Chapter 70 - Encounter (2)

“Ow, ow, ow... Ow, that hurts. A little gentler, please...”

Noel could say with confidence that she had probably made less of a fuss when she suffered serious injuries in the war. Yet despite her narrow-eyed stare, Aiden could only let out pathetic groans as she wound the bandages around his arm.

Of course, disinfecting a freely bleeding cut and wrapping it in a pressure bandage would hurt enough to make even Noel groan. But the grown man pleading tearfully about the pain looked so pitiful that she had to wonder whether he was really the same person who had just driven a pen nib into his own arm to intimidate someone.

Indeed, even the infected girl Aiden had brought outside to give her the medicine was clearly looking at him with some measure of that sentiment...

“Then why did you do something so insane in the first place?”

“There are things more important than pain.”

“... I wish you would treat me as something that important, too.”

“Sorry? What was that? Could you speak a little lou—”

Instead of answering, Noel pulled the knot in his bandage as tight as she could. Aiden made a dying noise, but she paid him no mind.

“A-anyway.”

Making an effort to recover the demeanor of a sensible adult, Aiden composed himself and turned to the girl. She had let him lead her outside, but her expression suggested she had no idea why she was here.

Fortunately, he was quite accustomed to dealing with infected people like her.

“Now, what are your symptoms? Where does it hurt?”

At the question, delivered without preamble, the girl merely darted her eyes about instead of answering. Aiden had not expected an answer in the first place, so he was not particularly disappointed.

Infected people living without even the bare necessities were, as a rule, extremely reluctant to speak about themselves. Their lives had surely been so harsh that the knowledge that they would be shunned the moment their illness was discovered had become instinct. That was especially true of a child like this one, who did not seem to have a proper guardian.

Which meant that, in cases like these, he sometimes had to resort to methods he disliked himself.

With a sigh, he turned to Noel.

“Noel.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not some creepy pervert.”

Naturally, any chart of Noel’s affection for Aiden would require an extraordinary amount of paper, regardless of the format used. Even so, there were times when she wondered what madness the man was suddenly spouting.

She could hardly be blamed, then, for holding her head at the oncoming headache and muttering a thoroughly obscene curse in the dragon tongue.

“Why would you say that out of nowhere?”

“I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

With that, Aiden approached the girl. He took hold of the sacklike rag she wore in place of a shirt and briskly lifted it in a single motion.

“...!”

Rather than saying she did not resist, it would have been more accurate to say she was too frightened even to react.

Despite her trembling, deathly pale response, Aiden carefully examined her body with a clinical eye.

Normally, Noel would have stopped him, even if it meant delivering a powerful blow to the back of his head. This time, however, she chose to stand back and watch. The familiarity evident in his every movement inspired trust.

At the very least, he had clearly encountered people like this more than once or twice.

After spending some time examining the trembling girl, he finally lowered her clothing again.

“Well, I have a few ideas about what this might be.”

Then, with a sigh in his voice, he said firmly,

“Stop using your supernatural power.”

The girl’s eyes quivered. This time, she was clearly shocked, not merely frightened.

“I don’t know what kind it is. But I can tell that using it any more will get you into serious trouble. You’ve been having trouble controlling it lately, haven’t you?”

She gave no answer, but Aiden moved on without waiting for one. He held out the bag hanging from one arm. It contained the medicines he had just forced the proprietor to sell through threats involving self-harm. Setting them on the ground, he neatly lined up the bottles in front of her.

“One of these, two of those, and two of these as well. Even if you can’t get a proper meal, eat something before taking them. Understand?”

Still, the girl said nothing. Her dimly flickering eyes wandered aimlessly through the air; that was the only response he received. This time, Aiden added no further words.

Instead, he gently took her hand.

“...”

He had been prepared for her to pull away, or even bite him, but fortunately she quietly accepted his touch. He stayed still for a while, as though trying to thaw her hand with his own warmth.

“...”

“...”

Silence settled over them. Then the girl’s breathing steadied, and finally her body stopped shaking as though she had the chills. Still holding her hand, Aiden pointed to the medicine bottles.

“One of these. Two of those. And two of these. Do you remember?”

“...”

“One of these. Two of those. And two of these. Say it.”

“... O-one. Two. Two.”

“Again.”

“One. Two. Two.”

“Good. Don’t forget. Can you read?”

“...”

Once again he received silence, but Aiden waited patiently for an answer. Only after enough time to drink a cup of tea had passed did a faint, hollow voice reach him.

“... Are you helping me?”

“As much as you’ll trust me to.”

“... Are you a bad man, mister?”

“First of all, I’m not old enough for you to call me mister. And I’m not a bad man, either.”

“I can read.”

“Good.”

Aiden took a business card from inside his clothes, along with the fountain pen he had just stabbed into his arm, and scribbled something on its back. Fortunately, despite all the blood it had been covered in, the pen still wrote without any trouble.

“Take this and go to the place written here. They’ll put you up for a night.”

Accepting it dubiously, the girl looked hesitantly between the card and Aiden. After repeating the motion several times, she spoke a little louder than before.

“I can’t give you anything.”

“I know.”

“Why are you doing all this for me?”

“Because I’m an adult with his head screwed on straight.”

“The adults I’ve met weren’t nice like you, mister.”

“Those were just people calling themselves adults. This is what real adults do.”

“I think you’re a strange adult, mister.”

It was such a fair point that Noel chuckled as she watched.

▣

“How did you do that?”

The question came abruptly from Noel after the girl had disappeared from sight.

“Sorry?”

“She was trembling with fear, but she calmed right down once you held her hand. Did you cast some sort of magic?”

“Oh, that?”

Aiden had absentmindedly leaned against a flickering streetlamp, only to realize he had used his bandaged arm and writhe in pain. He answered with a groan.

“Well... Someone taught me that.”

“Taught you?”

“Yes. But I can’t remember who it was.”

He answered with a slight frown, showing a rare trace of frustration.

“How should I put it? I learned it in a really important situation. But that’s all I remember.”

Noel nodded quietly, murmuring to herself, then suddenly started as something occurred to her. Aiden turned to her, wondering what it was, and she posed a solemn question with the gravest of expressions.

“Was this person a woman, by any chance?”

“... No, I’m telling you I don’t remember.”

The question of whether that even mattered briefly crossed his mind, but he had already given Noel plenty of grounds to criticize him today. He decided to keep his mouth shut.

For her own reasons, Noel also fell silent. What he had just said had struck deep into her chest.

‘... He can’t remember.’

Those words held a particular significance for Noel, who had lost a portion of her childhood memories.

So he was missing some of his childhood memories too...

“...”

What a curious coincidence.

She spent some time turning that fact over in her mind before asking another question.

“But where did you learn all that?”

“All what?”

“That medical knowledge. Anyone watching would have thought you were a doctor.”

Aiden chuckled and stroked his chin. Certainly, anyone could have made that mistake. But he would hardly call it specialized knowledge.

“I’ve seen plenty of children like her.”

“Like her?”

“... During the Coalition War, there were plenty of children whose illnesses had progressed much further than hers.”

“...”

“It’s just something I picked up back then. Nothing formal.”

The sight of those back alleys was still etched vividly into Aiden’s mind. War orphans. Defeated soldiers missing arms and legs.

No description suited that place better than hell on earth.

An odd rule of thumb had been fairly widespread, too.

Someone who could stand and speak had a week. Someone bedridden who could not get up had three days. Someone who could not swallow anything had two days. Someone who could no longer speak properly had one.

Aiden had simply watched all those lives and deaths intertwine and intersect in that place. Epidemics had naturally been a part of it, and the girl he had just examined looked exactly like an orphan who had used supernatural power amid that hellscape.

The more that orphan used it, the more their insides festered and ruptured. Hadn’t they ultimately died even before the person they had been trying to protect?

“...”

Noel gazed silently at him, her eyes somber.

She knew that each person carried a story as long as the path they had traveled, and that it was wrong to make careless assumptions about it.

But this man...

What hells had he passed through?

He surely harbored something that even Noel, who had witnessed every kind of hell and carnage on the battlefield, could not begin to imagine.

“Well, that’s that. Shall we head back? What a way to start the morning.”

“...”

And no matter how often she saw him brush such things aside as though they were nothing, she struggled to get used to it.

‘What the hell is this...?’

In truth, though, Aiden had little choice but to move on.

-System Message

▶ You have successfully completed the ‘Bonus Quest.’

▶ Target ‘Drakan’ regards you favorably. You may copy 1 skill!

▶ Target ‘Ganesha Aldebaran’ regards you favorably. You may copy 1 skill!

▶ Your successful progress leads to an additional event. Try raising affection even further!

Aiden blankly read through the messages.

No, seriously. He had known some kind of Bonus Quest was coming, but...

‘... That was it...?’

Apparently, something had happened without him even realizing it.

▣

The girl walked down the alley, clutching the bag of medicine to her chest. It was the one she had just received from Aiden.

There was one difference between her appearance then and now, however. Unlike when she had been with Aiden, her gait was perfectly normal.

As though the sickly behavior she had displayed until moments ago had all been a lie.

Then a voice came from farther down the alley.

It belonged to a young man. A monocle, a top hat, and a suit—everything about him suggested a merchant.

“You’ve gotten much better at acting human, haven’t you? You used to barely manage to keep your appearance hidden.”

“... Master.”

“The way you talked, the way you behaved—it all looked real. That training paid off.”

Then, as the girl faced him, supernatural power pulsed around her body.

Mana.

Not the Empire’s qi, the Great Plains’ dharmic power, the Holy Kingdom’s divinity, or the demons’ demonic energy.

A supernatural power long since forgotten. Proof of magic, whose tradition had died out even in this modern age teeming with superhumans.

As that mana swept over her body, her true form emerged, replacing the slum girl she had been portraying.

Though she barely retained a humanoid shape, scales covered her entire body, and her eyes bore the distinctive narrow slits of a reptile.

Unmistakable signs of dragonkind. A descendant of the dragons, believed to be extinct.

“So.”

Even with such a rarity before him, the man continued without a trace of concern.

“What do you think, now that you’ve met him? This generation’s ‘Omnipotent One.’ What sort of person does he seem to be?”

“...”

The dragonkin hesitated and looked down at her hand.

Though it was on the verge of tearing now that her body had grown so much larger, the bag of medicine Aiden had placed there with such earnest instructions still hung safely from it.

Looking at it, she could arrive at only one conclusion.

“... He seems like a good person.”

“I think so too.”

The man smiled and pulled his top hat down snugly.

“He really does seem worth getting to know better. The previous Omnipotent One was a little disappointing... Let’s see whether this one is different.”

The Merchant of Death stroked his chin with interest.

His eyes, however, gleamed sharply.

“Let’s see whether he’s someone we can stake our fate on.”