Wound (1)
As expected, I couldn't see it. No matter how hard I focused my eyes and looked at Ellie, 「Sixth Sense」 did not reflect her fate.
Contrary to my concerns, perhaps it wasn't the case that I could see anyone’s fate.
If so, that was a relief. Being able to see multiple fates would only end up being a hassle for me.
At that moment, Ellie’s aura, a mixture of various colors, began to deepen.
“…Blue?”
It was the first time I saw an aura shining blue after white and black. And Ariel’s aura, as she approached Ellie, was also rippling in blue.
I focused mana on my ears to hear their conversation.
“…When did I say that? I said ‘I don’t want to be abandoned again either.’ Pass that on.”
“Ellie…”
No way, were they fighting?
Well, knowing Ellie’s personality, it would be strange for her to just sit still.
Fortunately, I had read this development.
Although the timing had been moved up due to Ariel’s appearance, in the original, Ellie had also been the one to pick a fight first.
However, the problem with this episode was that it ended with ‘Ellie dropping out.’
That, I had to prevent.
“……”
Grace seemed to have noticed the situation too and was watching them. But she didn’t move easily.
Grace only clenched and unclenched her hands, unsure of what to do.
Though she was well-versed in tactics and combat, she was still clueless when it came to emotional fights between those who had just become adults.
“Professor, I’ll go.”
“…Please do.”
I had to step in here. Before Grace sided with ‘Michael’s little sister,’ before Ellie’s emotions twisted for just a moment.
“Stop.”
I had to stop this ending.
***
A resting area behind the main building, covered in greenery.
I stood facing Ellie and Ariel, who were sitting on a marble bench.
“I think the time for fighting without reason is long past. Don’t you agree?”
The two lowered their heads silently.
I already knew the reason.
Inferiority complex.
Though the two of them were so different, that feeling was the same.
“If no one is willing to speak up, then I’ll have to report this matter to the Disciplinary Committee.”
“Hey…”
Only then did Ellie lift her head slightly.
When I shifted my gaze to her, Ellie flinched as if she had been burned.
“Speak.”
“Well… dragging us before the Disciplinary Committee over something like this is a bit much…”
“‘Something like this’? Because of you two, today’s class was disrupted. As a result, nearly two hundred of your classmates suffered. Does it still seem like ‘something like this’ to you?”
It was then.
“It’s because of me.”
At Ariel’s words, Ellie opened her eyes wide in surprise.
Ariel stood from her seat and knelt on one knee before me.
“I was the one who said the Éclat technique was pathetic. I was the one who picked the fight first, and I’m the one who should be punished.”
…Yes. I knew you would say that.
“Ellis. Is what she said true?”
“……”
Ellie kept her lips tightly sealed, neither speaking nor showing any gesture.
She only looked at Ariel with a subtle expression in her eyes.
“Then that’s the end of the conversation. Settle the reconciliation among yourselves. You’re both old enough for that.”
And with that, I left the resting area.
Over the silence that lingered between them, only the sound of my footsteps echoed endlessly.
Once I arrived at the main building, I stopped at the door and glanced back at them.
Children who wanted to be adults…and thus pretended to be adults.
Such incompleteness eventually exploded like this.
Like a time bomb, with no telling when.
***
After Rohan left, Ariel quietly got up and began to walk away.
Watching her retreating figure, Ellis suddenly shouted.
“Hey!”
Ariel stopped and turned to see Ellie running toward her. Ellie asked,
“Why did you lie?”
At those words, Ariel recalled Rohan in the practice building.
Back then, Ariel had read the flow of mana at his ear.
‘Rohan already knows everything. But he still pressed us for responsibility…’
A test.
Ariel immediately realized that Rohan had been testing them.
That’s why she lied.
Because I sensed that the assistant professor already knew.
“You still don’t realize that the assistant professor treated us like children?”
“…What?”
Ariel’s words were unexpected.
Ellie hadn’t sensed that at all. She just thought they were being scolded for causing trouble.
“That’s why I apologized first. Because I’m not a child.”
Even someone as dull as Ellie could immediately understand Ariel’s intent.
“So you’re saying you’re an adult, and I’m a child?”
“I never said that. If that’s how it sounded, then maybe it’s because that’s what you think.”
At that moment, Ariel turned completely to face Ellis.
“You said you could see how I lived, right? Then tell me.”
A darkness like an abyss opened wide, as if to swallow Ellie whole.
“How do you think I’ve been living until now?”
That darkness resided in Ariel’s eyes.
An indescribable emptiness.
So deep, so profound, that if one misstepped even once, they might fall forever.
‘What is with her… Her eyes are terrifying…’
They were the same age, had lived through similar times. And yet, in Ariel’s eyes, there was a sense of time lived differently, as if at a slower pace, alone.
“!”
The gap was suffocating.
Ellie could finally breathe normally only when Ariel averted her gaze and resumed walking.
“……”
Left alone, Ellis felt heavy-hearted.
Only now did she realize that she had made a mistake.
***
Ellis spent the day surrounded by her friends’ comfort.
It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’ll be fine.
Hearing the words “It’s okay” all day long somehow made her feel the opposite. After barely finishing all her lectures, Ellis shook off her friends who invited her out for a drink and headed alone to the back gate.
“Haa…”
A sigh spilled out heavily. While walking with her eyes on the ground, a familiar shadow stretched across Ellie’s view.
“I’ve been waiting.”
When she lifted her head, under a sky dyed crimson, Rohan stood before her.
The kind and gentle ‘Rohan’ was not here.
Standing before her now was the Empire’s ‘hero,’ a ‘Gamma’-ranked ‘Sword Master,’ and an ‘assistant professor’ in the Swordsmanship Department at Springwind.
A complete, fully-realized ‘adult.’
“Éclat.”
“…Yeah.”
“I thought you would be the first to admit you were wrong.”
“…!”
Thump― That single sentence made her heart crumble into pieces.
“But you didn’t.”
Another thump― This time, the sound came from within Rohan’s chest.
It was the ‘trust’ he had built up for someone until now.
“You knew everything…?”
Rohan neither nodded nor opened his mouth.
No sound came this time.
As if nothing remained.
Ellie gave a bitter smile.
“So you’re disappointed? Ah, you didn’t know until now, did you, Rohan? I’ve always been like this. I can’t stand those better than me, and I can’t stand those worse than me even more!”
Rohan still said nothing.
That silence hurt Ellie more than any words.
If only he had scolded her, she could have used it as an excuse to hate him for a while…
She poured out harsh words to hide her rising tears.
“It’s hopeless for me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t do it. Why? Because I just can’t. I was born that way—what am I supposed to do about that?”
“…Ellie.”
“People like you, Rohan, would never understand. How awful it is to want to do something and not be able to!”
“Ellie.”
“You lied about trusting me too, right…? You were only nice to me because you wanted to get into my dad’s good graces⸺”
“Ellis!”
It was the first time Rohan had raised his voice.
Tears that had welled up in Ellie’s eyes finally spilled over.
To Ellis, who cried in silence, Rohan said,
“No one starts off being good.”
It wasn’t ‘Rohan’ who said that.
“I know how hard you’ve worked. Every time you wanted to give up, you fought countless battles within yourself.”
It was the ‘reader’ who had been reading her all this time.
“Even though you knew you couldn’t do it, you kept trying, resisting, refusing to give up. You kept trying to change yourself.”
Maybe the reason he was able to believe he could change Grace’s fate—was because there was someone like ‘Ellis Éclat.’
Her example, with a future already altered, gave him hope.
“Ellie. You probably don’t realize how much you’ve changed. How far you’ve come clinging on so desperately.”
“……”
“As long as you don’t give up, how slowly you go doesn’t matter.”
At those words, Ellie made a vow.
“So don’t give up, Ellie.”
To believe in the faith he had in her—she decided to believe in it herself, too.
***
White Hole, located southeast of Canterbury.
White Hole was a ‘war memorial’ built to remember the Second Human-Demon War.
“Why here?”
“I thought you’d forgotten something.”
“Ah… I don’t really like places like this.”
Ellie wasn’t particularly fond of this place.
She had lost her mother during the war—of course she wouldn’t.
Even so, I brought her here because I wanted to help her remember what she had forgotten.
A weekday evening.
The inside of White Hole was quiet, like the fading memories of those who were forgetting the war.
Ellie, who had looked bored at first, pointed excitedly at something after wandering through the exhibition.
“Rohan! Do you remember this? You did something here with Lady Grace.”
“The Ashford recapture operation? That was a nightmare. Felt like I came back from hell.”
…To be honest, I wasn’t sure.
It wasn’t me who lived through the war, but ‘Rohan.’
Still, I’d read bits and pieces of the Empire’s war history, so explaining that day wasn’t difficult.
“If the Éclat Knights hadn’t reinforced us, the entire 9th Legion would have been isolated. Then I wouldn’t be here, and Lady Grace wouldn’t have become a professor in the Swordsmanship Department. You could say my appointment as Éclat Knights’ vice-captain after the war was to repay that debt.”
“So you didn’t come because you admired Lady Ellis?”
“Quit playing around.”
Ellie, giggling, stepped closer to the display window. Her smile reflected on the glass slowly faded.
“In my memory, Lady Grace burst in and destroyed everything.”
“Exaggeration is how rumors are born. Lady Grace nearly died that day too. That’s how urgent the situation was.”
“And yet you somehow survived?”
“I’m Rohan, the Empire’s Sword Master. Don’t underestimate me.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure you are.”
The joking stopped as we entered Exhibition Hall 2. Beyond a massive dome-shaped glass panel, the horrific battlefield from that day was on display.
Ellie narrowed her brows at the sight.
“…Still the same. Still horrible.”
Ellie, too, was one of those who had experienced the war directly.
The horrors of that day remained vividly in some corner of her memory.
I asked.
“Doesn’t it all seem like a lie?”
“Yeah. It’s so peaceful now, I can’t believe the world was that violent just a few years ago.”
“There’s still a lot of violence in the world. That’s why knights like me exist—to stop it.”
“I know. That’s why I want to become a knight too.”
I fell silent for a moment and looked at Ellie.
Sensing my gaze, Ellie looked up at me.
“But mocking someone by putting their misfortune on display is also a form of violence. Like what you did to Ariel today.”
“……”
It was Ellie who first touched Ariel’s pain. No matter what kind of person Ariel was, as long as she had done nothing wrong, her wounds should have been protected.
That was why I still kept my eyes on Ariel.
“I believe it was a mistake on your part. Everyone makes mistakes.”
“…You’re telling me to apologize to her tomorrow? Tch, fine.”
No one fails to flinch when their wounds are touched.
Even more so when the wound is deep and festering.
—Because I feel the same way.
Michael’s feelings for Ariel were likely no different than my feelings for Grace.
If someone you love returns wounded, with reopened scars dripping tears of blood…Because I know that feeling, I’m letting it go this once. Lippenstein.