“Well then, since we’re here to do some cleaning, might as well start by taking out the trash!”
Shion was not exactly short, and she had a reasonably well-built frame with a good amount of muscle. Nevertheless, Renya could hoist her up to his side with his left arm without much effort at all. Part of the reason might have been the fact that she was carrying nothing but a longsword. In any case, it was a stroke of luck for him that she wasn’t wearing armor, because with each swing, step, and turn, various parts of their bodies came into rather intimate contact with each other. To put it more specifically, breasts were touched, midriffs were brushed, and hips were nudged. A kaleidoscope of sensations were his to enjoy, and enjoy them he did. How glad he was that Rona wasn’t present; with no need to worry about witnesses, he could indulge to his heart’s content.
Fortunately, the fight took place in the garden, which offered ample room for movement. He could run, jump, and spin without minding his surroundings. Taking full advantage of his freedom, he filled the entirety of the garden’s vast space with his presence. The pale human forms never even managed to utter a peep. Those he dashed past were sundered in two from shoulder to waist. Those in his way were skewered in rows. Others lost their heads before being parted down the middle. Yet more simply dissipated where they stood, sliced into too many pieces to count. Chaos ruled the garden that night, playing out its entropic symphony of violence. Every passing measure was punctuated by the scattering of more ethereal forms.
If they were the souls of the women who were murdered here — vengeful spirits shackled to this ground — they surely would have bemoaned their choice to show themselves this night. If they were the merchant who was beheaded here — fragmented remnants of his accursed soul — he surely would have questioned whether he sinned so deeply to justify such a cruel fate. Renya, however, neither knew nor cared what they were. He had but one sole goal: to cut them all down.
“Oh, man… this isn’t good…”
He blindly swung his arms this way and that, hewing down whatever they touched. Both blade and Shion twirled through the air. Then he stopped, cast his head back, and sent a bout of howling laughter up into the night sky.
“Why, I do believe we have a problem.”
Renya thought he heard the shrill twangs of muscles all through his body, their fibers stressed to their limit. They cried out in agony, protesting their abuse. It was the sound of reform. The sound of creation; he was making himself anew. He felt as though his tissues, once enfeebled by the crippling comfort of tranquility, were hardening into new ones, colder and stiffer than ever before.
“Swinging a blade to my heart’s content…”
Unwittingly, the corners of his lips curled upwards. Color disappeared from his world. With visual clutter removed, his eyes saw even more clearly. There were still plenty of foes. Plenty of prey. Every stroke of his katana brought with it a rush.
“…is just… too much fun!”
An ecstatic surge of adrenaline threatened to consume him, but he snapped out of it just before it took hold. There were two reasons for this. The first was that Shion, who still resided in his left arm, uttered a soft moan of agony. Apparently, he had been holding her too tightly; his arm pressed against her so forcefully that she was struggling to breathe. The second was that he heard a faint scream from inside the house. As far as he knew, he and Shion were the only ones within the premises who even had voices with which to scream. Though the wavering ghost-like forms in front of him could technically produce wails of their own, they were not the source; the scream he heard was definitely that of a young girl.
“Renya…” moaned Shion from within the cradle of his arm. Her breaths were coming in gasps.
He felt a pang of anxiety. Had he gone too far? Was he choking her? Her next words, however, brought his thoughts to a screeching halt.
“More…”
His arm went slack on reflex. Feeling like that wasn’t enough, he added a push to the motion, ensuring that the body hit the ground with an audible thump. As if on cue, the pale white figures that surrounded them gave one vigorous shake before vanishing like candle flames in a gust of wind. Silence returned to the garden. As he slowly turned in a circle and checked around him to make sure nothing else posed a threat, a voice came from below him. Shion, who he had just tossed onto the ground, was protesting her treatment.
“You know, that was definitely where you were supposed to look at my teary eyes, Renya, and feel your heart skip a beat.”
“Ah. Well, sorry my heart didn’t skip a beat, but those masochistic vibes of yours sure sent a chill down my spine.”
“Masochistic girls are adorable, aren’t they?!” she exclaimed as she latched onto him again.
“Okay, you need to shut up for a bit,” he complained, “and also fix that demented personality of yours.”
Renya effortlessly brushed aside her attack, sending her flopping onto the ground again.
“Hnngh… Well, anyway, moving on.” She slowly got up, dusted herself off, and looked at the house. “Someone’s in there, huh?”
“You heard it?”
He spoke with genuine surprise, which caused her to turn toward him with her hands at her hips. Her attitude suggested that she was upset to discover he held her in rather low regard.
“I sure did. It was a scream. Sounded like it was from a little girl… probably because you spooked her.”
“Hm. I can’t deny that the sight of me going crazy with a katana might be too stimulating for young children… but we didn’t see anyone else in that building, right?”
“You think a kid just wandered in?”
“Maybe, but we’ll be here all day if we start listing all the possibilities. We should probably just take another look inside…”
Renya sheathed his katana and was about to walk back to the building’s entrance when Shion called out to him from behind. When he turned around, he found her with her hands outstretched, desperately trying to reach out to him. She seemed distressed.
“What’s the matter?”
“After being thrown around so much, my head is spinning…”
He looked her over and discovered that her knees were indeed shaking. While she was putting on a calm front, she seemed to be having trouble keeping her eyes focused in one direction. He conceded that he might have gone a little too far this time. When he first heard that she couldn’t walk, he had considered just ditching her there. However, he decided that he’d feel guilty if he left her stranded and unable to move in a ghost-infested garden all by herself, especially when he was the cause of her disability.
“All right, fine. I’ll drag you in. Happy?”
Shion tripped where she stood.
Out of all the methods to transport a lady, she probably wasn’t expecting that one. With an effort of will, she laboriously stood back up on her trembling legs and pointed a finger at him.
“I demand to be carried like a princess!”
“I’ll see you when you can walk again, then.”
“Sorry, forget I said that! Don’t go! Don’t ditch me! Please don’t leave me here by myself! But can’t you carry me on your back? Or at least at your side like before? Please!” she cried, the look in her eyes a mute appeal of the claim that all girls dream of the princess carry.
He shrugged, then turned around and lowered himself before her.
“Here you go. Piggyback, then.”
“Oh, um, thanks…”
She meekly wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her body against his. With a grunt, he picked her up on his back and made his way to the house.
“Do you know where the voice came from?” he asked.
“Probably from the workshop. The window facing the garden there was open.”
He raised an eyebrow. To notice such a detail while being twirled through the air was no small feat. He re-adjusted his respect for her, figuring that even if she noticed by pure coincidence, it wouldn’t hurt to dial it back up a notch. Otherwise, he’d have to break the knob to turn it any lower.
They entered the workshop through the front hall. It remained brightly lit by his orbs. As he lowered Shion from his back and rested her against the wall, he noticed there was someone lying face down on the ground.
“The heck is this?”
It was a young girl with flaxen hair trimmed to shoulder-length. She wore a bicolored apron-like dress of white and black. To put it simply, there was a girl in a maid costume on the floor. What surprised him, however, was how short the girl was; she probably wasn’t more than a meter tall. He immediately dismissed the possibility that she might have wandered in here by accident. A normal girl might have done that, but this was no normal girl. He couldn’t even call her a child; while her stature was small enough, her arms and legs were much too thin while her head and the rest of her body were about as big as an adult woman’s. It was a peculiar sight; it looked as though a grown woman in a maid costume had been shrunk by a size or two. Her ears, long and thin and pointy-ended, were also decidedly unhuman. The word “elf” flashed in his mind. If this was what elves looked like in this world, though, then they must live in a place that would look like a kingdom of miniatures to him.