"That’s a terrible condition, indeed.”
The two merchants smiled wordlessly at each other.
The council meeting would end shortly before nightfall. Eve had business to attend to and could not accompany Lawrence and Holo, but she went on ahead to speak to Rigolo’s family on their behalf.
So after taking a moderate recess after midday, Lawrence and Holo left the inn.
Rigolo’s house was apparently slightly north of the center of town.
That particular district seemed relatively wealthy, given the stone foundations and ground floors of the buildings there, but the ambience was nonetheless poor. Many houses had been repeatedly expanded with carpentry, and their walls jutted into the street, almost meeting overhead.
The area seemed to have once been a wealthy neighborhood but had declined over time.
While families who had been prosperous for generations knew that money did not always bring happiness, the nouveau riche were different. So long as they had money, they wished to flaunt it by expanding their homes.
That was all fine and good, but those expansions ruined the atmosphere of the neighborhood. Stray dogs and beggars began to wander the ever-dim streets.
When that happened, the truly wealthy moved elsewhere, and the value of homes in the area fell, and with that value went the quality of the neighborhood. Once it had been mostly moneylenders and masters of middling trade companies that lived here, but now the area was populated by apprentice craftsmen and market stall owners.
“Quite a cramped street this,” said Holo.
Perhaps owing to the weight of the buildings on either side of it, the street was warped and buckled, and here and there cobblestones were missing, perhaps having been pried free and sold off by someone hurting for money. Water would then pool in the holes left behind, contributing to the feeling of general disrepair, an impression that the narrowness of the lane only heightened.
Lawrence couldn’t walk side by side with Holo, and if someone was to come the other way, they would have to flatten themselves against the wall in order to pass.
“I’ll admit it’s inconvenient,” Lawrence said, “but I like this kind of disorderly place.”
“Oh ho.”
“You can really feel how it comes out of years and years of change. Just like a beat-up old tool that gradually takes on a different shape over time, turning into something unique.”
Lawrence looked back at Holo who walked behind him. She traced her fingers along the walls as she followed.
“Like the way a river changes shape?”
“...I’m sorry to say I don’t follow your comparison.”
"Mm. In that case...like the way the heart changes shape. The soul, is it called?”
Holo’s example was so much closer to home that Lawrence was a bit sluggish to keep up. “I suppose so,” he finally answered. “If we could take it out and get a look at it, I imagine that’s what it would look like. The heart becomes scratched and dented and repaired over time, and with one glance, you’d be able to tell your own from others."
As Lawrence and Holo walked, they encountered one of the large puddles that dotted the lane. Lawrence crossed with a single bound first, then turned and extended his hand to Holo.
"Milady,” he said with courtesy. Holo offered her hand with exaggerated magnanimity in reply, hopping over the puddle to land next to Lawrence.
"And what would your soul look like, eh?” she asked.
"Mm?"
"No doubt it would be tinged with my color.”
Lawrence no longer flinched at the chestnut-red eyes that looked up at him.
Their effect on him was indeed fading.
Lawrence shrugged and resumed walking. “I’d say poisoned is a better word than colored."
"Then ’tis a potent poison, indeed,” said Holo over her shoulder haughtily as she ran ahead. “After all, my smile still knocks you right over.”
"So what color is your soul?” shot back Lawrence, still and always impressed with her wit.
"What color?” Holo repeated, then looked ahead as if pondering the matter. She slowed for a moment, and Lawrence caught up to her from behind. The street was too narrow for him to pass, so he simply peered down at her.
She muttered, apparently counting something on her fingers.
“Hmm,” she intoned. She then noticed Lawrence looking over her shoulder and tilted her head up, leaning back into him a bit. “There are many.”
“...Oh.”
For a moment, Lawrence didn’t follow her meaning, but then he understood that she was referring to the history of her romances.
Holo had lived for centuries, so it stood to reason that she would have experienced love once or twice. Given her clever wit, no doubt some of her partners had been human.
With Holo blocking the path ahead, Lawrence lightly pushed her small back, urging her forward.
Holo obediently began to walk.
They usually walked side by side, so Lawrence had few opportunities to see her form from behind. It was strangely novel.
Seen from behind, she was slender, the lines of her body lovely even through the thick clothes she wore. Her strides were neither too long nor too quick; the word graceful came to Lawrence's mind. There was also something lonely about her form, something soft when embraced.
Is this what it was to feel protective? Lawrence wondered with a self-deprecating smile but was suddenly filled with doubt.
Holo had ticked the numbers off on her fingers, but just how many men had held her slender shoulders?
He wondered what her expression had been like. Had she been pleased? Had she narrowed her eyes, being coy? Or had her ear twitched and her tail swished to and fro as she was unable to conceal her happiness?
They had held hands, embraced...Holo was not a child, after all...
Who else has she had? Lawrence thought to himself.
"..."
As soon as the thought appeared in his mind, he hurried to dismiss it. An awful tongue of flame reached up from the depths of his heart.
His chest pounded as though he had fallen from a cliff. The shock was like touching a hot coal, thinking the fire had gone out, only to be badly burned. She had counted them off on her fingers.
It was the most obvious thing in the world, but as she ticked off each finger in his in his imagination, something deep in him collapsed, leaving only a smoldering anger.
The feeling was unmistakable.
It was the blackest jealousy.
Lawrence was annoyed with himself. It was incredibly selfish of him, even if he had been born to the avarice that leads one to take on the occupation of merchant.
But the love of money was nothing compared to this feeling.
So was that when Holo turned to him with accusation in her eyes, this had a deeper effect on him than any clergyman’s sermon ever could.
"So have you finished your introspection?”
"...You see through just about everything, don’t you?” he answered wearily.
His heart felt so heavy it made him want to sit and rest.
But surprisingly, Holo smiled, showing her sharp canines. “I’m to better myself, though.”
"..."
"You simply sounded so happy, so desperately happy, to speak with someone without so much as a hint of charm—”
In that instant, Holo’s face turned angry.
He had seen her angry face any number of times before, but this one had a particularly savage edge to it.
She is a wisewolf, Lawrence reminded himself.
“Would it make sense if I said I enjoyed it as a merchant?” he asked, trying to offer an excuse.
Holo stopped, then started walking again once Lawrence had closed the gap between them.
“Do you want me to ask you which is more important—money or me?”
That line was among the top three things that a lonely traveling merchant would dream of hearing from a woman.
And it was a problem that would
cause any merchant to tear his heart out in frustration.
Lawrence raised both hands in defeat.
“To be sure, the reason I would be angry is not one whit different from what you’re thinking. ’Tis an utterly selfish, childish notion. But the two of us have our wits; we can speak of this. Thus, I am not angry.”
"..."
Holo was a wisewolf of long experience.
Lawrence could not hope to cross swords with her.
For a while, he searched his small vocabulary for some suitable response but found nothing. “What I’m thinking is that it’s not fair of me.”
“Truly?”
Lies were hopeless against Holo.
"Truly."
She did not turn around at his answer.
He was not certain that it had been the right one.
Holo continued to walk quietly, gracefully, finally coming to a fork in the road. According to the directions they had received from Eve, they needed to bear right.
Lawrence didn’t feel good about it, but since Holo had stopped, he spoke up.
“We head right here.”
"Mm.” Holo turned to face him. “So this is the fork in the road.” Lawrence did not ask which road was forking.
Evidently that had been the first barrier. Holo’s right eyebrow moved slightly.
"How do you resolve your selfish jealousy toward me?”
Was she now asking questions that sounded like they had come from some clergyman of the Church?
Outwardly the right thing to do was to lose this black, selfish feeling, but inwardly Lawrence knew it would not disappear so easily.
He looked back at Holo, a bitter expression on his face.
This was Holo the Wisewolf. He could not imagine that she would corner him with questions like this for no good reason.
In other words, even if the answer was wrong for nearly everyone, there was something that would be correct for Holo.
But how to reach it?
Lawrence’s mind raced.
Holo had said just a moment ago that she was the same as him. So the answer, he reasoned, must be within Holo as he saw her.
The most difficult problem for him might be the easiest thing in the world for someone else to solve.
Holo was also having trouble dealing with her jealousy.
And Holo herself wanted to know how to resolve it, did she not?
So given that, all Lawrence needed to do was consider the problem from the outside, and the answer would come naturally.
He opened his mouth to speak and saw Holo steady herself in preparation. “My answer is that there is no way to resolve it.”
It was a single ripple in the smooth surface of a lake.
He tossed another pebble into that lake, trying to bring expression back to Holo's face.
"And it makes you hate yourself.”
Neither defiance nor selflessness was the correct response, he thought.
If he imagined that Holo was the jealous one rather than himself, it was the most natural thing in the world, and it was actually quite nice to be the object of that jealousy.
After all, jealousy was nothing more than wanting to have someone all to yourself, so how could it be anything but flattering as long as it wasn’t excessive?
Hence Lawrence’s answer, but Holo still remained expressionless.
Lawrence did not look away. He was certain this was the final barrier.
“Hmph. So we bear right, do we?” she said with a smile, cocking her head. At this, Lawrence couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. “Still,” she added, giggling.
“What?”
“Jealousy and self-hatred, eh? Indeed,” said Holo with a smirk.
This struck him as rather unnatural, and by the time he started walking down the right-hand path, he had fallen behind Holo.
“Whatever is the matter?” she asked, grinning over her shoulder.
If Lawrence had really managed to produce an answer that satisfied her, Holo shouldn’t have been smirking like this. He'd anticipated either a smile of happy relief or an out-and-out scowl.
So what did this mischievous smile portend?
Lawrence felt his face flushing. He had turned red so many times that day that he began to worry the color would stick.
Holo giggled. “Have you figured it out, then?” she inquired over her shoulder. “You agonized over the problem, reversed the positions in your head, and arrived at the answer. ’Twas plain as day on your face. But if you’d thought about it a bit, you’d see. When someone comes to you for advice, the answer you think is correct is what you want him or her to be. Which means?”
Indeed.
Holo had not been waiting for Lawrence’s words to solve her problems.
She had, in fact, been waiting for him to reveal his own feelings. "You become jealous and agonize over it. Is that what you wish from me, so that you can play the role of offering your hand in consolation? Should I now collapse into charming tears of self-recrimination, pathetically clinging to the hand you so generously offer?"
"Urgh—”
So this was what it was like to have ones heart laid bare.
He felt like a shamed maiden, covering her face with her hands. The sharp-fanged wolf glided smoothly to his side.
And yet there was some solace in seeing that Holo did this not simply for her own enjoyment.
Even Lawrence could tell that much.
Holo had been truly jealous about his enjoyable chat with Eve, and this conversation was something of a diversion.
"Hmph. Come, let’s go,” Holo said, perhaps reading Lawrence’s unguarded expression. “We can leave it at this,” she seemed to be saying.
Surely her mood had improved with all of this, and she would probably be more generous about him enjoying the odd merchant-to-merchant chat with Eve.
Lawrence couldn’t help feeling that he had been careless, though.
He had allowed his deepest wishes to be hauled out for all to see.
"So then,” said Holo beside him, her tone completely casual. The atmosphere was still poor, but the street had widened enough for the two of them to walk side by side. “In truth, I’m asking you this simply because I want to tease you, but...”
Even given a warning like this, Lawrence felt like a hare waiting for the slaughter.
“Do you want to know how many I counted off?”
Her pure, innocent smile came down upon him like a giant meat cleaver.
“I’ve been reminded just how small and fragile my own heart is” was all the battered Lawrence could manage, but this seemed to satisfy Holo.
Sadistic satisfaction was written large all over her face as she clung to his arm. “Well, I have to get my claws into that fragile heart of yours before it freezes solid.”
Lawrence looked down at her, unable to manage any sort of response.
Unbelievably, her smiling face was like that of a winsome girl, pleased at her own mischief.
But even the worst nightmare eventually comes to an end. Once they found the house that Eve had described to Lawrence with the green copper signboard cut in the shape of a three-legged chicken, Holo abandoned her harassment.
“Well then,” said Lawrence to break the silence, his tone strangely light after the frustrating, embarrassing conversation that had preceded it. “I’m told this Rigolo is a difficult character, so let’s be careful.”
Holo nodded her assent as she walked alongside him, still holding on to his arm. “I suppose this ends our lovely, dreamlike exchange. We’re now back to boring reality.”
Lawrence had no idea exactly how serious this murmured statement was. “In that case, feel free to go back to the inn and sleep,” he shot back under his breath.
“Mm...that might be nice. Of course, it wouldn’t be sheep that I count as I fall asleep...”
Holo still held the upper hand when it came to being nasty.
But now that the subject had come up, Lawrence felt strangely emboldened. “Oh? So how ma
ny men have there been?”
He didn’t want to know every detail, but it would also be a lie to say he was totally uninterested.
She had randomly brought the subject up, after all, so the answer might well have been zero.
To suggest that some part of him didn’t hope that was true would also be a lie.
But Holo said nothing in response to the question. Her expression was blank, and she didn’t so much as tremble. This made her look like a perfect, untouched doll.
Once he realized it was an act, Lawrence knew he couldn’t win. "Men are fools, and I am their king,” he finally said. Holo came back to life and seemed quite tickled. Lawrence slumped in defeat, smiling.
The three-legged chicken that hung from the eaves of the Rigolo house was carved in the image of the chicken that had long ago predicted the flooding of the Roam River, which flowed by Lenos.
The Church claimed it was a messenger from God, but according to the tale, the flood had been predicted by the position of the stars, moon, and sun—in other words, by the astronomical records of the time.
Ever since, the three-legged chicken had become a symbol of wisdom.
Perhaps the Rigolo family, who had apparently served as chroniclers for ages, hoped that the monotonous records they kept would one day act as guideposts, pointing the way to the future.
Lawrence rapped on the door using the silver-plated knocker, clearing his throat.
Their introduction from Eve should have already arrived, but even Eve, whose negotiation skills were considerable, claimed that Rigolo was a tough nut to crack. Lawrence couldn’t help feeling nervous.
Behind him, Holo had neglected to continue holding his hand, but her presence was embarrassingly reassuring.
It was possible that he hadn’t been overwhelmed by Eve earlier precisely because he’d met Holo and it was her companionship that enabled him to think this way. Before meeting Holo, the only person Lawrence had been able to count on was himself. He had been filled with both a burning desire to win and a terrible fear of losing.
Was it better or worse to have friends to count on? Just as Lawrence considered this question, the door slowly opened.
That moment—the instant between the opening of the door to the point where he could see the person’s face—was the most nerve-racking of all.
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