand, while the city creeps towards death's door, it hasn't kicked the bucket yet. For now, Lyell is still a city. Although none know whether or not the appearance of a city can continue to be maintained, Lyell has not yet fallen to ruin. The population is greatly diminished, but hasn't fallen to zero just yet. The infrastructure is kept in working order by dutiful golems. Fewer airships may be moored at the harbors, but public ships continue to make their rounds, people and goods with them.

Half a month ago, an incident in Lyell resulted in the destruction of a significant portion of the Port District.

Each floating island is equipped with a harbor where airships may land and take off. Put simply, such ports can be considered the front door of the islands. Since the airships are confined, in principle, to only arriving and departing from the harbors, people and goods must naturally go through the front door. The structure established by this was vital to the island.

Now only half of the Port District remained, and it went without saying that the already tenuous connection this island had to other islands had shrunken to almost nothing.

For the other islands, losing their harbors would be a matter of life and death. However, Lyell's condition provided a silver lining. The flow of airships traveling to the island had already dried up to a trickle long ago, and its economy wasn't so healthy that a delay in the arrival of goods would harm it more than it already had been. The city, already on the verge of death, had no particular distinction whether it might be either living or dying.

Minor tragedies no longer affected the citizens of this fatally wounded city waiting for the end. They became filled with the stillness and quiet one expected from the sleeping, and today was no different.

Once again, they pa.s.sed a group of people wearing white masks.

"…Hmm?" Feodor came to a stop as he turned towards them, forcing Tiat to stop as well. He wasn't sure why; the group seemed mildly suspicious, but there wasn't any concrete reason they might be. It was so close to the time of the festival's beginning that it was hardly unusual to see people wearing masks. Large groups of people were rare sights in Lyell nowadays, but that was it.

The living hid their faces to get closer to the dead by wearing white masks. It hid every identifiable trait about them, making it impossible to tell one person from another. Failure to do as such would prevent the living and dead from meeting.

Feodor knew it was just a stupid superst.i.tion, and had no reason to change his mind. Still, there had to be some basis for the belief somewhere. If nothing else, those who wore the masks were undeniably impossible to identify. Downtown Lyell was currently flooded - though not enough people were on the streets for such a saying to be accurate, there were still quite a few - by aimlessly wandering masked people.

"What's up?" Tiat asked, munching on another cookie.

"Remember that statement the military police made a while back? After the Croyance stuff destroyed part of the Port District, they went into their records to reorganize all their operational reports about movements there over the past half year up to then."

"Oh right, they did mention something like that. But why're you bringing it up?"

When large numbers of people entered and left the port, security naturally grew lax or insufficient in places. It'd be all too easy for smugglers to take advantage of such gaps to sneak through and traffick their illegal goods.

"They found an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to alteration of the records. After all the errors were corrected and the numbers counted up again, it seems that they discovered an imbalance. As it turns out, more people came than left."

"That makes sense, doesn't it? Rumors started spreading about parts of the city falling, so of course the number of people coming here wou-hang on…" The bag of cookies Tiat carried threatened to slip from her hands. "You mean more people are in Lyell now?"

"That's what I said, isn't it? They even went as far as to mess up the official records to sneak in."

"What? Does that mean this place is like a secret tourist destination?! Is Lyell the number one destination for cities you absolutely have to visit, even by illegal means?!"

That's clearly impossible.

Lyell was a city experiencing its end. For however many years, its liveliness had faded as more and more houses became abandoned. As far as Feodor was concerned, it didn't seem like the number of people living here was increasing. The familiar bakeries removed their signboards one after another, and no new stories came about to replace them. Visitors wouldn't walk down the main street, so it was unlikely for a bread shop offering donuts to be supported by their business.

That meant an unknown, faceless crowd was covertly living in this city ruled by machines.

…My sister is involved in this too, huh.

He remembered the woman with silvery hair he'd met the other day, his blood-related older sister. She was an Imp in the truest sense. Her personality was twisted, she excelled at lies, she was fast on her feet… and her forte was strategy and scheming. But whatever could she be hoping to accomplish in this wretched place?

"So… what's going on?"

"Never mind."

His sister aside, it was the military police's job to worry about suspicious people. Feodor had no reason to pay attention to them. A rather ominous feeling was poking at him, but it wasn't solid enough to act on. Even if he cared enough, he hardly had the free time to conduct a investigation. The situation was only that merely suspicious people were lurking in the city, and a group with unknown intentions might be moving around.

As Feodor would come to learn, that was just the case.