EPILOGUE
DOUBLE CAST
—Have you finally realized your wish?
The voice echoing in the distance that had perplexed me.
I stopped trying to convince myself it was Hörn and accepted the truth: it was the voice of Syr, who should have already been dead.
What I wanted wasn’t love, it was to fall in love.
I had always longed for it. The thing I could never have, precisely because I was a goddess of love.
My beauty charmed everyone.
Those whose hearts had been stolen by me would offer me anything I desired, and if I rejected them, they would endure the tears and accept it. That was love. A twisted, almost unconditional love.
They were not in love with me, and the opposite was impossible, too. How could I fall in love with someone who had so totally submitted themselves to me?
No matter how much Hörn or Heith, or Ottar or any of those who strived to be pure, to be strong, to be beautiful might devote themselves to me, even if I found them adorable or darling, it was still love.
Everyone says that love is a higher emotion than mere puppy love, that it is a richer experience. It’s true. There is nothing so unstable as that burning first love that drove me mad. But there also is no other feeling that makes the world feel so bright and vibrant.
Love is like the abundant, fertile land, while to fall in love is the field of flowers I always reached.
Instead of an eternal relationship with the land raising people and granting them blessing while being plowed and enriched by their hand, the flowers brighten the world more than anything in the one moment they bloom.
I wanted to be a flower that lived for a moment instead of eternity.
…No, I should just say it.
I was tired of loving and being loved.
And so, I dreamed of falling in love.
Like a girl who knew nothing of the world, I yearned for an insecure emotion, one far more immature than all-embracing love. And I did fall in love. And it really did change my world. It ceased being a dream. It transformed into a wish.
Bell was the one and only person I could fall in love with. He alone was the only being in the mortal realm or the heavens above who could fulfill my wish.
I was drawn to him, and when I knew that my charm didn’t work on him, I was truly happy. If it was him, I could experience falling in love and through it maybe discover a depth of love I had never known.
But that he couldn’t be charmed meant that, as hard as it was to believe, he had someone for whom he yearned, another for whom he felt so strongly that he wouldn’t bend even to my authority.
What tragic irony. I could only fall in love with someone who would never return my feelings. That tragic ending was always lurking in wait. And because I wanted to fall in love, I was destined to fail.
There was an unseemly goddess.
Even though it was me, now, after he hurt and saved me, I can admit it. I was an impossible-to-deal-with, difficult woman.
My wish…was a first love that could never be realized.
—Is that all?
…?
Is there something else?
Furrowing my brow at Syr’s continued questioning, I heard what sounded almost like an exasperated sigh.
—You really are difficult. Playing dumb, unable to give up your pride. After all this, it’s terminal.
The sigh became another voice.
That was strange, though. I’m Freya. This was the double role I had created, playing both Syr and Freya.
But then I noticed.
Who was the one playing both of those roles?
—Bell said it, didn’t he. “Let me know the true you.”
That was what he said when I asked for the war game.
The real me?
Who is the real me…?
—Isn’t your figure answer enough?
A field of flowers appeared.
The sky was twilight; a big, red circle to swallow up the land.
The one sitting in the sea of flowers, crying not tears of gold, but translucent droplets…was me.
The one whose blue-gray hair swayed in the gentle breeze, was me.
Reaching that field of flowers, I opened my blue-gray eyes.
—Just be sure not to regret it.
The goddess passed.
The yoke disappeared.
I haven’t seen the continuation of that dream since that day.
At the end of the first great familia war, victory went to the coalition.
When Freya Familia’s defeat was announced, the world flew into chaos.
The balance crumbling, the power map being rewritten, and a new hero stirring caused a grand commotion in the mortal realm. Who was the newest hero candidate of this generation. Was it the gale wind’s whistle or the roar of a great bell. The enormous feat of beating Freya Familia drew guesses and speculation from many people, and even mortals could feel that big changes were afoot.
And the epicenter for that earthquake of course lost its mind, too.
The adventurers who returned to Orario triumphantly from the Orza city ruins were greeted by cheers and deafening roars. The Labyrinth City, gripped by a fever that toppled Hestia over when the procession entered the gates, turning into a parade and a giant festival.
The people of the city hailed them as champions. The adventurers were fired up. Deities came out to greet them with thunderous applause.
Even after the battle ended, the reverberations of the furious fighting didn’t die down, and the city celebrated and partied, forgetting all boundary between day and night.
And finally, exhausted by days of festivities, the city shut its eyes on the morning of the third day after the war game.
“Why did I lose?”
Freya ran her slender finger along the rim of an empty glass.
Early morning, before the sun had risen. The goddess was sitting at the counter in a deserted tavern, cocking her head like a confused child.
Mia heaved a sigh, having been dragged along rather unwillingly.
“Because you pissed off everyone in the city, obviously.”
“I still thought I would win. Even if Loki’s children joined, I thought it was doable as long as I handled it right. I should have been able to get my hands on Bell.”
It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t accept the results of the war game as that she seemed genuinely to find it curious. Mia regarded her with no small amount of exasperation.
“Isn’t it just that there were more people who wanted to protect the kid?”
“Is that all?”
“…Also, didn’t the weirdos who are hung up on you really let their imaginations run wild?”
Freya closed her mouth for a moment, and then stopped playing with the glass, as if accepting it.
Honestly, she still thought she would have won even with Hedin and Hörn switching sides, but she had embarked on this war out of love, and so it would make sense that she lost because of love, too.
All sorts of loves, all sorts of wills, all sorts of emotions blended together, allowing them to arrive at their one in a million chance. That was how Freya decided to interpret it.
“Mia, this glass is on the house, right?”
“Of course not, you stupid goddess. You’re paying for it, plus a fee for waking me up at this ungodly hour.”
“But I don’t have anything anymore.”
Hestia hadn’t ordered it as the leader of the familia coalition, but Freya and her familia had been far too arrogant, especially with the walled garden incident. Many members of the coalition, especially the goddesses, had no plan to be forgiving. They demanded Freya be stripped of her followers that enabled her to be so arrogant and selfish.
The fans who made up her self-proclaimed royal guard and the cultist mortals who worshipped her immediately objected, but they were promptly shouted down and drowned out. Among those who hadn’t chosen a side, the general belief was that it was natural for the victors to do whatever they wished, and also many of the residents of the city feared the goddess of beauty’s power, so none of them raised a hand to stop it.
Royman, whose face had undergone an unsettling parade of emotions when Freya’s loss was confirmed, made attempts to protect her at first, but he ultimately failed to overcome the victors’ demands or public opinion. Pressing the matter would have genuinely put him at risk of being stabbed in the back within the halls of the Guild, so he had no choice but to follow Orario’s compulsory rules and announced Guild Headquarters’ consensus: banishing Freya outside the city, but preventing the outflow of the city’s strength—of the einherjar.
“Even though Ottar and them won’t obey any master save Goddess Freya!!! Even though it’s just going to end up like God Apollo all over again!!!”
That was the haggard, exhausted Guild pig’s conclusion.
In accordance with the Guild’s decision, Freya Familia’s entire massive fortune was seized.
Folkvangr alone was placed under Guild management, but everything else was split evenly among the winners, the familias that had joined the coalition. Ogma Familia and those that had been almost funereal before the battle were apparently now jumping for joy. It was rather vexing for Freya.
She had expected to immediately be sent back to the heavens if she lost, and to her this felt like a half-hearted measure.
Let her taste every humiliation and disgrace.
That was probably what the Goddess Alliance was thinking.
The whole mortal realm already knew that she was a naked queen.
With her familia dissolved, the shame and ridicule would undoubtedly follow her for centuries.
In the Guild’s proclamation, they declared that despite the outrages she had perpetrated, they had decided not to send her back in consideration for all the service she had provided Orario up to now. Apparently. Freya assumed that was some credulous fools’ unnecessary interference.
“I was the one who said I was betting everything…so I can’t help it that I’m broke now.”
All she had left were the clothes on her back.
She didn’t have anyone accompanying her. She had told all of her followers not to follow her and to stay here and become heroes. Heith and the children who had never once disobeyed her desperately tried to argue, but when she said she would use her charm to force them to stay in Orario if they didn’t do what she said, many of them broke down and wept. Hörn, who had finally woken up alone among them, just looked down and endured it, as if believing she didn’t have the right to mourn.
In the end, Royman had managed to avoid giving himself another ulcer.
After all, no one had died in the war game.
Freya had strictly instructed her followers not to kill anyone.
She had started this battle out of her own unsightly ego, so if someone else’s child died over it, it would weigh on her conscience. And more than anything, she suspected Bell would never be hers if anyone died. She had expected the coalition to have no compunctions about killing, but she figured Ottar and the other first-tiers wouldn’t die, and she trusted Heith and the andhrímnir to take care of the rest.
“…Then just make an honest living like you’ve done till now.”
“No can do. I was told to get out of town by today, since no one wants a high-handed, troublesome woman around.”
Mia stared at Freya as she stood up.
It almost looked like she was trying not to let her feeling show.
“…I heard some runt goddess running her mouth about how a bimbo goddess was no good, but she could overlook a neighborhood girl.”
Freya froze right in front of the exit.
“…No. That would be pathetic.” But, still, Freya smiled, her decision unchanged. “So…farewell Mia. It was fun.”
As Freya pulled the hood of her robe over her head, she heard a heavy sigh.
Pretending not to notice, she stepped out onto East Main Street.
It was a lighter darkness, then pure night.
“How long have I been here…”
It was a familiar scene.
It had been a long time, and yet it felt like it had ended in no time at all.
The chill morning air.
How long had it been since she started being excited for the day to begin?
But the long fall, the season of fertility was over. So the goddess of fertility should leave before winter came.
Looking out at the empty city streets, Freya turned toward the city gate.
Or at least, she started to.
“Ms. Syr.”
She stopped, seeing the boy standing there, as if waiting by himself.
On the street where they had first met, in the place she had given him that first basket.
“…What do you want?”
A voice that was a little stiff, and a little cool, escaped her lips.
Because he was the one person she wanted most not to meet right now.
“Are you leaving?”
“Of course. That was what was decided.”
“But we…”
“What, want to run me around more? You rampaged to your heart’s content and, for your own self-satisfaction, turned me down twice already, didn’t you?”
“Gh…?!”
She shot back snarkily, as a final bit of payback.
But that wasn’t what she really felt. It was her. She was the one who had rampaged to their heart’s content, who had involved the entire mortal realm in her own smug efforts.
Compared to Freya, who had twisted the entire world to achieve her wish, Bell’s hypocritical ego was almost cute.
“…It’s okay.”
“Eh?”
“Thanks to you ending it, I was saved.”
“!”
Looking into his wide red eyes, Freya smiled.
The cruel and uninhibited goddess and the witch who knew the poison and miracle of love wasn’t there.
There was just a pure soul, like a girl who had learned the pain and heartache of a first love.
“Love won’t drive me mad anymore, and I won’t search for that love again. Because you, despite getting far, far more battered in the process, cast away all my lingering attachment.”
That was without a doubt what she really felt.
In exchange for the wound that Bell had given her, Freya wouldn’t become a monster who twisted the world, wouldn’t hurt others, wouldn’t hurt herself. Because he had suffered, too, sharing in that pain.
It wasn’t quite the end of a nightmare. And it was different from waking up, too. It was lonely and, in a way, refreshing.
The sense of loss that still made her want to cry was the greatest evidence that she had wanted him, and also proof that he had surpassed the love that she had cursed.
“I lost to you.”
It was vexing.
It was embarrassing, and she didn’t want to admit it. But she had been saved. The goddess smiled, with no hidden meaning.
“I love you, Bell. I really do.”
“…”
“I care about you, exhaustingly, boringly so.”
Even though the day that love would be returned would never come for the goddess who had searched for her destined companion for hundreds of thousands, hundreds of millions of years.
Carrying these feelings even knowing they would never come to fruition was Freya’s greatest punishment.
“…Well, then…”
She quickly left, before anymore regrets could take root.
He still didn’t say anything, even as she walked by him.
She thought it was strange. She even had a little bit of a childish thought that he should at least stop her for a moment, but the part of her that found it strange was stronger.
Considering it was him, she was sure he would have been unreasonable about it.
“Syr.”
The answer to that question soon came from another angle.
“!”
Lyu.
And Ahnya, Chloe, and Runoa.
And the rest of the girls at The Benevolent Mistress.
The girls had appeared at some point, all wearing their uniforms, forming a wall across the street.
Freya stopped moving. After a few moments, she pulled her hood up and approached, trying to pass between them.
“Wait.”
Of course that fastidious girl would never allow that. The goddess stopped at the rough tone that the elf had never once used with Syr before.
“Do you have anything to say to us?”
Standing there, Freya—no, she closed her eyes.
Lyu had called the girl’s name, so the one to answer wasn’t the goddess.
It was the player’s final duty as her game drew to an end.
Ignoring her racing heart, she opened her blue-gray eyes and looked at the ground.
The goddess disappeared, and the one standing there became the girl.
“…I’m sorry.”
SLAP.
There was a loud crack. Her hood knocked off, Syr opened her eyes and touched her stinging cheek.
“Don’t play games with me!”
Lyu slapped Syr’s cheek so fast that Chloe and Runoa winced.
“If you would apologize, then atone!”
“Eh…?”
“The one who saved me when I intended to die was you! Take responsibility for the fact that I’m here now!”
Syr recoiled at that.
Her heart wavered. Her selfish wish not to experience any more disgraceful thoughts, her desperate plea not to have to bear any more lingering regrets blended in her blue-gray eyes.
Lyu surely saw through what Syr was thinking. Her eyes flared angrily, and she got closer, as if to grab the lapels of her cloak.
“You don’t want to be humiliated any further? Don’t be stupid! Bear this shame for the rest of your life! Repay it for the rest of your life!”
“Gh…”
“Stay at our sides forever!”
This time, her blue-gray eyes opened wide at Lyu’s tearful rebuke.
“Who cares about a goddess’s pride, meow.”
“Yeah. ’Sides, it’s not like it’s a goddess standing in front of us. Just a coworker, right?”
Chloe sniggered, and Runoa cackled.
““Did you really think you can hide the truth when your cooking’s that awful?””
Syr’s face flushed with shame at their follow-up.
Her mouth opened and closed several times, but pathetically, she couldn’t say anything.
The other girls all giggled. But finally, without any chance to recover. The abandoned cat stepped forward.
“…Lady Freya…………Syr…”
“Ahnya…”
She was stunned herself at how much she struggled to find the words to say.
What could she say after deceiving her, pushing her way, and hurting her inside the gilded cage.
As Syr stood unmoving, Ahnya’s eyes and tail twitched several times, as if she were cowering. She opened and closed her mouth, and then stared at the ground, before—
“…Don’t go meoooooow!!!”
She clung onto Syr while crying.
She froze as the cat leaped onto her.
“I don’t understand anything, but…! But I don’t want you to leave, meow!!!”
Ahnya couldn’t persuade her. She couldn’t say something tactful. It was even doubtful whether she really understood the connection between Freya and Syr.
So she just poured out everything she felt, deep in her heart.
Stunned by the reaction, slowly, the traces of a tear started to appear in her eye.
“Ms. Syr.”
Bell, who had watched all of it, was standing behind her.
While Chloe gently pulled Ahnya off, Syr immediately spun around, looking down to not let him notice her agitation.
She couldn’t do anything when—BAM!
Ruona’s palm forcefully pushed against her back.
Leaning forward, about to fall, she pushed Syr back in front of Bell.
“……”
“Umm…aaaah……”
Syr struggled to say anything, and for some reason Bell was behaving awkwardly.
Just as she started to think it was strange, the boy seemed to make up his mind and spread his arms wide.
Eh, what?
Syr’s eyes widened at what looked like he might wrap her in a big hug at any moment, when Bell’s cheeks reddened, and he clutched his head, crouching and groaning.
Finally, as if giving in, he stood up.
The next instant, his cheeks still red, he gently took Syr’s right hand.
Her heart jumped at the sudden move.
And—
“Y…you’ve been a bad girl! I’m going to watch over you forever, so you never do anything bad again! So I hope you’re ready for that!!!”
The wind blew.
There was silence.
Runoa and the others behind her watched with cold eyes.
Lyu in particular had a cold gleam in her eyes as she glared at Bell with a look that could kill.
“Ah…”
While the boy blanched and stared to draw back, Syr realized it.
“If I ever started behaving strangely, what would you do?”
During their Goddess Festival date.
When Syr had secretly been afraid of a future where she went mad from love, that was the half-joking response she had told him.
“You wouldn’t squeeze me tightly in your embrace and whisper ‘You’ve been a bad girl. I’m going to watch over you forever, so you never do anything bad again. So I hope you’re ready for that’ and then take me home with you?”
“Of course not?!”
They had laughed together like that.
Because he couldn’t hug her, he had held her hand.
“…Ms. Syr, I said it then, too. I’ll stop you, so you don’t hurt anyone.” Shyly, awkwardly, he continued, “Not even yourself. So…”
He took something out of his pocket, and while still holding her hand, he placed the object in her palm.
“ ”
It was a silver accessory with blue decorations.
The other half of the pair. The one that the goddess hadn’t broken.
The one with the knight, with Erlandr as a motif.
“I will be watching out for you, Ms. Syr.”
“Eh…?”
“So that you don’t do anything bad…So that you can always smile with Ms. Lyu and everyone else.”
Syr’s hand trembled.
“I can’t be your Odr.”
Her consciousness drifted, and she gripped the ornament.
“And I’m not Erlandr.”
Her lips quivered as the boy smiled embarrassedly.
“But I think I can be a knight who will protect you, even as we hurt each other.”
Tears fell from Syr’s eyes.
“Ms. Syr. Please, keep your promise.”
And finally, as Syr cried, Bell gently, cruelly nudged her.
“I asked you…if we won, please show me the real you…”
Her throat quivered. It felt like she might sob.
I can’t do that. I’m Freya.
That was how she tried to tough it out in her heart, but the tears welling from her blue-gray eyes showed how she was really feeling.
She remembered the dream where she reached the field of flowers.
She realized who the real her was, and what her real wish was.
She had created both Freya and Syr.
The one who had always been in that field, the one who had always been crying. She was just a lone girl.
“…I want to stop being the goddess.”
So she laid her true self bare.
She shouted every bit of herself to the home that had freed her from the yoke of the goddess.
“I want to be Syr with all of you!”
Bell broke into a broad smile.
Lyu smiled as she cried.
Ahnya sobbed while clinging onto her, and Chloe and Runoa both smiled and put a hand on her shoulders.
The other girls from the tavern cheered. And the dwarf watching them from afar while leaning against the tavern’s column slowly beamed.
With their cheerful voices echoing in the early morning, the city gradually began to wake up.
The city wall in the east glimmered, and a sliver of the morning sun peeked over it. Its light burned the girl’s tears, chided her, and also granting her a bit of a blessing.
“Sorry, Ahnya…!”
This was a punishment.
“Sorry, Chloe…Sorry, Runoa…!”
A punishment for a selfish and egotistical witch who was no saint.
“Sorry, Lyu…!”
She would burn with shame and writhe every time she faced them, atoning for the rest of her life.
“I’m sorry, Mama Mia…!”
She couldn’t do anything bad anymore.
“Everyone…thank you.”
Because there was a knight by her side who would always watch over her.
“…Are you satisfied now, worm?”
On the roof of a certain tavern.
As her followers watched the scene below, Allen looked sullen.
“I don’t know.”
“Ahhh?”
“I don’t know if there’s something better than this.” Hedin’s answer was blunt, but honest.
Not only Allen, but the Gullivers, Hegni, and pretty much everyone other than Ottar glared at Hedin. He, of course, just quietly smiled.
“But…it isn’t bad.”
That foolish boy hadn’t become her companion.
And he hadn’t become her hero, either.
The Odr he had chosen was a knight at her side.
The spirit was the girl.
The saint, the witch.
Syr and Freya’s double cast. That was the true her.
She wouldn’t be driven mad by love, and the rush of falling in love wouldn’t kill her. Because to the boy who had rejected her love, she was just a girl. She had been saved by falling in love and could no longer be the goddess. But as long as he continued watching over her, she would be free.
Her true wish was there.
“Passing marks…Stupid pupil.”
Dawn had broken.
The sun-kissed girls hugged each other.
It wasn’t a field of flowers.
There was only the green of new leaves around them.
“You really are a horrible man…”
There was single murmur. That one piece of abuse came from Hörn, who was watching alongside the warriors. She flashed a tearful, ephemeral smile.
“Thank you for saving Syr…Bell.”
She offered what would be her first and only bit of gratitude to the rising sun.
The boy watching a short distance from the girls broke into a smile.
Fall ended.
The goddess of fertility left.
The girl freed from the shattered yoke smiled like a flower as she cried.
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