“How about this?!” It was a small pistol that had fallen out of his sleeve. It was a single-shot assassin’s gun, small enough to hide in his clothes but still very capable of killing a person. He pulled the trigger immediately. “…” Norman stood completely still. He knew what would happen, though he was still worried. “Phew.” Clareth let out a sharp breath for the first time. She raised her wand vertically, and the bullet struck the center of the handle, where fissures rushed along the whole surface before it exploded open. Then the little man saw two things. “…?!” A slender silver blade emerging from the shattered sheath of the wand and geometric-patterned wings emerging from the Fairy’s back. “Clareth!” Norman shouted in a panic, but the Fairy ignored him and stepped forward. In an instant, a flawless, arrow-like thrust pierced Nocker’s heart, like a flash of white blades dancing an airy step. “Cough!” Nocker coughed up blood. “……Dwerkknock!” “Spriggan Hand!” Nothing happened. “Damn you!” “Too bad for you. If you can seal me, I can just as easily seal you.” Spriggan Hand—it was the power to freely manipulate air as a solid. Clareth could shape air into any form she desired. The terrifying thing was that it was invisible to the naked eye. It was originally an ability to manipulate the air in her line of sight, but she expanded its range of distortion through training to dozens of meters around her, allowing her to solidify and manipulate air remotely, controlling its composition and even atmospheric pressure. Spriggan protected treasures. That was why she called her ability The Fairy’s Grasp. In contrast, Nocker’s Dwerkknock must have been an ability that turned solid things soft, but for him, what mattered wasn’t just what the ability could do—it was something more. “So that’s…how it is.” “Hmm?” “Those wings of light you had just now… They’re what make you special…!” Though the wings on her back had already vanished, the image was burned into Nocker’s eyes. “With that power…you’re capable of distorting so much more…!” “Don’t impose your version of distortion on me. You and I want to distort different things.” You and I, we’re not the same. Even if you say that, I don’t care. “Maybe you were discarded because you couldn’t even understand that?” “…!” The little man tried to shout something. “That’s enough.” Before he could finish, the Fairy pulled her thin sword from his chest. Blood spurted from the wound, and with a dull sound from the little man’s throat, his life ebbed away. That was the end. The monster who had distorted so many lives perished, and the two he targeted survived. “…Phew. I’m beat. I broke the sheath, Mr. Norman.” Clareth swung the sword to shake off the blood with a wry smile. “Well, there’s no helping it. Let’s go buy you a new one next time… Oh, also…” “Hmm?” “That’s some impressive skill you have.” “Hee-hee.” She smiled at the praise—not a feigned smile but one of pure joy, different than the usual. “Elementary, my dear Mr. Norman.” Her smile was warm as a spring breeze. “It’s all thanks to you teaching me.” “Well, that was a fun trip.” Two days after the trainjacking, having finished his report in the capital, Clareth smiled at him as usual on their way home. Taking down the ringleader was all well and good, but what came next was the difficult part. The aftermath was always a hassle. They turned the train back around at the abandoned mine toward its original destination of the capital, Nornol. They arrived that night, but the police’s questioning and their explanations lasted into the wee hours of the morning, and after only a few hours’ sleep, Norman took care of his original business, went on a sightseeing date with Clareth, and left the capital the next day without ever taking a breather. It made him uneasy that they hadn’t been detained for very long, but he decided to look at it as a blessing in disguise. Norman went to Nornol every six months, but he still hadn’t come to like it. He hadn’t even visited his family. In the end, he belonged in that city with no wind, surrounded by walls. “I can’t really say it was fun.” Norman lightly touched his felt hat as he recalled the events of their trip. “I was especially surprised to find someone in the same Category as you.” “I regret my bet with you didn’t have a satisfying conclusion,” Clareth said, and something seemed to occur to her as she raised her chin slightly. “Here’s a bonus quiz. I used my ability just once. Can you guess where?” “When you stopped the bullet, right?” came his instant reply. “I was surprised you deflected it with your wand, but I wasn’t sure what would happen to the scattered pieces of your wand or the bullet when you moved again. You just pushed them out of the way to attack, right?” “Perfect. Just as I expected.” “That was the easy part, though.” “Hee-hee.” The Fairy toyed with the new wand she’d acquired in the capital. “…But, Clareth, you were reckless back there…” The image of her green, shimmering wings flashed through his mind. “I know. But it was just for a moment, right? I want you to forget about it.” “Geez…I’m begging you here.” Norman sighed and went on. “Good grief… That was one hassle of a journey.” Between being caught up in a train hijacking, tangling with a self-serving revolutionary, and writing all those extra reports, Norman couldn’t find any joy in it. “What do you think, Mr. Norman?” “About?” “About the Unlaw Rights Movement. His actions were outrageous, but the idea itself—” Hmm. Since she asked, he thought about it. “The concept of human rights for Unlaw isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a good thing. If that’s all it was, I might have supported it.” “Huh. That’s a shame. If you’d been his ally, things might have worked out.” “It’s not that easy.” Norman smiled bitterly. “It wouldn’t have worked out no matter what,” he said with certainty, like it was the natural order of things. “Most people are ordinary humans. The world doesn’t revolve around a tiny handful of people.” “It’s the majority over the minority.” “Unfortunately.” At least, that was how the world worked—for now. “Making your existence public would only breed suspicion. It’s better to stay hidden. Living every day wondering if your neighbor had mysterious powers would be a pain.” That was why Nocker Cromwell’s goal was merely an idealistic pipe dream—it would only create chaos far worse than any individual incident. He must have understood that, yet he still acted on it, and the result had been an empty express train with only Norman and Clareth aboard. “I understand his feelings to some extent.” Understanding them didn’t mean that he agreed with them. “Hee-hee.” “What is it?” “Nothing. It’s just rare to hear you get all emotional like that, Mr. Norman.” “…Even I get like that sometimes.” Norman cleared his throat with an ahem. He wasn’t acting like himself. “Besides, when I get home, I have to report everything to my sister. Just thinking about it is a hassle.” “I’ll give you that it’s a hassle. But, you know, Mr. Norman.” The Fairy crooked her lips in a thin smile, her heterochromatic eyes looking straight at him. “…” In an instant, all sound vanished from Norman’s world. All that was left in the whole world was the Fairy smiling beautifully—her otherworldly, dreamy smile that seemed like it couldn’t be of this world. “If it’s that much of a hassle, why don’t you just run away and never return to Bardium?” The Fairy’s words flowed into his ears like sweetness itself. “That’s right, that city is a disaster. So why don’t we go somewhere, just the two of us? It’s just a thought. I wouldn’t mind. For you, I’d throw away my current life without hesitation.” What she said didn’t matter—he was seized by an uncontrollable urge to agree unconditionally with her bewitching tones. Clareth Airystep was that kind of being. It wasn’t just because she was an Unlaw; she herself was like a fairy. A mysterious child who tempted people into another world. Being a Distortion Type Unlaw gave her a certain devilish charm from that alone. If Norman accepted her enticing invitation, she would probably protect him from every misfortune. There weren’t many monsters who could match Clareth’s combat ability as an Unlaw. Norman knew that well. That was why he replied: “Let’s not.” Clareth Airystep had expected that answer from him. A Distortion Type was a monster that sought to manipulate everything around them, separate from their abilities. They wanted to distort their environment and society to fit their own desires. Clareth had done the same a year and a half ago as a student at the girls’ school in Bardium—she’d become an Unlaw and manifested that mentality, taking control of students and teachers alike and turning them into puppets who would do as she desired. The school transformed from a place to nurture humans into a fairyland where everyone knelt before a queen. It might have simply been the first time Clareth had learned to harness her innate charm effectively. The school was one that many of the children of Bardium’s nobles and merchants attended, and the possibilities of what she could do were endless; just when she started considering them and what to distort, she’d met Norman. From that point on, Clareth Airystep stopped distorting her surroundings—to be precise, she channeled her inherent longing as a Distortion Type to distort something toward Norman Hamish. To distort others was to change their very nature: to make someone who sought justice into someone who sought corruption, someone who comforted others in their sorrow into someone who delighted in others’ sorrows, and a normal human into a monster. And to make him, who held the collars of four Unlaw, hold her collar alone. Clareth found the man called Norman Hamish to be entirely too inflexible. He hadn’t changed since they’d met a year and a half ago, even while living side-by-side with the fairy Clareth Airystep, Tear Blossom, Hellhound, and Jewel. He hadn’t changed at all. Norman regarded her as a student in need of guidance, enough that he gave her lessons in self-defense. He had things he wouldn’t compromise on and priorities he upheld, and Clareth couldn’t change that. It would be interesting if he put her first, but she also didn’t want him to change. If all it took was a little bit of temptation to change Norman, then she wouldn’t have been interested in him in the first place. Fairy wasn’t interested in toys that broke easily. They were for playing with forever. Clareth had realized it was an Unlaw incident from the very first attack. With her ability spanning several dozen meters, she had a grasp of the entire situation on the train from the outset, from the condition of every train car to the fact that the little man was waiting for them in the engine room. Though she knew everything, she pretended not to, and even invited Norman to make a bet with her midway through because she wanted to observe the decisions he made. Of course, she was also protecting him with all her might. No matter what happened, she wouldn’t forgive anyone who hurt Norman. Distorted love. Distorted affection. Distorted yearning. She knew that it was wrong. That was where Nocker Cromwell was mistaken. Whether the Unlaw had human rights or not didn’t matter to her since they could do whatever they pleased. Even so, Unlaw mustn’t think their actions were justified. Distorting the world around them to be as they pleased could never be right. Anyone who laid hands on the guardian’s treasure—Norman—did so at their own risk. The Spriggan Hand—the Guardian Fairy—protected treasure, after all. “Hee-hee.” She gave the young man she’d claimed as her treasure a slow, lingering gaze as if she was running her tongue all over him. But he remained unmoved, like he did whenever she gazed at him, innocently shrugging. “Then maybe I’ll hold my tongue today.” “Yeah. An invitation like that puts me in a tough spot, too.” “Oh, that’s not what I meant, Mr. Norman.” Her wand moved in a supple motion to press against the center of Norman’s chest. “Ooof.” Just that was enough to render him unable to move. She’d struck perfectly along his body’s midline—something Norman had also taught her. While keeping him pinned, Clareth rose and straddled his lap. She pressed their bodies together, so close they could feel each other’s breath, and their gazes locked. The fairy smiled. “I can make it so no one outside hears anything.” Her whisper was sweet, melting. She used her ability to transmit the sound directly to his eardrum, which was apparently quite pleasurable, like a tingling in the brain. “It just so happens that the door to this compartment has no glass, so no one can see in from outside.” “Meaning?” “I wonder how many hours until we get to Bardium? No matter what we do, no one will know, right?” Norman gulped softly. The reaction gave her genuine joy. Even if she couldn’t distort his nature, this was a different matter. “Time to choose, Mr. Norman.” Spreading out from her back, a faint green distortion of the air wrapped around him so he couldn’t escape, and the Fairy smiled. It was her usual smile, but it had even greater love and desire behind it. The Guardian Fairy lavished love on her chosen treasure. “Your choices are what bring me the most joy.”
Chapter 18
12 min read