“Hey— Ouch. Don’t touch there, ya nitwit. You’re acting just like Myfila.”
She was poking me everywhere like she was trying to see how badly my wounds hurt.
“So…I see… If we use a healing spell, you’d need to sacrifice quite a bit of your immune system. And you’ve already lost enough of that from fatigue.”
“That’s right! If I up my regenerative abilities, then that’d eat away at my immune system, and I’d croak from a cold! So my only option’s to sleep it off!”
Even when I yelled at her to stop, her fair fingers kept poking. At the end of her immature teasing, we both ended up falling onto the soft cushion of the couch with a muffled thud.
She hadn’t pushed me over so much as suddenly lost her balance, and I hadn’t been able to stop her from falling.
…………
Before I knew it, she was on top of my torso and staring into my face. Her beautiful face and her curtain of platinum hair took up my entire vision.
Her pointer finger was caressing the gauze on my left eye, which still couldn’t see anything.
“…?”
I was fully convinced she’d start poking around my eyeball next, but it didn’t seem like that’d been her plan.
…………
Eventually, she both seemed to smile and look worried as she murmured, looking indescribably tender, “Back then…I ended up making you shoulder the world’s fate all on your own.”
Then I sighed and turned my eyes down…but I looked back at Sasha right away and clearly told her, “Cyril and Myfila, too.”
“Huh?” Sasha’s eyes immediately went wide, but I kept going.
“You’ve got the wrong idea, Sasha. Cyril was the one outside and bein’ my eyes watchin’ Pandora pummelin’ the Angel-Eater.”
“Feil—”
“And without Myfila’s tonic and help, I never woulda been able to finish the fight.”
As Sasha brightened the more she understood how I felt, the smile on my face also grew. In the end, I was giving her a toothy grin that went all the way to my canines.
“Like I coulda saved the world on my own—I’m just a student.”
The same was true for Sasha.
“…You really do make an excellent team.”
That moment, Sasha gave me her best smile yet—a smile without any gloom or regret—one that was kind and heartfelt.
“We ain’t done yet. We’ll keep improvin’ even more from here on out…!” I said, and she seemed to gather that I’d tried to stand up right then. She got off me and didn’t say a word as she offered a hand and a shoulder.
Then she pulled me up with more strength than I thought was in her.
“You’ll hurt yourself at this rate.”
“Nonsense. I’m country-raised.”
As we stuck right by each other, we bobbed along to the large window.
Sasha opened it, leading us to the balcony and allowing a cold breeze to come in.
“It’s amazin’. Ya got a whole view of the capital.”
“You should be proud, Feil Fonaf. This is just one of the views you and your friends protected.”
When we set foot on the large, semicircular balcony, the land of Shidoh’s capital—also renowned as the “white-walled town”—was right below our eyes.
The imposing castle had been built by cutting through a knoll in the middle of the plain. And this guest room was on the castle’s topmost floor. Beyond the railing spread the townscape of one million surrounded by alabaster walls.
The hem of her dress caught in the breeze, as did my conjurer’s robes.
The azure sky of lingering clouds connected to the ground at the horizon, and as I looked out at the blue of the sky and the white of the ground alongside Sasha, I genuinely marveled at its beauty. I’d just come out to the balcony hoping to get a breath of fresh air, but I’d been so overpowered by the view that I forgot to breathe.
“Do you think you’ll be able to speak all right in front of my father?” she suddenly asked me, which brought me back to reality and forced a strained smile onto my face.
“I’m used to figurin’ things out as I go, and it’ll be nothin’ compared with you, Sasha.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sayin’ I was a lot more nervous at the prospect of goin’ head-to-head against you in the ranking matches. So don’t worry ’bout me.”
That seemed to remind Sasha of five days ago. As though she’d remembered the several summoners who’d been sacrificed and the promise that we hadn’t been able to fulfill with each other, she suddenly, earnestly said, “…It’s a shame the summons festival had to be canceled…”
I didn’t share her sentiments—instead, I put on my usual grin.
“Just ya wait at the top. I’ll catch up soon.”
Sasha looked at me, and I looked at Sasha.
“So it seems you’re up to one of your schemes again?”
A smile graced her beautiful face, almost as though she was part of my mischief.
“I got a mountain of stuff to do after I heal up.” I turned to face ahead of me.
I slowly lifted my right arm, which could move a lot more than it had five days ago, and reached toward the distant, distant horizon.
“Can’t rest on my laurels after defeating one measly ol’ Angel-Eater.”
The blue sky and white capital were so beautiful on this brisk winter day. Once I got this audience with the king over with, I wanted to see the town and what lay beyond the horizon, though Sasha’d probably have a few choice words for me if I told her. Or she might have just smiled in exasperation.
“No wonder you’re Pandora’s summoner. That’s grit only fitting for a god-killing beast.”
“I gotta live for my partner, too, since he’s already dead.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“…I feel like I understand slightly…why your Pandora is a corpse.”
“Why is he?”
“Maybe his regrets upon dying—or no, rather, Pandora’s final wish might have formed a bond between you. So the moment you had the same wish, Pandora came to you.”
She had no evidence or logic to support what she was saying, but I felt like her conjecture might have been unexpectedly accurate.
“Ha-ha-ha! Great!”
I didn’t even stop to think before I was laughing toward the sky.
Then I said, in a voice so composed even I marveled at it:
“People gather burdens just livin’. I’ve got my mom’s, my pa’s, and now it looks like Pandora’s wishes, too. But that’s not gonna change how I’ll live.”
“My…that really is such a Feil Fonaf thing to say.”
“I’m always like this. I’m always cryin’ out about what was ‘entrusted’ to me, but in the end, the only talent I’ve got is to survive another day.”
Right in that moment, a strong wind gusted by.
But I didn’t squint at either that or the sunlight as I exhaled a puff of white breath and my robes whipped around me. I resolved myself to get my next new start today, right now.
“My summon is dead, so I gotta live for all my life’s worth.”
My mom passed early, I lost my old man, and even my own summon was dead, but I was still standing in this world. I exhaled and inhaled, thinking about what could come next and what I’d do in the future.
My life was just getting started.
I had tons of things I still needed to do, tons I still wanted to do, and an endless world stretching all around me to do it in.
Seemed like I had a long way to go before I could come back to my village as a respectable summoner.