So they must have tricked her. He didn’t know how, but they must have done it. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. How could his kind, loving sister do such things?
She cocked her head, the picture of innocence. “Deceiving me? I wonder. I don’t particularly think I’m being deceived.”
“So you mean—you mean to say that killing all those people in Friedland... Killing Berta... You did all that because you wanted to?!”
“Yes,” she said, her voice distinct but surprisingly quiet. “I think you’re the one who’s being deceived, my dear Yuki.”
“Me...?”
“You’re all I have, and I’m all you have,” she said, almost as if she were humming the words. “We were always together, weren’t we? Just two of us.”
“That’s—”
“We were going to be together all our lives, isn’t that what we said? After all, you were all I had, and I was all you had. You always said you would never leave me alone, my dear Yuki.”
What she was saying was true. With their mother lost in religion and their father lost in his work, the two siblings had grown up without any adults to look after them, and so had faced life together. Both of them had failed to build the bonds of love between parent and child that should have been primary in their lives; instead, they had clung to each other.
To each other, they had been parents, friends, and... lovers. Yukinari and Hatsune had each been every possible thing to the other. A parent should support a child from early on in life, yet in this both of them had been betrayed, and so they were reluctant—indeed, afraid—to form bonds with other people.
“And yet you, my dear Yuki...” Hatsune pursed her lips like a pouting child. Almost as if she were jealous. “The moment I’m not right next to you anymore, you forget all about me and go making friends with someone else.”
“No, I—”
“But my dear Yuki. Remember. No one else ever did anything for you, did they? Everyone who ever had anything to do with us did it because they had to, or because it was their job—always for their own purposes. There was no one who did anything because they cared about us, was there? No one who loved us.” The small smile remained on her face as she spoke. “The people of this town are the same way. They’re just using you, my dear Yuki. Deceiving you. They don’t love you. You’re strong, you possess great power, and that benefits them, so they’re using you.”
He didn’t speak. Yes, there was an element of that. The people of Friedland venerated Yukinari as the town’s guardian deity; nobody specifically liked him for himself. Or perhaps some did, but they were overwhelmingly few. Yukinari knew all this as well as anyone. And yet, somehow, he didn’t mind; it was only natural to him.
Love with no price? He recoiled at the thought. It was something his mother had often spoken of, yet she had disappeared into religion and never spared her family a backward glance.
Jirina, who had created Yukinari’s body, had told him that something could not be made from nothing.
“A price is always required in order to create something,” she had said. “Alchemy isn’t magic. An angel’s powers function on that same understanding. When you get something for nothing—well, that’s called a miracle.”
This was a world where people’s faith, the spiritual power of their intense devotion, could be stored up in Holy Oil or Spirit Oil. Jirina told him all this as if it were the most natural thing in the world. But that was all the more reason...
“They’re in the way,” Hatsune said. Her eyes were cloudy, as if she were dreaming. “The people of this town. They’re standing between you and me being together, just the two of us, like we used to be. You’re being deceived, my dear Yuki. I thought you might at least come to your senses, but you don’t understand anything at all.”
“You killed them...” To Yukinari, his voice sounded as if it were someone else speaking. “...because they were in the way?”
“That’s right.”
“And you thought I would figure out what you were doing? That you would keep murdering them until I decided to join you...?!”
Here he had thought someone was trying to sow chaos in Friedland, or perhaps cause the villagers to mistrust each other. But it hadn’t even been anything as devious as that. Hatsune had been thinking of nothing but Yukinari, and to her the people of Friedland were like insects—less than insects, in fact; they were no more than background clutter.
This wasn’t about brutality. She didn’t see killing them as an act of cruelty. She was just utterly uninterested in anyone but Yukinari.
“And you don’t need this, either,” Hatsune said.
It took Yukinari a moment to figure out what she was referring to. That’s why he was slow to react. That was why he failed to stop Hatsune from moving her left hand, turning the rapier over so that Berta would slide off the end.
Under the force of gravity, the body freed itself from the sword and dropped onto the roof. It rolled like an inanimate object; Hatsune had literally thrown Berta away.
“Hrgh...”
But as she tumbled, there was the smallest sound.
“Berta!”
She was still alive. Or was that merely air escaping from her lungs under the impact of the fall? It didn’t matter. Yukinari rushed across the rooftop and caught Berta in his arms.
He had no time to transform. Instead, he grasped Berta with his left arm, thrusting out his right arm and digging into the wall of the belltower with his fingers.
“Gah...!”
However strong his angel body might have been, he felt pain more or less like a normal human. He dug his fingers into the small cracks and undulations in the wall, and the friction burned his fingers, tearing away skin and flesh. But it was all in the name of slowing Berta’s momentum. He could only grit his teeth and endure the pain that lanced through his hand. Finally, he used the soles of his feet to soften the impact of the landing as much as he could.
“Ergh...!”
A severe shock ran through all the bones in his body, but he somehow managed to stop Berta from hitting the ground.
“Berta!”
He tried to get a sense of how she was doing. The actual piercing wound in her chest was small, and blood was only dribbling from it. But that fact was actually a bad sign. It meant her blood pressure was low—that her heart was near to stopping.
“Dammit! You can’t die yet!” He tore open her shirt, pressing his right hand to her exposed breast. “It’s too soon! You have to live, Berta!”
This wasn’t like when he had lost Jirina. Now he knew how to use his angel powers, and he had his memories from his previous world. He should be able to fix this. The heart was a bundle of muscle, and it had only been pierced by a rapier. If something as complicated as a heart had been totally destroyed, it would have been beyond even Yukinari to do anything about it. But a small wound? Surely he could cure that. Surely.
“Don’t you die, Berta!” As he shouted, Yukinari tried to use physical reconstitution to heal her heart. He could replenish some of the blood she had lost. Even if he managed to repair her heart, low blood pressure would mean she might go into shock and die from lack of blood flow and poor oxygenation.
A voice spoke from above him. “You mustn’t, my dear Yuki.”
He looked up. Hatsune was gazing down at him from atop the tower. “You mustn’t do that.” She sounded like an older sister gently chiding a disobedient younger brother. The rapier was still in her hand.
This was bad. If she attacked him now, he would have no way to resist. She probably wouldn’t even need her sword. She could just jump down on top of them. If Yukinari stopped his healing work now, Berta would die, no question.
Yukinari crouched protectively over Berta. He had to keep working on her, but as much as he could, he would defend her while doing so.
Then came the gunshot, a roar that split the air. Then a second, then a third.
Fanning. Using the left hand to work the hammer while the trigger remained pulled, a way of firing a machine gun-like volley with a single-action revolver.