The Shield of Miracles

by Sakon Kaidou

  Eishiro gave her a flat look, not saying a word.

  When it came to deals, Tsukuyo’s style was to present the other party with severe conditions and wait until they had no choice but to accept them. In this case, however, she’d betrayed her style twice — first by lowering her condition to him joining CID, rather than The Lunar Society, and then by actually giving him the treatment for absolutely no reward.

  Her strong, continuous, repeated assertion to Eishiro that she hadn’t done anything back there was just her way of denying the reality that she’d departed from her principle and helped Ray for nothing.

  She reminds me of herself when she was a child, Eishiro thought in response to the highly unconvincing and ineffective denial. He chose to say nothing more.

  “But... well...” Tsukuyo continued. “At least Shijima’s family is saved, and Ray gave me a good show. I guess that was his way of seizing miracles.”

  “‘Miracles,’ you say?” Eishiro commented. “I believe people consider wounds that cure themselves to be miraculous, as well.”

  “I don’t know what you meaaaan.”

  “Oh yes, of course, of course. I must say, though...” Tsukikage sighed at his mistress’s obstinance before letting out a whisper. “Miracles are certainly commonplace nowadays.”

  ◇◇◇

  Paladin, Ray Starling

  One more thing seemed to have happened while I was asleep: Louie and Farica received a letter from Mr. Shijima.

  It was from before he’d taken the surgery. Apparently, Mr. Shijima had put it in a metal pipe and given it to Gringham ahead of time so the lion could deliver it to them just in case he himself wasn’t back after half a year had passed.

  The man had entrusted it to Gringham, believing that his loyal beast would listen to his desire even after returning to the wild.

  Mr. Shijima’s letter said that he was fighting his illness and that the fact he wasn’t back yet meant that it was lasting longer than he’d expected. However, he also added that he would definitely come back.

  Aside from that, it contained his most heartfelt feelings for Louie and Farica.

  Upon hearing that, I decided to call off telling them what I’d found out before Monochrome’s appearance.

  The letter contained Mr. Shijima’s own words, so I had no business getting involved in this anymore.

  Not to mention that there was a decisive misconception on our part regarding this whole situation.

  When I’d asked Tsukikage how the man had ended up, the goddamn King of Secretaries had put on a depressed tone and said, “‘Miracles’ are called ‘miracles’... because they’re unbelievably rare.”

  Those words had seriously shocked me, but now that I thought about it... that sneaky bastard hadn’t said anything about the miracle not happening or the man dying.

  And to top it all off, when I’d logged out just a moment ago and ran a search for “Fuso hospital terminal illness” I’d instantly got a result for a medical article from two months ago, titled, “SURGERY FOR GLOBALLY INFAMOUS DISEASE SUCCESSFUL IN JAPAN FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!”

  It said that the patient would have to spend a few months in an ICU for follow-up medical care, and that the patient’s condition was stable.

  Out of respect for his privacy, the man wasn’t named, but it was more than likely that it was our guy.

  The miracle... had actually happened.

  “Man... I’ve been had,” I muttered.

  I knew today was April Fools’ Day. And, well, I had clearly been fooled. Hook, line, and sinker.

  Was I feeling bad about that, though? Nope. Not at all.

  That evening, after thanking me for saving him and Gringham, Louie went on to withdraw his request, saying, “I’ll keep waiting for Dad with Mom, Gringham, and my little brother or sister! He will come back!”

  He made the right choice, if you asked me.

  After all, the day he was waiting for wasn’t too far away.

  ◇

  It was the first morning after the Monochrome incident.

  B3 and I were about to leave Torne as Louie, Farica, and Gringham were seeing us off.

  Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that Gringham was tamed by Farica. If he’d stayed untamed, he might’ve been accidentally killed by someone, so yesterday, she’d gone out to get the Tamer job and made him hers.

  Of course, an Aries Leo wasn’t exactly a creature that could be tamed by a completely new Tamer, but it was different in Gringham’s case. They were family, and he’d wanted to be tamed, so the process had been completed without a problem, and he was now lying asleep on their grounds like some enormous housecat.

  Now, he too, would be waiting for his original owner alongside his family.

  “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done,” said Farica as she bowed her head. Louie followed after her. “You helped with Louie’s request and even saved us from that Monochrome...”

  “No need for that,” I replied. “I did those things because I wanted to.”

  It would have left a bad taste in my mouth if I hadn’t done them, and having done them, I was feeling nothing but refreshed. That alone made it all worth it.

  “Oh, right,” said Louie. “I canceled the request, but the money...”

  “Oh, no need for that, either.” I raised my hand to stop him.

  “Yes,” B3 nodded. “We never agreed on an amount.”

  Exactly — we hadn’t decided on a reward. Not to mention that...

  “Thanks to this matter, we chanced upon a windfall,” she continued. “And that’s payment enough.”

  ...Yeah, the reparations from K&R would do just fine.

  I’d gotten a closer look at the contract and found out that the interest for delayed payment was insane in more ways than one. If Rosa didn’t hurry and pay up, she’d be in for a serious debt hell.

  Anyway, we were about to depart, but before that...

  “Louie,” I addressed the boy.

  “Yes? What is it?” He looked up at me.

  There was just one more thing I wanted to tell him before I left.

  “Make sure to support your little brother or sister when he or she’s born, all right? Little brothers rely on their big brothers more than you’d expect.”

  “...Okay!”

  And with that exchange as our last, we left the Shijima household.

  Silver, having recovered from the effects of that “Gremlin” Embryo, was pulling B3’s carriage forward.

  Nemesis, B3, and I were all on the coachman’s seat.

  Looking around, I could see people reconstructing the parts of the village Monochrome had destroyed yesterday.

  A group of Masters with mohawk haircuts looked particularly enthusiastic about their volunteer work.

  Can’t judge a book by its cover, huh? I thought as I watched the scenery when I felt B3 look at me, both silently and intently.

  “Is anything wrong?” I asked.

  “No, it’s just that... I find it strange that you aren’t saying anything about me when I was in armor. Tone, looks — nearly everything about me was different, so I expected you to ask.”

  Yeah, she’d definitely been more manly back then. That was what she’d called being “turned on” or something. Nevertheless...

  “Well... I’m used to it.”

  “‘Used to it?’”

  “I have two family members and a few friends whose tones and behaviors, like yours, drastically change depending on the situation, so I don’t really mind it at this point.”

  “I... I see?”

  Both of my siblings, Marie, Hugo... probably Rook, too. Looking at it like that, I realized I had quite a number of two-faced characters around me. But at least they were all good people at heart.

  “By the way, may I ask you something?” Nemesis joined the conversation with a question for B3. “What should we call you from now on? ‘B3’ or ‘Barbaroy’?”

  “Oh, uh, please use ‘B3’ when I’m not wearing my armor and ‘Barb
aroy’ when I am.”

  She separates them...?

  “Hm... Why the separation?” asked Nemesis.

  B3’s face turned slightly red as she said, “Well... That makes it cuter... and cooler, right?”

  Those words of hers made me suddenly burst into laughter.

  She turned all sulky and lightly whacked my head a few times before escaping into her carriage.

  Yep. She’s an unexpectedly charming person, I thought with a grin. ...Those hits took some of my HP, though.

  “You have no one to blame but yourself,” said Nemesis.

  Can’t argue with that.

  And so, our carriage left Torne.

  I turned around for the last time and took a look at the village, now a small dot on the horizon.

  “Now that I think about it... what will happen to the Windstar Festival now?” I muttered.

  Monochrome, the origin of the festival, had awakened, greatly damaged the village, and vanished.

  Though not many had been hurt or injured, the same couldn’t be said for their homes, which were charred or even burnt to the ground.

  Reconstruction would take a lot of time, and it wasn’t certain whether they could continue the Windstar Festival tradition.

  “It will go on,” said Nemesis, sounding certain. She was sitting off to my right.

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “People are creatures that advance forward while etching their pain and grief into the past, so I’m certain they will do the same with this incident.”

  I silently pondered, thinking that it seemed much like throwing a festival during the anniversary of an air-raid or some other calamity in order to comfort the dead and pray for restoration.

  “You and I are like that, as well,” she added.

  “You, too?”

  “Indeed. I am an Embryo that changes your pain and sadness into power that lets you keep moving forward,” she said as she gently grasped my left hand — the one I now had again. “But the will to do that is none other than yours... and the same applies to everyone else. So if those calling this village their home have the will to move on, it will be restored in no time, and the festival will continue to happen as it always has.”

  “...That’s true.”

  We rode the carriage as it traced the road leading back to the capital.

  A gentle wind was blowing over it, spinning the windstars decorating the fences.

  ◇◇◇

  The following year’s Windstar Festival happened without a problem to name.

  However, there was a slight, but noticeable, change — the windstar decorations were now being held up by small paper dolls, which seemed to represent the person who’d shattered the star of the black sky.

  At the year’s Windstar Dance, one could see a certain family dancing among the crowd — a wife with her husband, and a young boy with a silent girl.

  Not far away from them, there was a lion with a baby sleeping on its woolly mane.

  Though it was much like the scenes from years before, it was definitely new.

  And that day, too, there was a pleasant wind that gently spun the windstars.

  END. To Be Continued in the Next Episode...

  Midword

  Fox: “Lookie here, we got the good ending! Things like this make waiting for the new volume allll worth it!”

  Cat: “Indeed they dooo. Now, if only someone didn’t destroy the aftertaste.”

  Fox: “Eehh? Whoever do you meaaan? Ah, almost forgot. I’m the fox, Tsukuyo Fuso.”

  Cat: “I obviously mean you. I’m the cat, Cheshire. And I didn’t have any scenes again.”

  Fox: “Our presence in the story sure is strangely patterned, isn’t it? Where’s the bear?”

  Cat: “...In jail.”

  Fox: “...Huh?”

  Cat: “For more about that, read the following side story! It takes place during the events of volumes 6 and 7.”

  Fox: “...So this volume also has side stories shoved in after the main story, huh?”

  Cat: “We have our reasons for this. Promise.”

  Side Story: The Case of the Unknown Murders — The Situation

  Lost Heart, Rook Holmes

  That day, I was in Gideon’s first district, carefully observing all the people passing by, immersing myself in deep thought while at the same time gathering information regarding my surroundings.

  My father had trained me in that, along with other such skills as lipreading, lockpicking, and reading mystery novels in a... somewhat peculiar manner.

  Specifically, rather than trying to unravel the tricks and mysteries within the work itself, I’d been trained to read while getting into the mind of the author and trying to understand his personality well enough to guess what kind tricks he would be inclined to use in his story, which... might be a sub-optimal way to read a book.

  Regardless, on the day Ray was kidnapped and the day before that, I was undergoing a change in my schedule that had me skipping out on the training from my father.

  I had to attend the hellish training prepared for me by Ray’s brother.

  Of course, “hellish” is not an adjective you use lightly, but all things considered, there was just no better word for it.

  After all, I was told to turn on my pain setting and come close to the death penalty over and over again.

  I couldn’t even describe the pain I felt when I had only 1 HP left.

  Most would surely think that anyone providing or accepting this training had issues with their sanity, but Shu had said, “You’re the type of guy who’s fine with this, aren’t ya?”

  And yes, indeed I was.

  According to him, “It’s not guaranteed, but people-like Embryos sometimes have their evolutions influenced by the Master’s needs or intense feelings. The more hardship you face, the more likely it is that your Embryo will be able to counter difficult situations.”

  And looking at Ray, I could fully understand what he meant.

  Nevertheless, Shu’s training had been so hellish that Marilyn and the other girls became cross with him, and I couldn’t quite fault them for that.

  I was supposed to be undergoing that training today, as well, but there had been an issue on Shu’s end, so now I was just sitting here in front of the knight offices, thinking about... his arrest.

  “Rook,” Babi spoke up.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I was sleeping, so I didn’t hear the reason. Why did they arrest the bear man? Food fraud?”

  “No. Nothing like that.” I could concede that the materials used in his popcorn were a mystery in itself, but that had nothing to do with his arrest.

  The reason for that was...

  “Serial burglary and murder.”

  Indeed. Shu was suspected to be the one behind a case troubling the city.

  It all began in the evening two days prior, when someone discovered the gory remains of a certain head of a merchant family.

  It was in such a terrible state that they didn’t even realize it was him until they restored his body.

  It was obviously no accident or suicide, so Gideon’s authorities instantly took to action, and as soon as they began the investigation, they discovered that all the money and goods in the hidden safe had been stolen. The evidence suggested that they’d been taken before the murder.

  But they hadn’t been able to find a single trace of the culprit even after mobilizing all those with investigative sense skills.

  The household also had an alarm system with potential equivalent to high-rank magic, but there were no signs that it had been triggered.

  They failed to find a single piece of evidence that the culprit had even been there.

  The only exception was a strange card placed next to the remains.

  None of those officers were able to read the language on it, so although it was an important piece of evidence, it wasn’t quite good enough to be considered a clue.

  The following evening, there was an
other burglary-murder at another merchant’s household.

  Like in the previous event, the remains were in a dreadful state, the money and goods had been stolen, the alarm had failed to activate... and there was a card left nearby.

  That was more than enough for the officers to become certain that the culprit for both incidents was the same.

  The details of the investigation hadn’t been made public, so it was impossible for it to be a copycat killer.

  Now, about the cards... they both had the exact same text on their front, but different text on their backs. However, the text of both the front and back were written in languages unknown to the investigators, so they weren’t able to read them.

  They created copies and spread them out to the relevant institutions, but no tian working at them recognized the letters or characters.

  But then there was a ray of light. Marie happened to visit the offices due to Elizabeth-related business, and when she caught a glimpse of the card the Knights had, she read it aloud, saying, “‘I am Unknown?’”

  That was the nickname of Ray’s brother, Shu Starling, the King of Destruction.

  Though his identity had become unveiled during the previous incident, he had yet to be given a new one. Then again, his face was still a mystery, so people were probably fine with keeping the nickname “Unknown.”

  “Oh,” Marie continued, “and this weird character on the other side looks like a bear. Did the furball write this?”

  With that new piece of information, the case moved from its standstill, resulting in Shu’s arrest.

  He protested verbally, saying, “I’ve been fur-amed!” But he didn’t resist his arrest, possibly because he wanted to be considerate of the investigators who’d been given the absurd, unreasonable task of taking him — a Superior — in.

  Their expressions as they did were both venerably resolute and heroically tragic.

  Apparently Shu logged out every now and then, but he respected his situation and always returned to the knight offices.

  Currently, he was being subjected to investigation and questioning using various skills.

  Naturally, one of them was Truth Discernment, but its results weren’t considered all that important because they assumed that a Superior could have a means to fool the skill.