Such speed...
That magic just now gave Marilou the distinct impression of jumping from the ground into space in one stride.
Even with her feet firmly planted, her whole body was still shaking from the shock of it.
Viya smiled faintly, withdrew her mana, and patted Marilou's shoulder.
"Have you learned it?"
Marilou: ???
"Do I have to learn that too?"
Marilou's face went dead-fish blank, and her brain turned smooth.
She swallowed, and a terrible thought rose in her mind unbidden.
If Viya had a skill that let her move that fast, then all those times she'd ignored Marilou wandering off, she really hadn't been the least bit worried about her running.
Which meant that what she'd just done was purely a warning!
At that speed, Marilou could run until her soles smoked and still probably not get outside the range of Viya's magic.
A single thought and she'd be dragged back, and god only knew what she'd go through once she was.
Watching it happen, Marilou grew still firmer in her resolve not to run. Money aside, she wouldn't be running during the contract term.
The contract was in her hands anyway. As long as she didn't break it, the initiative stayed with her.
And when the time came, Viya could hardly tear it up and refuse to let her go, because surely nobody would be daft enough to keep shoving a hundred thousand a month in pocket money at her, like driving a duck up onto a perch?
That would be a straight loss. What would she be angling for? She could hardly be angling for Marilou's charmed life.
Viya, at that same moment, was thinking that she had now taught Marilou the very skills for running away.
Surely now the girl would badly want to run.
As Viya saw it, Marilou hadn't run before because she had no means to, or no escape technique to use.
Today Viya had given her one-to-one instruction from a master. The master shows you the door; the practice is up to you.
So run, Marilou!
Except that perhaps not even Viya had expected Marilou to be quite this spineless.
Marilou, meanwhile, was terrified, and enormously grateful that she hadn't run earlier.
She had genuine admiration for her colleagues in the other caged-bird books, who insisted on escaping despite bodies frail enough to fall over.
Marilou reckoned that in their place she'd have gone flat on her back. If you can finish me off with your nifty little gadgets, then fair play to you.
What else could she do? She couldn't outrun anyone, so she might as well strike a better pose and get some enjoyment out of it.
A constitution that could be played to death wouldn't survive out there anyway.
At least coasting bought her a few brief pleasures.
"Sorry. I can't learn it."
"All right. Take your time. I won't get in your way. Carry on training."
Having said what she came to say, Viya left the training ground.
Marilou glanced at the entrance and found that today, again, Viya hadn't locked the gate.
She used to think Viya was careless. Only now did she understand there was simply no need.
She was already so hopeless that Viya could pick her up again with no effort whatsoever.
How was the gap between one person and another bigger than the gap between a person and a dog?
Marilou sighed, put away every thought of running, and set about training properly.
Viya, at that moment, was hiding behind a tree watching Marilou train, and screaming inwardly.
"Marilou, run. I taught you Moon Step, I taught you Earth Sense, I even gave you the practical demonstration. Why aren't you running?"
Several hours later the result was that Marilou, bursting to go, had crept off into a corner, covered her eyes, and refused to come out even to pee. Viya was left speechless watching it.
How can you have so little ambition?
Able to hold it in her room until she was on the verge of w*tting herself rather than come out. This... this was nothing at all like how the caged birds in the novel behaved.
This time Viya was genuinely at a loss. She had read the contract the night before.
If Marilou didn't run, then in a few months she really would have to let her go.
Openly breaking the contract would damage the Temple's image, and the opposition would make a case out of it.
Perhaps driven to it by Marilou, Viya thought of a dirty trick.
A thought moved her up onto a branch, and she threw an apple down onto the head of a Marilou who was still carefully pulling her pants up, then spoke in an imitation of an elderly old woman.
"Young one, you and I are bound by fate!"
Marilou startled. She'd only just relieved herself. How had this tree become a spirit?
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to squirt on you just now."
Squirt on me?
Viya looked down and only then saw the little puddle in the corner.
"Fuck!"
"Oh, why does that voice sound so familiar? Old mother, don't tell me you're this tree? I'm... I'm sorry!"
Marilou was half frightened out of her wits. She hadn't expected the tree to suddenly turn into a spirit; a moment ago she had genuinely been unable to hold it, which was why she'd hidden behind the tree to see to her internal needs.
Otherwise her clo... her clothes would have got dirty, and if Viya found a lot of yellow stains on the clothes she'd given her she would definitely be beaten to death o(╥﹏╥)o.
"That is not important. Since you have met me in this manner, it means fate binds us. I am the tree spirit of this place.
"Betrayed by men once, I fell to this. Young one, in the Misty Forest there is a treasure of mine. Would you go there and retrieve it for me?
"If you can do it, I can give you freedom, so that you need never stay in this place day after day again."
Viya pinched her throat, doing her best to make the voice sound unlike her own.
Marilou scratched her head. "But I promised Her Holiness I'd practice my magic properly. How about I ask her for you when she gets back? She's very kind. She'd certainly be willing to help."
"On no account. This treasure is one I wish to leave to you. I have seen your gift, child. Go and bring the thing back for me."
Marilou scratched her head.
"But I don't know any travel magic at all. If I just went, I probably couldn't get back quickly, and if anyone found out I'd left, I'd be finished."
Marilou looked thoroughly nervous, retreating step by step.
Viya nodded in satisfaction. Some sense of the rules, at least.
But she quickly remembered that she was supposed to be talking Marilou into leaving, so she shifted her tone.
"But are you truly willing to stay shut in here, oppressed, forever?"
Oppressed?
Marilou scratched her head.
Oppressed how?
You mean being shut in a house where all she has to do is her own business, with no complicated socializing to manage, and a hundred thousand in pocket money landing automatically every month, that life is oppression?
As a former shut-in, Marilou wouldn't have minded a great deal more of that life, thank you very much.
If that counted as oppression, then what were his nine-to-nine, six-days-a-week, and his "flexible working hours," and his "voluntary" overtime?
It scared her half to death.
"I don't feel oppressed. There are lots of interesting things to do every day, and although Her Holiness is very strict with me sometimes, I get the feeling she's just under a bit of pressure and wants to let it out on me."
Viya: ...
Was she really that good?
"That will not do either, child. Go outside, reclaim your power. She is not worth this from you. You could plainly choose your own marriage.
"Why be willing to serve as a stranger's wife? Surely you cannot go on like this your whole life?"
Marilou shook her head. "It won't be my whole life. My contract is nearly up, and then I'm going to the countryside to find a little house of my own to live in."
The corner of Viya's mouth twitched unnaturally, and somewhere soft inside her began to ache.
So she really was going to leave...
"Even if you have many reasons... in the end, going out just once would be all right, wouldn't it? She won't happen to notice you've gone. Retrieve my thing, and I can teach you magic, and repair your little wooden sword as well."
The old woman's coaxing voice came down, and Marilou frowned. She had worked out that this old woman was deliberately luring her outside.
There was something wrong with this one!
She mustn't fall for it.
"No thanks. Everything you're offering, Her Holiness can do too. It's not interesting."
"Then what is it you want?"
"I want... you to do my homework."
"I am only a remnant soul. How could I do your homework? Young one, help me."
"You can't even do my homework, so why should I help you? You're a pretty useless remnant soul."
"Then what must I do before you are willing to help me?"
Marilou paused, then said, "Her Holiness makes me little cakes. Make one for me too?"
"I am a tree. I cannot help you."
"Then you're useless. You can't do anything at all, and you still want me to help you."
Viya: ...
Why did she feel she was being toyed with by an idiot?
"All right, all right, off you go. I know you're not any sort of good god. Her Holiness will be back soon. You've still got time to run."
Marilou got up and left, leaving Viya up in the tree in a wash of melancholy.
This woman. She said with her own mouth that she loved her, and then spoke of leaving without a moment's hesitation.
What was it she even loved about her...