But Berta shook her head. “No. Lady Dasa...”
“Dasa? What about her?” Yukinari looked at the girl, who uncharacteristically seemed to be trying to hide behind Berta. Dasa focused on the ground, refusing to look at Yukinari. She was as expressionless as ever, but seemed unusually depressed.
“She... She thinks you’re acting rather strangely, Lord Yukinari.”
“I am? She does?”
“Ever since this morning...”
He didn’t respond immediately. In other words, ever since he had seen his name at that crime scene.
Well, he figured, she was right. At the same time, her unusually retiring attitude suggested she suspected something. Most likely it had begun when he told her not to follow him. He had been too preoccupied to think much about it, but it wouldn’t have been lost on her. He didn’t yell or make a big deal about it, but it had probably left more of an impression on her than he had realized.
Ever since Jirina’s death, Yukinari and Dasa had always been together. It was not an exaggeration to say that they had hardly been apart for a moment. He never left her behind, and she was always at his side. It was because of a promise he had made to Jirina: that he would take care of Dasa. That was why he always tried to put her first.
But ever since he had seen those words on the wall, they had been all he could think about.
“Dasa,” he said gently. Her shoulders slumped and she trembled a little. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been deliberately ignoring you. I’ve just... had a lot to think about.”
“Yuki,” Dasa said, looking up.
“Ahem.” Ulrike, who had been quiet until that moment, spoke up. She crossed her arms. “On that note, if you have concerns, you should speak to us about them. Berta thought perhaps you were depressed, and that the three of us should visit you.”
“Is that right?” Yukinari said, smiling dryly.
Had it been so obvious that he was upset? If anyone would have noticed, it would be the girls that he spent all his time with.
“Drawing on the knowledge of other familiars, I see that when a human male is unhappy, it is often of comfort to him to have a female offer him her body. Concretely speaking, to perform a reproductive act with him.”
“...Guh?” Where on earth did the plant-girl come up with these things?
“It was Berta’s considered opinion that if she were to offer you her body now, it would both make you feel better as well as gratify her own hopes. ‘Two birds with one stone,’ I believe you humans say.”
“Wha? No, I—” Berta was flustered to have the conversation suddenly turn to her. “I just—”
“Berta, you’re... very calculating.”
“Y-You too, Lady Dasa?! I wasn’t trying to—”
The fact that she couldn’t bring herself to utter the lie—I wasn’t trying to do that or the like—spoke to the girl’s personality. For better or for worse, she simply couldn’t say something untrue.
In many cases, people lie in order to protect themselves. But Berta, who had been raised her whole life to be a living sacrifice, had scant impulse to self-preservation.
“Hey, sorry,” Yukinari said with a smile. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m okay. This is plenty.” The knowledge that these girls were so concerned about him was comfort enough.
“Yuki,” Dasa said, blinking behind her glasses.
“Hrm? What, are you better already?” This came from Ulrike, sounding a bit annoyed. “Is your recovery not rather sudden?”
“Gee, sorry.”
“I thought I might have a chance to observe human reproduction up close.” Ulrike had always seemed inordinately interested in how humans continued their species.
“Go watch some cows do it or something,” Yukinari said.
“That will not do. I am given to understand that human sexual relations are rather different from those of other animals.” She looked doubtful. “I was curious to test whether this body, Ulrike, could engage in the activity. I have found that the stamens of my male familiars refuse to—”
“I get it! Don’t finish that sentence! Just... stop talking,” Yukinari said insistently. It made him feel a bit dirty just listening to Ulrike—who was little more than a child—say such things. She was asking not because of her own sex drive, but out of sheer curiosity. It made sense that her male familiars couldn’t reproduce. There was no sex drive powering them.
After all, Yggdra, the creature behind Ulrike, was an erdgod. As something that was effectively immortal so long as she was not actually killed, it was only natural that her attitude toward reproduction would be relaxed. But still...
“Pardon me, Yukinari,” the girl went on, “but could I bother you to become depressed again?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You shall become depressed, and voila! I shall comfort you!”
“Seriously. What. The. Hell.”
He wasn’t sure Ulrike herself understood what she was saying, or asking for. And why did she look so pleased about it?
“I must be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity,” she said, and then she began assiduously removing her clothing.
“Hey, leave that on.”
“Hm? Ah, yes. Only your stamen and my pistil need be exposed.”
“That’s not what I meant! Berta? Berta, stop that!” Yukinari said desperately. The other girl had begun to copy Ulrike.
“He is right,” Ulrike said. “I shall be first.”
But then she fell silent. Her face was the first thing to change. It stopped moving, frozen. It looked less as though she had decided to hold still and more as though time had stopped for her and her alone.
“What’s going on?” Yukinari wondered if this was some fresh prank, but then it occurred to him that Ulrike rarely joked. She always spoke seriously. That was what made it so difficult to handle the way she talked about sex—but leaving that aside.
“Hey...” Something was wrong. Yukinari frowned and started to reach out to her, but as he did so, Ulrike fell to the ground, as stiff as a board. “Ulrike?!”
Berta stood shocked, hardly able to process what had happened, but Dasa rushed over and kneeled by Ulrike. She touched her wrist, her neck, her chest, and then her face.
“Yuki,” she said.
“What is it? What’s wrong with Ulrike?”
“She’s dead.”
“...Huh?!” For an instant, he didn’t understand what she meant. “How... How can she be dead...?”
Yukinari looked at the face of the girl who had been Yggdra’s familiar. It was pale and pretty, and now its eyes were open wide. They reflected nothing, but only stared blankly.
✦ ✦ ✦
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✦ ✦ ✦
Beyond the outskirts of Friedland, past the newly cultivated fields, there was a wasteland that had yet to be developed. And in it stood a girl.
“......Hm.”
Her pale skin and white hair shone in the moonlight, making her seem to shimmer despite the darkness. Hers was an unearthly beauty, seemingly untouched by the vulgarities of the fleshly world.
She was dressed lightly, as if she were going for a walk in town. Yet this was neither a time nor a place that a young woman should be out on her own. It made the moment seem all the more unreal.
“Perhaps... this will do.”
The girl clutched a rapier in her hand. There was no telling where it had come from, for she wore no scabbard. The thin sword had a hilt and guard emblazoned with roses. Their red color stood out; they almost seemed to move like living things. Thin red lines, like veins, spread out from them, running up onto the blade.
What kind of sword was this?
What was more, when she stabbed it into the ground at her feet, the earth began to twist, and then the rapier sank down as if it were burying itself, until it had disappeared under the surface.
There was a tremble in the air, as though this very land was flinching, afraid of something.
“This ought to keep those meddlesome familiars from interfering,” the girl said, and turned around. There, on the ground, lay an old woman with horns like a deer and green hair. One of Yggdra’s familiars. Her body showed no wounds, but she was still, like a puppet with its strings cut.