The child is held up like a cat being carried by a person.
Probably because he's lost the strength to even curl his body from the pain.
"No, why are you asking Tori about that?"
Merriwather looks at me with a strange expression and asks. I look around.
Fear and confusion, anger, yet frustration at not daring to speak, annoyance, boredom. Many people are looking here with expressions filled with various emotions.
"Victoria is the only one here who can sympathize with the child and speak to me."
Actually, I'm forcing her to judge what will happen to the child. I think that the compassionate Victoria won't leave this child's arm in a severed state.
Becoming a Harvester should never be my intention. Of course, if I were famous, they might choose to become a Harvester when asked if they have any wishes, but such gazes are not mixed in here.
That's why I had to force it when creating the first Harvester in the Brightshin slums.
"What will you do if Tori tells you to leave it alone?"
Merriwather uses a mischievous expression. Still, she's thinking of making them a Harvester while saying the child wished for it.
But shouldn't I be isolated now?
I put words in my mouth that a monster would likely say.
"I won't do anything."
I don't say things like I won't do it if it's not wished for. If everything I say must be true, I have to be careful with my words.
I turned my gaze from Merriwather, who was looking at me with an expression full of interest, to look at Victoria. Victoria isn't paying attention to the conversation but is using her ability to stop the blood flowing from the child's hand.
Then, as if realizing something, she looks down at her own hand and waves it.
The hand that had fallen to the floor rose into the air.
And it flew towards the child's wrist, stopped a little distance away, and then the liquid inside came out in straight lines from both sides.
I was watching, wondering if she was going to kill the child by squeezing out more bodily fluids, but she gently rotated the hand until the liquid pillars from the cut surfaces completely aligned, and as soon as they matched, they immediately combined.
"My goodness, can you use healing magic from that point?"
Using the point where there's moisture, light rises from inside the cut surface as if welding the severed part. And after a moment.
When the light faded, a hand without a single scar appeared.
"My arm?"
The child mutters in an almost hoarse voice while looking down at his arm. It's a truly severe method of combination.
It's closer to repairing a machine than healing a person. Connecting the joint parts and welding them.
And humans are living machines.
"Wow, this actually works."
Victoria is also looking at it with an expression that suggests she didn't really think what she did would succeed. There's a murmuring sound from around us.
Then she approached the child and touched the arm here and there.
"Hmm. It's all attached. The arm was more complicated than I thought."
And she took the child off my arms, put him down, and patted his back.
My Harvester candidate disappeared after fleeing into the alley. While I was looking at the lost fish, Victoria meets my gaze.
"This is right, isn't it?"
I answer while inwardly heaving a deep sigh.
"Yes, that's right."
For you, that's right, Victoria Bete. But remember that my internal favorability has plummeted.
"I thought Belle was a kind person, but it seems that's not the case?"
Merriwather sneaks up to me and asks. At those words, Victoria was about to say something but closed her mouth. It seems she knows that I don't have a kind personality.
"By human standards, I'm evil."
Of course, I'm saying this knowing that it won't really sound evil. Most of the time, it's useless when someone says this about themselves.
Good people don't act because their actions are good, but because they think it's natural and act accordingly.
Because living kindly is normal.
So there's a thing where a society that respects individuality easily becomes an environment where evil people can thrive. If you can't be bound by the norm, there's not enough strength to hold back what pops out.
Anyway.
It means there's no bigger liar than someone who says they're good. Merriwather probably knows such an obvious fact too.
So after saying I'm bad, this time I pointed at Merriwather.
"Merriwather was bad too."
"Because I cut off the child's hand?"
"No. Victoria came out to play, but now Victoria's mood is ruined, isn't it? Take responsibility."
If someone is too kind, it's hard to use them. Everyone knows what kind of end a prophet of a universal religion is likely to meet.
Being moderately ugly makes it comfortable for the user to think, 'They're just like me,' or 'They're a worse hypocrite than me,' and use them easily.
Like those fools who say they don't like too perfect humans, idiots who find their inadequacies through comparison are easy to understand. That's why they fear God and hate strong artificial intelligence. They fear beings that are superior to them in every aspect.
Because until now they've found their value through comparison, they can't bear being lower in value in every aspect.
So you create easily understandable weaknesses. Is this what they call humanity?
"Hmm, aren't you taking care of Victoria too much? Or is it? Dependence?"
"Merriwather Olcott. Are you really an escort?"
I asked once as a warning because she was probing too blatantly, whether believing in cognitive distortion or not. When I said that, Merriwather takes a step back and apologizes.
"Sorry, sorry. I guess my interest in Belle is just too big. It's really hard to know what you're thinking."
Looking at the sentences, it's not a proper apology, but if cognitive abilities are impaired, you wouldn't feel such discomfort.
Even if that ability isn't that strong, and even if ordinary people should notice something strange here.
I decided to pretend not to notice.
"Yes. I understand."
It was then.
"That person, it's that person."
I hear a strangely nauseating murmur. Looking in the direction of the sound, inside an even narrower alley from the alley.
Midsummer. There's a gaze looking this way from an alley where sunlight doesn't reach unless the sun is directly overhead.
It's exactly the same kind of people as the poor in Brightshin.
But their gaze is directed at Victoria, not me.
It's not difficult to separate their voices from the sounds filling the background. I can think many thoughts simultaneously.
They murmur words like these:
Purple hair. Girl. Powerful healing ability. Mercy. Free of charge.
They only know fragmented information. If you gather it, it could be me, or it could be Victoria. Or there's also a girl who awakened healing abilities in the slums.
But that one isn't "that person" yet.
Because she hasn't used that healing ability on anyone except her family. And she used it two days ago.
Harvesters immediately realize their abilities when they gain superpowers, but I don't know until they use them.
Even if they use them somewhat familiarly from the start, everyone experiences the beginning. It means they experience trial and error.
They always experiment to see how much their ability will be accepted.
That's when I know that Harvester has gained superpowers.
Considering that the girl hid her ability for quite a long time, there might be superpower users that I haven't identified yet.
I'll need to pay more careful attention to such aspects in the future.
That's that, and those in the alley fled when our gazes met.
They could have exuded a little more desire...
Meanwhile, Victoria looks around and sighs. Many people are already staring at Victoria.
"I guess I can't come here anymore in the future."
"Victoria made the wrong choice."
I approached Victoria. If it were Choseol's body, she'd still be a small girl. This child too.
I reached out and took her hand. And I applied force to make her bend at the waist. Then I held her head with both hands.
"What do you mean I made the wrong choice."
Even with her face held by me, she asks with a pouty expression.
"Victoria should have died there. Then Morris would have fallen into despair and made machines that shouldn't be made at that company, and Beatrice would have broken. In the end, their relationship would have been torn apart."
Using Merriwather as an excuse, I say what I want to say.
"You've been making wrong choices since the moment you took my hand there."
Then I squeezed both cheeks, let go, and turned around. I approach Merriwather, who's looking at me with an interesting expression.
"Even now."
Merriwather, who's turning over in her head what my words mean. Most likely a person working in a place like the kingdom's intelligence department.
The king I met last time was also suspicious of me.
What my identity is.
That's probably for Aurora's sake. From the moment she contracted with me to save Aurora, everything was too late!
"Let's go, Merriwather. There's no one calling for me here."
"Hey, did Tori do something you don't like? If it's because of me, I'm sorry, so how about making up here before we go?"
Hmm. I see easily understandable malice.
There's an intention that if we make up here, the relationship will become more twisted. That's interesting.
Let's do that.
"Let's say that, Victoria."
"You seem crazy."
"I think so too."
A treatment that doesn't consider emotions at all. An action to break relationships by looking at context.
"Are you going to make up?"
At my question, Victoria stares at me intently. And the air became very dry. Dry air without moisture takes moisture from the body.
On the contrary, my body is damp. I scratched my body while feeling the coldness.
"Is it necessary?"
"No."
Victoria stares at me for a while, then walks past me. The air returned to normal again.
Victoria doesn't even give a glance to Merriwather, passes by her too, and leaves the alley.
"Well. This is a problem. But Belle, your words were a bit harsh too. No matter how unpleasant things are, you should have made up maturely there."
She immediately divides the difference between adults and children, and pushes me into the position of the weaker one. Yes. It's easy-to-understand gaslighting. Since I plan to pretend to fall for it, I shook my head.
"Victoria was the one who did wrong."
I'm not bad. Others are bad. It's a denial that a child would likely make.
See? Merriwather's smile is deepening, isn't it?
"Tori was acting strange. Saying something about cutting off the wrist of that poor person. And then ignoring you who was trying to heal. It was as if she was trying to replace you."
I hold back my laughter at such an obvious story about threatening my place. While pretending to be concerned, she's widening the gap between us, isn't she?
"Is that so?"
"But you should make up, right? It's not that you don't want to, right? But today's not good, let's think about it after a day."
In short, she's telling me to confide my worries to her. Confiding worries means pouring out my thoughts.
Indeed, she's someone from the intelligence department.
The answer this person would like best here is ignoring. I didn't answer and started walking towards the lodging.
Merriwather tries to hide her joy while saying words to comfort me. In between, she also whispers stories that could push away the relationship between Victoria and me.
I returned to the lodging while starting to answer little by little like someone who's being enchanted.
Merriwather doesn't seem to know.
In the last moment when I talked with Victoria. The air was very dry, and my stomach was damp.
Victoria said Merriwather was strange, and told me to scratch my arm if I knew.
When she asked if I needed help, I answered that I didn't need it.
Sorry, Merriwather.
Victoria is probably smarter than you think. You shouldn't underestimate someone who single-handedly slaughtered Sahaggin because it was necessary, killed those summoning the Great Kraken, and then tried to self-destruct with their nest.
Victoria is strong in adversity.
She can notice and deal with insidious methods.
It might be better to side with Merriwather to gain warmth immediately, but this time I'm thinking of taking another side.
The point where I can gain warmth has become distant, but if she doesn't cause accidents, you could say an abundant future is waiting.
It's painful because it feels like this isn't fast food but a series of hard, nutritionally-focused healthy meals stretching out ahead.
The important thing is that the automatic warmth system production plan is progressing without major problems.
So in the meantime. A few hundred years.
Let's play happily with me.