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Chapter 322: If Only I Could (8)

I did not know how long I cried. By the time I felt that the emotions clogging my throat and strangling me had loosened even a little, the aroma of tea was already drifting through the room. It was familiar, and one I liked.

“…Do you feel a little better now?”

Who knew? Could I really call this feeling better? I slowly closed and opened my eyes as I regarded the heap of emotions that had diminished slightly, yet still constricted me.

“…A little.”

My throat, hoarse from crying so much, stung.

“I see….”

At my response, the Archmage guided me along, her reaction an odd mixture of disappointment and understanding. When the front of the sofa touched my knees, I immediately understood her purpose.

Following her wishes, I sat down on the sofa already there. The soft leather supported my body.

Rattle.

While I leaned back against the sofa, the Archmage pulled over the trolley that had been left near the door. An elegant tea set and a sparse assortment of refreshments sat upon it.

Only then did I understand the source of the fragrance drifting through the room.

“The butler left it outside the door earlier.”

Then did the butler see me crying too? For an instant, I felt mortified, but I soon gave up. It was far too late to worry about maintaining my dignity—especially after I had already indiscriminately said things I should and should not have in front of the Archmage.

‘What am I supposed to say if she asks me later what all that roleplaying stuff was…?’

My mind grew deeply troubled.

[Don’t worry. I blurred out the things you blurted about your persona without thinking, one way or another.]

But my anxiety was cut short by Wrath’s subsequent words.

‘Blurred them out?’

[You’re a human from another dimension. We can translate writing for you, but conversation doesn’t work that way, so I cast something like translation magic on you. I also added an illusion so no one would realize that the shape of your lips differed from what they heard… Anyway, I filtered those parts out by deactivating the spells here and there. I did well, didn’t I?]

As Wrath’s explanation continued, deep relief, subtle deflation, and a dense surge of irritation filled the hollow place in my heart.

After all, whose fault was it that I had ended up roleplaying without knowing anything? Wasn’t it this bastard’s fault in the first place?

‘This isn’t even giving me the disease and then the cure….’

[Giving you only the disease would be worse.]

I vividly imagined raising my middle finger. I wondered whether images could be conveyed in addition to words, but unfortunately, there was no response, so I could not confirm it.

Pourrr.

Meanwhile, whether I was in the midst of an existential crisis or not, the Archmage carefully poured the tea. It possessed a jade-clear color and a fragrant aroma. I recognized at once what the tea had been brewed from.

Those were the tea leaves the people of the Great Forest had packed in abundance for me—the same ones the Archmage had once brewed exclusively for me.

“…Would it be all right if I served you tea?”

Yet she hesitated for a moment over the cup she had filled. Why? There was no need to think hard about the reason.

I remembered a teacup that had once cracked.

“…Of course.”

Fortunately, the new cup had no cracks. As long as I was careful, no new ones would appear.

I accepted the cup cautiously, determined not to let the same thing happen again. A deep fragrance I had failed to notice back then lightly tapped at the tip of my nose. It was much better this way.

Sip.

I savored the aroma for a moment before bringing the cup to my lips and drinking. It was not hot enough to burn my tongue. Tea leaves steeped for just the right amount of time in water shy of boiling sweetly caressed my mouth before slipping down my throat.

It felt as though both my body and my heart were growing warm.

“You may tell me more.”

When I had finally emptied the whole cup, the Archmage spoke. Pourrr. The tea flowing into the empty cup still carried its warmth.

“…That’s….”

I hesitated over that warmth. I could remember to some extent what an ugly spectacle I had just made of myself and how harshly I had spoken, which only deepened my reluctance.

“Water poured into a vessel usually spills when it exceeds the amount the vessel can hold. But even if no more is poured in and nothing else spills, the vessel remains full. It will stay that way forever unless it is emptied.”

“…If it isn’t spilling, is there any need to empty it?”

“Well… A full vessel spills if jostled only slightly, and it overflows if even a little more is added. Do you truly believe there is no need to empty it despite that?”

The emotions I had just poured out had granted me the slightest bit of breathing room. That was why I had intended to decline, but the Archmage held a different opinion.

Rather than place a chair opposite me, she sat beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and rested a hand on my back. Despite my usual aversion to most physical contact, her touch somehow did not feel unpleasant.

“It is all right. I am older than you, and I have enough composure to share it with someone else. Besides, I have matters of my own for which I must atone to you.”

“…….”

I nearly denied that she had anything to atone for, but stopped when our eyes met.

“So I am all right. But are you? Are you truly all right now?”

No, had I really chosen to stop? Or had the words simply caught in my throat?

“…I….”

I felt my way through some of the words I had tossed out indiscriminately to vent my grief. I recalled a few of the wrongs I had pushed onto them in the heat of the moment.

“I….”

That was, well…

It was….

“…I’m not all right.”

Perhaps—perhaps they really did owe me an apology. Maybe not objectively, but emotionally, perhaps they did.

Because just as I had hurt them, they had hurt me as well. They surely had.

“I want to say that I’m all right, but I just can’t bring myself to be.”

Yes. Let’s admit it. I think they truly did hurt me.

No, not merely think. They did.

“It hurts so much.”

At last, I acknowledged that truth.

Even if none of it could have been helped, their misunderstanding—and the coercion born of that misunderstanding—had tormented me terribly. I understood that the existence of a demon made it difficult to trust me, but I had truly hated the uncompromising righteousness that would not even allow me to explain myself… Even if my own mistake had caused it in the first place, the unfairness of it had wounded me deeply. At last, I genuinely accepted all of that.

“It hurt so much….”

With that, one of the knots that had done nothing but grow inside me finally came undone.

It had been a long time since I felt such relief.

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“May I… ask your true name?”

Perhaps the Archmage saw my expression and thought I needed time to collect myself, for she waited a little before asking.

“I ask because I do not think it would be right to keep calling you the Demon Knight. You need not tell me if you do not wish to.”

I blinked my swollen eyes and thought for a moment.

“…It isn’t that I don’t want to tell you, but I can’t. It would cause trouble if the demon heard my name.”

“Ah… So that was an issue. I understand.”

If I followed my heart, I wanted to give her my name too. But if I spoke it here, the demon might hear. I fidgeted with my teacup as I thought of the demon embedded somewhere in my mindscape.

“Then… what would you like me to call you?”

“…I’m not sure.”

Should I give her the nickname my friends used? No. Hearing it would undoubtedly make me think of them constantly.

To spare myself that longing, I discarded the best option. The same went for Chilseong, Star, Constellation, and the other names derived from my old nickname.

“Just… call me Adventurer.”

That left me with nothing suitable to be called. I considered giving her my pen name, but saying that name felt like it would lead to truly miserable hardship, so I swerved in another direction.

Adventurer. It was the most common label for a player in games.

“Adventurer… you say?”

“Would Traveler be better?”

The Archmage looked somewhat troubled, but there was nothing I could do about it. I might be someone engaged in creative work, but I was not confident in my ability to invent names without a dictionary or a naming site.

“…For now, I understand.”

In the end, the Archmage accepted that painfully generic appellation.

“In return, try to choose a more proper nickname later.”

She had only accepted it for the moment.

At her choice of the word “later,” I needlessly rolled my eyes. We did not know how the Temple would respond. Would that later ever come for us?

“…Did I not tell you?”

When I refined that question somewhat and conveyed it to her, she looked disconcerted. “Ah, there was no opportunity to tell you.” Her discomposure did not last long.

“You need not worry about that.”

The Archmage told me the outcome of the negotiations she and Meister had secured. It was not entirely unexpected, but I was truly delighted to hear it had been settled.

With this, I could openly live among humans. Whether I remained with them or not.

“Ah… And a meal will arrive shortly… The Young Lord learned that you skipped breakfast and personally asked that you eat, so please do.”

“…Is that so?”

“Yes. The Young Lord regards you as the city’s savior and has been looking after you in various ways. I was also told that it would not be too late to speak later and that you should rest comfortably. So do not concern yourself about staying here, and get plenty of rest.”

The reappearance of the Young Lord, whom I had forgotten about, flustered me slightly, but I soon responded calmly. I did not know what conversation Faust had shared with the Young Lord, but I remembered the demon saying that it had ended well.

Whatever else might be true, that bastard was obsessively attentive to this body’s well-being, so surely it had not been an empty claim. And even if it had, there was nothing I could do immediately.

Under that faith that was not quite faith, I decided to set the matter of the Young Lord aside for a while. Now that my accumulated emotions had been released, even my thoughts about such things moved with remarkable stability.

“Then… may I ask again? About the things that have been difficult for you all this time… or the things that hurt you….”

But as soon as food was mentioned, I abruptly grew hungry. Perhaps the emptiness left where those emotions had been made me feel it even more keenly.

I reached for the refreshments I had not touched. Crunch. The cookie crumbled in my mouth, very sweet from what must have been a lavish amount of sugar.

“Of course, I have always kept the things for which I owe you an apology in my heart, but I suspect there are many matters I overlooked without ever realizing it.”

“…Nothing in particular.”

Crunch, crunch. I slowly shifted my gaze as I ate, covering my mouth so no crumbs would fly. This “nothing in particular” meant something different from the one before.

“…Is it too late to apologize?”

“That isn’t what I meant. It’s just… nothing comes to mind right now.”

There had been nowhere I could bring myself to voice the grief that had accumulated layer by layer, so I had done nothing but label all of it “unavoidable.”

And now, after Daniel and the Archmage’s successive blows, I realized that had been wrong—that it would be better to voice it.

“I don’t have the ability to sort through, all at once, the feelings I tried so hard to turn away from because dwelling on them hurt too much.”

But did that mean I could immediately assign names to everything now that I had removed the label? They were things I had turned away from and ignored so that I could endure somehow. They were knots tangled and twisted together in countless layers.

…If I carelessly pried them open, I would also have to confront every mistake I had made at once.

“Ah… I was inconsiderate. I apologize.”

“I wasn’t asking you to apologize for that….”

I hesitantly chewed another cookie.

“…I’m sorry too. For harshly rejecting your kindness… and for the many times I behaved rudely.”

“Those were not things you did because you wished to, were they?”

“Even so, they may have hurt you.”

“If you put it that way, I cannot even begin to tell where my apologies should start.”

“…Were those not unavoidable circumstances?”

“You were the first to apologize because I could still have been hurt despite that justification.”

“…….”

That was… true, wasn’t it? Unable to find any way to refute her response, I put another cookie into my mouth. Crunch. Only after putting it in did I realize it was the last one.

The Archmage looked at the empty plate and smiled with satisfaction.

“I have rarely… well, I cannot say never, but rarely thought you rude, and I was never hurt by it, so it is all right. You need not apologize.”

“…Even so.”

“If it truly troubles you, then please refrain from doing so in the future.”

That went without saying. At my reaction, the Archmage smiled faintly and added one more remark.

“It would also be nice if you softened your manner of speaking.”

Judging by her expression, it was probably a joke. Considering the boundless insolence I had displayed until now, there was likely some sincerity behind it, but it was still the kind of jest where she would be pleased if I complied and unbothered if I did not.

“I will. No… I shall.”

But I was not about to let this opportunity pass.

I calmly corrected myself and adopted a more deferential manner of speech. Two seconds later, the Archmage’s smiling expression filled with shock. Why two seconds? I suspected her mind had briefly ground to a halt and failed to process what she heard.

“Y-y-y-yes. Do that.”

But what could she do about it? She was the one who told me to change the way I spoke.

Watching the Archmage malfunction, I drank my tea with a satisfied heart. Warmth spread all through me.