When he came to, Yukinari was indoors. He thought he recognized the room, but it took him a moment to realize that it was one of the rooms in the Schillings mansion.
“I...”
He turned to one side, where a window revealed that it was completely dark outside; the room was filled with the soft glow of lamplight. Yukinari seemed to have been put to bed.
“You awake?”
At the sound of the voice, Yukinari grunted and sat up, but it made him a little dizzy, as if he were anemic. “Veronika...?”
The female mercenary was sitting with her back to him. But she wasn’t there just to keep an eye on him. This room had two beds in it, and she was sitting on the one next to his.
She didn’t speak immediately. He could see someone lying in the bed Veronika was sitting on. It was—
“Berta!” Yukinari jumped up as soon as he realized who the occupant of the other bed was. The sudden movement caused a wave of dizziness, but he didn’t have time to care. “Is Berta—”
Veronika still didn’t answer; she still didn’t turn toward him. Yukinari put a hand on the wall to steady himself as he climbed out of bed. He looked down at Berta where she lay. The shrine maiden, the girl who had been offered to Yukinari, was sleeping. Or... unconscious, rather. Her eyes were closed, her lips hanging slightly open. Her face was pale; maybe she still didn’t have enough blood. It would have been easy to take her for dead.
“Is Berta all right?” he asked, a touch of annoyance entering his voice at Veronika’s persistent silence.
“Well, she’s alive.” The mercenary said no more than that. In other words, Berta had remained unconscious the whole time Yukinari had been out.
“I cured her... I’m sure I did,” he murmured, but his voice shook as if he knew it was a lie. Yes, he had tended to her wounds. He had felt her heart start beating again. Those things, he remembered. And he remembered Dasa asking how Berta was doing—but he recalled nothing else.
“Sounds like you collapsed, yourself. I only know about what happened after I carried you here. Dasa was here until just a moment ago.” Veronika glanced in the direction of the door. “Until I chased her out of here to get a little rest. We can’t have all of you giving out at once.”
“I see...” Yukinari had thought he must only have been out for two or three hours, but it seemed to have been closer to an entire day. He had used his angel powers of physical reconstitution—in essence, almost of creation—to their limit in his attempt to save Berta. He wasn’t working with that much material, but it was far more demanding to work with the constituent elements of a living being, muscle and flesh and blood, than it was to produce a ball of steel or some water.
What was more, when using his powers to constitute something, Yukinari consumed spiritual power; that was, a specific amount of information. Normally he would first take the information from something else, reducing some object to sand or dust before using that information to produce something new. But he had spent so much time worrying about the serial killer lately that he hadn’t saved up much information in advance, and now he was paying the price.
The overuse of his powers had led to him consuming information from his own self, and that was what had caused him to lose consciousness. He seemed to be suffering from a touch of amnesia, but he didn’t have time right now to track down every last memory.
Veronika finally turned to him. “And what about you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a little anemic.”
“I can’t fault you for that. But still—”
“Berta is who I’m really worried about,” Yukinari said, placing two fingers just below the unconscious girl’s chin. He could feel a pulse.
“She’s not coming around,” Veronika said. “The doctors don’t seem to know what’s wrong with her.”
“Because I fixed all her superficial wounds...” It was understandable that this might confuse the doctors. If he hadn’t done it, though, she would never have survived long enough to be taken to the Schillings home. In fact, it was almost a miracle that she hadn’t immediately died from being stabbed through the heart.
When I showed up, Berta had already been stabbed. How long had it been since she sustained the wound?
He was confident that the gunshot he and the others had heard had come from Berta’s Derrringer. From the time he had heard it until the moment he arrived at the scene... He didn’t know exactly how long it had been, but he thought not a full three minutes. How long had it taken, then, before he had been able to start treating her?
Humans can survive if blood is cut off to an arm or a leg. But the brain is different. It requires constant oxygen and nutrients to be brought to it by the blood. Just five minutes without blood flow can be enough to do irreversible damage to the brain. After ten minutes, the chance of death skyrockets.
Damn it all!
When Yukinari first saw Berta with the sword through her torso, he had thought she was already dead. But in fact, she had been alive. He shouldn’t have talked with Hatsune, should have ignored her so he could get to Berta as quickly as possible. The thought sent an unbearable feeling of shame through him.
Is she still unconscious... because of brain damage...?
Medicine in this world had no way of evaluating the status of the brain. And Yukinari didn’t have neuro-surgical knowledge. In principle, it was possible to create microscopic structures and revive cells using the powers of an angel, but to do so Yukinari would have had to understand their physical construction. It wasn’t like building a gun. The slightest wrong move could make things immeasurably worse.
In other words—even if Berta’s brain had been damaged by lack of blood flow, there was nothing he could do about it. The most he could do now was pray she would heal under her own power.
He didn’t speak.
“Don’t fret too much about it,” Veronika said. “It’s not your fault. Whether someone lives or dies isn’t anyone’s fault. Everyone has to take responsibility for their own survival.” Perhaps that was how Veronika felt, as a mercenary who had seen life and death up close. But...
“No.” Yukinari shook his head with a sigh. “I’m supposed to be her god.”
“...Oh yeah.” Veronika’s shoulders slumped.
Granted, he hadn’t taken on the role voluntarily, but Yukinari was the deity worshipped by Berta and everyone in Friedland. He had responsibilities. It was, one might say, his duty to take on those responsibilities given all the trust that had been placed in him. And on top of that...
Hatsune...!
It was not some faceless, anonymous criminal who had done this to Berta. It was Yukinari’s own older sister, Hatsune Amano.
She had killed more than ten people in this town. She had paralyzed Ulrike and Yggdra’s other familiars. And now she had put Berta in a coma from which she might never wake up.
Was there something more he could have done? Even when he suspected the killer’s true identity, he hadn’t made the information public; he had tried to solve the case with just himself and his close friends. He had even tried to ignore the possibility that Hatsune was the killer. If he’d been willing to face reality sooner, maybe he could have prevented some of the harm she’d done.
How very, very foolish he was.
“Damn it...”
Yukinari bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood.