That same evening.
“Kaito! Kaito!”
The sound of an urgently screaming voice coming from the hallway outside my bedroom forced my eyes open as I wondered, sleepily, what was going on. I woke up just as the door was thrown open. Tigaro, having suddenly barged in, climbed onto my bed.
“H-Help me!” she said, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck as she screamed, imploring my aid. Her fragile body trembled against mine, voice full of horror.
“What’s wrong? Did you have a scary dream or something?” I asked, rubbing her back. She pointed at the door.
“M-Monstro, he... My room, he came and...”
“To apologize?” I said after a pause. It would be strange for Tigaro to be so shaken by Monstro coming to apologize, but an uninvited guest in your room while trying to sleep could be scary. That being said, it didn’t seem like that was what she meant. Monstro had probably come for another reason.
“N-No! H-He tried to kill me! He tried...”
“To kill you?!” I said. It was absolutely unthinkable. The image of Monstro apologizing to Tigaro in front of the mansion was still seared into my retina. To think that the same man who I had watched lay bare his desire for atonement on that lawn would suddenly turn around and try to murder Tigaro... It was beyond belief.
That being said, it was also unthinkable that Tigaro would lie about something like that. No matter how much she hated Monstro, she wasn’t the kind of person who would falsely accuse someone just to bring about their downfall. If her words were indeed true, then his motive had to be revenge. Perhaps she had said something that angered him when he fired her, and using the apology as a pretext, he had brought her back to the mansion so that he could keep her close and watch vigilantly for an opportunity to take her life.
It was nothing more than conjecture, of course. Without hearing his side of the story, I would simply be jumping to conclusions. It wasn’t too late to make my judgment after speaking with him.
“Is Monstro still in your room?”
“I-I don’t know... Maybe he ran away, but maybe he’s still in there waiting for me to come back!”
“Okay, I’ll go check it out.”
“B-But he had a knife!” Tigaro said. She seemed not to want me going anywhere dangerous. She strengthened her grip around my neck, holding me tightly. I laid my hands on her shoulders and spoke reassuringly:
“It’s all right. I’m strong. I’ll be okay.”
“B-But...if you get stabbed because of me, then... You don’t want that, right?”
“Don’t worry, okay? I promise, I won’t get stabbed,” I said in an effort to calm her nerves. Her grip loosened a bit. Gently, I separated myself from her. I rose and summoned Shield Beam in an oblong, rectangular form that resembled a policeman’s riot shield.
When I stepped out into the hallway, I found Oltea and Frieze standing in the darkness. Both of them, it seemed, had been woken abruptly by the scream and had rushed to my room.
“Hey, what was that scream just now?” Oltea asked.
“It sounded like Tiga... But why was she calling out your name?” Frieze asked.
“Monstro attacked Tigaro with a knife,” I explained. In the light cast by Shield Beam’s glow, I saw their faces stiffen with shock.
“Monstro attacked her?!” Frieze said.
“Is Tigaro okay?!” Oltea asked.
“She’s shaken up but doesn’t seem to be injured,” I said.
Relief setting in, the two of them looked to my shield.
“That shield... Are you going to fight Monstro with that?” Oltea asked.
“If all he has is a knife, then I can help too,” Frieze said.
“I’ll be fine on my own. I’d rather you two stay here with Tigaro and keep her company. She’s in my room, terrified.”
Oltea and Frieze nodded, urged me not to get hurt, and went into the room. I watched until they were safely inside to make sure and then went down the corridor to peer into Tigaro’s chambers. On the other side of the threshold, visible by the light of the moon streaming in through the window, Monstro was squatting atop the bed. A paring knife lay discarded on the floor by his side.
I sent magical energy into the panel embedded into the wall that governed the lights, and in an instant, they snapped on and illuminated the room. Monstro turned his eyes upward ever so slowly to look at me. His face was twisted into a terrible, chaotic expression.
“S-Sword Saint... P... Please, somehow. Please, save me...”
Monstro descended from the bed as if falling and placed both his hands humbly on the floor. An act to elicit sympathy and trick me into lowering my guard was...not at all what this appeared to be. He had abandoned his knife on the bed and, though he had always looked unwell, now had the haggard, emaciated appearance of a man hanging by a thread. His expression was genuine. It was the face of a man desperately begging for salvation from the bottom of his heart.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said, dropping Shield Beam as I spoke. I had come here to save Tigaro, so why was the man who had tried to murder her asking for my help? I didn’t understand the situation at all.
“Th-The truth is—”
“Kaito! What’s going on?”
My companions must have been worrying about me, for just as Monstro began to open his mouth in reply, Frieze called my name from the hallway. Oltea and Tigaro were with her too, peering into the room from their vantage behind Frieze’s back.
“It doesn’t seem like Monstro has any hostility left in him,” I said in an attempt to ease their fears.
Tigaro’s anxious expression, however, remained unchanged. “How do we know he isn’t just waiting for the perfect moment to strike?” she asked in a hesitant voice.
“I-I’m not... I’m really, truly sorry,” Monstro said. He pressed his forehead against the floor in shame, but his self-abasement did nothing to curb Tigaro’s suspicions.
She looked at him with doubt in her eyes. “But you said the same thing earlier today. Wasn’t that just a show you put on to disarm me too?”
Monstro, listening to the distrust with which Tigaro needled him, lifted his head to look at her. With a pained, apologetic expression, he began to speak words of repentance.
“I’m truly sorry... I didn’t think I had any choice except to kill you, but...I couldn’t... I can’t kill anyone, I... Especially not a poor kid who enjoyed my food so much. I-I can’t bring myself to kill...” Seemingly overcome with remorse, he spoke softly and feebly. It didn’t seem at all like a performance. Tigaro was looking at Monstro’s pathetic form in bewilderment.
“B-But you...you think you can just do anything and get away with it as long as your victim is a hybrid, don’t you? You said as much when you fired me, right?”
“I-I was on edge, irritated because the wine had been knocked over... I am so sorry for my cruel words...” he said. I wasn’t familiar with the details of the incident to which they referred, but I could see that Monstro regretted it intensely.
“I understand why you wouldn’t want to believe him, Tiga, but shouldn’t we at least hear him out?” Frieze suggested.
“I think so too. It won’t be too late to judge what kind of person he is after we’ve listened to his story,” Oltea said.
I nodded in agreement, adding my support to their efforts to calm Tigaro before continuing to question Monstro. “Just a minute ago you asked me to ‘save you.’ Could you tell us what the situation is?”
“I-It’s...” Monstro began speaking but, perhaps lacking the courage to speak frankly, quickly sank back into silence. After some time, he resumed in a shaky, uncertain voice. “This town is going to be destroyed by the stampede on the night of the next full moon.”
The stampede?!
“Has there been a movement of the devil flies?” I asked.
“N-No, they’re still in the Great Forest, but... As it is, they’re set to completely swallow up this town soon.”
“How can you say that so definitively?”
“B-Because...we’ll provoke Beelzé’s wrath,” Monstro said.
Beelzé, I thought, remembering the old man who lived near the mansion. Tigaro, who had worked as Beelzé’s server for two years and brought him all of his meals, widened her eyes in confusion.
“He’s definitely a tough guy to please and scary when mad, but he’s just an old man. Even I was able to win him over by trying my best. Besides, what does he have to do with the stampede?”
Monstro bristled at Tigaro’s question. Looking around the room as if checking his surroundings and speaking low, in a stifled voice, as if afraid to be heard, he began to lay things bare and answer her.