THE next morning, I mount Vianta with Lex and ride to where Goddess Sadia is waiting. No one else is with us. Vanquishing the Dark Djinn drastically reduced the danger outside the city walls, removing the need to have a small squad of guards trailing after us.
I haven’t spoken to Lex today beyond the bare minimum conversation necessary to do what needs to be done. Because of that, I can hear Vianta’s hooves hitting the ground and the rustling leaves clear as day. Not long after entering the forest, we come upon the area where big trees have been cruelly ripped from the ground, knocked over, and split as if a tornado had passed through. Car-sized dents mar the ground in various locations. This is where Giganta-zombie rampaged yesterday.
Beyond the downed trees is Jela’s cabin. Lex ties Vianta to a nearby tree and helps me down.
“I wonder if she’s in the cellar still,” I say aloud, breaking the silence between us.
“Good question.”
As soon as I open the cabin door, I’m blinded by a searing light. “Yeow!” I cry, reflexively covering my eyes with my arm.
“You arrived sooner than expected.”
Slowly lowering my arm, I see Goddess Sadia where the light had been. She’s sitting with her legs crossed, elegantly sipping tea from the dainty teacup in her hand. A sweet, floral fragrance hangs in the air as though to demonstrate that she is drinking a delicious first-class black tea.
“…You seem to be very relaxed,” Lex quietly observes.
“W-Well, I had too much free time on my hands, so…” Goddess Sadia quickly returns her teacup to its saucer on the desk and gives a discomfited smile.
I certainly didn’t expect to find this world’s goddess twiddling away the time drinking tea, regardless of how little there is to do out here in the middle of nowhere. I’m just hankering to ask her where the tea came from. I stare at her hard.
“You said it’d be hard for you to hang around, but it looks to me like you’re holding up just fine.”
“That isn’t necessarily true. I am just barely enduring this as it is.” She pulls her shoulders back and sits up straight to maintain her dignified demeanor. Goddess Sadia might be worldlier than I thought. Made uncomfortable by my exasperated, pointed stare, she rises to her feet. “E-Enough about me! …Care to tell me your answer now?”
She suddenly brings the conversation to a head. “Yes,” I say. I arrived at the answer yesterday. I have nothing left to hesitate over. “My original world—”
“Lady Mizuha!” Lex interrupts, his shout so loud and abrupt that I flinch.
“…L-Lex?”
“F-Forgive me.” Just when I think he’s lowered his head, Lex lifts his chin and looks at me with seriousness gleaming in his eyes. “You have your own world, Lady Mizuha. I know that. Knights are meant to serve their masters. I am fully aware my conduct right now would normally never be allowed. However, even so, I…” After a three-second pause, he finishes with quiet firmness, “Wish to be at your side, Lady Mizuha.”
I’m struck by the feeling of something piercing through me. Lex’s gorgeous sapphire eyes are peering right into the depths of my soul. It’s kind of embarrassing. But I can’t take my eyes off him.
“If you are going to return to your world, Lady Mizuha, I shall accompany you there. Please allow me to come with you!”
“Lex…”
I never knew he was this attached to me. His oath to serve as my knight means more to him than I realized; it’s taken root in his heart and has manifested in his conduct.
“That cannot be done,” Goddess Sadia says in my place, bluntly rejecting him. A shadow instantly falls over Lex’s gallant face.
“…Why not?”
“I’m the last person who has any right to speak of this after bringing her to this world, but transporting people between worlds is fundamentally taboo. I cannot break the taboo again to send you with her.”
“This cannot be true… Then what am I— What should I do…?!” Lex drops his gaze and shakes his head. Anguish painfully coats his voice.
I, however, do not feel the same sense of loss and urgency as he does. After all, I never thought of this moment as a lifelong separation. Feeling slightly guilty, I speak to him as gently as possible.
“I’m a little perplexed by this unexpected turn of events, but…hear me out, Lex.”
“…Yes, m’lady?”
“I don’t plan to go back, you know?”
“Is that…so? So it should be. It is only natural for you to care more about the world you were born and raised in. You would be ill in the head to grow attached to and think about lingering in a world you were in for only a few months— Wait! Did you say you are staying?!” After having his head stuck in the clouds for a few long moments, he finally catches on.
“Yeah. Sorry I’m ill in the head.”
“Ah, don’t be. About that part…I can only apologize. More importantly! Are you really, truly, positively staying?!”
“Yeah.”
“Wh-Why…?”
He still can’t believe it. To be perfectly honest, a part of me doesn’t believe it either. But this is what I had decided after thinking it through.
“I agree with you that it’s stranger to choose staying over going. While we have succeeded in purifying the zombies around Grantz’s capital city, this is still a rotten, post-apocalyptic world full of zombies. Frankly, the food, clothes, and shelter in my world are a thousand times better than what’s here.”
“Then is that not even more reason to—”
“But how can I explain it? I’ve grown attached? Or something like that. Partly it’s that I want to enjoy the environment I’ve finally secured after all the painful and scary experiences I went through. As I’ve watched Grantz Kingdom work toward restoration, it hit me that I’m a part of this place as well.”
What I want to do with my life—I’ve always hoped I’d figure out what that is. I’ve slowly gone through life without finding it—until now. Not that I had expected to find my purpose in another world, and one that has the worst possible circumstances to boot.
I’m the most surprised by my decision because I’ve always played it safe, avoiding trouble at any cost for my entire life. But I don’t regret this choice.
“But then you won’t get to see your family again…” Lex sadly reminds me.
“As for that part…” I face Goddess Sadia. “You don’t have the leeway to send me home because you need to focus on returning this zombie-blighted world back to normal. But, at the same time, that also means you will have plenty of leeway once you get the world back in order. Doesn’t this mean you’ll have spare energy to send me back and forth between worlds once everything is done and settled?”
“Y-You caught on to that part?”
“Mwhahaha!” I cackle.
I spoke confidently, but the truth is that Pino casually tipped me off this morning before I’d left the castle. Thanks, Pino!
“Nevertheless, as I told your knight, transporting people between worlds is taboo—”
“The woman who broke the taboo and ripped me from the comfort of my own bed to clean up her mess has little right to care about taboos when it’s convenient for her. Don’t you think so too, Goddess?”
“Ack.”
“Besides, you already broke it once to bring me here. You’d do it again to send me back. What’s a few more times?”
“Y-Your logic sounds like a repeat offender’s…”
She put me through hell and nearly cost me my life several times. This is a small price to ask in return.
“I won’t be able to send you and bring you back often. It takes a lot of my power, even when I am in tip-top shape.”
“Being able to make the trip is enough for me.”
“I do not know how much time it will take for the world to reorder itself. Are you still okay with waiting?”
“Yes, I’ve already made up my mind.”
“You sound firm in your resolve. Very well, then. However, under one condition.”
I didn’t think she’d have a condition. I instinctively prepare myself for the worst possible demand that she’d ask in return for what I want.
“The piece of my power that currently resides in you—I had originally planned on taking it back when I sent you home, but…I shall leave it in your care.”
“Um, should I take that to mean you want me to help you purify the world?”
“It helps that you are quick on the uptake.”
Oh, that’s all she wants? I’m internally relieved by her simple request.
“Okay.”
“That was…a quick decision.”
“Well, that’s what I planned to do all along anyway.”
If Goddess Sadia hadn’t requested it first, I would have asked her to let me help. It ties into what I want to do with my life.
Goddess Sadia smiles softly. “As I thought, I was correct to choose you.”
“I’m going to make full use of my goddess perks!” I make a joke of it, getting a giggle out of Goddess Sadia.
Yesterday, she told me my heart is closest to hers in the multiverse, and I kind of get why now. She’s not a complete stranger. There’s a familiarity between us that makes me think that way.
“I shall be going, then.”
Not to any particular place—she is going to become a part of the world in order to maintain it.
“Until we meet again.”
“Yes. Until the day the world is right again.”
With those final words, Goddess Sadia’s body flashes. By the time the light settles, she’s no longer there.
“She left,” Lex says.
“…Yeah.”
For a time, we stare at where Goddess Sadia had been standing. Even if her disappearance is the right thing, it is still lonely to watch a person vanish before your eyes.
That being said, we can’t stay here forever. Plus, I’m dying to do something right now.
“Okay, shall we go home? To our country!”