The answer to my question was given not long after.
“She said to pass it to you, that it would be helpful… She said she doesn’t have the qualification to use it yet.”
“What help?”
“I don’t know, she said you’d go anyway even if I tried to stop you.”
I ended up receiving Mr. Reynolds’s relic in a daze.
With my remaining hand, I downed the alcohol, and my eyes endlessly stared at the pitch-black rod.
She said I’d go anyway?
Knowing what I’d do.
“Please take good care of our uncle’s relic and last words.”
For a while, I thought about those words.
The relic of the departed, the teachings of the departed.
Not a single one was light.
Suffocatingly so.
**
Lupin conveyed another piece of news to me.
The story that Ria was keeping one of my items. If so, she could have come to find me right away, but why had there been no news until now.
The doubt would be resolved by going there.
On the way to find Ria like that, I stopped my steps several times and let…