“Are you all right? Do you know who I am?”
“Er...Sora, right?”
When I heard her reply, I reflexively breathed a sigh of relief. “Whew...so you didn’t lose your memory, then. The way you were staring at me, I was beginning to wonder.”
“Why...are you here?”
“Raz asked me to come save you. Oh, and don’t say it wasn’t necessary. If I hadn’t shown up, you would have been monster food by now. I guarantee it.”
“Yeah...I don’t doubt it,” she mumbled, agreeing. She attempted to stand several times but lacked the strength in her legs to stay upright and ended up falling on her rear. Having now realized the state she was in, with no other way to move, she crawled over to where I was sitting. Her hands and knees got dirty again, but she didn’t care. Her gaze stayed fixed on me all the while.
“Hey, what gives?” I asked.
She didn’t reply, simply making her way over to me. It didn’t take her long to reach my location, since I was sitting nearby. Once she was in front of me, close enough that our noses were nearly touching, she continued to stare in silence. I frowned, unsure what she was planning. It wasn’t like her gaze was out of focus, and she didn’t look addled or confused. The look in her eyes was clear, so I knew she was lucid. So why in the world was she staring at me like that?
Then, when I cocked my head slightly in puzzlement, she suddenly moved, burying her face right in my chest. It was such an abrupt and nonhostile action that it caught me off guard. I never would have dreamed in a million years that Miroslav, of all people, would do such a thing, so I was absolutely gobsmacked. I would have been less surprised if she’d attacked me with magic.
Then, with her face still in my chest, she began to sob. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed tight, like she wouldn’t let me go even if her life depended on it. At this point, there was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t bring myself to throw her off me, but I didn’t want to cross-examine her either. So I just let her do as she pleased. To be honest, it was incredibly awkward for me. I would have been far more comfortable if she’d just sent attack magic my way. But she was showing no hostile intent whatsoever. With no other choice, I used one hand to stroke her head and patted her back gently with the other, comforting her like I would a child. When I did, her sobs became higher and louder. Whether that meant it had been the correct answer or not, I had no clue.
Miroslav continued crying for some time afterward, and even after her tears had dried, she kept her face buried in my chest. Then she began telling me everything. How even after I’d let her go home from the Lord of the Flies’ cave, the memory of what I’d done to her had strangely remained in her heart. How during the process of breaking up Raz and Iria like I’d asked, her feelings for Raz had gradually faded. How the excursion to the mountain had been another part of her plan to disband the Falcon Blades. How she didn’t want to be with Raz anymore. How she’d planned to raise her level so that she could come back to me. How she’d succeeded by raising her level to 19.
The more she talked, the more obvious it became that the target of her affection had switched from Raz to me. Of course, I highly doubted that my actions in the Lord of the Flies’ cave had unexpectedly sown seeds of romance. I’d once heard a story: In the empire, a group of bandits occupied a small village for an extended period. They were taking the villagers hostage in order to save their comrade who’d been arrested by the empire’s knights. In the end, the knights killed them all, but the important thing was that the villagers ended up sympathizing with the bandits’ cause more than the knights’. Some even tried to resist the knights’ advance.
The villagers were cut off from the outside world as hostages, so their lives were literally in the bandits’ hands. They had to do whatever the bandits wanted in order to survive. Therefore, their obedience was probably reluctant at first. But as time went on, a sort of understanding formed between the two parties. The villagers began to rely on the bandits of their own will, and as a result, they grew somewhat fond of their captors—or so the story goes.
I suspected Miroslav currently had a similar mindset. In other words, through violence and confinement, I’d twisted the heart of a young girl to bend to my will. While embracing Miroslav, I unconsciously looked up at the heavens. Oh, what have I done?
Yeah, right. If Miroslav had been completely innocent, of course, it’d be a different story. But she’d tried to kill me! I wasn’t about to regret an ounce of revenge I’d taken on her. Even if I’d accidentally twisted her heart as a consequence of that, that actually worked out in my favor. I didn’t feel a shred of guilt about what I’d done. There was also the possibility that her experience in the cave really had sublimated into feelings for me, but that, too, would just be to my benefit in the end. It’d certainly make it easier to keep her around as a source of soul energy as I’d already planned to do, and I could take that last thread that she’d been saving for Raz, the one thing left tying her to him, for myself. In her current state, she might even be happy to give it to me!
While I continued to stroke her head and pat her back gently, the corners of my mouth turned up into a wide grin.