“Available for twelve hundred trenni silver pieces. – The Vhans Company.”
In that moment, with the town seemingly glittering from the sun’s rays pouring down from the clear blue sky, the only things Lawrence saw were the words on that piece of paper. The store was for sale. Here, in an unregulated, free town full of activity.
It would have not been overstating things that not only had his feet stopped, but also his heart.
The flow of blood through his veins came to a halt.
That was why, when he came back to his senses, he had no idea how much time had passed.
The tumult flew into his ears as if the crowd had suddenly engulfed him.
And the instant he realized his left hand held nothing, his liver froze just as surely as if he had drunk ice.
“Ho…”
… lo, his lips formed to pronounce. Holo was at a stall right beside them buying grease-toasted bread with honey on top. Lawrence’s hand immediately went to his hip; his wallet was gone. He knew he had attached a cord to it as a measure against pickpockets; he had never noticed it being untied.
Holo, expressionless to the point he could not tell if she was angry or not, bit into the bread as she came back to Lawrence. She handed his wallet back to him without a word.
“Er…?”
Desperately trying to rebalance his dizzied head, he opened his mouth to say something, anything, to apologize.
As he did so, Holo thrust the grease-toasted bread in her hand into it.
“Mm! Mm?”
Holo stared straight at Lawrence, still keeping the bread thrust into his mouth.
Even the townspeople passing by on the busy street took some interest in the odd scene.
She stayed like this for a while before her hand released the bread.
Holo letting go of food was surprising in and of itself; when she turned over the hand that had held it, showing him the palm, he had no idea why.
“I shall go purchase another.”
Telling her, “Waste not, want not,” and so forth, never entered his mind at all. He handed the coins over largely by reflex; Holo turned toward the stall, his eyes following her back the entire way. The stall owner glanced at Lawrence a little and, in response to Holo’s words, made a large smile and put an extra-large helping of honey on her toast.
Holo returned as expressionless as before. She stood beside him. “In the end, ’tis for the best.”
“Huh?”
Lawrence replied, but Holo continued to face the unoccupied store for sale.
She probably meant the toast.
Out of concern for Holo, Lawrence had brought her outside and went all around the square and artisans’ district with her, but the best thing for improving Holo’s mood was surely sweet food.
As his still-befuddled head thought as much, Holo stepped on his foot.
She ground her foot into his.
In the end, while bringing her all over the place, the state of this and that in the town had distracted him, and he had neglected her. Furthermore, even though Lawrence had originally dragged Holo along to cheer her up, when he set eyes on that store, he forgot himself to the point of not even noticing his precious wallet, as dear as his life, being taken; of course, he had forgotten Holo as well.
Of course, Holo was angry. He had no way to apologize.
“You probably forgot about me where they were pounding metal as well.”
It seemed she had noticed.
Lawrence subconsciously shrank back.
“You go out into town and become such a pup. What’s this, what’s that, how about here? What’s over there?”
About as hot as the toast she held in her hand itself, the honey was melting and soaking into it. Normally Holo would not have let one, let alone two, go to waste, but she had barely touched this one.
That was how angry she was; He offered no rebuttal.
To apologize would complete the picture of a shameless fool.
If Lawrence was a puppy being scolded, all he could do was wait for Holo’s anger to subside.
But seemingly leaving it at that, Holo stopped grinding her foot into Lawrence’s.
And after pausing for a while, she took Lawrence’s hand.
Seemingly putting up with embarrassment for once, she bounced back after some slight hesitation.
“So, in the end ’tis for the best.”
“…?” Lawrence looked down at Holo.
Holo was just biting into her toasted bread. She seemed annoyed and foul tempered. “Do you intend to make me say more?”
As she stepped on his foot once again, Lawrence turned forward.
But Holo’s hand did not let go. Her cheeks were fairly red. That was surely not because it was cold out.
Holo ate her toast down to halfway in one go before sniffling, perhaps because it was so hot.
“You really are happy as a foolish hound.” Making an exaggerated, white-misted sigh, Holo sniffled once more. She did not look at him, but Lawrence could tell that it was taking serious effort not to.
And looking upon the side of Holo’s face in silence, Lawrence saw something sweeter than honey on toast.
Chasing after the name of her pack mate from her homeland, instead of meeting him, she received a conceited message left by him instead.
That was a very sad thing; surely there were various things passing in and out of her heart that only she could understand.
Compared to that, what Lawrence could do amounted to very little.
For Lawrence to triumph over the memory of Myuri within her, all Lawrence, who lived here and now, needed to do was to hold her interest somehow and push forward.
Of course, no matter how inexpensive, he could not purchase the store immediately. He knew too little about the town; more than that, this was the Debau Company’s backyard. In truth, he thought it was a pity to see the town so lively.
But what he needed to say right now was nothing so realistic. Even a fantasy would do; he needed words full of hope.
So Lawrence came up with something to say, which was this: “Sorry, could we go back to the inn?”
Holo raised her gaze up and looked at him.
“It’s been a long time, so I want to sketch this store.”
The corner of her lips turned upward. But he was not wrong.
As Lawrence thought that, the corners of Holo’s eyes crinkled in a smile that came to her face like the rise of oil-glazed bread dough.
“You don’t want to buy it instead?”
Her having asked this, he would indeed have to speak to her of banal realities. He had never imagined Holo would actually approve of Lawrence acquiring a store in this town.
Lawrence girded himself, choosing his words carefully as he spoke.
“Buying something cheap can mean wasting your coin, after all. I need to calm myself down first.”
It was not a complete fabrication, but Holo’s ears twitched under her hood as she made a vague face.
“I must warn you, the regret of letting a purchase go is bitter wine, indeed.”
“That’s all right. You know better than anyone how I get worked up about things, yes?”
Holo’s eyes widened a bit in surprise; then her face twisted into a malicious-looking smile.
When Lawrence saw that smile on her face, he wondered if he had repeated his mistake from that back alley in Lenos.
Even so, men grew by piling one experience upon another as they lived.
Lawrence realized he still had the toast that Holo had bought him and took a bite.
It surely held the same taste as those lips.
As if somehow perceiving he was thinking of that, Holo made a sigh as she walked off, urging Lawrence along.
“You truly are a fool.”
Of course, she had not forgotten to say that.
He did not know how many times he had sketched a store. This wasn’t even the first time he had sketched in front of Holo.
However, it was the first tim
e that they had sketched together.
That made him happy in itself, but what truly made him happy was that Holo had largely regained her own spirit.
“I do not think much sunlight shall reach here.”
Holo had been commenting on the layout of the furniture and even the size of the window.
At first, he thought she was forcing herself to be cheerful, but having seen her saying, “Oh, this one’s so much bolder,” “Oh, your sense is that of a fool” – on and on, saying whatever she pleased, Lawrence decided she might have simply liked this sort of thing from the beginning.
He suddenly wondered if wolves were animals that built their own nests.
“This is the sunniest place… aye. This is a suitable place for me to sleep.”
The second-story room that was the sunniest place was normally occupied by the company chief. Lawrence snapped back from the thought and wrinkled his nose.
Of course, this was all fantasy talk.
Even so, the arrangement and construction of the building they were sketching was from the store they had seen earlier, a building that actually existed. He had unintentionally gotten rather serious about it.
“Properly speaking, this is where the owner…”
As Lawrence complained seemingly to himself, Holo made no sign of listening as she drew more things here and there.
Indulging in one’s fantasies could be inconvenient when push came to shove.
As Lawrence thought about that, completely forgetting about cheering Holo up, Holo slipped in the knife.
“Is there no place for me in your store, I wonder?”
“Er–”
“Surely ’tis not so?” she said, an innocent smile on her face.
There was nothing Lawrence could say to that.
Suddenly he wanted to say something, even if it meant her snapping back at him.
As he tried to, Holo happily pressed down on Lawrence’s tongue with her slender finger.
“If you say anything strange, all my hard work shall go to waste.”
He wondered how much was a joke and how much was serious.
When it came to the length of time of occupying Holo’s heart, the difference between the Myuri of the past and the Lawrence of the present was great, indeed.
Holo was pushing herself.
He kept telling himself that any smiling face would turn into a truly smiling face soon enough.
Lawrence gazed back into Holo’s eyes and nodded.
And as he nodded, he ran his pen to part of the bedroom on the second floor.
“Aah–”
Holo was taken by surprise; then Lawrence spoke.
“If the company’s future is in doubt with one set of hands, isn’t two better?”
He thought it a rather corny line, but Lawrence drew a small table in the corner of the room.
Holo gave a loud, smug laugh.
They decided where to place all the furniture and what merchandise their fantasy store would carry. It seemed both real enough to touch and, at the same time, impossibly idyllic.
Holo exchanged words with Lawrence, sometimes laughing, sometimes angry.
Even so, there were many moments when after something was decided, she simply closed her mouth, silently gazing with joy.
She made a calm face as if she was truly in this ideal shop, spending her days there as the spring sun rose and fell.
Finally, her face became sleepy and she began to nod off.
Of course, he did nothing so rude as to wake her, but neither did he move Holo to the bed.
So as he worked, smiling at Holo, she woke up from time to time, wiping her mouth.
But Lawrence suddenly realized something.
After nodding off and falling asleep, when she woke up, Holo always had an uneasy look on her face. At first he thought it was due to discomfort from the shallow sleep, but he felt it was something somewhat different. Holo was staring at Lawrence for a while as if making sure whether he was a dream or not, finally relaxing her shoulders and beginning to nod off again.
The moment he realized that she was making sure he was still there, Lawrence could draw the picture of the store no longer.
To Holo, who would live however many centuries, the time she spent with Lawrence was but a small fraction of that. No doubt she felt it was time so short if she nodded off, it would be gone. All the more so just after what was probably an eternal farewell to the pack mate from her homeland she had been so certain she would meet again.
So Holo wanted to keep her eyes open even a little longer.
“There’s no time,” Lawrence had told Holo many times. “I have to travel my trade route – I can’t keep on traveling with you forever,” he had told her many times.
But it was Holo whose time was truly limited.
After all, Holo lived for a very long time. The time she could spend with Lawrence and what she could do with him amounted to a very small piece compared to the mountain of things she could do with the surely great amount of time remaining to her. No matter how precious, no matter how much the contents of that warehouse piled up higher and higher, the time might be coming when she might lose sight of that.
That was why he wanted to stay with her just a little more. Just a little longer. In the face of such thoughts, the time she could be with Lawrence was all too brief.
Lawrence put his pen down and spontaneously stroked Holo’s forelocks as she took a little nap beside him. Holo’s eyebrows frowned slightly in annoyance and her ears twitched a little, but she showed no sign of waking.
Lawrence watched her sleeping face with great anguish. It was like his chest was being crushed.
They had come to this town to confirm things with the Myuri Mercenary Company and look into the Debau Company’s schemes. But they had not come to look into them thinking that they could correct, halt, or control those schemes whatsoever.
He thought he would like to be able to, like some hero in a legend, but real problems made that impossible. Lawrence was a merchant; no matter how mighty Holo was, the opponent was a mining company with an army at its beck and call.
Furthermore, the combat specialist who led the Myuri Mercenary Company had feared Lawrence and Holo would stand in opposition to the Debau Company. Meaning it was so obvious that even a fool could see defying Debau was absurd.
Lawrence had promised Holo he would cooperate however was within his power. And even if Yoitsu was under threat of invasion, surely it was not Holo’s wish that Lawrence put his life on the line. He knew not for certain, but he thought that Holo might not fight for Yoitsu herself. He sensed she might put some effort into sabotage, however.
It sometimes seemed pathetic that even though her true form was a giant wolf, she was always traveling as such a tiny girl in the nooks and crannies of such a broad world with a salt-of-the-earth merchant such as him. She seemed to be desperately trying to keep pace with the world around her.
Furthermore, Holo had come in search of her homeland and any trace of her old pack mate. That certainly was not moving forward; rather, it was facing the consequences of things about which nothing could be done.
One might call it trying to make up for having spent a few centuries in a wheat field in a rural backwater, but it was not Holo’s fault that the world had changed so much in that time.
Lawrence stroked Holo’s forelocks once more as he thought to himself.
What was it that they could do in this town? Sniff out the Debau Company’s scheme left and right, then raise both hands in surrender before the enormity of their scheme? Or once they knew the full absurdity of their mad scheme for short-term profits, tremble with anger?
Either way, there was nothing to be done.
Those were the words Holo had spoken when toying with the glittering snow piling up on that snowy morning at the monastery in Winfiel Kingdom.
This time they could concern themselves with it, at least to know what was occurring.
What they could do was truly limited t
o that.
Lawrence truly regretted that he was not a hero in a heroic tale. Holo was precious to him beyond words, and yet being unable to do anything for her made him want to question whether his life had any meaning.
Holo’s sleeping face looked exhausted from crying.
Even an annoyed smile was good. Even a pained smile was good.
If he could, he wanted to make her think of something else tomorrow.
Rather than sitting before the fireplace, remembering painful wounds and hiding them behind a smiling face, he wanted her eyes dazzled by the bright morning sun with a smiling face full of wonder as to what this day might bring.
When he thought about it, he had few choices remaining to him.
Moreover, all he had done today was to make Holo laugh.
So all he could do was pour in every last effort for the sake of that smiling face.
Lawrence pulled the just now fully asleep Holo away from in front of the easel, lifting her up and laying her upon the bed. He retraced his steps in reverse order from when he had dressed her to leave the inn as she slept at ease. She truly had her guard down, her body as warm and soft as that of a cat. Though he felt pangs of guilt, he somehow suppressed them.
Or perhaps it was because something tugged at Lawrence’s heart even more.
After softly stroking Holo’s sleeping face, he put his coat on and headed out of the room. After taking a couple of steps, he stopped and took the drawing atop the easel. Confirming the ink was dry, he placed it at Holo’s bedside. It was amusing how the smell of ink made Holo’s nose crinkle as she mumbled incoherently.
He left the room and walked down the corridor.
And he went not down the stairs, but up.
Since passing him upon their return to their room, Lawrence had not heard any proper footsteps so he was probably still there.
Unable to hide a fair bit of tension, Lawrence cleared his throat and knocked on the door.
The one who opened the door was a large man with his silver hair and beard clipped short.
It was the strategist of the Myuri Mercenary Company.
Chapter 3
The strategist’s name was Max Moizi.
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