The air stayed still for a good long while.
Komachi Yua, folded into her dogeza, could not help trembling faintly, her small face buried in the dirt and the fright very nearly squeezing tears out of her.
Was begging useless after all?!
No — it seemed to be working. Casper was hesitating right now...
Going by the original timeline, Komachi Yua at this point should already have been cut into two pieces...
So even Casper's silence counted as a good development...
Just as Komachi Yua was wavering over whether to say something more, Casper spoke, still thinking it through.
"Anything I want?"
The turning point had come!
Now was the moment!
Komachi Yua's head snapped up, and she pulled on an expression of the most pitiable appeal, nodding fast as a bird after grain.
"Mm! Mm! Yes, that's right! Anything at all~"
And then it occurred to Komachi Yua that Casper was the male lead of a harem novel.
If she used her looks to tempt him, that ought to have some effect, surely?
Even a little effect was worth going for!
At the thought, Komachi Yua looked up at Casper with her cheeks turned redder still, her small mouth slightly open, breathing out a misted heat.
At the same time she rocked her body gently up and down, so that the eye-catching softness of her ripe fruits swayed a little.
Having done it, Komachi Yua went redder yet, red almost to the base of her neck.
It! Is! So! Mortifying!
Whatever else was true, her soul was still male!
Male as recently as a few hours ago, at the very least!
Using a body this young and this generous to tempt and flatter a man... was more than enough to make her burst with shame!
But to stay alive, all of it was worth it!
And if she could get a grip on the male lead's leg, the days ahead might be a good deal easier.
With any luck, she might even scrub out the countless crimes in those memories.
An awful lot of terrible things really had happened... but she truly hadn't done them!
At the very least, this Komachi Yua hadn't done them!
Watching Komachi Yua sway those ripe fruits with what might or might not have been intent, Casper fell to musing again.
"..."
Say what you like — look properly, and this witch really was beautiful.
She wasn't tall and her face was very young, but her figure was full and generous, giving off the contrasting charm of youth and maturity existing at once.
For sheer allure, she was no worse than Lady Philia or Madam Connie...
"Mm..."
Casper made a thinking noise to cover the fact that a pretty face had just pulled his attention off course.
"If it wasn't what you wanted, then who sent you? Why ambush us?"
Komachi Yua answered without stopping to think. "It was my mas—"
She jammed halfway through the word and coughed, embarrassed. "Ahem. The wicked old ghost who enslaved me — the former Calamity Plague High Priest, Morag Gideon — he's the one who instructed me!"
Having shifted the blame in full, Komachi Yua reached into her own deep cleft and drew out a still-warm letter, lifting it in both hands and presenting it to Casper in the posture of an offering.
In the novel this letter had been an item dropped after Casper cut her down; now she was handing it over herself.
What was more, every part of the letter that touched on things the "Left Hand" Komachi Yua had set in motion of her own accord had been thoroughly rewritten and pushed entirely onto Morag Gideon and the "Right Hand" Hino Yosuke.
With the Hand of Woven Thread, twisting a few strokes of ink was the simplest thing in the world~
Not even a professional handwriting examiner could have picked a fault in it.
After all, this genuinely was correspondence between her and Morag; the tone, the vocabulary, all of it was seamless!
Casper did not stand on ceremony. He took the offered letter, opened it where he stood and read.
"So that's how it is..."
The churches under the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were, to a body, madmen intent on welcoming the end of days and destroying the world.
From the lowliest common goblin to the High Priests at the very top, all of them.
And Morag Gideon, the former Calamity Plague High Priest who had lost the Plague Horseman's favor, had grown madder still, attempting anything that might throw the whole world into disorder in the hope of being looked upon with favor again.
He had sent his Left Hand, the "Soul-Draining Witch" Komachi Yua, to assassinate Philia Soren, crown princess of the Nightingale Kingdom, and his Right Hand, the "Bloody Butcher" Hino Yosuke, to assassinate Tokugawa Kai, the oni general of the Falling Blossom Kingdom next door.
As for Morag Gideon himself, he had gone off to do something neither his Left nor his Right Hand was permitted to know.
What exactly was it...
Casper tucked the letter away inside his robe to show Philia and Connie shortly.
"Mm. It looks credible enough, and there's no sign you're lying."
I-it worked!
She was going to survive!
"Ehehe..."
Komachi Yua produced a guileless, dopey grin and poured out a whole string of things, wanting only to clear away any other doubts Casper might have. "And I, I'd been planning to surrender to you for ages!
I ordered them not to use lethal force on you or the crown princess you're protecting, only to take you alive — that way I could do the most possible to keep you and the princess safe..."
"Very thorough of you."
Those four words were the whole of Casper's comment.
In fact, a certain doubt of his had been cleared away as well.
He had been wondering why the orc lord said all that about recruiting him... so the witch had given orders beforehand.
Though orders or no orders, they were zako he could cut down without thinking.
"Mm..."
Casper sheathed his sword and rubbed lightly at his chin. "I've never heard of a single case of someone repenting after taking up faith in the Four Horsemen..."
"Me! I'm one! I've repented! I want to turn over a new leaf! I can be the first case!"
"Then all those wicked things you did in the past..."
"The overwhelming majority of them are false! Other people did them and pinned them on me! Really I'm, mm, I'm very pure of heart!"
Blushing, Komachi Yua raised both hands beside her cheeks and made a cat-paw pose of studied cuteness.
Whatever else was true, she had consistently treated those past memories as a film rather than as herself, so she got the line out without so much as a change of colour or a skipped heartbeat.
But acting cute was so mortifying, guh guh guh guh!
This... this is purely an expedient measure to win his goodwill! Right!
"A-and besides, there are plenty of bandits and outlaws and the like who do something wicked and then say the Church of the Apocalypse did it... and the Church of the Apocalypse never denies any of it..."
"..."
Casper let out a long breath.
At this point, ninety percent of his guard against the one nicknamed the "Soul-Draining Witch" had come down.
For the moment he had found nothing to make him suspicious!
And this generously built, small-framed pink-haired girl had not the faintest trace of the bearing the rumours gave a witch. She was far more like an idiot who had been introduced to mana a few hours ago and was fumbling every part of it.
"It seems I can trust you for now...
But even if you've decided to turn against the Four Horsemen, there's no guarantee They haven't sown something in you — a plague of the mind, or a curse of depravity."
That said, Casper put on a mild, warm smile and extended a hand to the kneeling Komachi Yua.
"For a while yet, you'll stay at my side as a prisoner. That way, if anything goes wrong with you, I can deal with it the moment it happens."
Komachi Yua's eyes widened by degrees, and a bright, glittering light came into them.
Whoaaaaaaaaa!
The protagonist... the protagonist was inviting her to join the party!
Now she could get a grip on the protagonist's leg! Let's goooo!
For a while yet?
No, no, no... she was going to stick to him the whole time~ Don't even think about shaking her off~
Komachi Yua broke into a besotted grin, rose with an air that could not wait and was pretending very hard to be demure, and laid her slender little hand in Casper's palm.
"Ehehehehe~ Th-then from now on, please do take good care of me~"