Fairies had better hearing than most wild animals, and though I was from a distant branch, that trait had manifested strongly in me.
Thanks to that, I could clearly hear what the other man whispered to Andrea.
Against my wishes.
Having overheard something I did not want to hear, my face hardened coldly.
Naturally, Anna, who stood beside me, had no idea why and asked.
"What's wrong? What happened?"
"It's not something I can tell you. Hear it directly from Andrea later."
Anna thumped her chest at my firm refusal, but I watched only Andrea.
His expression changed several times in the brief moment he exchanged a few words.
Boiling rage, bewildered confusion, and an unbearably heavy responsibility.
After displaying all manner of emotions, he looked down at the sword in his hand.
A massive two-handed sword measuring 1.7 meters.
Its appearance made it seem as though it had been forged to smash anything apart, but the truth was the opposite.
The swordsmanship that wielded that blade had been created to protect those who mattered.
Had he recalled the purpose for which the tool in his hands was created as he stared at it?
Andrea bit his lip, his expression hardening, and gripped the sword with all his strength.
Then he turned away from us and headed for the dojo's entrance.
Anna called out at his large, broad back with all the strength he had used to grip his sword.
"Hey, where are you going?! Class isn't over yet!"
Anna knew as well.
That his turning away meant he had already made up his mind.
She did not know the detailed reason, but she must have sensed that if we did not stop him now, we would have to let him go forever.
Was that why?
To me, Anna's sharp voice sounded almost desperate.
Perhaps Andrea felt the same, for he stopped his steady footsteps.
His shoulders trembled for a moment before he finally turned back to us.
"Anna, and Johan. I'm sorry, but it seems I can't keep our promise."
"Why? I know something's going on, but we can solve it together!"
"No, we can't. This is the karma Father passed down to me. It has nothing to do with you."
"Hey! Why would you say something like that?"
Is this the most foolish way to express friendship?
I could feel him deliberately drawing a line between us.
Unlike me, Anna did not notice it. She opened her eyes wide as though she had been betrayed and shouted.
"Don't try to act cool on your own. Tell us everything! Then let's figure something out together. Okay? That's what friends are!"
Anna tried until the end to somehow persuade Andrea, but she could not soften the heart that had already become firmly set.
"I'm not your friend anymore. I'm the Capo of the Brave Brothers."
At his sorrowful declaration, Anna faltered backward.
Her eyes brimmed with tears, as though she had never imagined something like this would happen.
I, on the other hand, walked toward him.
One step at a time, slowly, limping but proudly.
"So you've decided after all?"
"You know I don't have it in me to run away while I watch the older brothers and uncles I've known since childhood die one by one."
Unlike his exchange with Anna, our conversation came and went in quiet voices.
But the meaning within it was as heavy as the truth we shared.
I glanced at his sword, then met his eyes.
"If you go, you'll die."
"I know. The enemy has more people and they are stronger. I'm still weak."
"I'm not talking about the Adoocenum scum."
"How do you... Right. You're the guy who can even hear a cat's footsteps."
Adoocenum.
Unlike the Brave Brothers, whose nature was strongly that of a vigilante group, they were a full-fledged criminal organization.
Smuggling, forced sales, extortion, and even contracted violence.
They were scum who had built up their power in the shadows of Raechia for decades.
The Brave Brothers themselves had been formed to protect people from them in the first place.
If they fought head-on, the Brave Brothers, a comparatively new organization, had no chance against their superior power.
But that was not what I meant.
"Until now, I have only watched... but if a large-scale bloody conflict breaks out, the Council will act."
"I know that too. I know the organization could collapse. Still, if we don't fight, we'll all die."
"You idiot! I'm telling you, you'll all die even if you fight!"
The boss who had led Adoocenum and Andrea's father, who had led the Brave Brothers.
In the Sword Saint's memories, Andrea's severed head had hung beside the heads of those two.
His eyes wide open.
If things went on like this and dozens of people were killed or injured, that scene would be recreated.
But then and now were different, too.
The Sword Saint, who had been unable to cry or laugh in front of the severed heads.
If Andrea had been nothing more to him than the dojo thug who tormented him.
"Do you think Adoocenum and you are alive because you are so formidable? No. You are only not dead 'yet' because the Council has not cleaned you up."
To me, he was a precious friend.
To save that friend, I threw the bitter truth into his face.
Yet Andrea's flat question stopped me short.
"So should I meekly die at the hands of those Adoocenum bastards? If I could back down without anyone being hurt or dying, I would want that too. But is that possible?"
I tried to find something to throw back at him, but I could not.
My throat even felt sore, as though the words with nowhere to go had piled up there.
I thought and thought again in that brief span, but there was no answer.
In the end, I could only ask weakly.
"Is there... no way?"
"There is no way. From the moment they killed Father, the road was already set, and all I can do is walk it."
"Do you think Father wants you to die like this?"
"He would not, but... the dead cannot stop the living."
Andrea silenced me with words his dying father had spoken.
From that twisted answer, I realized.
It was impossible to turn his heart, and this incident had already left my hands.
My strength drained away in helplessness.
Even if I had grown stronger, there were still so many things I could not do with a single sword.
I wanted to kill every one of those Adoocenum bastards myself.
But I did not have that ability, and even if I did, the head on the line would merely change to mine.
I would only be betraying everyone who loved me.
When I finally failed to find an answer and let my shoulders droop, Andrea said nothing. He merely turned away.
Radiating an icy, chilling air.
"Let's go."
"Yes, Young Master."
"Call me Capo."
"Yes, Capo!"
Andrea left, his resolve clear.
Anna burst out in frustration.
"What is it?! What's got that stupid idiot so twisted up?!"
She seemed ready to go beyond merely getting angry and follow him.
In fact, with her fists clenched tight, she even took a step in the direction he had gone.
I stopped Anna.
"Don't go. We can't help him."
"If we don't help him, who will?!"
Though she had even heard the cruel words that she was not his friend, Anna still thought of Andrea as a friend.
And I was no different.
'We can't.'
As Andrea had said, the dead could not stop the living.
But the living could stop the living.
Recalling another precious bond that my change had created, I murmured.
"There is someone who can help. Someone you know too."
"Ah!"
Hearing Anna's exclamation as she finally thought of someone, I said,
"Let's go."
Anna and I emerged from the dojo together and ran in the opposite direction from the path Andrea had taken.
To where the person we could rely on most in this situation was staying.
***
"Impossible."
"Why? Why not?"
"Why should I stop a Council operation simply because he is your friend and a child I know as well?"
Reality was cold.
The answer we heard after going straight to the Adventurer's Guild was a refusal.
A refusal colder than the frost of midwinter.
Frowning, I explained the whole story to Grandma Sujin once more.
"Andrea hasn't done anything wrong. Neither have the Brave Brothers. They were simply assassinated first and then attacked!"
"But they will do wrong."
She spoke with the certainty of a prophet.
Unable to hide her hurt feelings and sorrow, Anna shouted angrily.
"How can you be so sure? We just have to get rid of those Odoachenium-or-Odoachenon bastards! Andrea isn't someone who will do bad things! You've seen him too, Grandma!"
"I have. Yes, I have watched for a very long time."
Answering in a voice bearing years incomparably longer than any human's, Grandma Sujin poured hard liquor into a cup.
Then, grimacing as though she were drinking bitter old memories rather than alcohol, she took a sip.
"I am four hundred and thirty-two years old. In all that time, I have seen and seen again those gathered under the name of a 'vigilante group' become nothing but criminal organizations."
"Andrea's different!"
"That is your hope. I—no, we—have heard and witnessed firsthand how groups of humans created with pure intentions, without a single exception, become more corrupt as their history grows longer and their scale larger."
Grandma Sujin's words left me speechless again.
The words carried the anguish and torment of a long-lived being; they were impossibly weighty.
So much so that I did not even dare think of refuting them.
"For humans, even corruption and evil that occurred only a few decades or centuries ago may be nothing more than a single line in a book. But for us, it is different."
Even Anna froze, unable to say a word.
Perhaps Grandma Sujin disliked becoming a bad adult who told a boy and girl about reality, for she smiled bitterly.
But she did not stop speaking.
"These are experiences I heard firsthand from grandmothers and grandfathers, and experiences I have lived through myself. Is Andrea kind now? Yes, he is a kind boy."
"Then—"
"Unfortunately, he is a boy who will turn bad. The same is true of the Brave Brothers you claim are a vigilante group. They will become nothing more than a criminal organization."
Her words, delivered as she looked at Anna and me with sharp, icy eyes, were firm.
They were as keen as a blade falling onto the neck of a condemned man.
"I have no reason to stop an opportunity to sweep away both the present criminal organization and the future criminal organization in one stroke. Nor do I have the power to stop it."
Had the cold words from someone she trusted hurt her too deeply?
Anna's face turned pale.
My face could not have looked much different.
Perhaps thinking that she had been too harsh upon seeing us, Grandma Sujin tried to reason with us in a gentler voice.
"Nothing is eternal. Everything is bound to change. Have you not seen this principle yourselves?"
Impermanence.
The teaching the elder had given me in the Starwind Flower field.
I had never thought that teaching could sound so cruel.
If an ordinary island could become a paradise,
a group that had gathered for self-defense could become a criminal organization existing only for exploitation.
Everything that exists inevitably changes.
It cannot be avoided or stopped.
Even so, I had never imagined change like this.
I did not want to imagine it.
I bit my lip, squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again and asked.
"Even so, if I still choose to help Andrea, what do you intend to do?"
"What can I do? As I have until now, I will quietly watch Raechia. While remembering with regret the boys and girls who are like grandchildren to me."
At her merciless answer, Anna's face filled with disappointment.
At first hearing, Grandma Sujin's answer sounded as though she would not help, no matter what we did.
But I thought differently.
"Everything is bound to change. But it does not have to change only for the worse, does it?"
"If it can be changed, that is so. If there is a way to change the fate of human groups I have seen, heard of, and felt, I would like to know it too."
"I do not have one yet. But I do not think every person and every group will necessarily turn bad."
I tapped my short left leg.
This leg, which had been short since I was born, could not be healed.
My uneven gait would twist my skeletal frame, placing more weight on my knee and damaging it.
Should I give up because of that?
Because even the Sword Saint had searched his whole life and still could not heal this leg?
I did not think so.
It could definitely be healed.
It could get better.
Even if it ended as the futile delusion of a cripple with a bad leg, I did not think that belief was wrong.
"I will think of a way for Andrea and the Brave Brothers not to fall into corruption. But—"
"You want me to help as well if the method you devise is reasonable enough? Very well, I promise. Try to prove that my thoughts are merely an old person's, a Fairy's prejudice."
People were no different from the groups people created.
If they could worsen, they could also improve.
Thinking that, I tried to persuade Grandma Sujin.
Fortunately, rather than simply declaring it impossible, she returned a promise.
Trusting in that promise, I ground my teeth.
"Yes."
To Grandma Sujin, I returned that promise with the determination that I would certainly find a way.