“Run away... together?”
The moment their bloodstained fingers were linked, Nagi felt like he heard the sound of two hearts beating—something he shouldn’t have been able to hear.
Their hearts were beating in harmony. In rhythm to the pulse, the girl’s eyes turned a deeper and deeper red. A crimson mark manifested on the back of her hand, taking the shape of some sort of crest.
Suddenly, the guard’s shriek echoed all around them, and he immediately collapsed to the ground. Nagi had no idea why it had happened, but his body instantly reacted to the opportunity he’d been given. He jumped up, grabbed his knife with his left hand, and launched himself at the fallen guard’s body all in one fell motion.
The knife plunged right into the guard’s heart. Having been dealt an unhealable wound to his most vital organ, the guard belted out another animalistic scream and perished.
It was an instant death.
Nagi had killed him.
He had killed someone.
Not just anyone—he had killed a noble.
A voice brought his dazed consciousness back to reality.
“Are you all right?”
It was the girl.
Nagi’s entire body felt like it was burning with pain. Several of his bones might’ve been broken. Nevertheless, Nagi nodded. He was alive, so everything was fine.
He took another look at her. Her beautiful eyes were once more a faint red, and her pale hand no longer had a mark on it.
What exactly was that?
It was as if he had seen a hallucination from the pain. Moreover, why had the guard collapsed? Nagi was about to ask the girl if she had any clue what happened, then realized he didn’t even know her name.
“Um, you are?” he asked.
“Saya.”
“I’m Nagi. Are you okay?”
“Okay?” she echoed.
“Erm... Did they do anything to you?”
The girl didn’t look humiliated, but it wouldn’t have been strange if something nefarious had been done to her considering she’d been held captive.
“No, no one did anything to me. Not ever.”
For some reason, Saya looked far off into the distance. Unable to understand the meaning behind it, Nagi felt a bit troubled. He instinctively averted his gaze and took a look around.
Saya apparently interpreted this gesture as wariness. “This man was the only guard tonight. There’s nobody else here.”
Was such a thing possible? This man had nearly killed him, but he hadn’t been skilled by any definition of the word. Regardless of the circumstances Keele had spoken of, was it really possible for such a man to be the only guard left to protect a treasure? This series of doubts racing through Nagi’s mind was abruptly wiped away by a single word: treasure.
“Where’s the treasure?” he asked.
Saya daintily cocked her head to the side. “Treasure...? This isn’t that sort of place. There’s nothing of worth here.”
Her red eyes looked truly dispirited.
“You’re kidding!”
All of Keele’s information had been accurate, but the single most important part was apparently wrong. Nagi looked around in a panic. The courtyard beneath the glass ceiling was quite literally a garden. It was filled with well-trimmed vegetation, but that was it. There was nothing valuable worth taking.
“Did you come all the way out here looking for such a thing? Just for treasure?”
“Not just for treasure... If I had treasure or money, then I wouldn’t need to go through the blood offering. They say you can buy blood—lifespan—in the capital. It’s possible to live longer that way.”
“Do you want to live longer?”
“Doesn’t everyone? There’s no downside to living a long life.”
Saya shook her head. “Being granted a long life without purpose only brings suffering. Only when one acquires hope does their life become their own.”
Nagi didn’t know what she was saying, but he somehow grasped the meaning behind her words. “You mean just living a long life is painful?”
That was a novel way of looking at it, from his perspective. Nagi had only ever thought that he didn’t have enough life. He tried imagining it for himself. Say he was given a longer lifespan. For example, eternal life, just like a noble. He couldn’t even fathom it.
“Someone once told me that even if one lives a long life, if there is no hope there, it doesn’t belong to oneself. Is that truly living?”
Saya’s words were becoming more and more unintelligible. But this time, Nagi managed to imagine it just a little. He had never once thought of his life up until now as his own. A commoner’s life was for the sake of nobles, after all.
“You have a point. I kind of feel like I get it. Just extending that kind of life is meaningless.”
Saya gazed at Nagi as she listened to him. Upon suddenly meeting her faint red eyes, Nagi’s heart leaped. He quickly averted his gaze.
“Oh well. Shall we get going?”
“Get going? Where to?”
“Well, I guess there’s nowhere to go but Strano. Back to my village, I mean. I didn’t manage to get anything here, though. Where are you from, Saya? I’ll take you there.”
Nagi was under the impression that Saya had been brought here from some village for the Blood Offering Festival. He had never heard of such a thing before, but it wasn’t unbelievable. It was possible that the noble who owned the Garden had long had his eyes on this otherworldly beauty and used the blood offering as an excuse to bring her here. She had spoken of some strange things too, so perhaps she was a resident of the rumored capital.
“I don’t know,” Saya said with a dark expression.
Evidently, she had her own circumstances to consider. It was likely that the noble who supervised her village had promised to reduce the village’s obligations for blood offerings in return for Saya’s surrender. If so, she couldn’t possibly go back.
“I see. In that case, you can come with me to my village.”
Nagi was excluded from this year’s blood offering. He would likely get yelled at for skipping out on the festival, but that was all it would amount to. Nagi was now a criminal who would normally be executed for laying his hands on a noble, but Saya was the only one who knew of this.
“Is it okay for me to go there?”
“People come to the village from elsewhere all the time. Like, brides and stuff.”
“Brides?”
Saya looked at him with a blank stare, and Nagi realized he had just said something with unthinkable implications. His cheeks turned bright red. It was as though he’d just proposed to a girl he had just met.
“We can think up the details later. Anyway, let’s get out of here.”
Saya looked up at the hole in the ceiling that Nagi and the guard had created. She then returned her gaze to Nagi, asking the same question she had during the fight. “Is it okay for me to run away from here with you?”
Nagi answered without hesitation, assuming she was uncertain because she didn’t want to impose on him and his village. “Obviously. It’s your life. You can decide for yourself.” With that, he held out his hand.
“I can do something like that?”
Nagi didn’t pay attention to the tremble in her voice. He thought little of what he was saying, after all.
“Well, yeah. Come on, I’ll protect you until we get somewhere safe. I promise.”
There was no deep meaning behind his words. Nagi’s mind was completely focused on the warmth of Saya’s hand as she grabbed his, causing his heart to throb.
Saya cast her eyes to the floor and slowly nodded. Her pale cheeks were kissed by a touch of pink.
Neither the girl, bewildered by this unknown emotion, nor the boy, who was instinctively charmed by her, had any idea of how many would die because of the blood bringing that slight tinge to her cheeks.
They didn’t know how much blood would be shed because of the feelings born between them in this very moment.