6
“—Haaaaah.”
Moving away from the pipe organ–shaped metia, Subaru took a deep breath.
Wiping away the sweat on his brow, the expression of all his worries and nervousness, he suddenly realized his legs were trembling and his jaw was tensed, and he hoped that his current mess of emotions had not come out in his voice.
“Ahhh, that was rough…”
Subaru sighed as he rolled his neck at the unexpectedly heavy exhaustion.
Honestly, he had lost himself in talking partway through and could not remember the details of what he’d said. It was not all gone, but parts of it were fuzzy.
Had he actually conveyed everything that had been in the draft note that Anastasia had given him?
“Huh?”
As he contemplated what he had done, he suddenly realized that the room was awfully quiet. The people who had been watching in the room, Anastasia and everyone else, were silent.
“ ”
Anastasia, Garfiel, Julius, and Al had all been watching, and somewhere during the broadcast, Ricardo had joined them. They were a group not known for being short on words normally, and yet they were all silent.
Subaru could only assume he must have really badly screwed up the broadcast.
“—Natsuki.”
“Ugh! I’m sorry! I swear I’ll do better next time!”
“Huh? Why are you apologizing? You really are an oddball.”
All wound up from self-doubt, Subaru reflexively started to apologize, but Anastasia just laughed in confusion as she elegantly touched her hand to her cheek.
“It’s a bit of a strange question to ask after that, but are you by any chance—?”
“Am I what?”
“A former con artist or something?”
“Where’d that come from?! As you can see, I’m just your average, everyday schoolboy… Well, I guess in a sense, I’m not even that!”
“Ah, that’s not what I mean. I didn’t mean it as an insult. The way you wound them up was just too perfect… Bringin’ the audience down low and then liftin’ them up to a new high. You had the process down cold like you’ve been doing it for years,” Anastasia said, waving her hand as she nodded in a combination of admiration and praise.
“Huh?” Subaru cocked his head. “I don’t know anything about that. Honestly, my head went fuzzy somewhere in the middle, and I had no clue what I was saying. I only remember up to when the note started looking blurry, and I stopped trying to read from it.”
“You pretty much totally ignored my draft from that point on. And you even started going on some tangent that was totally different from what we discussed beforehand. Do you have any clue how much I was worrying watching you from over here…?”
“Ugh… I’m really sorry about that! But wasn’t it basically the gist of the draft? If it was that far off, you would have stopped me, right?”
The note that he had forgotten in the heat of the moment had been filled with Anastasia’s negotiation techniques—and the little mood-lightening jokes and witty remarks that Subaru had put in to clear away the fear the people of the city were feeling. Even if he had messed up reading it back, it should be fine as long as he had hit the high notes—
“Not much point in dwelling on it now, but you didn’t really even touch on anything we wrote down. Not even a little bit.”
“Eh?”
Anastasia breezily denied Subaru’s optimistic view.
Subaru stiffened, and he looked around the room for confirmation from the others. But the four other people all confirmed what Anastasia had said in their own ways.
“Lady Anastasia is correct, Subaru,” Julius said, stepping out and tilting his chin austerely. “Your speech was certainly not what we discussed beforehand. In particular, I was of a mind to press you on why you did not reveal that you had defeated Sloth until near the end, when that was supposed to be shared early on.”
“Wait, really?! If I didn’t even say that much, then I was just some nobody for most of that! If it was that bad, you should have stopped me! Even if it messes up the mood, if you thought it would be better to start over, then you should have stopped me!”
“Start over? That would be absurd.”
Subaru could only judge that he had screwed up badly enough to ruin the whole point of the broadcast, but Julius shook his head with a serious look on his face.
It almost seemed like he was feeling some sort of respect for Subaru.
“It was a splendid speech.”
“…Huh?” Subaru stared at him dubiously.
“Forgetting the contents of the draft was not a problem at all. You managed to come through even better than we could have hoped when you put it in your own words. I have nothing but praise for your performance. I cannot help but see in you the same Subaru I witnessed during the battles with the White Whale and Sloth.”
Julius hailed him with praise that was far more than he deserved. It was unlike him, and Subaru could sense a silent excitement radiating from the Finest of Knights. And when he realized that, it immediately felt absurd to him.
“Don’t make fun of me. For a while now, it’s felt like your jokes aren’t funny at all.”
“If it sounds like a joke to you, then it is because you think too little of yourself. But that is also part of why you were able to give the speech that you did. That was something that no one other than you could have done.”
“You really are just taunting me, aren’t you?”
Julius’s unbending stance even in such an urgent situation annoyed Subaru. He was used to Julius’s sarcastic jabs, but this was not the time for another pointless back-and-forth. If he had screwed up the speech, then they needed to do something else quickly.
“That was supposed to quell everyone’s fears, so it would be a problem if it made everyone even more unsure. Someone else should do the next one…”
“There should be limits to how self-deprecating you can be, right? It’s not like anyone else enjoys hearing it,” Anastasia cut in, annoyance blazing in the backs of her eyes as she glared sharply at Subaru. “It looks like you really don’t remember it at all, so I’ll come out and say it for you—your speech was perfect. Much better than what I thought up. You’re a natural demagogue.”
“The lady’s right! Yeaaah, that was sure somethin’! You really have a way with words! That was smooth, Bro! With a gilded tongue like that, you could get all the ladies or talk a kid out of his snack.”
“I would never take candy from a baby! And ‘demagogue’ sure doesn’t sound like a compliment, either!”
Subaru’s eyes flared at Anastasia and Ricardo’s explanations. But the two of them just glanced at each other and then shrugged, seemingly without any ill will. It half looked as if they had practiced their timing, but they also did not seem to be messing around with Subaru.
It was clear from Garfiel’s expression, too, from the way he was holding his breath and peering at Subaru’s face.
“What did you think, Garfiel? How was the broadcast?”
“…That’s why you’re my general. I wasn’t wrong to follow you out of the Sanctuary. That’s what I thought.”
“…Your expectations are always just a little bit too heavy for me…”
“But it’s ’cause of what you always do to earn them,” Garfiel said, breaking into a toothy grin.
“Then I guess I should quit trying to escape responsibility,” Subaru said, scratching his head. Everything that had happened since he started speaking into the metia still didn’t really feel real. “I sort of feel like I said something along those lines during the speech, too.”
“You did.” Anastasia laughed, rubbing her scarf. “If anything, I’m worried you inspired them too much, and people might try to do something unwise. Even we felt the effects up here, thanks to Wrath’s ability.”
“When you put it that way, it sounds more and more like a lie… If it were true, that would be some blessing of eloquence–level performance,” Subaru joked as he looked over at Al, who had started moving to the corner of the room at some point.
Noticing his gaze, Al silently looked away and made a point of slumping his shoulders. Al had been against the broadcast, so if he was reacting like that, then that had to mean Subaru really had pulled it off like everyone was saying.
“It will be a big help if the people can calm down a little bit now. Is there anything else we can do?”
“If you want anything more than that, all that’s left is to get rid of the source of all this. They’re gonna know we’re coming, after your great performance.”
“Even so, they’re still just going to do whatever they have planned out. I guess we’ll have to count on their irrational thinking when it comes to that, but we have to try to settle things as quickly as possible.”
Regardless of how well the broadcast had gone, the cultists still had the ability to destroy the city.
—We have to kick their asses for sure this time before they can do what they came to do.
“And in order to do that, we need to take down all four control towers at the same time, huh?”
“There are four Archbishops and two powerful people helping them. There’s the demi-beast problem to deal with, too, so we’re gonna have to figure out how to divide our forces to deal with ’em.”
The key to saving the city was capturing all four control towers simultaneously, which meant concentrating all their fighting power in one group like they had during the first raid on city hall would be hard. If they targeted the control towers one by one, then one of the other Archbishops could just open the floodgates.
Subaru could not imagine them managing to successfully pull off that gamble four times in a row.
There were six people on the enemy’s side. Meanwhile, Crusch was down for the count. They were low on cards and pieces to play—
“Then how about adding a trump card to the field?”
“ ”
As Subaru was going over the numbers they had, a voice suddenly interrupted him. Spinning around, he saw a figure standing in the doorway. Subaru’s eyebrows rose, and then he exhaled and flashed a wry smile.
“Disappear for a few hours and now you think you’re a trump card?”
“Certainly not in comparison to the man who took on the task of addressing the masses… And here I was, sure that I didn’t have any heroes for friends. I guess that was an oversight on my part.”
“I don’t think that really fits me, either.” Subaru shrugged and walked over and gave the newcomer a high five.
As he saw their lighthearted exchange, Garfiel’s eyes gleamed.
“Bro!! You were okay?!”
“I was running for dear life, but somehow I managed to get out alive.”
It was Otto Suwen, their missing friend—looking worse for wear but seemingly uninjured.
Otto held his hand up for another high five as Garfiel dashed over, but Garfiel leaped into him at full speed, wrapping his arms around Otto’s waist.
“Wah?! Wh-what?! Wh-what is it, Garfiel?! Were you really that happy to…? Owww! Ow, ow, ow! Too strong!”
“Aahhh, thank goodness… Not that I was worried about you at all, though…!”
“Y-you aren’t very convincing… Ngh…”
Just like with Subaru, Garfiel rejoiced with all his might at reuniting with Otto. After a little bit, and after Garfiel released him, Otto steadied his breath and then flashed a wry smile.
“Still, though, I’m glad to see the both of you safe. You are both far more stubborn and resilient than I am, so I wasn’t too worried.”
“You don’t say. Actually, I wasn’t that worried about you, either. I wonder why?”
“Hard to say. I guess that’s just Otto’s natural virtue?”
“Come on, it doesn’t have to be as much as Garfiel, but you should have been at least a little worried about me, Mr. Natsuki! I was running around headlong into this dangerous emergency situation all by myself!”
But there was not really much weight to what he said, either, since he actually had managed to join back up with everyone safely. Still, though, as they were enjoying their happy reunion, Anastasia broke in, clapping her hands and saying, “Yeah, yeah.”
“What a relief, what a relief. I’m glad you made it out alive, Otto. There’s a lot I’d like to ask about what you were doing during all this, but before that…” Her tone shifted as she looked Otto in the eye. “What you said earlier sounded rather important… Would you care to explain what exactly you meant by that?”
“You mean the trump card, right? It’s quite simple, really. I brought someone with me, though if he’d entered first, the celebration of my safe return would have gotten completely drowned out.” Otto explained the sad fact as he stepped aside, clearing the way.
Taking that as a sign, the person who had been patiently waiting on the other side started walking in. And when that person stepped into the room—
“—My apologies for being late.”
Just that one line was enough for them to feel like a whole army had just shown up at the gates.
“ ”
It almost felt like a breeze was blowing, fanning a flame that had suddenly ignited before them.
What’s more, he really was that strong. The fighting power they had been desperate for, the ultimate support, had finally arrived, and it set their hearts ablaze.
“Reinhard van Astrea of the Sword Saint lineage— It is late, but allow me to join you as well.”
Saying that, the fire burning bright, the Sword Saint announced his desire to join the battle.
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