Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 13 - Chapter 4

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CHAPTER 4

The Curse of the Sword, and Two People’s Story

Liella.

She was a young lady with something very mysterious about her. She appeared to be in her twenties.

Her beautiful pink hair was tied up in a ponytail behind her head, and fluttered in the wind. Her eyes were blue and clear like the midwinter sky.

She was wearing a red robe. She was a mage.

But strangely, she always wore an Eastern-style sword at her hip. It made me wonder if she came from the East. However, she wasn’t anything like any of the people that I knew from the East.

When I asked her, she looked a little embarrassed as she answered.

“I’ve never been to the East before,” she said, and scratched her head bashfully before she continued. “But isn’t assuming I’m from the East because I’m carrying a particular style of sword a pretty simplistic way of thinking?”

Very fair point.

“But I also feel like it’s unusual to see a mage walking around with a sword.”

Being a mage, she could sort out most problems by waving her wand. It didn’t seem like she needed to go to the trouble of carrying a sword around with her since she should have been able to solve any problems with magic.

So then, why was she carrying around a sword?

I asked her.

When I did, she smiled cheerfully and answered me.

“You’d better ask the sword.”

That was what she said.

Even the words that this mysterious girl spoke were filled with mystery.

Ah, I’ve got no money.

The moment I passed through the gates of a certain city, I was suddenly struck by a hunch. It was like a gut feeling that hit me all of a sudden, yet at the same time, as that single phrase flashed into my mind, it was clear as day.

I immediately checked my wallet, and it became clear that my hunch had been entirely correct.

My wallet gaped open, revealing just a few copper coins. It flopped limply, as if making a feeble complaint that it had no more left to give. My frank opinion was that if it was going to spit up complaints, I would rather it spit out some cash, but anyway, there was no helping it. Then I wrung it out just in case, but all that fell out was some dust and trash.

Anyway, my mind immediately began calculating with terrifying speed the events that might occur due to this new development.

I’ve got no money.

If I don’t earn some, I can’t go on living.

I’ll die.

Crap.

In short, there was only one conclusion to be drawn.

“I’m in trouble here…”

I’m sure that when those words came out of my mouth, it was obvious that I didn’t have an ounce of composure left. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning, and because of that, I was thrown into a little bit of a panic when I suddenly remembered that I had no money.

I’ve got to hurry up and make some money right away—

“Welcome! We’ve got fresh-baked bread, it’s delicious!”

I’ve got to hurry up and munch, munch, munch.

“You’ve got a good appetite, miss. Is it tasty?”

“I’m in trouble…”

I’m sure you can infer from my poor decision and my poor description that I had, without a doubt, lost my composure.

Nevertheless, once I had fortified myself with a meal, my mind recovered a little bit.

“First of all, I’ve got to do something to earn some money…”

Even though I was out of ideas, I was sure I could come up with something if I put my mind to it.

But I thought I just made some money recently… It’s so strange… Maybe I got carried away and went on a spending spree?

My wallet was flat and shriveled, like it had given up on life.

Ah, and even though I just ate some bread, it won’t be long before my stomach is all shriveled, too… Oh-hoh-hoh…

“Miss? Do you not have any money?”

Maybe it was because I was wearing an expression of utter despair as I stuffed my cheeks with bread. The proprietor of the stall just seemed worried about me.

“Well… That is how I find myself…”I answered in a deflated voice.

The proprietor looked shocked like she was wondering why I had bought the bread at all, but then she said—

“In that case, I know a good place to make some. You’re in luck.” She provided me with some welcome information.

In this city, there was one convenient way for foreigners like myself to make money, she told me.

“If you go straight down the main avenue, there’s a plaza. Try going there.”

“What’s there?”

“The Cooperation Circle.”

She told me that it wasn’t just an expression, that there was really an arrangement by that name in this city.

According to the bread merchant, a large bulletin board had been installed in the plaza, and if you posted your troubles there, someone from somewhere would come consult with you about them.

If you were seeking help, someone would respond to you, and if someone else was seeking help, you could respond to them. The country’s bulletin board, which worked as a mutual aid station, was commonly called the Cooperation Circle.

According to the woman running the bread stall, you could earn rewards for responding to requests posted there.

“Although normally people don’t worry about rewards, and take on the requests out of the spirit of charity, you know. But I have heard of people who are having money trouble helping other people out to earn some cash,” she informed me.

Oh-hoh, I see, I see.

That’s a good bit of intel.

“Actually, I’m not having money trouble at all. But I’m feeling extra charitable, so I think I’ll go take a peek at that bulletin board.”

“Oh? Sure, whatever you say.”

“Thank you for the information.”

I was getting the sense that the bread merchant doubted me. She was probably wondering if maybe I had a split personality or something. But even I am sometimes moved to action by the weight of the spirit of charity, I’ll have you know.

After that, I made my way to the bulletin board known as the Cooperation Circle, and sure enough, there were requests from all manner of people posted there.

There was, for example, one that said, I WANT TO GET MY HANDS ON PROOF OF MY PARTNER’S INFIDELITY.

Another read, amusingly, I WANT TO GO TO A FANCY CAFÉ. SOMEONE PLEASE GO WITH ME.

There were also requests with blatantly unsavory motives, like, NOW RECRUITING SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO GO ON A DAYLONG DATE WITH ME!

It seemed like people could ask for help with anything.

It also seemed like I was free to choose which request to answer.

“Huh… This request seems like it might yield a lot of money…”

“What? I can get paid just for going to a fancy café? What could be better…?”

“What? I can’t get paid without going on a date with some guy…? What could be worse…?”

And so on. Here and there, other people stood in front of the bulletin board, scrutinizing it.

Since I came all this way, I guess I should also fulfill one or two of these requests, huh?

“But wow, they all have really good rewards…”

At this point, it goes without saying that the spirit of charity within me had quietly taken a back seat, but at any rate, I searched the requests for something that seemed comparatively easy and looked like it would make me a comparatively large amount of money.

For example, if there had been someone asking for help with transportation, that would have been convenient, because it would have meant that I could get paid for giving someone a lift on my broom when I moved on from this city.

“…Oh!”

Before long, one such convenient request caught my eye.

It was a request from Liella, a mage who had come to this city about two weeks earlier.

It was a strange request.

“How do you do? My name is Liella.”

Her request, which started with such a common greeting, continued as follows.

“I am currently on a journey, headed for a certain destination. On my travels so far, I have asked merchants for help, and gotten them to transport me along with their cargo. Other times I’ve had to walk, and camp out in the open air. I’ve made it this far, but no matter how I try, I won’t be able to reach the end of this road alone. So please support me, if you can. Right now I am staying at an inn. Anyone who can help me, come to the location below—”

The request on the bulletin board had her information written beside it as well.

Liella.

Twenty years old.

From an unnamed village far away from here.

A mage.

“I am incapable of flying on a broom. In my hometown, it is not customary to fly using a broom.”

The place she was headed was apparently some ruined city—now known as the Ruins of Voght.

The reason why she was headed for that particular destination was not mentioned.

I didn’t know a thing about this Ruins of Voght place, so on my way to the inn where Liella, or whatever her name was, was waiting, I casually stopped in to see the proprietor of the roadside stall where I had purchased the bread earlier, to give her my thanks and ask her about it while I was there. But—

“Hm? Ah, that would be the former site of a secluded city deep in the mountains, I think. They had a war a long time ago, and ever since then, no one has lived there, I hear.”

That was her answer.

“It’s not a tourist attraction?”

“It’s too far off the beaten path.”

According to her, the Ruins of Voght sat at the edge of a precipitous cliff in the mountains, and it was difficult to get to if you didn’t have a broom. On top of that, because they had been abandoned many years ago, the ruins had almost entirely deteriorated, to the point where there was basically nothing left but rubble, so no one ever went near them.

“If there’s someone who wants to go to a place like that, they must be a pretty strange person,” the proprietor of the bread stall said, wrapping up our conversation.

I nodded in understanding.

Some of the requests that Liella had posted on the bulletin board read:

“I really have to make it to the Ruins of Voght, no matter what.”

“So please, somebody help me.”

“Please.”

“I’ll pay you half the fee up front, and the rest after the fact.”

“I can pay you the full amount up front too.”

“If the reward is too small, come talk to me. I can increase the amount.”

“In fact, how much will it take for you to do this for me?”

It seemed like her situation must have been very urgent.

She had put up quite a few postings.

I was holding page after page of requests in my hand, all written in her name. She must have been writing them continuously over the course of the two weeks she had been in the city.

The board might have been called the Cooperation Circle, but it was sad to think that no one had taken her hand, no matter how many times it had reached out for aid.

“Here, I think?”

I came to a halt.

The building in front of me was a run-down inn. It had such an old, shabby appearance that it seemed like it might fall right over if I were to, for example, push hard with both hands.

“…Hello?”

So, I opened the door very carefully.

Even though it was the middle of the day, there was hardly any light shining into the dark, damp interior. There was one employee at the counter, and just one woman in the lounge, who seemed like a guest.

“…………”

The young woman sitting in the lounge was staring at me like she was evaluating me. She had pretty, graceful features, and a dangerous expression. But eventually a faint smile crossed her lips.

I feel kind of like she’s got me in her sights…

Feeling the uncomfortable chill of a bad hunch, I walked straight up to the counter, and, holding up the request sheet, I asked, “Excuse me. Is there a mage by the name of Liella here? It sounds like she’s been staying here for the past two weeks?”

The innkeeper seemed to know her name.

“Ah, if you’re looking for her—” Then the innkeeper looked slightly to the right of me, past my shoulder.

The next moment—

“Yo, girlie. What’s up? Hm?”

A young woman suddenly threw her arm around my shoulders, talking to me like we were already friends.

When I turned to look, the young woman who had caught my eye before was suddenly standing beside me. Her pink hair was tied up behind her head, and she was wearing a robe. There was no questioning the fact that she was a mage.

“…I’ve just got a bit of business with a mage named Liella.”

“Is this about the request that was posted on the bulletin board?”

“…You know a lot about it.”

I was a little surprised.

She nodded brashly. “Of course I do. Because it’s my request.”

“…………”

“I am Liella. First off, let’s shake hands!”

“…Um, I’m Elaina… Nice to meet you…?”

I was confused, but Liella grabbed my hand. As she shook it, she said, “Now you and me are friends.” Then her hand clapped down sharply on my shoulder. “I’ve got great expectations for your work.”

Without a word, I stared down at the papers in my hands.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Liella.”

“I’m looking for some help.”

“Please, help me—”

The papers, covered in earnest, desperate appeals, had apparently been written by this person.

“…………”

“Hey, hey, what’s this, bestie? Don’t look so intense! Eh-heh-heh!” Liella chuckled.

“…………”

So I’ve already graduated from “friend” to “bestie”…

She’s got no sense of personal space…

“So what should we do, bestie? Head out now for the Ruins of Voght? I’m ready to go anytime.”

“…………”

According to the information I had gotten at the bread stall, the Ruins of Voght were in a secluded area, far enough away that it would take about three full days to get there, even traveling by broom. It was a troublesome distance to travel at the drop of a hat. In my opinion, it would be a real pain.

“No, leaving right now wasn’t what I—”

“All right, tomorrow morning, then! Let’s meet in front of the main gates.”

“Uh-huh… Well, in that case…”

“Great, it’s decided! Thanks a ton, bestie.”

Then she took my hand and gave me a strong handshake as she cheered with great joy. “Yaaay!” Here was Liella, with her boundless—or should I say, dizzying—cheer.

The longer I looked at her, the more I felt she was quite unlike the girl who had written the pages that were posted on the bulletin board.

“Does she have multiple personalities…?”

I think it’s safe to say that it was perfectly natural for such words to spill from my mouth.

The following day…

I opened my eyes in my room at the inn. As the sun rose in the sky, I crawled out of bed, and after some light stretching, washed my face, and got dressed. That was about when I realized, Ah, come to think of it, we never agreed on a meeting time, did we…?

But immediately afterward, I realized, Well, who cares?

I felt really bad for thinking it, but the girl I had encountered the day before was very, very easygoing, and because she was like that, I could easily imagine her arriving at the gates with a grin, saying that she had left her inn whenever she felt like it. So I decided selfishly that I could also leave my inn whenever I felt like it, and I took my time getting ready, then left at my leisure.

“…………”

As I was heading toward the gates, a thought occurred to me.

Liella would be my companion, the person traveling with me on the road, for the next few days.

Even though there was no need for me to become her “bestie,” as she’d called me, it still probably wasn’t a bad idea to close the distance between us a little bit.

I ought to make an effort to meet her halfway.

“Oh?”

Just as the cafés and other businesses around me were beginning to open, I made it to the area near the city gates.

Unexpectedly—which is rude of me to say—Liella had already arrived.

“…………?”

I cocked my head.

She looks completely different from yesterday.

Her clothes and appearance hadn’t really changed, but she seemed like a totally different person. The day before, she had been overflowing with confidence; now she looked anxious and forlorn.

…Maybe she’s been waiting a really long time?

If that’s the case, I was wrong to dally.

“Sorry I’m late.”

I called out to her while I was still walking.

She made eye contact with me and let out a quiet, “Ah!” Fidgeting with her own hair, she answered me nervously, “N-no… I also just got here…”

What is with this reaction? She’s like a blushing bride.

Has our relationship moved from besties to sweethearts…?

“Yaaay!”

I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I thrust one hand up in the air, matching the energy the other girl had demonstrated the day before.

I was going for a high five.

“…Huh?” She stared at me blankly for a moment, gazing up at the hand that was raised in the air. Eventually, she hesitantly touched it. “Ah, y-yaaay…?”

Stiffly, she went on, “Looking forward to working with you…”

Then she bowed once, very deeply.

…………

I don’t understand…this relationship…

She was close yet far away, far away yet close; a girl who maintained a vague, indistinct sense of distance, like a shimmery haze.

After exchanging a tentative high five, she stared fixedly at me, pulled a thick memo pad out of her pocket and opened it up, then looked back and forth between my face and the memo pad.

And then—

Finally, in a reserved tone, she asked me a question.

“Um, I met you yesterday, is that right? You are the mage who accepted my request. Your name was, let’s see—Elaina, is it?”

She spoke like it was our very first time ever meeting.

It goes without saying that I was astonished.

“Do you have multiple personalities…?”

So, I asked her that.

She shook her head slowly.

“Well, yes and no.”

She gave me a vague, indistinct answer.

Then we left the city, and from where I had positioned her on the back of my broom, Liella told me about herself.

According to Liella, at the moment, she had two personalities existing in one body.

I ought to have been surprised to hear such a thing, but I accepted it without question. I figured it meant that the person who had posted to the Cooperation Circle was the same girl I had just put on the back of my broom. And that the one I had met the day before must be her other personality.

“The personalities change at midday. Generally, I’m me until about three in the afternoon. After three o’clock, I become the girl you met yesterday. The two of us split the time that we’re awake exactly, so that’s when we swap.”

“I see.”

For convenience, let’s call them Morning Liella and Evening Liella.

Morning Liella was the comparatively calm personality. She wasn’t very animated, her voice was quiet, and she didn’t seem to have much confidence.

But what an extraordinarily strange arrangement that is.

While I was taking us by broom to a nearby settlement, I asked her, “Have you been like this since birth?”

“No.” She quickly shook her head. “I became like this two years ago. Until then, there was not another version of me inside me.”

“Two years ago?”

“Yes. Ever since then, she and I have been traveling, heading for the Ruins of Voght.”

“But it sounds like it’s way off the beaten path, in the middle of nowhere, right?”

“Seems that way—”

“What do you want there?”

I looked over my shoulder at her, and Liella frowned uneasily.

“I don’t even know all the details, but the Ruins of Voght are apparently where she was born.”

“‘She’?”

“The other one, who you can talk to after three o’clock.”

“…………”

Her personality had been split for the past two years, and the other one had her own hometown.

Is that what she is saying?

To put it another way, it wasn’t a case of multiple personalities so much as a complete stranger hijacking her body in the afternoons. At least, that was the sense that I was getting.

Yes and no—I was starting to see part of the reason she had told me that when we were standing in front of the city gates.

“Elaina, do you know anything about cursed weapons?” Liella asked me.

Cursed weapons?

I can’t say that I’ve never heard anything about them.

As I nodded, I answered, “They’re a type of weapon that burden the user with some major disadvantage in exchange for obtaining great power, right?”

It was only natural to expect some sort of drawback to accompany the acquisition of great power, after all. I had heard of cursed weapons that, for example, sapped the life of anyone who picked them up, and always returned, no matter how many times they were thrown away.

“That’s right.” Liella nodded.

“So, what about them?”

“Well, that’s the true identity of the sword that I wear at my side,” she said, tracing the hilt with her fingertip.

Well, then what kind of extra effect does it have?—I nearly asked, but then realized I didn’t need to.

“Strictly speaking, I’m not Liella.”

After we reached three o’clock in the afternoon, Evening Liella told me that.

Sitting on the back of my broom with her arms and legs crossed, her attitude seemed terribly brazen as she spoke to me.

“I became one with her two years ago, yeah, and we’ve been traveling ever since.”

“So that means that the morning version of her is going along with you for your homecoming?”

“She’s got nothing else to do.”

“Oh?”

“Like, she can’t exactly do whatever she wants so long as her sword is cursed, right?”

“…Is there no way to break the curse?”

“Once I make it home, I can return to normal.”

“Ah…”

So, at the end of the day, whether or not she has anything else to do, Morning Liella has no choice but to accompany the cursed sword on its way home, is that it?

“So, what kind of curse do you carry?”

“Once someone touches me, I always come back, no matter how many times they throw me away, and possessing me shortens their life span, and, as you can see, they’re taken over by a different personality in the afternoons.”

“You’re like a whole cluster of curses all in one sword.”

“Stop it, I’m blushing! Eh-heh-heh.” Liella chuckled.

It wasn’t a compliment…

After that, Liella and I continued our conversation as we flew over the landscape on my broom.

That was how me and my plus-one—or maybe it was plus-two—started our short journey of several days.

Strictly speaking, Liella did not have a split personality. The sword’s personality just took over in the afternoons. I’m not certain that was the reason why, but I did know for sure that the person known as Liella was two different people between morning and night, without the slightest trace of the other remaining.

For example, even when it came to something as trivial as food preferences, Morning Liella and Evening Liella were so different it was almost funny.

“Bestie. There’s something that I want you to make absolutely sure of when you’re having dinner with me for the next few days.”

We were on the road headed for the Ruins of Voght. On the first day we had devoted ourselves to flying over fields on my broom, and by the time the sun had sunk in the sky, we had arrived at a village.

For dinner, I ended up cooking for the both of us in our lodgings, but Evening Liella was crabby.

“Something you want me to make sure of?”

What’s that? I tilted my head questioningly, and she answered with a single word.

“Mushrooms,” she said.

“Mushrooms?” I lowered my gaze.

Dinner that night was a simple stew and plain bread. I detested mushrooms, so I hadn’t put any in.

I thought it was a pretty good dinner. “Is there something wrong with this?” I tilted my head again.

In response, Evening Liella said, “I just love mushrooms, that’s all.”

“Huh.”

“I want you to put mushrooms in the food every night from now on.”

“Huh…”

“C’mon, do it for me, bestie.”

I received that request from Evening Liella. Well then, at breakfast the next morning, how do you suppose Liella behaved?

“Hm…”

After glaring at her memo pad, looking extremely serious and maybe a little upset, the girl sitting across from me lowered her eyes to her breakfast.

Breakfast was yesterday’s leftovers. But, assuming Liella would probably be displeased again, I had gone ahead and added some grilled mushrooms only to her portion.

“Is something the matter?” I asked.

Morning Liella looked at me with a sad expression.

“Why is only my portion garnished with mushrooms?”

I had been asked for mushrooms, so I had gotten up early to go mushroom hunting. But Liella was acting awfully strange.

She’s making the same face I do when I square off against mushrooms, isn’t she? Is this some sort of sick game?

Her reaction was hard to pin down.

So I asked her.

“Liella, do you dislike mushrooms?”

“I hate them.”

Well, that was a quick answer.

That was the moment I realized Morning Liella and Evening Liella had completely different food preferences.

“It seems like you and I will get along just fine.”

I took Liella’s hand and responded with a radiant smile.

“Huh…? Um, why are we holding hands…?”

“I also hate mushrooms. I hate them so much, I don’t think they’re really food.”

“Wha…? And yet you tried to make me eat them…?”

Liella looked at me with even more suspicion, like she was thinking that this must be some kind of sick game.

It wasn’t just food preferences. Morning and Evening Liella, of course, acted completely differently toward me.

“Hey, hey, bestie! Hey! Yaaay!”

Now, it was Evening Liella who said nonsense like that. And as she did, she raised both arms on the back of my broom and assumed the high-five position, leading me to wonder dubiously exactly what celebration-worthy thing might have happened. But—

“Oh, nothing worth celebrating really happened, or anything. I just felt like a high five. Yaaay!”

Smack!

Evening Liella forced my hand into the air and slapped it for a high five.

Physically and mentally, she’s dizzyingly forward…

I don’t love it…

“By the way, bestie, listen, how much do you want for your reward?”

“Huh…? I mean, I’m fine with the amount that you originally posted, but…”

“Hey, hey, what’re you doing acting so selfless? You’re helping me make it home, so I figure I can splurge a little.”

“‘Splurge’…?”

“How much did you say the reward was?”

Let’s see, how much was it again?

I pulled the scrap of paper from my pocket and glanced at it to check.

“This much.”

One gold piece. A fairly extravagant amount, given that it’s a reward for three days of assistance.

“Well, I’ll give you double that.”

“It seems like you and I will get along just fine.”

And so on.

For the most part, Evening Liella and I spent most of our time together sitting one behind the other on my broom, engaging in this sort of silly conversation.

However, in contrast, Morning Liella wouldn’t even get on the broom to begin with.

“Since we’re making a special trip, let’s get some merchants to give us a ride, Elaina.”

The Ruins of Voght might have been off the beaten track, but that didn’t mean that we never saw any settlements or traveling merchants along the road to get there. Morning Liella apparently liked to be tossed around with the merchants’ cargo. So the two of us basically traveled by wagon, and switched to walking whenever it seemed like we were straying from the road to the Ruins of Voght.

“You won’t ride the broom?” I asked her.

She nodded and answered, “I like walking better.”

Morning Liella and I maintained more physical and emotional distance. Though that had something to do with the fact that Evening Liella did strange things like yelling “yay!” and stuff at ridiculously close range.

Although that didn’t mean that Morning Liella never talked at all.

As the two of us were walking along, she reminisced about all sorts of things. She even told me extremely candidly about the start of her relationship with the cursed sword—with Evening Liella.

After prefacing it with a disclaimer that her story was not really anything special, she told me, “Two years ago, my job wasn’t going well, I had become alienated from my friends, I was on bad terms with my family, and lots of little unpleasantries like that were piling up. Around that time, I started to just get sick of everything.”

“Mm.”

“While I was going through all that, I just so happened to stop by an antique shop, and, she—this sword was sitting there.”

Liella touched her sword as she spoke.

Apparently, it had been love at first sight.

“I was immediately captivated by her beautiful appearance. From the moment I first saw her in that shop, I was seized by a sense of urgency that told me I had to buy this sword. I was probably cursed from that moment—” Liella laughed.

Then Liella had purchased the sword without any trouble.

She told me that she had been cursed to have her body taken over by the cursed sword during the afternoon hours.

“Still, it’s terribly inconvenient to only be present for half of each day, so I realized that I need to lift the curse quickly.”

Oh, quickly, you say?

“I’m surprised to hear that, considering we’re walking there.”

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at Liella, who chuckled elegantly.

“I like walking.”

But once it got into the afternoon, she suddenly hated walking.

Evening Liella found it bothersome.

“Hey, bestie. So does this mean that she’s been making you walk in the mornings?” As might be expected for someone with co-ownership over a single body, if there was anything strange going on with Liella’s body, Evening Liella noticed right away.

Hey, hey, bestie?

What’s going on here, bestie?

I’m sooo tired, bestie.

My legs are stiff already, like sticks, bestie.

Evening Liella nagged and protested constantly.

I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do about it.

“…I told her not to overdo it, you know?”

“What? So you’re saying the morning girl forced you guys to walk? Really?” Evening Liella narrowed her eyes.

Then she pulled a memo pad out of her pocket, and opened it.

A moment later she nodded, as if in understanding.

“Oh, she really did. It’s written right here—” said Evening Liella.

According to her, the small memo pad that she looked at from time to time while we were conversing was an exchange diary between the two people who shared one body.

She told me that neither of them had any way of knowing what the other was doing once they gave up control over their shared body. After all, the only thing they traded was control of the body, and they couldn’t share memories.

The two women, so close yet so far from one another, had never directly exchanged words or met eye to eye because of this.

So, for each other’s sake, they both left behind written memos, she told me.

“By the way, what did Morning Liella write down?”

“‘We walked a lot from morning until afternoon,’ she said.”

“I don’t suppose she wrote anything else…?”

“You know, it’s a little early, but I think I might go ahead and write her a reply.”

“What are you planning to write?”

“I’m tired today, so I’m going to sleep early.”

“Sarcasm, huh?”

“I hope she gets my point.”

So then, as for how Morning Liella acted the following day—

“…………”

Sitting in her seat at breakfast, Liella read over the memo pad as she always did, looking extremely serious and a little upset. Then she started to eat her meal. She didn’t really seem to understand the intention behind what her evening counterpart had written.

“Hm…”

But as if to say that such notes were no concern of hers, she closed the memo pad and ate her breakfast as normal. I could tell we were going to be riding in carts and walking on and on until three o’clock.

“I just like walking, oh-hoh-hoh.” Morning Liella chuckled.

“Is that so…? You’re not under any strain or anything?”

“Not at all, why?”

“Oh really…” We had been walking continuously from dawn until afternoon. “…But aren’t you a little bit tired?”

“No, not a bit. Oh-hoh-hoh.” Liella chuckled cheerfully.

“Is that so…?”

Apparently, Morning Liella was a surprisingly strong-willed individual.

However, as soon as we made it to three o’clock, when the Liellas changed places, Evening Liella writhed around on the ground yelling, “Waaah, my leeegs!” and, “My mind is so energetic, but my body is super tired!”

Her face creased up as she groaned her complaints. “Ohhh…bestie…carry me…”

I reasoned that Morning Liella had probably been enduring a lot.

So, the following morning, feeling slightly curious, I tried asking Morning Liella again, “You really are straining a little bit, aren’t you?” But Morning Liella stubbornly refused to admit it.

“No, I’m not straining at all, oh-hoh-hoh.” She smiled radiantly.

“Yeah, but in actuality—”

“I’m not straining.”

“But—”

“I’m not.”

“…………”

So stubborn…

I had initially been under the impression that Morning Liella was just a timid, shy girl, but now that we had been together for a few days and she had opened up, I knew that she was unexpectedly strong-willed.

“Ah, Elaina? For breakfast tomorrow, toast will be fine.”

Also, she made a lot of demands about all sorts of stuff.

“Sure, okay.”

With a sigh, I nodded at her, and followed along with Morning Liella all morning.

When the clock struck three, Evening Liella switched in with screams that were getting more exaggerated by the day.

“Uaaaaaagh! My leeeeeegs!”

She rolled around on the ground.

“…Whoa!”

I looked down at her.

Basically, neither Liella nor I had been paying that much attention to the timing of the three o’clock change, so I had started to treat her screaming as pretty much the same thing as an alarm informing me of the time.

Time was constantly moving past us.

This day, as always, I knew that the afternoon had arrived without any need to go out of my way to check the clock.

“Gyaaah!” Evening Liella still continued to roll around indecently on the ground.

I crouched down beside her, and smiled as I always did. “It’s three in the afternoon, huh? Want a snack?”

“Is that all you have to say to your fallen bestie?”

Then, after the two of us—me and the complaining Liella—had a light meal, she and I got on my broom and got back to our journey.

“We got majorly offtrack, huh?”

If we had actually been flying directly toward our destination, we would have arrived at the Ruins of Voght a long time ago. But the fact that Morning Liella was so extremely easygoing had impacted our plans, and it was our fifth night crossing the plains.

We were camping out.

Lying sprawled out next to me, gazing up at the roof of our tent, Liella let out a deep sigh, as if she was basking in the aftertaste of the dinner we had just finished eating.

Following her lead, I, too, gazed up at the tent’s roof, but all I could see was an ordinary piece of cloth blocking my view, nothing interesting.

Even so, Evening Liella was wearing a contented expression.

“My journey will also be over soon, I suppose.”

We’d come quite far on our travels, and we only had a little ways left to go to get to the Ruins of Voght. She must have realized that this would be the end.

Liella turned to look at me and said, “Thanks for looking after me so far, bestie.” As always, she acted like we were very close.

“It’s still early to be thanking me. The last day of our journey is tomorrow.”

“But I probably won’t have a chance to thank you tomorrow.”

“If we keep going at this pace, we’ll probably get to the Ruins of Voght in the evening. You’ll have your chance,” I told her.

“…Probably, yeah.”

In the dim light, I could sense that she was smiling faintly.

The unguarded moments before sleep are the best time for a person to confess the honest feelings that they normally keep hidden, and the way that Liella was acting somehow seemed even more tender than usual.

Maybe her thoughts had turned to her hometown.

“…Voght, what kind of place was it?”

All I knew was that it was in a distant land, far from other human settlements, and that it had been destroyed long ago. So I wondered, what had her home been like?

“It was a small city, deep in the mountains, on the edge of a precipitous cliff.” Evening Liella answered me bit by bit. “The people of Voght built their city on top of a rocky mountain that towered over its surroundings, to keep themselves safe. It was a modest place, but the city flourished deep in the mountains. The people there lived simple, humble lives.”

But it had all been destroyed.

Liella launched into a story from long ago.

Long, long ago.

“A plague spread through the city of Voght.”

Liella told me that it was a dreadful illness.

The infected would bleed from the eyes and forget who they were. They would attack anyone and everyone around them, and then their victims would contract the illness.

The illness, just like a curse, spread unchecked throughout the city.

The source of the plague apparently lay in a lovely, light green flower that had started to grow on the edges of the city’s territory. The flower looked exactly the same as another plant that had been cultivated there for many years. The sole difference was that in the darkness, the toxic flower gave off a green light.

Under a cloudy sky, being fanned by the wind, the flowers looked beautiful, giving off small round balls of light like fireflies, and the people definitely thought that they were special herbs.

The special green flowers were harvested along with other herbs, and presented to the king that very same day. The king was delighted by the green flowers, which were still giving off light even after having been picked.

The herbs were dried, and served to the king as tea.

The king drank the tea with great joy.

The following day—

The king passed away.

“It was probably some kind of sudden mutation. Before the king died in great agony, writhing on the ground with blood pouring from his eyes, not a single person suspected that the green herb was poison. Because they had cultivated a plant that looked basically the same since antiquity.”

“…And then the disease spread from the king?”

Liella nodded.

“It happened so suddenly. In the blink of an eye, our entire history disappeared in a haze of blood.”

And so the city perched high on a mountain was piled high with corpses.

Years passed, with no one the wiser about the city’s destruction. In the present day, the prevailing theory was that Voght had been destroyed by civil war.

However—

“You know a lot about how it was destroyed.”

Even though she had said that she came from Voght, the fact that Liella was able to tell me the true story in such detail made me suspect that she must have been present at the moment of the city’s destruction.

“That’s true, I do.” Evening Liella—or rather, the cursed sword—nodded in the affirmative. “It’s because I was carried out of the city after it was destroyed.”

Perched high on its craggy mountain, the city of Voght became the Ruins of Voght, and after many years had passed, treasure-seeking merchants visited the ruins. The treasure that they retrieved from the ruins turned out to include the very same cursed sword with whom I was conversing at that very moment.

“After that, I wandered around the outside world for a long time. I can’t possibly remember just how long I spent out there. Many swordsmen picked me up, and parted with me.”

“Have you been a cursed sword the whole time, ever since you were at the Ruins of Voght?”

“Eh-heh-heh, guess so.” Evening Liella nodded proudly. “I don’t want to boast, but there was a period of time when I was a big deal in one part of the world. I had quite a reputation as a super annoying cursed weapon that, once taken up, could never be laid down.”

“Wow…”

“But you know, you spend long enough as a cursed sword, and you get bored.”

“Is that how it goes?”

“Yeah, I eventually started to feel like I wanted to go back to the countryside and spend the rest of my days relaxing.”

“You sound like a gangster who’s gotten old and fattened up.”

“Maybe so.”

She smiled slightly, which made me smile, too. After that, in the cramped tent, we had a lively conversation about nothing in particular.

The following day, Morning Liella was staring at her memo pad with a slightly puzzled look on her face.

“Oh, is there something strange written there?” I asked.

“Hm? Well, there’s always strange stuff written here, but—”

For the past few days, the notes left for her had been almost desperate. I WAS WIPED OUT TODAY, SO I’M GOING TO BED EARLY, and, TIRED AGAIN TODAY, SLEEPING EARLY! and, SERIOUSLY, I WAS SO TIRED! and, HEY, HEY, ARE YOU READING THESE?

On the final day, which was today, there was the following entry:

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING.

Just that.

That’s all that was written there.

“No, thank you,” Morning Liella mumbled to the memo pad.

Then, after finishing up a simple breakfast, she and I headed for the Ruins of Voght.

Just as we had for the past several days, on this final day the two of us traveled on foot.

We had talked about all sorts of things on our journey together so far.

Even as we crossed through the forest that led to the Ruins of Voght, we were still making chitchat.

“You’ll be all on your own from tomorrow on, huh?”

“That’s right, I will—” Liella nodded to me. “It’s kind of a strange feeling. I got used to this way of living, where I’m me until three in the afternoon, and become her in the evening.”

“Well, I guess if you live that way for two years, it becomes normal, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. I grew accustomed to it. Starting tomorrow, I suppose I’ll have to get accustomed to a different sort of daily routine—” She let out a sigh. She sounded a little regretful.

I said, “I think you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.”

While I was making this irresponsible declaration, I looked at where we were headed.

At the site of the former city, high up on the mountain.

We were getting very close to the Ruins of Voght.

Deep in the mountains, far from human settlements—

We made it through the rugged forest, and once we climbed the craggy mountain, the Ruins of Voght were there, sure enough, standing quietly before us.

“…………”

The story that no one had visited the ruins for a long time after the city’s destruction seemed to ring true. The top of the rocky mountain was covered in green as far as the eye could see. The city of Voght must have built its houses out of stone. But the structures that had once been houses were now covered with greenery, taken over by ivy and moss over the long years, and most of them had crumbled, fallen, and decayed.

The place was in such ruin that it was no longer possible to even imagine what kind of city it had been.

There were no traces anywhere of its former prosperity.

The road into the city was lined with a lot of flowers. The pretty, light green blossoms swayed back and forth in the gentle breeze like they were shaking their heads.

The whole road was covered in flowers, filling the spaces left by the absence of humans.

I pulled out my watch.

“One minute left until three o’clock,” Liella said. She was gazing at her own watch just the same as I was. She slowly began walking through the field of flowers.

She thrust the sword into the ground, sheath and all.

Then Evening Liella appeared in the field of flowers.

“…………”

Undoubtedly, the scene was not a very good sight to her.

Beneath the cloudy sky, the light green flowers that covered the road were giving off a green glow. Their light illuminated the path. The small, round lights, like fireflies, swayed between us.

If you overlooked the fact that these abundant blossoms were the very thing that had destroyed the city, and judged the sight by appearance alone, it made for a beautiful, whimsical spectacle.

Surrounded by the pretty poison blossoms, I fixed my eyes on Liella.

The clock had struck three.

“We made it.”

When I called out to her, she turned around.

“Looks that way.”

Surrounded by beads of light, her eyes narrowed like it was a little too bright, or like she had just been forcibly awakened.

Evening Liella, who had a slightly different presence to her than usual, then said, “Thanks for looking after me until now,” and bowed slightly.

I shook my head.

“Not at all,” I answered humbly.

I’m happy as long as I get my money.

“But as far as I can tell,” I continued, “well, it doesn’t seem like the curse has lifted, does it? What do you have to do so that Liella can return to normal?”

The curse will lift once you return to the Ruins of Voght. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?

I cocked my head.

“…………”

All I got was silence. I wondered whether my words were really getting through to her. All her attention seemed to be focused on the sword that was stuck in the ground right in front of her.

“Liella?”

I prompted her again.

“…………”

Finally, at long last, she looked in my direction.

But she was gripping the sword in her hand.

“……?”

Why on earth—?

I was about to ask her a series of quick questions, but I blinked, and at that moment, she disappeared from the flower field.

The only thing left where she had been standing were small beads of light drifting upward toward the sky.

And then—

When I realized that each one of those points of light was a flower petal, and then followed those lights upward, lifting my face, I suddenly understood the situation I was in.

Liella was falling from the sky, aiming right at me.

“—Sorry,” she mumbled in an emotionless voice, as she swung her sword down. It glinted as it drew a lovely arc through the air. Though I twisted my body around and dodged the blow just before she fell to earth, I was cornered by the sword-swinging girl.

Her attack, which had failed to hit me, sliced through dozens of flowers.

More beads of light whirled up into the air.

“…What are you doing?” I asked her, as I pulled out my wand.

“Just as I’d expect from my bestie. You dodged it, huh?”

Liella stared at me while swinging the sword again, as if testing the blade, cutting down yet more flowers. Finally, I felt like I had managed to exchange some words with her.

“Sorry, bestie. I’ve been hiding one thing.”

Standing there in front of me was not the boisterous girl I had come to know. We had gotten along so well that I had started to forget that she was not even a human being.

She wasn’t just a person, and she wasn’t just an object—she was a cursed sword.

“My curse can’t be broken just by coming to a place like this.”

Even though she had returned to her birthplace, when afternoon came, the cursed sword had taken over Liella’s body again.

Actually—

I had wondered whether bringing a cursed weapon back to the place where it had originated was really the right way to go about releasing someone from its curse.

Wait, wait.

There ought to be a simpler way.

In fact, to tell the truth, that was something I had realized the moment I learned that she was a cursed weapon.

To get to the point, in other words, that way was—

The cursed sword said it.

“In order to break my curse, you need to kill me.”

“Wai—”

Wait a minute. What are you talking about? Let’s talk this out.

Faster than I could speak up, Liella closed the distance between us, and swung the sword down at me. When I leaped away from her and dodged the attack, she swung the sword sideways after me, and more flower petals scattered to the ground.

It was one narrow escape after another, but I did manage to fire a ball of magical energy at her as a diversionary tactic—hoping to at least break her stance.

“Humph!”

She casually cut the approaching ball of energy in half with a single stroke. The flower petals behind her were struck by the magical energy and gave off light.

“Whoa…”

She can cut them…

I was stunned.

Liella said, “Come on, kill me. Smash me to bits. If you don’t, you’re the one who’ll end up dead.”

She smiled. I didn’t think it was something one should say while smiling. But before I could say anything to that effect, she swung her sword at me again.

Over and over again, she thrust her blade at me.

I dodged it every time, and occasionally retaliated with a spell.

But she cut down my attacks each time with her sword.

“Why don’t we talk for a second…?” I proposed as I dodged and weaved.

Did you really have to attack me all of a sudden?

“What’s that? You’re going to come kill me?”

“What happens if I kill you?”

“If I’m destroyed, the curse will also cease to exist. This girl’s evenings will never be stolen from her again.”

“But your essence will also disappear, won’t it?”

“Yeah, that will happen.”

“Then I don’t want to. Killing you wasn’t part of Liella’s request, after all.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

With a smile, she readied her sword, then swung it at me again.

“That’s all the more reason why you have to do this,” she said. “Because this helpless young girl’s body can’t possibly kill me—”

I shot off a wind spell as I dodged her latest attack. The sudden gust blew through the field of flowers, sending flower petals flying wildly into the air, surrounding Liella with their green light.

But she dodged them easily, and once again closed the distance between us.

We repeated this same sort of exchange many times.

She slashed at me with her sword, I fired off a spell, and she dodged it. We did this again, and again, and again.

“From the moment that the king bled from his eyes and died, our city was done for.”

In the middle of our battle, which seemed to be going nowhere, Liella started to talk to me as she slashed at me. Maybe she’d finally gotten bored, or was longing to do something with her mouth, or maybe she genuinely just loved to chat.

What she told me was the story of the city’s path toward destruction.

“The next person to die after the king was the doctor who had been treating him. Then came the doctor’s family. And after that, friends and acquaintances of the doctor’s family. By the time anyone realized it, the illness had spread throughout the land.”

She told me that at the time, the land was just like hell on earth. She told me this while still slashing at me.

“Some struck their neighbors as they sought help, bleeding from their eyes. Some wrung their own necks, bleeding as they died. Some cried tears of blood as they incinerated their own bodies. People became confused once they contracted the disease, and kept ending their own lives, tormenting themselves and others like that as they did.”

“…Why did they do that?”

“I guess there weren’t many of them who could keep it together once they contracted a disease with no cure, so they started immediately trying to end their lives to escape the suffering.”

“…………”

“But even in a city consumed by panic, there was one human who kept their cool.” She swung the sword, then said, “That person was my owner.”

According to her—

The person who had originally owned Evening Liella—a swordsman who had guarded the king—had just barely managed to hold on to his wits in the midst of the pandemonium.

At the same time, he had realized that no one would be able to help the infected anymore.

So he had taken up his sword.

Intending to at least make their time spent suffering as short as possible, he had gone around killing his own neighbors. One after another, he had cut down the bleeding people.

Their lives had been ended by his hand.

“Why…?”

“You murderer!”

“How dare you hurt my wife?! I’ll kill you!”

“Why are you doing such a terrible thing?”

All of them went on to die by his hand.

One by one, the swordsman murdered all his neighbors who were beset by such anguish.

Not a single person expressed feelings of gratitude. Some pointed their own blades at him and swore to get revenge. Some even resisted to the last of their strength.

“Curse you!”

Time and time again, the swordsman heard those words. Even so, he kept on killing, down to the last man.

Finally, after every other person had laid down life’s burden—

The swordsman tried to kill himself.

That was when he finally realized something.

“The swordsman’s body was already long dead.”

When he looked down, he saw that countless spears and swords had pierced his flesh. The flow of blood had stopped long ago, and without question, his body had already died.

So then, how was his body moving?

The true identity of the entity that was controlling the swordsman’s body—

“It was me.”

That was how the cursed sword—Evening Liella—had come into the world.

“…………”

Before I realized it, her attacks had come to a stop. She was standing in the midst of the little dots of green light, panting and looking up at the sky.

It was cloudy, as it had been before.

Her expression was gloomy enough to rival the cloudy sky.

“After that, I was picked up by a merchant who just happened to visit this city, and got out of here. But I was cursed. After leaving the city, I have no memories for the next several years.”

What she did remember, just barely, was being cursed with a sense of duty to kill everything that she laid eyes on. She remembered being passed from master to master.

She remembered being covered in blood every day.

She remembered living always in a rain of blood, even when the setting changed, or when she changed masters.

“I regained consciousness two years ago. Right around the time I became one with this girl. By then, I had so much blood on my hands that I knew I’d never be able to wash it all off.”

“…………”

“So I decided to die, without delay. I decided to die, and erase my existence from this world.”

“…………”

“I’ll die, as penance for all the people I’ve killed up to now… So please, kill me,” Evening Liella asked, holding out her sword to me.

She seemed to be telling me to destroy it, using magic or some other means.

“I won’t.”

“…………” On the other end of the sword, Evening Liella’s eyes went blank. “How many times do I have to tell you before you understand, bestie? Do we need to cross swords again? Repeat the same actions, over and over again?”

Evening Liella responded with obvious frustration.

But no, no. That wasn’t really what I was trying to say at all.

“I’m saying that I don’t want to destroy that sword, because even if I do, you won’t die,” I said with a sigh.

I stared at the sword she was holding.

It seemed that I simply hadn’t taken a good enough look under the cloudy sky.

“What about that sword is cursed?” I asked.

“—Huh?”

The longer I looked at it, the more obvious it was that the sword being offered to me was cheap, and brand new. It looked like one of the blunt replicas the merchants in the area had been selling.

What on earth is going on?

I looked at Evening Liella again.

She was a young lady with something very mysterious about her. Her age was probably twenty or thereabouts. Her beautiful pink hair was tied up in a ponytail behind her head, and it fluttered in the wind. Her eyes were blue and clear like the midwinter sky. She was wearing a red robe.

Without a doubt, she looked just like Liella.

But something about her features was different.

For example, her hair was just a little bit longer than the real Liella’s. It was pink, but somehow redder than Liella’s. Even in age, she looked ever so slightly older than the real Liella that I knew.

They were similar enough that if I looked at them side by side, they could be mistaken for sisters.

Though they looked almost the same, there was something vaguely different about them, the human and the object.

Their relationship seemed just like the relationship between me and my broom.

“Hello.”

A girl with an easygoing air about her stepped out in front of Evening Liella.

Her name was also Liella.

As a matter of convenience, I had been calling this girl Morning Liella.

“Nice to meet you.”

She smiled gently.

I looked at my watch—my own watch, which showed the accurate time.

It was two thirty in the afternoon.

There were still thirty minutes to go before three o’clock.

“Once we get to the Ruins of Voght, I think she will probably ask you to destroy her,” Liella had told me, while we were traveling.

Early one morning, while the two of us were walking side by side, she had said to me, “It’s unavoidable that the cursed sword wants to eradicate herself.”

Right after we’d departed, Morning Liella had told me about what had happened two years earlier.

She had told me the story of how her evenings had been stolen.

I AM THE ONE WHO HAS STOLEN YOUR EVENINGS. I AM A CURSED SWORD.

One morning, Liella had found these words written on a note near her pillow. She had been growing rather worried that there might be something wrong with her mind, since, for the past few days, she had been dealing with some kind of strange affliction that somehow made it so that she had no memory of anything that had happened in the evening hours.

I HAVE STOLEN YOUR NIGHTS. IN ORDER TO TAKE THEM BACK FROM ME, YOU HAVE TO GET ME BACK TO MY BIRTHPLACE. YOU MUST COOPERATE.

The only thing that Evening Liella even remotely knew was that the place she had been born was some city named Voght, and that was it. She had no clue where the city was, or how many years had gone by since it had been destroyed.

“At any rate, we decided to leave.”

The two of them wandered at random, trying to figure out where Voght might be. The cursed sword took over Liella’s body in the afternoons, while Liella inhabited it in the mornings only, and they traveled around asking people about Voght.

Liella told me that it was a strange feeling.

“Even though my body was supposedly being stolen, it didn’t feel that way at all. The fact is that I’ve been introverted my whole life, the kind of girl who can never manage to say what she wants to say. Until two years ago, I wasn’t treated very well at work, or by my family.”

It wasn’t that she had been shunned by the people around her. But Liella, who rarely expressed her wishes to anybody, told me that she had often been taken advantage of by the people in her life.

She’d had unpleasant jobs foisted onto her.

She’d received cutting remarks when she couldn’t do the work.

Even when she had gotten her work done, she’d been taken for granted.

Liella told me that in those days, she had endured that pitiful situation.

However—

Around the time that she’d first had her body hijacked by the cursed sword—

Around the time that she’d realized she was lacking any memories of her evenings, Liella also noticed that the way the people around her behaved toward her was changing.

Her boss, who had abused Liella by telling her that useless girls like her ought to hurry up and quit, started sucking up to her instead. Her father, who had lost control of his drinking and turned to violence, was driven out of the house before she knew it.

Once she had the cursed sword in her possession, the bad things in her life had started to turn around.

It was clear that someone was taking care of them.

EVERYONE AROUND YOU IS A REAL PIECE OF CRAP.

Because these frank words were written on her memo pad.

She heard the story from the people around her at a later date.

The boss, who had foisted so much work on Liella that it was practically harassment, had apparently been crushed by Liella’s own hand. But Liella herself had no memory of this.

And Liella’s father, who had been addicted to alcohol, had been thrown out of the house by Liella’s own hand one night. But of course, she had no such memory.

In that way, the other personality that dwelled in the cursed sword went on to eliminate all the difficulties from her life, using methods that were quite unlike anything Liella’s original personality would have employed.

If they had stayed in her hometown, somebody was sure to notice that she had two completely different personalities by day and by night. And there was also the possibility that Evening Liella might get more violent than strictly necessary.

Ultimately, Liella decided to leave.

If she never traveled to the Ruins of Voght, she would never get her nights back as long as she lived.

So, she had set off on a journey to find the birthplace of the cursed sword, trying not to make any particular acquaintances along the way.

“But to tell you the truth, I don’t want the cursed sword to go away.”

Even though her nights were lost to her, her time with the cursed sword had been very, very meaningful to her.

“So, I just have to talk to her, one time—” Liella had said.

I thought back to the day I had first met her.

I had found Evening Liella when I had been enticed by the idea of the bulletin board known as the Cooperation Circle in the middle of town. Sure enough, the reward she was offering was good enough for me, so I had decided to accept her commission.

But there had been one other deciding factor.

I had felt certain that this was a request only I could fulfill.

The requirements for her request were written in this way.

“I’M LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN CAST A SPELL TO TURN AN OBJECT INTO A HUMAN.”

Morning Liella took the hands of Evening Liella, which resembled her own so closely. “Nice to meet you. I’m glad I finally have the chance,” she said.

Liella had set the time on her watch just one hour ahead. It was actually currently two thirty in the afternoon. It wasn’t time for them to swap yet.

“I knew that you, the cursed sword, were trying to get rid of yourself, to destroy yourself.”

Morning Liella had decided on one thing before reaching this place.

“I decided that if the method for lifting the curse would kill you, I wanted to stop you from going through with it. And I decided that if you, the cursed sword, were trying to disappear for my sake, I was going to stop you.”

One way or another—

Morning Liella needed to have a conversation with her.

That was why, on our journey to reach this place, I had been teaching Morning Liella magic. I’d been teaching her the spell to turn an object into a human.

Because of that, it had taken a little extra time to reach our destination, but, well, since they had successfully met face-to-face like this, I decided to call it a win.

“This is my place of death. Do you understand, little girl?”

“I do not.”

“I have to die here.”

“I don’t want you to die yet.” Morning Liella’s voice grew just a little stronger. “Why do you have to die?” she demanded. “Because you hurt a lot of people?”

“…………”

“In that case, from now on the two of us will go around making amends. So please don’t die here.”

“…………”

“Don’t die and leave me, please.”

“But wait, what does it matter to you—?”

“I have long since become a part of you. And you are a part of me. So if you’re going to apologize, I’ll go with you.”

“…………”

“Besides, it might not seem like it, but I’ve been enjoying these days splitting the time with you.”

Evening Liella, who had been cursed and detested since the day she was born, had continued to torment herself all her days with the idea that she had to die.

Even though not every human had wished that for her.

“Come with me, won’t you?” asked Morning Liella.

Surely those were words that she had been longing to say.

She must have wanted to talk about this directly, face-to-face, and not in writing.

Even as I was teaching her the spell to change an object into human form, Liella had told me time and time again—

“—There are so many things that I want to say to her, but the two of us still haven’t met even once.”

Perhaps the sword felt responsible for changing Liella’s life.

Maybe she was under the impression that she could take responsibility for that by laying down her own life.

But Morning Liella didn’t want that, not in the least.

I told Evening Liella.

I told her what we had talked about the whole time I had been teaching Liella the spell.

“It sounds like Liella wants the two of you to walk together forever.”