Episode 125
“……What the hell.”
A chill seeped into his left side, where his heart was.
Levian moved only his eyes and looked beside him.
“……Ha.”
The silver muzzle of a rifle was pressing hard into his side. The way the butt was braced against her shoulder, the hand gripping the stock—everything about her stance was so absurdly clumsy that Levian let out a laugh despite himself.
The only ability she had that was even remotely useful was those two feet that had crept up on him. And even that was being generous. In truth, if he had not been so distracted, there was no way he would have failed to notice this woman’s presence.
He tried to twist aside from that childish aim, but Ejekail was faster. The major seized Levian’s arm—the one gripping the handle of the knife buried deep in his abdomen—with both hands, holding him fast so he could not move. Blue veins bulged along his forearm. Though exerting strength only worsened the bleeding, the man did not seem to care in the slightest.
Damn it.
Levian ground the curse between his teeth and swallowed it. This inhuman bastard had a knife in his stomach, yet he was as strong as a mad horse.
“Do you think this changes anything?”
He clenched his teeth and threatened the woman. Perhaps to lend strength to her trembling grip, she placed her left hand over the right hand on the trigger.
The woman’s face had lost all color and was bluish pale. Glancing at her face, which looked as though she might lose her senses at any moment, Levian recovered a sliver of composure.
Wait. Right. What can this woman even do just because she’s holding a gun?
She was a weak woman. It was obvious just from her impression. She was nothing more than an ordinary young woman who had grown up picking fruit while living in a school dormitory isolated like a convent. Today was probably the first time in her life she had ever held a weapon meant to kill.
It was not easy for such a person to kill another. Even trained soldiers were prone to hesitate at the threshold of their first killing; all the more so for a woman as frail as her. This woman was merely a hostage who had been dragged out helplessly, unable to scream even once when her dormitory friends had died.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Do you even know how to load it?”
Rifles were strewn among the corpses, so she must have picked one up. But did she know how to load it? No, before that, did she even have gunpowder and bullets?
The only thing this woman had to rely on must have been Major Valdemaera. And even this fine major had been busy running from them with the woman in tow.
Though he had lost all his subordinates at the end of the chase, the one who had finally cut into his opponent’s flesh and bone and stained his hands with blood first was Levian. He was the victor.
What if this woman was threatening him with an empty gun in a desperate attempt to save her own life? What if the major was playing along with his lover’s pathetic little scheme?
At this point, was it not a reasonable suspicion?
Levian mocked the woman.
“Go on, then. Shoot.”
If they thought he would fall for such a pathetic, shallow trick, they were gravely mistaken.
“If you have the nerve, then shoot.”
Even at Levian’s sneer, the woman merely pressed her lips tightly together. She was clearly flustered and tense to some degree, which was why she could not readily take her next action. Yet perhaps she had a stubborn and tenacious streak after all, for she did not lower the muzzle aimed at him.
“Rizan.”
It was then. Ejekail called her softly.
“You know, don’t you? You can stop at any time.”
His voice was calm.
“You don’t have to force yourself. You can leave the rest to me, turn around, and go. Don’t torment yourself against your will. Whatever decision you make, you don’t need to feel sorry. If anyone here should feel guilt, that burden belongs to me for failing to protect you.”
How much of that was sincere, and how much was a lie?
How much was a trap, and how much was the truth?
If the gun in the woman’s hands truly held a bullet, the major ought to be urging her to pull the trigger right away. Not trying to let the woman go like this.
Wasn’t that obvious? This was his only chance to drag his enemy down with him.
Levian hastily steadied his confusion.
As expected, this gun was empty. The show unfolding right in front of him was nothing but a little prank meant to deceive him.
As if he would fall for it.
“Whatever happened between us, in the end, you have always saved me. Because you were there, my long night was not dark. Don’t forget that one truth.”
As if Levian, caught between them, did not exist at all, the major held the woman in his eyes, and the woman held the major in hers. Tenaciously, as though only the two of them existed in this world.
“Go, Rizan.”
“And who says I’ll let her leave alive?”
Levian snorted.
Ejekail answered.
“Then you’ll have to come with me. I have no intention of letting you leave alive either.”
Levian did not hesitate. The instant his mouth twisted cruelly and he wrenched the blade embedded in Ejekail’s abdomen—
Bang! The final gunshot rang out.
For a moment, Levian had no idea what had happened to him.
Only when the woman’s face entered his tilted field of vision did realization strike him like lightning.
He had misjudged the woman. Terribly, disastrously misjudged her.
The rifle had not been empty, Major Valdemaera was a man who could throw away even his life if it would lighten the weight of the woman’s guilt, and the woman who had pulled the trigger without hesitation in that final moment still wore an astonishingly calm expression.
She had a look in her eyes that Levian knew well.
The eyes of a soldier who had resolved to become a killer, stepping into her own battle.
Ejekail had been deeply worried about her, but when faced with her first killing, Rizan was surprisingly rational. She did not regret her decision either. Because she had known that the moment she hesitated or trembled, Ejekail would die.
She could not bear to lose him. That was why she had made the choice she had to make.
To save the person who had to live, she killed the person who had to die. If it meant she could save him, Rizan would pull the trigger as many times as necessary from now on without fear. Moreover, this bullet was also the price paid for the lives of the girls who had died without even knowing why.
The spy who had boasted that he had won after stabbing a knife into Ejekail’s stomach twice went rigid like a log and collapsed from a single bullet that struck his heart.
Only after confirming the man’s death did Ejekail finally stagger. He had endured all this time through sheer force of will, and once he was certain Rizan was safe, his knees buckled and he crumpled.
Rizan urgently caught hold of him. She wanted to support his body, but his weight was far more than she could handle. In the end, they sank to the floor together.
What am I supposed to do here?
She felt utterly helpless. With her shallow medical knowledge, the only thing she knew was the basic fact that pulling out a knife embedded in the abdomen would cause even greater bleeding. Ejekail had already lost so much blood. For now, she had to preserve what blood and body heat he had left. Rizan took off his outer coat and put it on him, then put his gloves on his hands as well.
“……Are you all right? You’re not badly hurt?”
Anyone could see that he was the one gravely wounded, yet Ejekail was entirely occupied with checking on her condition. Rizan only nodded frantically.
She wanted to ask him the same—if he was all right, if he could hold on—but no matter how she looked at him, he was not all right. She tried pressing down on the wound with her hands, but blood, precious life, kept flowing between her fingers.
“Then that’s enough.”
When Rizan tried to tear up her nightclothes at random because she had nothing to use to stanch the blood, Ejekail stopped her.
“Don’t waste time. Go, Rizan.”
“…….”
“Go. Now.”
Why again?
Why did he keep trying to send her away alone instead of asking her to go with him?
Why? Why?
As if he had read the heart burning inside her, Ejekail urged her.
“Those who can live should live.”
Only then did Ejekail’s “go” transform in Rizan’s ears into “live.”
Rizan could not understand why he was speaking as if he were someone who would soon die, leaving her behind.
This was not what she had wanted to hear.
This could not be why he had followed her, and yet he spoke as if he had fulfilled his responsibility, as if he had even become lighter for it……
Ejekail lifted his head. He seemed to want to see her face, so Rizan quickly met his eyes.
He blinked.
Blink. His dark blue eyes looked straight at her. Blink. The eyes that had still held relatively clear awareness began to lose their light little by little. Each time he blinked, she could see the last strength with which Ejekail had desperately been clinging to consciousness wearing away, moment by moment.
His head dropped.
In that instant, it felt as though the whole world had turned pitch-black. As though she had been left all alone in the middle of a vast darkness.
Don’t do this.
Please don’t do this.
You saved me, and I saved you.
Ejekail,
“Rose, how long are you going to keep calling me Major?”
“……Pardon?”
“You know it, don’t you? My name.”
What had frightened her so much that she had not been able to call his name even once?
It was empty. She regretted it. She was afraid.
Ejekail.
I should have called his name when I still could.
Was it not far too cruel that even in this moment, she could not call out to him aloud?
Rijan moved her lips. Whether her voice came out or not, she called him again and again.
Ejekail.
His name tasted of tears. Bitter, and terribly salty.
Ejekail, Ejekail.
What if this name became the past?
She had no confidence she could remember him only as a memory. Even now, the distance felt so vast she could hardly bear it.
Ejekail, Ejekail, Ejekail, Eje…….
“……kail.”
At first, she herself did not know what had happened.
“Ejekail!”
The stillness of the night was shattered by a scream mixed with sobs.
Rijan doubted her ears. Then she doubted her throat. Still unable to believe it, she carefully parted her lips.
“……Ejekail?”
It was certain. She had heard it. It was her own voice.
Of course, it was not exactly the same as before. There was a metallic rasp in it, a somewhat hoarse trace remaining, and the unfamiliar feeling of her throat vibrating after so long made her keep touching her neck.
Even so, it was unmistakably a voice that had flowed from her own vocal cords and lips.
“Can you hear me? Ejekail, are you hearing my voice?”
Rijan shouted into the ear of the man whose consciousness was gradually fading.
“Stay with me! Don’t lose consciousness…….”
The man who had nearly crossed the line between life and death countless times was truly about to cross it now, and she had no idea what she could say to hold him back.
“You said you wanted to propose to me!”
She wanted to demand how he could reassure her as if he would always be in the same place, then vanish overnight like a mirage.
Now all that was left was to build happy days together, one by one. There were far too many futures they had yet to fulfill…….
Grief surged up inside her.
“What kind of man gives a ring and says he only wants to be remembered? Even if I said no, you should have clung to me just once more…… I didn’t truly hate it. I only needed a little time. There was never a moment I didn’t love you, so how can you give up so easily?”
Rijan snapped the chain of the necklace holding the ring from around her neck. It was the ring she had resisted with all her might to protect even when Akenaus had tried to take it from her. She placed the ring, chain and all, into Ejekail’s hand.
“I always carried the ring with me. Far from thinking of throwing it away, I never once took it off, and you didn’t even know…….”
Her throat closed up. She had wondered what she would say first if her voice ever returned, but she had never imagined this.
She had never dreamed that the man who needed to hear her words would end up in a state where he might not hear them at all.
She had never known that every moment would go so terribly awry.
If she had known.
If only she had known sooner.
“……I would have married you.”
Only now did she see her own true feelings.
“I wouldn’t have set foot in a dangerous place like Sielsa. So propose to me again. Not a cowardly proposal like that one—if you just put the ring on my finger yourself, I’ll gladly accept it right there…….”
“……Rijan?”
Suddenly, a voice reached her ears, making her doubt them.