“Haah…”
Saito let out a soft sigh, accompanied by the sounds of digging in the dirt and quiet sobbing behind him.
Of course he hadn’t simply walked away outright — the only reason he’d headed off ahead of time was that he didn’t want to put these two on edge.
Saito’s original plan had been to tail these two from a distance, scout out the location of their village, and then, in due course, approach the villagers under the cover identity of a traveling merchant.
Only — he hadn’t expected to witness a scene this hard to stomach.
“Infected…”
Saito repeated the word once more, and at this very moment, his state of mind was already completely different from what it had been at the start.
After all, no amount of words could match the impact of seeing something with one’s own eyes.
The helplessness and grief on Vannini’s face had, to some degree, made him feel it as if it were his own.
After about a dozen-some minutes had passed, Vannini finally finished burying his brother with his own two hands.
Looking at that crude makeshift headstone, piled together from a few stones, the emotions he had just barely managed to choke back broke through the dam once again, and tears streamed down his face uncontrollably.
“I’m sorry, Vannini.”
Matvey watched the scene before him, his face full of pained reluctance.
This family was one he had practically watched grow up — Vasily, too, had been someone he regarded almost as his own child — but for Vannini’s sake and the sake of his family, he had no choice but to wrong the boy by letting him sleep here in this stretch of forest.
“I understand, Uncle Matvey.”
Vannini did his best to hold back his tears.
He knew that Uncle Matvey really was doing this for their good — and that Uncle Matvey, in his own right, must be hurting very badly right now too.
The two of them stood there in front of the grave for a long time, until the wind in their ears gradually picked up again.
Only then did they wordlessly take their leave.
Saito, who had been watching from off to the side all this while, stepped out into the open, came to stand before Vasily’s grave, and let out another sigh.
If only he had discovered the situation a little earlier — this young man named Vasily might not have had to die.
A pity that there was no such thing as ‘if’ in this world.
After standing in front of the grave for a few more seconds, Saito silently committed the three characters of ‘Vasily’ to memory, and then carried on, tailing after the two who had departed.
…
…
Treading through the night, Saito made his way back into the No.
7 Mining Site through the rear gate.
The Integrated Industrial Zone was still ablaze with lights as ever, but after making a full loop, he didn’t catch sight of the Administrator anywhere.
It wasn’t just the industrial zone where she was nowhere to be found — even in the residential area, there wasn’t so much as a shadow of her to be seen.
“Now that’s strange…”
Saito muttered under his breath.
Just as he was about to go look somewhere else, his gaze happened to flick toward the main entrance — and it looked as if some pitch-black ‘thing’ was standing planted there. Visit novelping(.)com for the full chapter.
Realizing what it was, Saito immediately rushed straight over.
Drawing closer for a better look, that black figure with snow piled halfway up its calves was none other than the Administrator he hadn’t been able to find anywhere.
Hearing the movement behind her, the black figure suddenly gave herself a violent shake, sending the snowflakes on her clothes flying off.
The Administrator turned around in jerky, stop-and-go motions.
Beneath the face mask, her pink lips were trembling faintly, and that delicate little face of hers had already been frozen bright red.
Her hands were crossed and tucked away inside her sleeves, as if she’d been trying to keep warm this way.
“…You — you weren’t waiting out here for me this whole time, were you?”
The Administrator nodded, the corners of her mouth turned downward — clearly she had more than a few choice words to say about Saito’s late return.
“Didn’t I send you a message via the Synchronizer?
Said I might be getting back a bit later than usual…”
The Protocol Core also doubled as a signal base station, and through it, Saito and the Administrator could communicate remotely by way of the Protocol Synchronizer.
The moment the girl heard this, her originally somewhat indignant expression instantly froze solid.
Right after deciding to tail Vannini and the others, Saito had sent the Administrator a message.
Now, looking at this expression on her face, Saito reckoned there was a very good chance she hadn’t actually read the message at all.
This rare slip-up from the girl brought an extra glimmer of amusement into the depths of Saito’s eyes — but out of consideration for the Administrator’s pride, he held back from openly laughing on the spot.
“It’s getting late — you must be hungry, right?
How about we head back inside first and talk later?”
The Administrator gave a stiff nod.
Seeing this, Saito turned around, ready to head back over to the residential area first to fix up dinner for the Administrator — today, conveniently, they could put the Rend Beast meat to good use and treat themselves to a proper hearty meal.
But after he had taken a few steps forward, he noticed there didn’t seem to be any movement coming from behind him at all.
Saito turned back around — only to see the Administrator, still rooted to the same spot, not moving an inch.
And only then did the girl’s clear, crisp voice barely manage to make itself heard.
“Fro…
frozen, help me…”
“Pfffft——”
Looking at the girl in such an awkward predicament, Saito this time absolutely could not hold it in.
“You’re still laughing?!”
“Hahahahahahahahahaha——”
And so, the girl’s flustered scolding and the young man’s roaring laughter echoed out above the No.
7 Mining Site, going on and on without end.
…
A dozen-some minutes later, the two of them were sitting beside a fire pit.
Saito tended to the soup in the pot while his shoulders kept giving the occasional faint shake — clearly, he still hadn’t fully snapped out of the mood from a moment ago.
The Administrator’s cheeks were flushed bright red.
In a fit of mortified indignation, she landed a punch on Saito’s shoulder — only, that limp, feather-soft attack didn’t really land with any kind of impact at all.
She tilted her head back to look at the ceiling lit up by the glow of the fire, and a touch of sorrow welled up in her heart.
‘To think that I, the dignified Administrator of Endfield, would have my lifelong glorious reputation come crashing down on something like this!’
Credit where credit was due — it really wasn’t that something had gone wrong with her head and she’d been out there freezing on purpose.
Right from the start, she had simply calculated that the timing was about right; the Administrator, having just had a major breakthrough, had wanted to share the joy in her heart with Saito, and so had, for once in a rare while, decided to go meet him right at the door.
Who could have known — after waiting nearly a few dozen minutes, Saito still hadn’t come back, and when she’d finally gotten fed up with waiting and was about to head back inside, she had discovered that her legs were already frozen stuck.
And in her haste to head outside, she hadn’t brought any Originium with her — so for a moment there, she had genuinely ended up trapped right there on the spot.
‘This is, like, an absolute black mark on my record!!!’
The Administrator was beside herself with frustration.
Thankfully, her body had recovered a bit over these past few days, and this much cold wasn’t enough to cause her any actual trouble, at least.
“Are you done laughing yet…”
The Administrator turned a resentful, wistful gaze toward Saito at her side — paired with the way she was curled up in a little ball beside the fire pit, the picture she made was extremely cute.
“Got it!”
Saito forcibly held back the urge to reach out and start handling her, and at the same time crammed the laughter back down, swapping it out for a serious expression.
But the more the Administrator looked at that put-on, pretend-serious face, the more unbearable it became — in the end, she just chose to give in.
“Forget it — you go ahead and pull yourself together first.”
In an instant, Saito returned to that same grinning face from a moment before.
Looking at the cute girl in front of him, his originally somewhat gloomy mood eased up considerably on the spot — but the Administrator very keenly picked up on Saito’s momentary shift in emotion.
“What’s wrong?”
Saito gave a slight start, clearly not having expected the Administrator’s attention to be so finely tuned.
After taking a moment to put his words in order, he laid out for the Administrator, point by point, the situation he had run into on his outing today.
At the end, he looked at the Administrator and quietly asked:
“Is Oripathy really that frightening?”
Hearing Saito’s question, the Administrator opened her mouth as if about to say something — but in the end, all she let out was a sigh.
‘The frightening thing has never been Oripathy itself…’
____
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