“What?”
At my words, Cassian asked back with a blank look, as if he had forgotten he’d been angry until just a moment ago.
I told him once more, so he could understand clearly.
“I’ll wait, so try doing it on your own.”
At my words, Cassian couldn’t answer for a while and only opened and closed his mouth.
Until now, there had never been a time when my thoughts and his own had differed this much, so he seemed not to know what to say.
Cassian let out a short, meaningless sound, then finally managed to squeeze out a single sentence.
“So, Master is……”
“Cassian.”
I cut off whatever Cassian had been about to say and spoke firmly.
“That’s what you think. It isn’t what I think.”
The basic sense of morality Cassian possessed had been greatly influenced by me, but how he thought and acted based on it was up to him.
“If your thoughts are different from mine, then you need to be able to think and act for yourself.”
I couldn’t decide everything for him—who was good, who was evil, how he should act, and how he should treat others.
In the end, the one living Cassian’s life was Cassian himself, not me.
“You’re still young, so I can help you a little. For now, I can even take responsibility in your place. Whatever you do, if it’s something like this, I don’t intend to scold you.”
This was one of the things that had never changed no matter how many times I had taught children.
Whatever thoughts they had, whatever actions they took, as long as it did not belong to the category of evil so clearly that there was no doubt, I respected it.
Of course, if it caused trouble for others, I corrected that properly.
In the end, if it was a matter that could differ depending on what one valued, I acknowledged whatever choice anyone made.
If there were a hundred people, it was only natural that there would be a hundred ways of thinking.
So, if it was a conclusion they had reached by thinking for themselves, I stopped no one.
“But in the end, the one responsible for the results of your actions is you, and you must be able to bear them entirely on your own.”
……Even if that result meant killing, with my own hands, a disciple I had raised myself.
“Master……”
At my firm attitude, which he had probably never seen before, Cassian seemed to have completely lost the words to say.
Then, with an expression as if his soul had left his body, he barely opened his mouth.
“I’ll think about it for a bit……”
Leaving only those words behind, Cassian turned and headed for the door.
I spoke to Cassian’s back as he left the room.
“……I’ll wait until tomorrow, so take your time and think it over.”
Cassian glanced back slightly, gave a small nod, then opened the door and left.
Once Cassian disappeared from the room, I felt as though the tense atmosphere had finally eased.
“……Are you all right?”
Illiana carefully looked up at me from beside me and spoke.
“I’m fine. Cassian must have a lot on his mind in his own way, too.”
It had already been well over ten years since I had taken Cassian in and begun raising him.
Until now, whenever he fought someone, I had always been behind him, and whatever he did, it had never differed from what I had taught him.
Because of that, it might feel a little resentful to him that, perhaps for the first time, I was not doing as he wanted.
No matter how smart he was, children at that age were naturally emotional.
Come to think of it, though it was a little early, Cassian had reached that time as well.
The time of puberty and stormy adolescence, that is.
I recalled the adolescent years of the children I had raised until now and let out a sigh first.
……
……
The next day.
Originally, I had planned to wake early and leave the village quickly, but since I had decided to give Cassian a day, I let Illiana sleep in.
It was cute how she briefly opened her eyes in a daze, then smiled and lay back down when I told her she could sleep more.
As for me, unless I had overexerted myself the day before, I always woke at an early hour, so I had nothing to do.
As expected, hearing the bustle from the first floor even at this hour made me think they lived quite diligently.
……It needlessly reminded me of my days as a graduate student at the Imperial University, which soured my mood a little.
Though back then, it wasn’t that I woke early—I had simply stayed up all night working.
To kill time, I took out a suitable book and began reading. Gradually, the world outside the window brightened, and I saw the sun rise beyond the sky.
I watched the sun rising between the low mountain peaks, then returned my gaze to the book and read, then tickled Rutina after she woke up. While doing so, Illiana also opened her eyes and got up.
“Did you sleep well……”
“Yes. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes……”
I created water in the air and gave Illiana, who was still not fully awake, a simple wash, then went to call Cassian while she woke up.
The room was right next door. Since the walls were wooden and thin, loud sounds leaked through.
However, from the time I woke until now, there hadn’t been any sound at all. It seemed highly likely he was still sleeping.
I knocked on the door a few times and called Cassian.
But even after knocking several times, no answer came.
It had become much rarer to see lately, but it seemed there were still days when he slept in like this.
Without hesitation, I opened the door and went inside.
And there was no one in the room.
“Cassian?”
Just in case, I called his name once more, but naturally, no answer came.
The large backpack Cassian carried around was still there, but the auxiliary pack that had been attached beside it was gone.
And what caught my eye was a small scrap of paper placed on the bed, with something written on it.
On the paper, in Cassian’s distinctive crooked handwriting, there was only a single sentence written.
I stared at the note for a moment, then burned it away with fire and smiled slightly.
Then for now, I should start with breakfast.
◇
Cassian could not quite understand his master.
And, more than that, he could not understand himself.
When he thought of the face of the auntie who had been shedding tears and suffering so painfully, the first thing he felt was pity and sorrow.
Though he could not know exactly how it had been because his master had not told him, if he considered that he, too, was a child who had been taken in……
As he listened while imagining that his own parents must have been separated from him in that way as well, it was hard to hold back his tears.
He had somehow barely managed to endure it because he didn’t want to show such an unsightly side of himself.
Even so, with the thought, “Since Master is here, it’ll work out somehow this time!” he felt his heart grow a little more at ease.
To Cassian, his master seemed like a hero who could send any bad person flying with a single blow.
And yet, even though he had been in the same place, right beside him, his master had only said it was pitiful in words and had seemed not to care at all.
Cassian’s expectations had been shattered to pieces, and he had ended up getting angry at his master for no reason.
Even though, in his head, he understood that nothing his master said was wrong.
He himself could not understand why he was so angry.
In the end, when he was told that if he wanted to do that, he should try doing it on his own, he left the room as if running away.
“Haa……”
Returning to his room, Cassian lay down on the bed and agonized over what he should do.
The fact that his master would not help felt daunting, and because of that, he even fell into the thought that perhaps without his master, he was nothing at all.
He spent the whole night unable to sleep, rolling around on the bed.
Then, when he heard the trio preparing from dawn to quickly begin their investigation, just as they had said yesterday, he scribbled something roughly on a piece of paper and rushed out of the room without a plan.
◇
―――Boom!!
With the sound of an explosion, a bear died on the spot without even being able to scream.
“……That’s incredible.”
Draut, the red-haired mage, muttered as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Can you do that?”
“No. I told you last time, didn’t I? I specialize in the earth attribute to begin with, so how am I supposed to do something like that?”
“Wow, Draut, that was a bit unfair just now. More importantly, Cassian is much younger than you.”
“So noisy……”
Cassian intended to let it go in one ear and out the other, but hearing words he could never hear from his master made him grin despite himself.
He forcibly tensed his face to stop the corners of his mouth from rising, but he couldn’t help feeling good.
After all, his master always started with “Not bad,” only for countless points of criticism to pour out afterward.
Still, Cassian recalled his master’s words that he should never let his guard down in a place like this and barely regained his composure.
After that, the four of them, including Cassian, continued deeper into the shadowed forest.
However, the search that had begun at dawn still showed no progress.
Because the trees were dense, it was difficult to move quickly, and since everything was covered in shade, it was hard to see far ahead.
They had been advancing deep into the shadowed forest for quite some time when they stopped briefly for a simple rest.
Cassian was talking with Bella about what had happened with his master yesterday.
“……So, I was asked whether I could bear it.”
The story had gone on for quite a while, but Bella listened silently to Cassian’s words without looking away for even a moment.
Though Cassian could not have known, it was because while listening to confessions, she had heard plenty of stories longer than this.
When Cassian’s story ended, Bella closed her eyes for a moment and thought, then slowly opened her mouth.
“That is true, but would the peace gained that way really be genuine?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mm, first of all, in my opinion, the Lord would not be very pleased with abundance gained by sacrificing someone else like that.”
Cassian had been taken by his master to church a few times, but it wasn’t as if he had much faith.
At the answer, which was far from the one he had wanted to hear, his brow furrowed slightly.
But before Cassian could say anything, Bella began speaking again.
“And even if that witch seems quiet now, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow, do we? If that witch suddenly changes and treats the villagers cruelly, in the end, the villagers won’t be able to do anything.”
“Uh……”
“Besides, what if they keep depending on that witch like that, and one day she changes her mind and leaves? At that point, couldn’t even more people starve to death?”
Hearing it, Bella’s words did not seem wrong either.
Right now, she might appear to be helping the villagers, but no one knew what the future would bring.
Unlike Cassian, who had simply thought that they should defeat the witch because the auntie before his eyes was pitiful, it was a clear answer.
However, when he thought back on his master’s words, to Cassian, both sides seemed correct.
Their brief rest ended, and they began searching the forest again, but the words of the two people echoed in one corner of Cassian’s mind.
Thanks to his thorough training, he did not lose focus, but at the same time, deep in his mind, he was constantly agonizing over what he should do.
The search continued, and even though the four of them went quite deep, they could not find even the slightest clue.
Spending the night in the forest was dangerous, so they decided to sleep at the inn until they had searched all the nearby areas and chose to return.
By the time the sky was dyed with a faint glow of sunset and they had finally left the forest,
Cassian, who had continued hesitating all along, was finally able to steel his heart.
He intended to talk with his master one more time.