The jail had fallen silent. However, the sealed wall was still left open.
“...Oi, close the wall, receptionist lady.”
“Yes, I am a receptionist, and I am a lady, but it’s high time you start using my name.”
“I don’t remember your damn name.”
“Oh come on. I’m certain I introduced myself in the last interrogation.”
Mirka sat in the chair, slowly spinning round and round. She and Haring had definitely met before. During the slave incident...the one who interrogated him as a suspect was Mirka. The one who released him was also Mirka.
“I can imagine why you didn’t say anything. You worked under that Navie, so I’m sure you understood that speaking would be completely pointless.”
The chair came to a sudden stop. She directed a mysterious smile at him.
And she was right.
While the testimony of the rescued girl did cast suspicions upon Navie Ionesca, not a shred of evidence could be found linking him to the incident.
Haring knew it would happen, therefore he kept his silence. Otherwise—he wouldn’t be able to keep his promise.
“Athena is sharper than she looks, god bless her soul. If you were going to hint that hard, you could have just given her a real answer.”
He replied to Mirka’s question with a scoff at himself. “Hah... I’m gonna leave the city anyways. What’s talkin’ gonna do for me?”
Even so, Mirka continued to latch on. “Let me change the question. Why do you try to make people hate you?”
Even if she asked that, he didn’t really have an answer. If he had to say...
“Is it because the people around you desire you to be evil?”
Taken by surprise, Haring inadvertently lifted his head.
“I mean, the word ‘Haring’ does mean ‘nuisance’ in ancient dragonic.”
“...Why do you know somethin’ like that?”
Haring’s village was in a remote region where they still used old customs and words to this day. It was in that village where he earned the name “Haring.”
“I have an acquaintance who’s pretty knowledgeable about the Dragon Tribe, you see. During our last investigation, I asked him a few things about you.”
Her purple eyes pierced through him, as if she had seen through every last defense he put up. Perhaps it was because of those eyes that Haring somehow or another felt like talking about himself.
“...I was an orphan. Lost my parents in the pandemic.”
Haring’s parents were gone by the time he got to thinking about the world. His village was on a desolate mountain, what little fertile land they had run dry by many generations of farming. This left the village as a whole in a constant state of poverty. But the villagers did not wish to leave the lands where their families had lived since ancient days. No matter how needy they were, they would live on if only to preserve their traditions.
Naturally, they hadn’t the surplus to raise an orphan, but Haring was taken in as a baby by someone who knew his parents well. He still had a different name then, as far as he could recall. But...as he grew, the name was quickly lost to the sands of time.
“I’ve had a good physique since I was a little tyke. Ate twice as much as the others, and threw a tantrum when there was no food. The villagers couldn’t stand me.”
And at some point, the villagers began calling him nuisance and baring their antipathy. The adults looked at him coldly; the kids his age would call him Haring to make him mad. Short-tempered as he was, he would smack the children to the ground, and it had gotten to the point where even his guardian who took him in would keep him at arm’s length.
“But...it didn’t really bother me. Call me a nuisance if you want, but that was my place in the world. What more could I ask for?”
By shunning Haring and using him as an outlet for their pent-up emotions, the villagers maintained their vigor. While he understood it was twisted, Haring accepted the role. To be detested by others was where he found worth in existing. Precisely because it was a closed-off village, they needed somewhere, someone to direct their anger toward when irrationality and unreasonability struck. Young as he was, even Haring could understand that.
And thus, he gave up on being a good person. He would continue to be the villain the others needed him to be. Unfortunately—or perhaps inevitably—at the very end, he was driven out of his place there as well.
“But you should have earned a new place, right?” After listening in silence all this time, Mirka abruptly spoke up. “You became a duelist and came to this city of your own free will.”
“Hah... My will? It ain’t somethin’ so overblown.”
In essence, he had barely any say in the matter.
“It ain’t easy to change how you live your life. When a guy like me tries findin’ work somewhere else, he doesn’t last long. I became a duelist to live, is all.”
Try as he might to find work outside of the village, there was no place for someone who had lived as a villain. Haring chose the path of a duelist in order to survive.
It was a petty, worthless reason.
“In the first place, the only reason I even considered becoming a duelist was ’cuz some random geezer said I looked the part. I got no regrets if I quit.”
Haring didn’t feel like speaking more, and he didn’t even know why he had spoken so long at all. He hung his head again.
“Isn’t that enough? Just close the wall.”
“Very well. Your verdict will be handed down in three days. Until then, you should think long and hard, okay?”
“...What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I say. There’s nothing else for you to do here. It’s a good chance to look back over your past.”
A smile on her face, Mirka brushed a hand over her own proof. Slowly, inch by inch, the jail cell door swung closed, and the outside light faded away.
“The reason you fight—I hope you can remember.”
With her words of prayer, the wall finally sealed off with a click.