“I ended up spending a full ten thousand yen… I should have known Bella would be something else…,” Rossweisse groaned as she inspected the contents of her wallet.
We were taking a break after she had finished her shopping on the terrace of a nearby café.
To have spent ten thousand yen, she must have purchased close to a hundred items. She must have realized she had gone overboard. She decided to have the items delivered, so the huge package should arrive at our house tomorrow.
…Ten thousand yen… Did we come all the way to Tokyo so she could buy a mountain of goods from a hundred-yen store…? Well, she seemed happy, so maybe it was okay… But should a woman her age really be coming all the way to Tokyo for this? I couldn’t help but worry about her future.
At that moment, however, she called out to me. “Y-you weren’t bored, were you? S-sorry… All that shopping got me hyped up…”
Maybe I was letting my feelings show, as a tense air had settled over us.
“Not really,” I answered. “I’m just happy to be here with you.”
Those were my honest thoughts. This was my first time going on a trip with Rossweisse alone, and it was a refreshing experience. I was getting to see a side of her she usually kept under wraps, so there was no way this could be boring.
She paused for a moment to take a sip of her coffee. “Come to think of it, I’ve never gone out with a man before.”
…!
What a shocking confession! I was left speechless, humbled. Was I really the best person for such an important occasion?
“I hope I was the right choice?” I blurted.
Kiba would have definitely been a better companion, while Azazel would no doubt have brought her to Tokyo in a fancy sports car. Compared to them, my dating skills were average at best.
“I-if I had to choose any man I knew, it would probably be you, Issei…” Rossweisse blushed. “But don’t get the wrong idea! If, I said! Hypothetically!”
Her face flushed crimson as she took another sip of her coffee. Then, all of a sudden, she heaved a sigh as her expression clouded.
“…I was always studying in my hometown… The other Valkyrie candidates were always obsessed with stories of warriors who became heroic spirits in Valhalla… While they were daydreaming about boys, I was at my desk trying to get ahead.”
…I could easily picture it, a young Rossweisse hitting the books while muttering to herself, “They’re so filthy. Vulgar! If I don’t study, I’ll end up a loser!”
Rossweisse was staring off into the distance. “I spent my youth studying to become a Valkyrie, but looking back, sometimes I wish I had spent just a little more time having fun…”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re still young! You’re only a year or so older than I am! It’s totally normal for you to still be enjoying your youth—heck, even to just begin enjoying it!”
She was young! She was a teacher, so we tended to forget that sometimes, but she was actually still a teenager. It was far too early for her to consider herself old.
“And being Odin’s attendant—that’s pretty impressive, right? I mean, you were working directly with the Norse gods’ chief deity. That’s an incredible résumé!”
Rossweisse might have her shortcomings, but when you really thought about it—heck, even if you didn’t—her background and skills were incredible. No matter how many times I was reborn, I could never handle the heavy responsibility of being a deity’s attendant.
“…I got left behind, though…”
She was clearly feeling down in the dumps.
…I didn’t know how to respond to that. I knew better than to say it out loud, but Odin’s treatment of her had led to her joining us, so there was that…
“…Besides… I’m not as great as you and the others all think I am…,” she said with a troubled expression.
She pulled an embroidered patch from her pocket, a complex design comprised of layered runes arranged in a circle… Right. I saw something like it last night. That was the pattern from the magic square when her grandmother Gondul teleported in.
Rossweisse sighed deeply. “This has been passed down through my family for generations. It’s like a family crest… The eldest child is supposed to inherit it from generation to generation, engraving it into their mind and body to carry it on… I was the firstborn—the oldest daughter—but this pattern…” She paused there, her voice lowering to a soft murmur. “I couldn’t carry it on…”
Every Norse demigod family—especially those in Asgard—possess their own unique tradition of magic, techniques honed to perfection and passed down through the generations. When the time came for a new heir to take over the family legacy, they would engrave their family crest on their minds and bodies as proof of their inheritance.
Rossweisse’s family was no exception. Her mother had inherited their crest, and Rossweisse, as her daughter, was expected to as well.
And yet she wasn’t able to.
No matter how many times they performed the inheritance rites, the emblem failed to take root in Rossweisse’s mind or magic formulas.
“…I’m an only child, so in the end, the family crest was passed down to a distant relative,” she said while clutching the embroidered patch. “The inheritance ceremony went flawlessly for them, leaving everyone wondering why I couldn’t complete it… That magic has been my family’s specialty for generations, but I’m completely hopeless at it… I managed to pick up some rune magic and gandur techniques, but it’s like I’m just not compatible with seidhr-style magic. I still can’t get the hang of that type… I was able to pick up a bunch of Valkyrie combat spells—I’m probably the best in the family at those ones—but my ancestors have always balanced rune, gandur, and seidhr magic, so ultimately, I’m the odd one out. The only styles I have a knack for are ones my family doesn’t use… I was lucky to be able to become a Valkyrie…but I was hopeless at it compared to my grandmother back in her day…”
…She wasn’t adept at her family’s magic, and so her talents had blossomed in other fields. I couldn’t help but think of Sairaorg. Then again, he belonged to a noble lineage intricately involved in underworld politics, so his burden must have been unimaginably more immense. For someone like me, born into an ordinary family, these inheritance issues were too complicated to wrap my head around.
I had heard Rossweisse wasn’t particularly skilled at collecting the souls of brave men during her Valkyrie days. No doubt she had faced considerable difficulty before being chosen as Odin’s attendant.
Maybe it was fate that she wound up part of the Gremory Familia, with our overarching emphasis on raw firepower. After all, Valkyries learned a lot of offensive magic! It could hardly be a coincidence.
Rossweisse’s cheeks turned bright red. “For generations, mages in my family have been experts at communicating with spirits and working with summoning magic. But not me… Instead, I soaked up attack magic like a sponge, and was even able to design more efficient spells. My parents were more dismayed than pleased by my success in that regard.”
I scratched at my cheek. “Y-you also learned defensive magic when you went back to your hometown, though, right?”
“Yes, that’s true… I’ve developed in an unorthodox way for my family. As a child, I always took it for granted that I would become a Valkyrie like my grandmother and follow in the family’s footsteps. That was what everyone expected of me. But it didn’t happen. It seemed like a given, and it slipped right out of my hands… I still don’t know what to do with myself. That’s why I’m focusing so much on my job and trying to be careful with money—because I’m anxious about the future.”
She had talent, just not the kind the people around her wanted. Being blessed with ability, she had nonetheless succeeded in finding a job. But she still couldn’t figure out what she really wanted to do.
Her struggle was that she had something but wasn’t able to hold on to it. I had thought her similar to Sairaorg earlier, but at their cores, they were different issues.
She put the embroidered patch back in her pocket. “My parents, my grandmother, the rest of the family—they didn’t blame me for not being able to inherit the family legacy, and they still treat me normally… They put it down to every family having its oddballs, which was nice in its own way… But if they had criticized me more, pushed me a little further, maybe I would have rebelled and gone in a more extreme direction… Well, I suppose you could call becoming a demon an extreme choice…”
Was that why she had become a demon? To let go of everything?