〈 Episode 20 〉 Witch's Dream 2

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[Tir.］

She is calling me. Like a child afraid of a ghost in the night, not knowing when it will come out, I slowly reach out my hand.

[Where are you?]

I'm calling for her. I want to find her, and I want to follow her and embrace her as she sheds her tears. All I feel is that I want to be with her, and I feel like she and I should never be separated. It's a cold, longing feeling that I don't know if it's love or obsession...but it's there.

[Tir.］

Her voice fades away. I take a step, a step, and I feel like I'm standing on a cliff. If I go any further, I feel... as if the waves of the lake will swallow me up, as if the evil hand of the water will sweep me away. Perhaps this is the last gasp of a drowning man who gives up.

[Tir.］

Her voice fading, her tears streaming down her cheeks, I wanted to call out to her, like a child, like an abandoned beast, to assure her that I hadn't forgotten...at least...not yet.

[Noelle...]

I want to scream, but my cracked throat can only produce a groan. I reach out to take her hand, but...with a final, falling sensation, her silver hair and violet eyes flicker in my mind, and a blackness unfolds.

.

"Ah."

It was a sunny morning, and the sun was beating down. I shielded my eyes with my hand and stared at the glowing purple ring on my left hand.

"Why did I dream that...

I remember the countess who wanted to run away. I remember the sad face she showed me the last time, and I remember her, and I open my eyes, surprised by my own frantic heartbeat. The darkness that had obscured the last thing I felt...seemed to make me even more miserable.

"You're awake, you didn't have a good dream."

"What?"

The witch was looking up at me. She smiled at me, a trusting smile that told me not to worry.

"If you grunt like this, I'll waste the knee I lent you."

"What?!"

I scrambled to my feet. My head was banging against the witch's knee, and I quickly ducked my head, afraid to show my flushed cheeks.

"I, I..."

"You're tossing and turning so much, it's rumored to make men have good dreams. It's a futile endeavor."

"...."

I felt strangely guilty that she'd gone out of her way to give me a lap pillow, and now I couldn't have a good dream. The thought crossed my mind, like, why should I have a good dream because of her, pun intended?

"Anyway, suck it up. Let's get up. We have to leave."

"Wasn't the witch asleep?"

"They say beauties are sleepers, but a great witch like me has long since abandoned sleep."

She sat up, closing the brown-covered book. She wondered if her legs wouldn't ache if she'd had a lap pillow the whole time.

"Don't you want to know what I'm looking at?"

"...."

"You're thinking in your head again, "Don't ask me anything dangerous," aren't you?"

"...Yes."

"Well, how nice of you to answer so honestly. It makes me feel good to feel that you and I are getting closer and closer to each other!"

I decided not to think about why she was trying to get closer to me; I just picked up the bot luggage I had left behind her and carried it to the wagon. I wonder if her current behavior, being dragged along as if it were a matter of course, was an excuse to take her mind off of Nama Noel.

"Come on, then, let's go!"

"May I ask where we're going?"

"Hoo-hoo, where do you think we're going?"

It was a surprisingly obvious question to me. I'd been looking for a rationale for her behavior since last night.

"I think we're going to the Sirtus estate in the west, because she said there's a branch of the Coven there."

"What? How do you know about the Sirtus chapter?"

"Just because it was one of those places that merchants talk about when they come in, saying it's dangerous."

The Sirtus estate in the west, the next-door neighbor to the Deckers estate in the east... of course, with the current turbulence, it's more like a frontline perimeter than a neighborhood... but it's probably the safest place for a witch to be. She guessed that where they were riding up the mountain now must be Sirtus.

"Heading west.

The direction of travel on the mountain was toward the setting sun, so it would be west, and of all the places a witch could go, it had to be the Sirtus estate, which was only a short distance away.

"So that was a question you didn't have to ask?"

"Because I wanted an answer."

Being questioned was old hat to Neurose now, and she wanted to get a straight answer. I ignore the witch's questioning look as if I shouldn't have asked, knowing that it was a question I'd rather not have to deal with.

"Then you'll run from me when you get there, because if you go west, you won't be able to get to Deckard's side, and the merchants' pockets are full of new pickpockets."

Deckard and Sirtus are currently preparing for war, so merchant traffic has increased. Of course, the increased number of dangerous people has made pickpocketing a bit more difficult... but that aside, both Deckard and Sirtus have declared that war is nonsense. There was a lot of talk about how it was just a civilian security policy that could be overturned at any moment. Anyway, I had to answer her question about running away.

"My position would be more dangerous if I ran away from the Sirtus estate than it is now."

"Huh?"

"If there is to be a war, the Deckard side will send hermits to fight on the Sirtus side...I hope someone like me will just pass by, but if anyone who knows my face recognizes me..."

Taking a cue from the witch's 'for now' yesterday, pickpocketing in Sirtus was a big risk of getting caught by them. He had no intention of resuming pickpocketing, but if he ran away from the witch now, there was a strong possibility that he would be caught by the Cancerians who had been assigned to Sirtus.

"It's a big deal, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Then, Tir, what do you think you should do to be the safest?"

Another witch with a strange vocalization. I wondered if she was a teacher at the coven.

"I'd be safer following her around, wouldn't I?"

"Exactly. If she runs away, both the Coven and Deckard will be able to track her down, so it's best to follow her quietly."

"Dull.

As if my muddled mind didn't understand, the foal let out one long yawn before dragging the cart along at a lumbering trot. For a moment, I'm angry with him, but I realize that I'm the only one who would lose if I took it out on the unintelligible foal.

"You don't seem like the kind of guy who'd let his guard down for something so important, do you?"

"Oh, are you suspicious of me?"

"...Not suspecting, just asking...If I had something worth a lot of money to sell to the Deckards, I wouldn't let you get away so easily."

A short distance away is the Hammel Great Forest, between the Deckard and Sirtus estates, where it's hard to track anyone. Those who fled there could never be traced...and the forest was so dense it could never be properly mapped. There was a part of me that wondered if even a witch could keep up with my pickpocket-trained legs.

"It's good to have an escape route in mind, but I'm a little disappointed that you're deducting points from my judgment when I thought we'd gotten pretty close."

"That's because we've only met twice."

"That's true, but have you thought about what would happen if you ran away from here?"

"...It would probably be a much more dangerous wander than staying with the witch."

The Hammel Forest is not unconquerable, it's just that it can't be conquered. Trees so dense that they block out the sun that explorers often fail to calculate their movements, and the terrain changes naturally within a month of drawing a map. This is a vibrant forest where the terrain changes not only with the seasons but also with the months. The wild animals and monsters that appear everywhere destroy the mind and body, and it is said that people who enter the forest become ghosts and wander around, or become abandoned and go insane. It was a place where it was said that if you run away from humans, the forest will trap you.

"You may go, but only if you intend to become a great explorer who will conquer the Great Forest of Hammel, a land of nature given by the gods, more lush and transformative than anything else in the world."

The witch's cackle. Her taunting two is a little higher than usual, which is pleasant to hear but disturbing.

"I take it this is the mountain path to the Sirtus estate, then?"

"More frequented by monsters than other places. It's a favorite back road used by witches and others who don't like to meet people. The main roads don't usually have monsters, but there are a lot of people using them, and you never know what new bandits might show up."

I can somewhat sympathize with the witch. It wasn't the animals and monsters baring their fangs that scared me the most, it was the people who didn't know where to hide their knives.

"It's too much trouble," I say, "monsters are better than humans at judging their opponents."

The subtlety of her response told me her level: she was the kind of person who would be fine if the monsters swarmed her.

"A witch so strong that the monsters can't run at her.

Sometimes, the group pays a lot of money to sprinkle her with a scent that monsters don't like, but she doesn't smell like them, just a little vinegary.

"I have no intention of running away, of course. Well, if you're not going to sell me to Count Sirtus, how are you going to tell the Deckard estate that I'm alive?"

"Are you finally relaxing and asking me questions?"

The questions I'd asked the witch so far were exactly the kind of things I didn't mind her knowing. Questions about the future or post-abduction plans were things I'd avoided. But given the lengths she'd gone to in order to get to know me, I figured it wouldn't be a problem.

"The ring I looked at for you."

"...I see."

Whatever mischief the witch had done with this ring of 'endless companionship', it seemed to have some means of breaking Noelle's spell.

"Noelle.

Considering her appearance in my dreams, I must have taken her quite to heart. She's nothing more than a creature created by the White Walkers who thinks similarly of love and killing. I had no intention of being the rabbit that pitied the wolf that was charging at me.

"It's not a good character trait to overthink things. Of course, overthinking things is a very good trait for a sociable person, but it's a minus for an explorer."

"What?"

"You're saying 'I see' because you know what I did to that ring, and what if it's a curse that makes your heart explode with a bang if you fall off me?"

"Because I don't want to leave you in the first place."

"Huh?"

If she's the witch who saved my life in the first place, and is powerful enough to heal a stabbed heart...there's no way I'm leaving her. I clutch the stone in my hand, hoping for some sort of hope, but it's futile. In that case, it was only right to obey her wishes.

"Well, enough of that unimportant talk, it's time for your medicine."

"What?"

She held out a small black pill to me. It smelled musty...and I could practically taste the bitter flavor.

"Am I supposed to...eat this?"

"It's better with water."

I glanced at the pills in my hand, along with the canteen.

"Don't worry, it's like a hemostatic medicine used to quickly stitch up a torn heart. You don't think I'd kill you with poison now, do you?"

He was right. The fluffy pill popped into my mouth and slowly began to dissolve. It tasted quite bitter, and not in a good way. Forcing myself to eat it quickly, I chewed it, feeling the pungent aroma linger in my mouth, and slowly slid it down my throat with water.

"Yuck!"

The aftertaste became more bitter as it went down my throat, and I ended up gagging slightly. I felt a little embarrassed.

"Fuhit, you've been eating well until now, but now you're having trouble feeding yourself?"

"What?"

The witch smiled and pointed to her small red lips. I think hard about what that gesture means.

"How do you think you'd give someone a cure while they're passed out?"

My cheeks begin to blush as hard as they can.

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