We stopped by the nearest restaurant to Erifell’s apartment and after Leen wolfed down some lamb, soup, salad, and bread, her frustration disappeared from her demeanor. The huge stack of bones on her plate seemed like the required sacrifice to get her to behave normally again. I prayed the sheep would rest in peace.
“Phew...”
Leen rubbed her eyes as she emitted this strange sound, most likely due to the increased exhaustion after such a big meal. I pulled her along and headed back to our inn. I had gone up and down this street countless times over the last few days.
The reason I stopped walking wasn’t due to anything big. It was something small. We had passed by the store that Jiray was manning earlier, and I’d noticed he wasn’t there. That was all. Or maybe it was something else that caused my feet to stop. Maybe I wasn’t ready to accept that the day was over and felt unsure about heading back home already.
Whatever it was, it was an inefficient action that I wouldn’t have done normally.
As I paused in the street, I couldn’t help but look at the sign for the store that Jiray had been manning. Upon closer inspection, it was written in the common script and the words had faded. While I couldn’t read it this morning, something pushed me to want to try and read it now.
“Para...petter...?”
Independent stores like this were usually named after their owner. I didn’t know anyone called “Parapetter.” But why did it sound so familiar? I had the feeling someone had uttered that word not too long ago...
“Do you know the Parapetter store? My exhibition is being held there...”
Cormeca’s words from that shifty scene suddenly came back to me.
“Cormeca’s exhibition,” I muttered.
“Mmm... Hakura? What’s up?”
Leen was still in a daze from her drowsiness and full belly, so she hadn’t noticed.
I kept silent. The witch trial was probably starting about now. There was nothing we could do, and if I brought it up, I risked ruining Leen’s mood. Thinking about this logically, there was no reason for me to step inside.
“Leen, I’m just going to head in here,” I said.
“Hm? Sure...”
In spite of that, my feet carried me inside the store. I noticed that at the back of the room, full of shelves with goods on them, sat an old woman.
“I’m here for the exhibition,” I said.
She wordlessly pointed at the room next to her. I slipped between the cluttered rows of goods and headed inside. It was a dark, windowless room, dimly lit up by the mana crystal lamps on the walls.
Oil paintings inside frames that weren’t all too old but weren’t all too fancy either hung on the four walls of the room, which contained furnishings that weren’t cheap but weren’t that impressive. Some paintings depicted landscapes, some did sculptures, while some chose stones or flowers as their motif. I didn’t have the knowledge to tell if they were good or not. I’d never had any connection to art since the day I was born, so I didn’t even know what value these paintings had.
However, my gaze was inadvertently drawn toward the two eye-catching paintings on the back wall. The first was of a young man in light armor who posed with a kind and manly yet bashful smile. It was clear he wasn’t used to being a model and I could tell he had been nervous. His expression was rendered in a lifelike way with a soft touch. Even an insensitive person like me could tell what she’d been thinking as she painted this. The title was short: My Dearest Love.
However, this wasn’t the issue at hand.
Over the past few days, my Sphere had twinged with pain, but now it was too big to ignore. Now I immediately knew why.
“I see... Cormeca saw this, huh?” Leen muttered.
She had joined me and was looking at the painting beside the portrait too. The layered colors of it reflected in her green eyes, giving them a vivid hue.
This painting...didn’t seem like a landscape painting. There were no people, no subjects in it—the colors were merely layered atop one another. There were red, orange, blacks, and blues. The sky was burning. It was the embodiment of rage and despair. Unless you spat out blood that had simmered in utter hatred and boiled it down into a pigment, I doubted you could ever whip up such a terrifying color.
I didn’t have an education, so I didn’t know what made a good or a bad picture. But even I could tell immediately what emotion this painting evoked. It was hatred. The strongest hatred and loathing that a person could squeeze out of their heart. The wail of the soul that caused someone to throw their entire life aside and give themselves up to a demon...
“This is...”
—Ahh! Ahhhhh!
—That’s mine! It’s always been mine!
—Shut up! Shut up! Who would dare agree with that?!
—Give it back! Give it BACK!
Despite the room being perfectly quiet, I felt I could hear someone’s wailing. One that rivaled my own feelings toward witches...
“Hakura.” I heard Leen’s voice. “Just relax. It’s okay.”
Her voice was calm, peaceful—the polar opposite of that enraged screaming. Her slender fingers stroked my Sphere.
“Did something happen to me?” I asked.
“I think your Sphere was resonating with the hatred in these paintings.”
“Excuse me?”
“Black Spheres often are like this. They’re particularly capable of sensing power that we cannot see. You’ve been bothered by it a lot recently, haven’t you?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“I think it’s reacting to anger or resentment. You don’t need to be so on guard.” Leen spoke to me as if placating a small child. “It’s proof that your Sphere is finally bonding with you. It’s a good thing, so don’t worry about it too much.”
“R-Really?”
I wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t a newbie like Jiray. My Sphere had long since developed its color, so why would it finish bonding so late?
“All right.”
All the same, I decided not to pursue the matter and accept what she said. I turned back to the painting. This time, I wasn’t visited by head-splitting screams, but I thought that it was pretty grim to have this painting right in the middle of the room.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” I muttered.
What was on display here was one person’s life. The life of a woman who was going to be put on trial and then executed due to irrefutable evidence.
“Hm?”
As soon as my thoughts drifted to the trial, my Sphere twinged again. This time, it wasn’t due to the painting. It was me. It was ringing alarm bells about something inside of me. Something wasn’t right.
“Hey, Leen?” I said as she continued to stare at the painting.
As soon as the words left my mouth, a loud rattling filled the air. I readied myself for another earthquake, but I realized that it wasn’t the room that was shaking. No, the frames of all Cormeca’s paintings were rattling on the walls, growing steadily louder. Soon, the frame of the creepy black and red painting started rattling louder than the rest. Come on, this isn’t normal!
“Wait a sec...!”
This was Cormeca’s personal exhibition. It wouldn’t be out of the question for her to have set up a trap to get rid of anyone who was prying into her affairs!
“Enough of that,” Leen said.
Leen tapped her staff onto the ground, stopping my thoughts there and cutting the thread of my caution. It felt like a sudden calm breeze blew through the room.
“Quiet down,” Leen went on.
That was all it took for silence to return, as if the wild rattling had been nothing but a figment of my imagination. I stared at Leen wordlessly. She knew something or was hiding something at least. Despite my wary stare, she seemed to pay me utterly no heed.
“I might as well ask. What was that?” I said.
“Hmm...”
I didn’t think I’d get a decent response, but it was worth a shot.
“I suppose you could call it a part of my job as monstermancer,” Leen replied after a little thought.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
To no one’s surprise, her reply didn’t explain anything. It was barely an answer and I wasn’t satisfied by it. All the same, Leen didn’t seem to think the random rattling was much of an issue at all. I could continue to hound her into slowly explaining herself in dribs and drabs, but by her disinterested reaction, she must have deemed this unworthy of the effort right now. It irked me, but accepting my employer’s wishes was part of my own job.
“Fine, I won’t ask then. Whatever,” I said.
“Hee hee...”
“What’s with that face?”
“I’m just so haaappy that you fiiinally understand what I wanna saaay,” Leen replied in a sing-song voice.
“Oh, shut the hell up!”
I shouldn’t have taken this damn detour...
“We should have come here at the start. I get the picture of what happened now,” Leen said before yawning and rubbing her eyes, no longer interested in the paintings. “It’s too much too late now though, with the trial already going on.”
“Yeah... All we can do is—”
The documents and evidence that Erifell prepared were for the purpose of calling in the Carbuncles—only important in the decision of whether a witch trial should be carried out or not. With the Carbuncles here now, the evidence was no longer of any importance. All they needed to do was find a stigma. And they should. Cormeca was no doubt a witch. Various factors had led both me and Leen to believe so, and Erifell’s evidence was objective proof too.
However, something had stopped me from finishing my sentence.
“Hakura?” Leen said as I fell into silence.
She looked concerned and she filled my vision. Her green eyes. Her right hand clasping her staff. The stone on the back of that hand, a marker of her role as an adventurer...