“I wonder how Lefiya is doing…” Tiona murmured.
She was in Twilight Manor, Loki Familia’s home.
It had been ten days since Lefiya left to be a recruiter.
Lounging lazily on the sofa in the parlor, she looked to the southwest, toward Meren, where Lefiya surely was.
“Unlike us, she’s got a real education. I’m sure she’s doing fine. It’s her old stomping ground, right? She knows how things work there.”
“Yeah…and Lefiya can get along with anyone…”
Tiona and Aiz answered from their own places on the sofa.
But Tiona’s expression was still clouded.
“I’m not really worried about that… I’m wondering if she’ll come back like that?”
“Of course not! …Of course not, right?”
“But Lefiya…went to Bete, too…”
“Ugh.”
Tiona and Tione both slumped at Aiz’s dejected answer.
They had been like this all the time lately, ever since Lefiya left.
To be blunt, there was nothing to do.
Of course, Aiz was continuing her self-training. Tione was working hard to help Finn, and Tiona was going into the Dungeon with Narfi and the others. But maybe because everything had become so peaceful, the time they spent sitting around like this had increased.
They had been immersed in near constant fighting until the final battle in Knossos, so this was just an adventurer’s rest, but recently…whenever they were hanging around with nothing to do, they ended up thinking about Lefiya.
And fell into a negative feedback loop due to their excessive unease.
It just became normal that she was always around…
That’s why it’s so lonely…
Aiz glanced at the empty seat on the sofa.
“Don’t worry, Tiona. If that dumbass Balder tries to keep Lefiya…I’ll send up the flare and smash that whole stupid school to pieces.”
“That’s too dramatic… There’s no need to destroy it.”
“And the ones doing the smashing would be us.”
They turned a cold eye on the fourth figure in the parlor, Loki, who had been drinking since the break of dawn.
“Hey, why did you send Lefiya there? I can sort of tell you’re worried about her after her big image change, but could we not have stayed with her?”
“Hey, hey, always diving straight into the heart of things without any warning, Tiona. That’s the naive, childlike character I took ya for! The innocent Amazon is definitely a top-tier trope!”
“Quit dodging the question,” Tiona said with a pout.
Loki downed the last of the alcohol she was nursing and after a moment’s pause:
“Mmm…the thing about people who are students is, in a way, they can be forgiven for messing up.”
“?”
“People who teach’ll admonish ’em and correct ’em no matter what happens. They can be spoiled like that, which is maybe a bit over the top…but anyway, they can do whatever they feel like and keep rushin’ ahead. They can mess up and fall on their face, and it’s fine.”
“…You mean Lefiya?”
Loki did not respond to Tione’s question or Tiona’s cocked head.
“But once you’re on the teaching side, you don’t get that anymore. And then the people you’ve gotta guide, the ones who’re there to learn from you, they become a mirror.”
“A mirror…?”
Loki stared at her reflection in the empty glass as Aiz looked at her.
“When you stand in front of a mirror, you can suddenly see the things that you couldn’t unravel no matter what anyone said… That’s what I’m hopin’.”
“Meaning? There’s something she can’t notice while staying on the side that learns?”
“I wouldn’t put it that strongly. But when you’re the mirror, there’s nothin’ that reflects you, right?”
“I don’t get it at all!”
Loki just smiled at Tiona’s and Tione’s reactions and refused to give a clear answer.
“What do you think of Lefiya, Aiz? As her respected older sister in uncertainty.”
She leaped into the open seat beside Aiz with a grin.
She poked her finger at Aiz’s cheek. She tried to stop Loki, but before she could:
“Well, it’s true Lefiya’s pretty adorable compared to Aiz.”
“Yeah, Aiz is the most unsteady, for sure!”
Tione, sitting on the other side of Aiz, also started poking her cheek, and Tiona moved behind the sofa and grabbed her long, blond hair and spread it out. Surrounded by the three of them, unable to argue, she was transformed into a doll for them to play with.
Even though she had no idea what to do, like a hamster being played with, she did feel like what they were saying was correct.
The current Lefiya was not more unstable than Aiz.
All of them were in agreement on that.
But…
“Lefiya isn’t dangerous…but she is…scary,” Aiz murmured as she looked down at her hand.
“Scary? What do you mean?”
“Like she might…stop being Lefiya.”
“Stop being Lefiya?”
“Mhm…I have a goal. But Lefiya…doesn’t.”
Loki watched quietly as Tione and Tiona expressed confusion.
Because the current Lefiya resembled her younger self, Aiz could understand. It was an instinctive feeling she could not explain well, but she was sure it wasn’t wrong.
And she used the word scary because Lefiya was decisively different from Aiz’s past and current selves.
“Lefiya has no goal, so she will never be satisfied. Even if we say it’s enough…she won’t be able to stop.”
Aiz concluded that there was probably only one person who could stop Lefiya now, and she was no longer there.
But she could not explain it well. It was difficult to put her exact thoughts into words. Disappointed in herself for being so terrible at expressing things, she stared at her feet.
“Sorry…I can’t explain it well…”
“It’s fine, Aiz. I can get the gist, and the important thing is you’re serious about Lefiya.”
Loki’s foolish attitude disappeared, and she patted Aiz on the head.
“The main reason I sent her back to that rotten ship was to return her to her roots…An alma mater can be unexpectedly good for helpin’ ya realize some things.”
“Back to her roots…?”
“That’s right. Hopefully, Lefiya can remember herself. That’s what I was thinkin’.”
And as they looked at her, she slipped back onto the sofa and looked up at the ceiling.
“I’m just lettin’ it ride, but…I wonder how it’s goin’.”