INTERLUDE
ELVEN UNREST
“““Cheers!”””
White foam splashes extravagantly as a dozen or more of our cups, each generously filled with wine or ale or juice, collide in a toast, and then we all gulp—or sip—our drinks.
We’re in The Benevolent Mistress.
It’s evening; the sun has just gone down, and the tavern that stands along the western main street is as prosperous as ever. The interior is lively and full of patrons, all suffused in the warm glow of its magic-stone lamps. Now that I’ve made it back from the expedition, the clamor raised by the drunken dwarves and prums is strangely comforting.
We are holding a banquet. A drinking party, really.
Hestia Familia , Miach Familia , and Takemikazuchi Familia are all here, as well as an assortment of other familiar faces.
“Congratulations on getting out of your cast, Mr. Bell!” says Lilly enthusiastically.
I manage a nervous smile. “Ha-ha-ha…Um, thanks?”
This is actually the second party we’ve thrown since returning from the expedition. The first was a homecoming celebration held in our familia’s headquarters. Miach and Takemikazuchi were there to raise their cups with us.
The second—this one—is in celebration of my cast coming off.
To be honest, I did feel a bit strange about using that as a reason for yet another party…but I’ve been craving Mia’s cooking, so I suppose it’s all right. Even Lilly okayed it, and she’s ruthless with managing our finances.
Incidentally, our goddess is, as usual, at her part-time job.
“Don’t worry, we’ll handle cheering up poor, dejected Hestia, so you should all go and enjoy yourselves as familias!” was what Takemikazuchi had said. Apparently, he, along with Miach, Hephaistos, Hermes, and Demeter were all going to have a gods’ night out. He’d said something about there being “a lot to discuss.”
“Wow, this is tasty. It’s a little expensive, but this Benevolent Mistress is a nice tavern,’” says Daphne, licking her lips after sampling a bite of the food.
“You’d never been? It’s pretty famous among adventurers,” says Welf.
“It is, but…for some reason, Apollo had some kind of a problem with it. My old familia never came here.”
Everyone’s enjoying themselves. Lilly and Nahza are trading jokes as they quibble over potion shopping—although their eyes aren’t smiling much. Mikoto, Chigusa, and Haruhime are having a grand old time reminiscing about the past, with the members of Takemikazuchi Familia joining in. No doubt they’re trying to steal back some time with Haruhime now that she’s officially joined our familia.
I look on as Ouka watches them quietly and fondly like an older brother, not interrupting. A flush rises to my cheeks.
…I suppose Loki Familia won’t come…
I look around our table, and then my gaze scans across the rest of the tavern. I find myself hunting for the strongest familia in the city.
And a certain golden-haired girl.
Ever since the Xenos incident, and having survived so many adventures, I can’t help but want to see Aiz again.
I wouldn’t say that I want her to see me now that I’ve grown so much, exactly, but…I want to know where I stand. I want to confirm certain things—by seeing her, the person I look up to so much.
I do have a promise from her to teach me combat techniques again, but the truth is I’m not sure how to approach her about it.
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Bell? Whatcha looking around for?” asks Welf.
“Oh, uh…I was just wondering if there’ll be enough room in the tavern if Loki Familia shows up to the party. Don’t Aiz and the rest of them come here pretty often?” I say, instinctively glossing over my real thoughts.
Sitting next to me, Welf just gives an easy smile. “Ah. It’ll probably be all right, yeah? Elegia’s pretty soon, after all.”
“‘Elegia’…?” I repeat the unfamiliar word.
“It’s the Guild folks who do the preparation for it. I figure they’ve told Loki Familia and Freya Familia and the like to behave themselves for a while,” says Welf, then orders another round of ale for himself.
I cock my head, and I’m about to ask more about Elegia, when Cassandra—who hadn’t been participating in our conversation thus far—suddenly cuts in like she finally summoned the courage to do so. “Bell! Er…H-how is your left arm feeling?”
“Oh! Miss Amid said that it was coming along nicely. There’s no pain or stiffness now, at least.”
“I-is that so…? I’m glad…” Hearing my answer, Cassandra smiles. She’s sitting diagonally across from me, and she stares down—is she nervous about something?—into the cup clasped in both her hands.
I open and close my left hand repeatedly, satisfying the urge to make sure that what I just said is true.
Amid did ask me to continue to refrain from combat for a while, but at this rate, perhaps the day when I can reenter the Dungeon isn’t far off.
I realize this is a good opportunity to give my appreciation to both Welf and Cassandra. “Oh, right—Welf, Cassandra, thank you for earlier.”
I’m talking about the Goliath Scarf that they fashioned for me during the expedition.
All joking aside, without that particular piece of equipment, I wouldn’t have been able to fight the Juggernaut, and I probably wouldn’t be sitting here at this table.
Welf smirks at my words of honest gratitude and waves them off, while Cassandra’s eyes widen, and she brightens. “Of course!” she says.
I could swear that there are tears in the corners of her eyes, and her beautiful smile gives me a pang in my chest, which I keep to myself. I chide myself for what feels like infidelity and can’t help but smile wryly.
“Still, Ms. Daphe and Ms. Cassandra—to think that you both leveled up! Congratulations!” says Lilly.
“Ah, th-thank you very much!” says Cassandra with a sincere bow.
“With this, our familia will have two people at Level Three. I’ll look forward to your achievements, which will be more than worth the tax we’ll have to pay for that, Daphne, Cassandra…” says Nahza with a giggle and a fishy smile.
Daphne isn’t having any of it. “Please refrain from such tiresome blackmail, Captain.”
That’s right—both Daphne and Cassandra leveled up during this latest expedition.
While I’d been wandering in the deep levels, Lilly and the others had tirelessly continued their adventuring. Defeating the floor boss of the lower levels with such a small party was already a tremendous achievement.
Of course I owed them a debt for having caused such trouble while I was off on my own, but what they accomplished is incredible to me separate from that. I might be feeling a bit forlorn over it—over not getting to adventure with everybody else.
In any case, this party is also to celebrate all the people who recently leveled up.
“You say that, Lilliluka, but you leveled up, too, didn’t you? Congratulations!” says Daphne with a smile.
“Oh, no, that was only possible due to your guidance, Ms. Daphne. Thank you,” says Lilly, bowing her head like someone from the Far East. She’s also sitting on her knees, perhaps owing to Mikoto and Haruhime’s influence. Ouka and his familia see this and smile awkwardly.
The members of that adventuring party had leveled up one after another—which only shows just how brutal the expedition had been. There probably weren’t many expeditions that could compare.
“Hee-hee, don’t leave out everything we did, meow!”
Ahnya and Chloe abandoned their work entirely and assumed poses that seemed suspiciously rehearsed as they cut into the conversation.
“That’s right, meow! Who could forget the moving scene when I appeared so gorgeously in front of the wounded boy hero, and he pledged an oath to me, ‘Oh, my darling Chloe, my butt is yours forever!’ What passion!”
I frown at Chloe’s retelling of an event I have no memory of, when a human carrying a stack of used plates appears with an exasperated expression on her face. “By the time we arrived, everything was pretty much over. I don’t know what you two dumb cats have to brag about.”
““What’d you say?!”” the catgirls hiss in chorus.
Ahnya and Chloe are about to continue their indignant rant when Mia’s voice rings out from behind the tavern’s counter. “Stop lazing around, all of you!”
Evidently all three of them had been enduring Mia’s terrible scoldings ever since they’d skipped out on their shifts at the tavern to come to our aid.
The strength of Mia’s baleful gaze makes all three girls’ shoulders flinch, and they hurry back to work, half-crying “““Sorry!”””
Since it was our rescue they’d come to, I can’t help but feel a little bad for them…
“Please don’t worry about it too much, Bell. Ahnya and the others knew what they were getting into,” says Syr, as though reading my mind while she brings more food to our table.
“Syr…”
“I’m just happy that everybody made it back safely.” She leans down and whispers conspiratorially into my ear. ”You know, I went to see some adventurers I know and begged them to save you, too,” she says with a giggle. “But it wasn’t necessary.”
“I’m…sorry you went to so much trouble!” I say guiltily. I really did make a lot of people worry about me.
I scratch my head and smile abashedly, when Syr asks me another question.
“Did something happen with Lyu?”
Snap.
It’s the sound of everything around me freezing solid. And everything around Lilly, too.
…Lyu’s been avoiding me.
Maybe. Probably. Most likely. Definitely.
Even after I ended up with a cast on my arm, I’ve visited The Benevolent Mistress many times, but every time Lyu avoids making eye contact with me, and somehow naturally seems to end up walking right by me and then stays hidden in the kitchen.
It’s like she’s trying to put distance between us, and I haven’t been able to follow her.
“Ever since she came back to the tavern, she started acting odd whenever you come up in conversation, Bell,” says Syr with a smile, her gaze boring a hole into me. I’m starting to sweat, for some reason.
I plaster an awkward smile onto my face, and after what must have seemed like a suspiciously long pause, I nervously manage a reply. “Odd, you say…?”
“Quite odd, yes.”
“Odd, like how?”
“Like that.” Still holding a stack of wooden bowls, Syr indicates a direction.
There’s Lyu.
Just like Ahnya and the others, she’s briskly moving between tables as she performs her duties as a waitress. There’s nothing particularly strange about anything she’s doing…except she takes great pains to avoid looking at our table.
Or rather, she refuses to look at me .
As she busily takes orders, she’ll face our direction when she needs to, and even get close to the table…but the one time I seem to enter her field of vision, she spins quickly around to face the other direction. It’s sudden enough that she draws looks of surprise from some other customers.
If she’d been just looking the other way, or averting her eyes, it would’ve stood out less. But the agility with which she’d turned herself bodily away made the awkwardness that much worse.
If anything, it seemed like the kind of defensive move you’d make if you were alone in the Dungeon.
The whirlwind motion makes her skirt flare out each time she does it, briefly revealing her black tights.
Under Syr’s close observation, a fresh wave of sweat breaks out on my face.
“Lyu! Go take these to the kid’s table!” Mia leaves several plates on the counter and gives Lyu a direct order.
“…”
Lyu is silent for a moment, and then without so much as the slightest change in her expression, loads herself up easily with the plates. She then heads directly for our table.
“L-Lyu, listen…”
“Here is your steak.”
“Do—do you have a second?”
“Do you have an order?”
“Eh…?”
“Ale?”
“U-um…”
“Ale it is, then.”
“I—I just want to talk…”
“Thank you for your order.”
This…can’t be called a conversation.
Lyu leaves me flustered in her wake as she strides away.
Unsurprisingly, the others seem to have noticed what’s going on, and Welf, Mikoto, and Haruhime, as well as Nahza and Ouka and their respective familias, all look at me.
Lilly leans in close to me. “…Mr. Bell, did something happen between you and Ms. Lyu?” she asks.
I flinch away, answering honestly. “W-well, I’m not sure…so much has happened that I sorta haven’t been able to get it out of her…”
The first thing that comes to mind was when I embraced her n-naked…but that was an emergency.
Plus, she’d talked to me normally after I’d come back from the Dungeon. We’d even laughed together, atop that high, high place where the sky had been so beautiful.
Had I done something to Lyu to make her so angry?
We’d joined forces to escape from the deep levels. We’d made such a connection then.
Was I the only one who felt that way?
“…”
“…Syr?”
I notice Syr studying me again. Her pale eyes are gazing at me with an almost audible intensity, and then—
Bonk.
She lightly hits my head with the wooden tray she’s carrying in both hands. The noise is somehow cute.
“Huh? Wha—?” I press my hand to my head, confused.
“You deserve it,” says Syr, closing her eyes and turning on her heel almost childishly. But she also seems unusually mad.
Syr leaves me behind without explaining anything and returns to her work, just as Lyu did.
Lilly watches us with half-lidded eyes, Welf and Daphne pretend not to notice and continue to drink, Mikoto and Chigusa tilt their heads curiously, while Haruhime and Cassandra simply look confused.
Nahza’s the only one who says anything. “Ah, youth,” she comments, closing her eyes and smiling.
“What do you mean?” asks Ouka, completely straight-faced.
I don’t have time to worry about their reactions, though. All I can do is watch Lyu go as she disappears into the kitchen.
“I’m taking out the garbage,” Lyu said.
She was answered by the hectic sounds of the kitchen as the chefs busily worked: the roar of the flames that seared the meat, the clop-clop of knives chopping vegetables. She picked up a bucket full of slop and headed for the back door.
She emerged into a narrow alleyway that had gotten quite dark and made for the trash heap.
That was as far as she got.
As though reaching the limit of her endurance, after maintaining her impassive facial expression for so long, her mask collapsed.
“…That was strange.”
Now that she was alone, her deep feelings of shame finally came to the surface. Her cheeks were faintly flushed.
She unconsciously brought her hand to her mouth, as though to hide the heat that rose to her face.
Lyu looked back on her actions with reproach. “That…that was strange of me. I’m being rude to Bell. I’m hurting him…I should apologize.”
The kind boy had been completely taken off guard by Lyu’s sudden change in demeanor, and he was probably afraid she hated him. She ought to go to him right that instant and apologize with a proper bow.
Please don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. That was all she had to say.
“But…”
Her heart pounded.
She was often nervous.
She had been acting strangely.
Things that she’d had no trouble doing before, she now couldn’t do at all.
She couldn’t stand to look at his face.
“…What is wrong with me?” she murmured, eyes downcast, arms hanging slack at her side.
Her chest hammered. Her ears burned.
Whenever she caught sight of the boy, her shoulders jumped as she started like a surprised cat.
It was like she really was sick.
…When did this start?
When did she start calling him by his name, “Bell”?
As she made the realization and started to think back over her memories, someone called her name—from right behind her.
“Lyu…”
Lyu’s sky-blue eyes shot wide open.
How she hadn’t noticed him, or why he was there—such questions were trifling matters.
It was Bell.
She knew without turning around.
There was no mistaking his voice.
But Lyu hurtled into a state of utter panic. The fact that she was alone with him was not acceptable.
She spun around and swung the edge of her palm down in a strike. “Who goes there?!”
“Aaaaah!! It’s me!!” cried Bell as he parried the left-handed attack.
Half a year earlier, when he’d been Level 1, he would have been completely unable to deal with a strike from Lyu. And yet now he did so perfectly, intercepting it with his right arm while protecting his still-healing left.
It was a beautiful movement, momentarily shocking even Lyu despite her being the attacker.
It was obvious growth on his part that proved beyond any doubt his attainment of Level 4.
He’d grasped Lyu’s delicate wrist with just enough force so as not to hurt her.
But—
In that precise moment, far from calming her down, it had the exact opposite effect on her.
A fever seemed to engulf her body, spreading from the place where Bell was touching her wrist.
Her cheeks grew hot and her eyebrows rose on her flushed forehead and she captured Bell’s arm with a speed worthy of the name Gale Wind.
Then she threw him.
“Bwaaah?!” There in the alleyway echoed the sound of a body hitting the ground along with a boy’s alarmed cry.
His Status was undoubtedly higher than hers overall. But when it came to ad hoc tactics, Lyu was a cut—or two or three—above Bell. He hadn’t been prepared for the throw, so it was only logical he’d go down magnificently.
But that wasn’t the real issue.
“…I’m always going too far!” Lyu whined through her cold sweat.
Bell had landed on the cobblestones, of all places.
He was Level 4, but the force of the throw was also that of a Level 4. The cobblestones had clearly cracked from the impact, and Bell was completely stunned.
In some distant corner of her mind, Lyu could hear Kaguya’s and Lyra’s voices saying, ““You good-for-nothing elf!””
“Lyuuu, just how long does it take to throw away the garbage?” asked an angry voice, which only compounded her problems.
“?!”
Evidently Ahnya and the other waitstaff had grown tired of waiting for Lyu to return. As Ahnya approached, Lyu’s facial expression transformed.
She couldn’t allow herself to be seen like this. She wasn’t sure why, but—she couldn’t let it happen.
Lyu quickly gathered Bell up into a classic princess carry.
And then she ran—still tightly holding on to him.
Since coming to Orario, Bell had carried many people like this, but he had never once found himself on the other end. If he’d been awake for it, he probably would’ve fainted from the shock. But Lyu had no way of knowing that as she sped away with every bit of the prodigious speed that the Gale Wind had been known for.
She abandoned her shift at the tavern and careened through the streets, searching for someplace without any prying eyes.
And then—
“Hah, hah…” she panted. She’d stopped in a narrow street where no one would see them. There were no stalls or little shops here, just stone buildings with short staircases leading into them, and the occasional wooden bench.
Lyu first lay the unconscious Bell down on a bench, then clasped her head at the realization of what she’d just done. “Assault…kidnapping…just how much further am I going to sink…?” she said to Bell’s form as waves of self-recrimination crashed over her.
In any case, she had to heal him.
He’d lost consciousness but fortunately wasn’t injured. Nevertheless, Lyu used her recovery magic. Trembling nervously, she applied as much healing as she could muster, far more than was necessary. She was, to put it bluntly, panicking. She did every single thing she could do.
This resulted, ultimately, in Bell’s head resting in Lyu’s lap.
Why—?!
The good-for-nothing elf had done it again.
It had seemed like the reasonable thing to do. She’d decided to atone by making sure his head wasn’t sore when he woke up, using her thigh as a pillow. Just that. That was all she could let herself think.
But then—a pair of jovial-looking animal people walked down the little street, arms over each other’s shoulders. They seemed to be quite drunk.
They looked at Lyu and Bell, the scent of alcohol wafting off of them.
“Whoooooo! Young love!”
“Hey, baby! Thanks for the free sh—”
The jeering pair was cut off mid-sentence. The piercing look in the elf’s eyes as she stared at them was terrifying.
“Stop howling.”
“Y-yes, ma’am!”
“Forget what you saw.”
“Wh-wha…?”
“Leave.”
““Y-yes, ma’aaaaam!!”” The two scampered away, still arm-over-shoulder.
With the two drunks gone and solitude restored, Lyu’s expression became sorrowful again. “…It’s so strange. What’s been wrong with me lately?”
Above the street hung a slice of the dark-blue night sky. In it were scattered the same stars as her forest home. The tranquility of the space enveloped her as the boy’s head rested on her thigh.
“I’m still so difficult all the time…just a troublesome, irritating elf…” Self-loathing swirled within her.
She remembered how she had been when she’d first arrived in Orario.
I’m no different from when I met Astrea and Alize…
That had been another time Lyu’s unapproachability had ended up hurting her. Her narrow preconceptions had led her to disgraceful actions, and then, as now, she’d ended up trapped.
“…Bell,” she said, desperate not to repeat past mistakes. She reached down to the white hair that fell over his eyes with a gentle touch. Even that was enough to send her heart racing. “I do not hate you, truly…”
There was hardly any point in explaining herself, given the circumstances. But she felt like in that moment, she finally could.
Her cheeks were faintly flushed as she addressed the boy who slept on her lap.
She realized she was glad his hair covered his eyes. If she’d been able to see his closed eyelids, his eyebrows, she was certain she’d become too flustered to explain herself.
She brushed her own hair back behind her long, tapered elven ears and brought her face near to his. Close enough to feel his breath, she whispered, “I could never hate you. In fact…”
That was as far as she got.
Lyu stopped. She said nothing more.
An unnatural silence fell.
At length, she narrowed her pale-blue eyes. “Bell…you’re awake, aren’t you?”
The boy’s face twitched.
Lyu pulled back and fixed a freezing-cold glare on the boy’s shameless attempt not to move.
Reluctantly, Bell opened his eyes in resignation.
“…Yes.”
Lyu’s graceful eyebrows rose in anger. “I believe I told you never, ever to do something like that again…didn’t I?” She pinched the cheek of the boy who’d been pretending to be asleep.
“Owwww! I-I’m shorry!!”
It was just like the time they’d wandered the deep levels. After the boy had caused the collapse of the Colosseum, he’d played dead, perfectly hearing every pathetic, girlish noise Lyu had made. Recalling the vivid memory, a fresh wave of shame hit her. Her cheeks were scalding as she looked down reproachfully and put her strength into her pinching fingers.
Bell’s cries rose an octave. “I-I’m sorry…! When I came to, I was like this, and I was confused, and I didn’t know what to say…” He rose out of her lap, rubbing his cheek.
Her thigh seemed to miss the warmth that had rested on it a moment earlier, but that was surely her imagination. “…By the way, when did you actually wake up?”
“Um, just a moment ago, honest…Right when you said ‘In fact…’”
In that case, she was safe. He hadn’t heard her truly fatal slip of the tongue.
Lyu sighed in relief. She put her hand to her chest, not really understanding what that relief might entail.
“So, er, wh-why did you have me on your lap…?”
“…My actions caused you harm, so I felt it was the least I could do…” Lyu explained the details of what had happened as Bell sat next to her, occasionally tilting his head in confusion.
“I see…I think?”
She stared at the alley wall, assiduously avoiding looking at Bell.
“…Er, so, did I really do something to make you so angry, Miss Lyu?”
“Huh?” She finally met his gaze as though compelled to and saw Bell’s nervously smiling face.
“I mean, you haven’t even looked at me ever since…”
He looked somehow sad.
Her chest tightened, and she answered immediately. “No!”
“Huh?”
“Not at all! You haven’t done anything! None of this is…your…” Lyu trailed off, tearing her gaze from Bell’s wide eyes and staring at her feet. After calming the pounding in her chest and carefully working out exactly what she wanted to say, she continued. “I…don’t hate you at all. The problem isn’t anything you did.”
“It…it isn’t…?”
“It’s just that I can’t stand to look at your face.”
“But why?!”
Lyu didn’t realize that her phrasing would provoke misunderstanding or that Bell, who was at a delicate, sensitive age, had been subtly hurt. As she tried to explain, she indeed made no move to meet his gaze.
But neither did she try to move away from where she sat next to him.
“…I’m sorry, Bell.”
“Huh?”
“For all the trouble I’ve caused, including this. I’ve only given you more things to worry over. I’m very, very sorry.”
“N-no, it’s fine! Honestly, I’m just relieved that you don’t hate me! Or more like, I’m happy, or…something…”
“…I see.”
“I mean it!”
“…”
“…”
“…Don’t you need to be getting back to the party?”
“Um…Welf told me to ‘go figure this mess out once and for all,’ so I think I’m okay for a while. What about you, Miss Lyu—will you be all right?”
“If…if you’re talking about Mama Mia, she’s definitely not going to let me off the hook for this, so it’s not like going back right away will make much of a difference.” In other words, it would be all right if they didn’t return until a bit later. Given that, Lyu decided to stay here with Bell a little longer. “Ahnya, Chloe, Runoa, and even Syr have skipped work before…so if it isn’t for too long…”
“Ha-ha-ha…” Bell laughed nervously.
Lyu, too, was finally able to manage a smile.
The two then talked about recent events, recounting to each other what had happened to them since returning from the deep levels.
How was Bell’s left arm? What about Lyu’s right leg?
Bell talked about Hestia welcoming him home. Lyu talked about eating Mia’s cooking.
He was resting up. She was back at work.
Their conversation was perfectly mundane. And that normal, everyday chatter delighted Lyu. It tickled her heart.
Her tense tone of voice gave way to a peaceful one.
“Hey, um, Miss Lyu?”
“?”
“If you wouldn’t mind…would you tell me about Alize and the others?”
“Alize?”
“Yes. When we were in the Dungeon, I didn’t get to ask about them…and I was thinking I’d like to know more about your old familia.”
When she thought back to when she’d parted from them, pain swirled in her chest. But more than that, it made her happy that Bell would ask about them.
“…All right, that I can do. Now, where to begin…?” She peered up ever so slightly, taking in the night sky and considering the twinkling stars as she prefaced her story by saying that it was an embarrassing one.
Then she began to tell the tale of how she had come to this city and the people she had met when she first arrived.
The boy listened quietly. Sometimes he smiled, which brought a smile out of Lyu, too.
There in the alley under the stars, they allowed themselves just a bit more time in each other’s company.
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