Between Syr and Hörn

P/N let me know if there's any mistakes and I will try to fix them, I will post volume 18 in a few hours.

Between Syr and Hörn

Hörn was always watching that boy's unsightliness.

"Do you remember the promise you made with me…the

requirement if Bell discovered your lie? You may no longer contact him.

I will not allow you to appear before him."

In accordance with Freya's order, she was careful not to allow herself

to be seen, but she was always watching Bell Cranell fight in

Folkvangr.

At times by simply looking down from the window of her room. At

others by using her magic and watching through Freya's eyes.

She fulfilled the duty the goddess had assigned her while watching

him more than any of the goddess's other followers did.

"…Foolish man…"

Those words always fell from her lips when she was alone.

Being pummeled by Hedin, rolling across the ground, tears welling in

his eyes, struggling desperately against a swirling storm of violence.

No, what he was struggling against might have been the sandbox

that Freya had constructed around him. Desperately writhing in

agony, screaming in tears, displaying a pitiful figure as he struggled

against a world that affirmed Freya Familia's Bell Cranell and

rejected Hestia Familia's Bell.

Hörn watched that unsightly boy with cold eyes.

"This is your punishment…for tormenting the goddess, for pushing

her this far…"

She murmured it, sure of its meaning.

However, for some reason, she could not bring herself to think that

he truly deserved it.

If she were asked if this was the situation she had imagined, she

would be at a loss for a response.

Her attempt to assassinate Bell during the Goddess Festival had

ended in failure.

If she had to guess, her plan to have Bell himself seal Syr's fate had

been a partial success and a partial failure.

When he rejected Syr's feelings, Freya was no longer going to lower

herself to being just a mere girl. She remained the sublime and

supernatural goddess just as Hörn had hoped.

But her obsession with the boy remained. If anything, it seemed to

have transformed into something more intense and more twisted.

Hörn had not been executed.

She had resolved herself to die to preserve the goddess's existence,

but Freya in her mercy had spared her.

It was surely its own form of punishment, living with the shame.

There was not a single moment when Hörn did not feel guilty for

what she had done to Freya, and no matter how hard she worked

and how faithfully she exerted herself, she could not look upon the

goddess's countenance as she had before.

Also, the eyes of the other attendants when they looked at her were

subtly painful.

They did not bully or ignore her, but the way they looked at her with

pity and whispered when she was not watching was so difficult to

bear. And Freya had indulged in an impish sadism by telling them

precisely what it was that Hörn had done. And the glares from Allen

and the others were terribly unpleasant. As if they were asking,

"Why the hell are you still serving the goddess and not dead and

buried yet?"

And when her thoughts reached that point, she scoffed to herself

that she was a criminal just like him.

Though they expressed it in different ways, Bell and Hörn were both

unsightly.

A twisted empathy started to make her expression shift into a

smile—but Hörn's lip immediately warped in distaste.

"Why must I feel so happy at having something in common with

you…? This is absurd."

As she watched the boy splay out on the field below after getting

knocked down.

"Miss Hörn has started to talking to herself more lately."

She had not yet noticed that the other attendants had started

whispering comments like that behind her back.

One day.

As she prepared to go outside the city in order to maintain Freya's

sandbox, as she was walking down a corridor of the home, she heard

a voice around the corner.

"Umm, Heith…is there someone named Hörn in Freya Familia…?"

"…There is. Obviously. She's the goddess's attendant after all. Did

you forget that, too?"

She was jolted out of her thoughts and immediately hid against the

wall.

Peeking out around the corner, she saw the healer Heith and Bell

standing there talking.

Bell was apparently taking the day off from the baptism in order to

go out.

For some reason, she had been startled to hear the boy say her

name.

"Why do you ask?"

"Umm…I'm going to Lady Freya's chambers every night, and yet I

haven't seen Hörn at all, so it just seemed a little strange…"

Hörn's lips curled subtly as she focused her ears to listen in on them.

She had been strictly ordered not to appear before Bell, but Bell had

no way of knowing that. She could not interact with him in order to

make sure he did not notice the truth of what had happened during

the Goddess Festival, but not unexpectedly he had noticed the

unnaturalness of the situation.

She watched on edge, wondering how Heith would respond.

"…Ahh, that's what you mean. It's because you walked in on Hörn

while she was changing."

"Ehhhh?!"

Pfft?!

Hörn almost burst as the boy cried out.

She coughed while turning red to the ears, but miraculously Bell did

not notice while in the grips of his own agitation.

"With the perfect timing, you ended up going into her room while

she was changing and ended up getting a perfect look of her in the

black lingerie she always wears."

"B-black lingerie?!"

"And to top it all off, as if by some rule of nature or something, you

ended up tripping and falling face-first into her soft breasts."

"Why did that happen?!"

"She turned bright red and just let you have it, and afterward she

purified herself by dousing her whole body in holy water, hid away in

her room without eating or drinking anything for three days and

three nights, offering a prayer and a vow to Lady Freya and all the

gods and goddesses that she would never appear before you again,

never approach you again, and never look at you again."

"She went that far?!"

I did not! Who would do that?!

Hörn screamed in her heart.

If something like that happened, there's honestly a good chance I

might do something similar, but that never happened!

After a few more questions and answers, Bell left on unsteady legs,

and Hörn, her face still red, approached Heith.

"Heith!"

"Hello, Hörn. Yeah, that was dangerous. I'd say that was some good

thinking on my feet and all around a decent job." Heith pretended to

wipe her brow.

"What part of that was nice?! What was that story?!"

The healer just shrugged at her colleague's menacing glare.

"I'm the one having to clean up after you, so just give me a break. It's

a little unreasonable."

Hörn's momentum stalled when confronted by Heith's tone, which

did not contain even a trace of disagreeableness. She was just saying

what she thought.

Suddenly, Heith looked closely at Hörn—at the girl who had been

listening in on her conversation with Bell—and asked:

"I know your situation of being pulled by Lady Freya, but…are you

still attached to him?"

"Wha…?!"

"The honor of experiencing the countercurrent of Lady Freya's love is

wondrous. I can't begin to imagine it, and I'm jealous of it, too,

but…why not draw a line already?"

Hörn started to indignantly shout that such a mistaken observation

was badly misdirected. But she stopped just before opening her

mouth.

She recognized that she had lost her composure. In order to calm

herself, she asked Heith a question instead.

"…What of you, Heith? You seem to be interacting with him quite a

bit."

"Me? I definitely like him."

"Wh…?!"

Heith continued with an untroubled pace as Hörn revealed a stunned

expression.

"He is special to Lady Freya, so I would never in a million years do

anything inappropriate, but…even if I wasn't the healer assigned to

monitor him, I wouldn't mind taking care of him. Compared to the

captain and them and their complete and utter lack of interpersonal

skills, he's honest and cute."

"Ghh…! Have some shame! If you lie down with dogs, you will wake

up with fleas! What are you going to do if you end up caught in that

terrible, worthless man's spell?!"

"Please don't say it so crudely. You're leaping to some pretty

tenuous conclusions. It's not like I'm over here professing eternal

love for him or anything." Heith sounded fed up as she confidently

stated, "My everything belongs to Lady Freya."

Her behavior was polished and refined, but she still had some sort of

amiable charm, the exact opposite of Hörn.

Heith Velvet was an alluring girl no matter who was looking, man or

woman.

Her pale red hair was tied back in two braids, and the red apron and

white dress that she wore brought to mind the image of a nurse.

Her figure had a goddess's good looks, and aside from the fact that

her eyes looked dead from being so heavily worked every day, she

was cute and wise, not more stubborn than Hörn, and generally

harmless (with the exception of topics involving Freya, where she

was like every other member of the familia).

She had a reasonable and serious personality, and if she had not

been in Freya Familia, everyone would be friendly with her. Hörn had

even heard adventurers talking about the two great healer girls, the

silver saint Amid and the golden witch Heith.

The only time Hörn's voice became rougher and lost its respectful

tone was around her. She was by no means a friend, but they were

of the same generation, and she was affected by the mood she

evoked.

If Hörn was icy, then Heith was a flower atop a hill blooming without

a care in the world.

…Heith and Lady Syr are both the polar opposites of me…

Did that foolish man let his guard down around members of the

other sex like them?

Thinking on it, I have seen him with Heith often—

While Hörn had continued to reflect on the honor of being Freya's

attendant, she had not thought at all about the other girls her age.

However now, for some reason, she was on the verge of feeling a

sort of jealousy toward other women.

"

—Also, could you stop always watching me when I'm talking to

him? I can feel you staring from the window of the manor all the

time…It's honestly kinda scary."

"Wha—?"

Perhaps noticing what Hörn was thinking, Heith chimed in.

This time Hörn had nothing to say.

Not because she had been noticed, but because she had not realized

she had been doing it until Heith pointed it out.

Heith was to accompany Bell as a healer out on the field of battle,

and yet she had glared holes into her.

Heith watched Hörn carefully as she froze at being caught out like

that.

And then she sighed ostentatiously.

"You're too desperate. It's almost like you love Bell more than her."

Hörn blushed redder than she ever had before.

And so the humiliating days continued.

The amount of time she spent thinking about Bell increased because

of that unnecessary comment by Heith. She started noticing it. It was

all Heith's fault—no, the boy's fault.

The days passed in the blink of an eye, but his spirit still refused to

break.

He was still roiling Hörn's heart.

"Caurus Hildr!"

"Ugaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!"

As the sun set in the west, the boy screamed, roasted by the white

elf's lightning.

"…Ghh…ughhhh?!"

And after being bathed in healing light, crying tears of terrible pain,

he stood up again.

As if he understood that he would not be able to stand up again if his

will broke there.

And Hörn unsurprisingly was watching it from a window in the

mansion, a hand resting on her breast.

"…I don't understand…"

While she watched him through her own eyes, the boy looked both

terribly unrefined and more earnest than anyone.

The number of times she had looked at Bell through her own eyes

were surprisingly few.

She was always looking at him through the goddess's senses.

Without the filter of Freya's senses, though, the feeling she had

when she looked at him through her own eyes was bitter adoration.

He's just like the old me—

Bell was currently utterly alone, just like the girl who had once been

named Syr.

Cast out by the world, with none who would affirm him.

She had thought that Bell would shudder in a cold chill, unable to do

anything once he was trapped in Folkvangr, just like she had been

before.

But he was different.

Even though in the truest sense of it he was alone and without any

allies, even if he was unsightly, he still continued to struggle, to fight.

Even though he was still lost and unsure.

Even though she had immediately taken the goddess's outstretched

hand on that snowy day in the slum.

He still didn't take the goddess's hand.

Bell was strong.

Stronger than the reports about him would indicate.

Far stronger than she could have imagined.

Far, far stronger than the old her.

It made her jealous, it was bitter, and it was dazzling.

Hörn had to admit that she was chasing after the boy she saw in her

own eyes, not a reflection of what the goddess saw.

"…No. No! I can't have feelings for him!"

Hörn looked down at the floor as she shouted.

Pulling her gaze from the scene outside the window, she shook her

head over and over as she stood alone in the room lit by the setting

sun.

"This is just Lady Freya's feelings! They aren't mine at all!"

There was no one there to agree or disagree with what she was

saying.

She tried to convince herself that she was just being deluded by the

goddess's feelings, but the emotions pouring out from inside her

proved otherwise.

"They aren't mine…!"

What if…

What if Syr was not Freya…?

What if Hörn had remained Syr?

Would she have been able to love him?

If she ran outside right that moment, rushed over to the boy

collapsed on the field, held him tight to her, protected him from the

einherjar wounding his body, could she be forgiven for doing that—?

And when she thought of that what-if, Hörn wanted to kill herself,

even if it meant tearing herself free from the goddess's command.

Thunderclaps echoed.

She could hear the boy's groans and battle cries.

And a single drop fell to her feet.

And as if mirroring Hörn's anguish, a change visited the goddess as

well.

" "

At night in the goddess's chambers, after the boy had retired for the

night, the goddess's emotions flowed into Hörn.

At first, she thought it was just her imagination. But it was anything

but.

When he had complimented her dress, when she had silently looked

into her wine, it had shaken Hörn's heart.

My right eye is—

A change had occurred in Hörn's body when she had received Freya's

falna and gained her transformation magic.

Her right eye.

When transformed into a goddess, that eye lost its original color, and

took on a silver or, at a certain angle, a bluish-gray color.

She believed it to be the price paid for a diminutive human

attempting to become a goddess.

There were moments when even though she was not using her

magic, Freya's emotions flowed into her through her right eye. It was

just the slightest bit of the goddess when compared to when she was

using Vana Seiðr.

But in that moment, even though the goddess herself did not notice

it—there was a girl crying alone in a field of flowers.

—When she felt it, Hörn was speechless.

—She was crying.

—She was hurting.

—She was suffering.

—Then she is—

"What are you doing?"

The voice broke the magic that Hörn had activated.

"…Hedin."

As the goddess still held the paired hair ornament to her breast on

the other side of the door, Hörn left the place, trying to escape.

She ran away, fleeing to her empty room and locking the door before

collapsing.

"My way didn't work…? And even with her method, the goddess is

still—

"

She hugged herself tightly as she murmured in shock. Her nails dug

into her arms, and she struggled to restrain her trembling body.

She had to make a decision.

Would she just watch and do nothing?

Or would she sully the goddess's mercy, become truly shameless,

and betray her a second time?

It was a fork in the road.

Would she continue to live as Hörn?

Or return to Syr?

Would she forget everything of the goddess and just one time

appear before the boy?

May I accept these feelings—

"

—The answer to that is obvious."

After a long time, Hörn looked up.

The moonlight shone on her beautiful features.

"I'm Hörn, daughter of the gods."

She smiled.

"My craving for you was the first thing I yearned for. I'm here

because I chased after you."

She smiled as tears ran down her cheek.

"I will offer up this life that you saved so that I might save you."

She chose the goddess's attendant.

She would never choose Syr again.

Grasping her hands, she closed her eyes. She made a vow to the

moon as she returned all of herself, and all of her feelings toward the

boy, to her.