Chapter 81 - Suspicions

When someone had an experience too incredible to believe, or finally achieved something they had dreamed of for years, one reaction commonly followed.

Insomnia.

Thoughts such as 'What if everything that happened today was a dream?' or 'What if I wanted it so desperately, for so long, that I finally hallucinated it?' would leave them unable to sleep.

Naturally, Renée was no exception to such universal feelings.

Having spent the entire night awake, remembering those moments spent walking with their fingers intertwined and resting her head on Bera's shoulder, she shuffled along, her movements utterly limp.

TAP. TAP.

Her cane struck out a somewhat irregular rhythm.

It was her first day of volunteer healing, when she ought to have been in perfect condition, yet her inability to rein in her emotions had brought this mishap upon her.

Normally, Renée would have squirmed with guilt... but today was different.

A shy smile rested on her face as she trudged along.

'It wasn't a dream.'

The knowledge that everything yesterday had been real filled her with overwhelming happiness.

She was indeed feeling poorly.

Still, it would not interfere with her schedule.

This happiness alone would sustain her. Today, too, she would walk the streets with Bera.

She could easily overcome the drowsiness washing over her.

Radiating happiness, Renée opened the door, and Bera's voice immediately rang out.

"Are you awake?"

She flinched, her body trembling.

Although she had known Bera would be standing outside, hearing his voice brought back memories of the previous day.

Her cheeks were growing hot again.

As embarrassment and excitement mingled in that rising heat, Renée worked her lips for a moment before answering him.

"Good morning, Bera."

"... Yes."

The way Bera bowed his head as he answered was also unlike his usual manner.

He, too, had not slept a wink.

If there was any difference between him and Renée, it was only that his physical condition had not changed. That was only natural. Wouldn't it have been more absurd if Bera's body, bordering on the superhuman, had fallen apart after a single sleepless night?

Bera struggled to suppress his trembling and pounding heart.

Even if she was concealing her identity, this would be Renée's first work as the Saintess in the Empire. He had to keep his wits about him.

Yet there was one thing he still could not conceal: where he directed his gaze.

Ever since Renée had stepped through the door, he had been addressing her while staring at the floor instead.

The mere thought of looking her straight in the face shattered his composure.

"Shall we go?"

Renée extended her hand as she spoke.

Bera gave a start, then slipped his own hand beneath hers.

Their fingers immediately began to intertwine. Renée's fingers slipped into the spaces between his.

She did it with brazen ease, as though it were only natural, as though they had always done so.

Bera felt his heart plummet with a thud. It felt as though someone were squeezing his insides.

Yet he did not resist. He simply curled his fingers in response to hers.

One might call it an unspoken rule.

When they held hands, they intertwined their fingers.

Neither had said a word about it, yet that promise was taking root between them.

"Where are we going?"

Renée spoke with the same brazen nonchalance as her hand's movements. Bera's answer was equally brazen.

"We will go to Eleventh Avenue. It is a district where low-income commoners live, so many people suffer from minor ailments because they find the cost of seeing a healer burdensome."

"Oh, healers..."

"Yes. They are regarded as highly skilled professionals, after all, so receiving treatment from them costs a considerable amount of money."

"... I see. Then let's go there."

"Yes."

The conversation went no further.

There was a curious atmosphere between them that defied description, feelings passing back and forth even when they said nothing.

As they had the previous day, the two walked on with their lips firmly closed.

* * *

Renée began her volunteer healing in the square of the residential district on the Empire's Eleventh Avenue.

They had done little to advertise it.

Nevertheless, a long line had already formed before her.

Their priestly robes had done the work for them. The golden crosses embroidered on the shoulders of their snow-white robes plainly revealed why the two had come. Those seeking treatment had no reason not to line up.

Renée released pure-white divine energy. The little boy whose hands she held widened his eyes. Before his gaze, the long gash in his arm healed in an instant.

"Wow..."

"It doesn't hurt anymore, does it?"

"No..."

Renée smiled at the boy's dazed voice. She could feel the joy filling it.

"Will you go back to your mother now? I need to help the people behind you."

"Okay, thank you!"

"Goodbye. Don't get hurt again."

There was no reply, but the jaunty rhythm of his receding footsteps made Renée chuckle.

Watching her laugh from behind, Bera began to look dazed.

Perhaps he should have been grateful. For some reason, standing behind Renée like this made Bera feel reassured.

Here, where he could not see her face, he could hold on to his composure, couldn't he?

Of course, some lingering heat kept him from feeling entirely normal, but he was far better than he had been the day before.

It was thanks to the sense of security afforded by her loose priestly robes and the long white veil covering her head.

That attire, which made her the Saintess rather than a woman, put Bera's heart at ease.

A short breath escaped him.

'... Focus.'

Bera steadied himself.

The imperial capital might have been well policed, but crimes still certainly occurred.

Moreover, Eleventh Avenue was not far from Thirteenth Avenue, where the gutter lay, and criminals who ventured out from there could occasionally be seen here.

He could not afford to remain this distracted.

Bera knew.

The gutter's criminals did not conceal their true nature even when they left it. Life in the gutter was already ingrained in them. Their moral sensibilities had collapsed, leaving them unable even to recognize their crimes as such.

Bera knew because, long ago, he had kept all manner of criminals in the gutter beneath his heel and put them to work.

Nor was that all. He also knew just how tempting a target he currently presented.

He and Renée were dressed as ordinary priests, and their purpose here was purely to provide medical care. Those criminals would surely bare their teeth.

With that thought in mind, Bera surveyed his surroundings.

First, he examined the long line of patients stretching out before Renée. By his estimate, it would take a good several hours to get through them.

'None among them.'

That was only natural. Anyone who slipped into that line would be beaten by the residents of Eleventh Avenue before Bera could get to them. They would never mingle with that crowd.

Next, he examined the alleys within sight. If anyone was targeting Renée, they would most likely be hiding in one of those alleys, watching her. Bera stared down them for a long while, but...

'... Nothing visible at the moment.'

He saw nothing.

His eyes narrowed, puzzlement rising within him.

'It shouldn't be this quiet...'

Those bastards would never leave such tempting prey alone.

He did not consider the possibility that no one had come out of the gutter.

The very notion was absurd.

The gutter could not supply its own needs. To keep living there, its inhabitants had to obtain goods from other nearby districts.

The gutter rats knew better than anyone that the gutter's entire structure would collapse if that process stopped for even a single day. There was no way they would not come out.

Suddenly, Bera's expression began to turn grave.

Only then did something occur to him.

A fact so obvious that he felt foolish for failing to remember it.

'... It's different from my previous life.'

The gutter now was different from the gutter of his previous life.

At this point in his previous life, he had already seized control of it. He had rewritten every rule and begun conducting business on that basis.

Naturally, the gutter now would be different from what it had been then.

'... How is it being run?'

The balance of power between the five cartels and the newly arrived outside organizations would all have changed.

His thoughts continued.

'If...'

If that change was the reason he could see no gutter rats, what on earth was happening inside?

Bera's gaze began to turn toward the left side of the square.

Beyond where he looked lay Thirteenth Avenue, called the Empire's pus.

The gutter.

* * *

In the end, the gutter rats never showed themselves, not even by the time they finished treating everyone and turned to leave.

Bera had to return to the mansion with his questions unanswered. Before long, it was late at night.

In his room, Bera sat at the table, continuing to ponder with a grave expression.

'This is strange.'

There was clearly a problem he could not simply overlook.

No matter how he considered it, the gutter rats remaining holed up inside made no sense.

'Have they established their own production lines?'

Inside that gutter?

He considered it repeatedly, but the answer was still that it was impossible.

Bera could reach that conclusion because he had given this problem more serious thought than anyone else.

The gutter received no sunlight, making it impossible to grow crops.

Naturally, its appalling sanitary conditions also made raising livestock impossible.

Trade with other districts was out of the question, too. The gutter had nothing to offer.

Wasn't it an unparalleled rubbish heap that even the imperial family had given up on?

The gutter was the result of a vicious cycle that had continued for hundreds of years, beginning when the floating Magic Tower, Oriac, had blocked the sunlight reaching Thirteenth Avenue.

A hell on earth without the slightest trace of productivity, yet impossible to clear away because no one could manage the aftermath. It could only continue to fester.

'And yet...'

How were those gutter rats holding out inside?

Every system in the gutter would collapse within a day without suppliers. Why, then, had none of them appeared on Eleventh Avenue?

TAP. TAP.

With his arms folded, Bera tapped his index finger.

The gray eyes visible through his hair grew darker and more brooding.

'... If I can't figure it out.'

He could go there and see for himself.

He wanted to ignore it, but he could not.

From now until the founding-day banquet began, Renée would be going out to provide volunteer healing, and the districts she would visit ranged from Eighth through Twelfth Avenue.

All of them were close to the gutter.

That was not the only concern.

The gutter rats were bombs, and there was no telling what they might do.

If whoever controlled them truly planned an act of terror, the resulting situation would be no different from setting off a bomb in the very heart of the imperial capital.

Bera now knew that turning a blind eye to such threats was wrong.

Bera continued thinking, this time narrowing down who might currently rule the gutter.

'... The five cartels.'

If movements within the gutter were being controlled in such an organized fashion, they must have united into one.

He did not know who their leader was, but all five were known as madmen among madmen. A thorough investigation was the right course.

Without delay, Bera put on the black robe hanging in a corner of his room.

He would get no sleep tonight either, but that was not a problem in the slightest. A superhuman body would not break down over something like that.

"Whew..."

Bera exhaled at length, briefly closing his eyes to calm himself.

He was far from pleased at having to venture into the gutter of his own accord, and was trying to reassure himself.

'... This must be done.'

Bera quietly opened his room's window and looked outside.

It was a pitch-black night without a single shining star. All that illuminated the dark city were magical lamps standing in rows at considerable intervals.

It was the very sight he had seen until he was sick of it in his previous life, and somehow it even stirred a sense of nostalgia.

Bera swiftly suppressed the feeling, then vaulted through the window.

It was his first homecoming in roughly seven and a half years.