Truth and Lies (1)
Captured by Yulla, leader of the Pungjang, Shiina twisted her body with all her strength.
"Kuan! Kuan!"
"Don't be foolish. Even now, cutting your throat would be no trouble."
Yulla's words were true, but Shiina also knew she wouldn't be killed easily.
"Enough! I'll go with you. So don't attack Kuan."
Yulla said nothing.
She had to be killed.
Shiina had been taken as a hostage to neutralize Kuan.
What restraint could be stronger than death?
This had to be the end.
As that thought crossed her mind, a horrible sound brushed Yulla's ear.
What was that?
When she looked back, blood and flesh were rotating as if ground by a machine.
"Stop."
A forty-man detachment halted, and the color drained from Shiina's face.
"Kuan…? How many men must be fed into that thing for what we see now to come about?"
"Kuan!"
When Kuan burst through the Pungjang's shield, Yulla quickly checked the casualties.
"Thirty-seven."
A fight of around ten seconds, and he had felled more than half of a sixty-man formation in that span.
He had cut them down.
"Grrr!"
Landing with a spin, Kuan calmed the fury of his blade with a solitary sword dance.
He limped on one leg and swung the sword with one arm—on the surface almost ridiculous—but—
"Shiina… I protect."
Every time he limped, the world trembled; every rotation of the blade brought a wave of nausea.
Yulla realized.
"You can't predict what comes next. The plausibility of motion-to-motion transition has been utterly destroyed."
It was an absurd, idiotic mastery—so illogical it became terrifying.
That was why Kuan seemed to vanish and reappear from her sight every moment.
The Pungjang's survivors withdrew to the main camp.
"We're sorry."
There was nothing to scold them for.
Yes—mistakes could not be forgiven in this world. The Pungjang was the world's finest swordsmanship unit.
To embody fluid dynamics in a human body wasn't something mere effort could achieve.
Though they had suffered heavy losses in the Great Purification, the newcomers had filled the gaps with genius.
Even in unit tactics rehearsals, their skill was almost indistinguishable from veterans.
But Kuan—this man—did even that tiny margin look to him like a yawning gulf between life and death?
Thirty-seven had died like that.
Yulla, lost in thought, slowly lowered her sword and removed her owl mask.
Parca Kuan.
He limped on one leg as he walked, but whether he'd still be limping the next instant was anyone's guess.
Cold sweat beaded on her forehead.
It was a murderous, uncanny thing.
Whatever happened next, Kuan would carry it out without fail.
In other words, this man was—
Yulla's counterpart—her equal at the very peak.
"Stop."
For the first time, his step halted when her blade leveled at the bridge of his nose.
The landscape trembled as the Pungjang gritted their teeth.
"Ugh!"
If mastery could be measured, Yulla's aiming precision was down to the atomic level.
He couldn't be caught.
For Kuan to avoid that, he too would have to move his body with equivalent precision.
He seemed stopped, but was actually moving. Of course, no human could observe it.
What changed was sensation.
"Kuan, accept my sincere applause. Today you have reached the pinnacle of technique. Therefore I offer you this again—this is the first time I've ever done this. Join the Pungjang."
Determination hardened her eyes.
"I'll give you authority to lead the First Squadron."
She was the Pungjang's leader.
"Captain—"
Yulla ignored her subordinate.
"You asked me once whether it's shameful to be called the strongest in collective swordsmanship. You paid for that with a lost leg, but now you deserve to say it. Lead the Pungjang. This post is proof that our swordsmanship is the strongest in the world."
She had never bent her convictions; everything she said was earnest.
Kuan looked up at the sky and answered.
"Shiina… protect."
There was something clumsy in his phrasing, and of course a chilling thought flickered through Shiina.
No. It can't be. It's just a level of something.
Right now he's doing it because I'm in danger—out of necessity. So—
It will be something that can be undone.
Unlike Shiina, who clung blindly to that thing, Yulla finally understood everything.
Is that so?
It had to be.
How pitiful.
To hide the emotion on her face she put her owl mask back on.
"Kill her."
Everyone in the Pungjang except Yulla exploded outward and flew at Kuan.
In the Delta headquarters' garden, Shirone and Kido exchanged lethal stares.
"Shirone."
Kido moved only his lips.
"I don't want to fight you."
"Same here."
They were enemies, but both understood perfectly why they had to fight.
"I want to get to Uorin. That's all."
Of course Tormia and the forces of the various holy war nations would be desperate to kill the Empress.
"Why did you come?" Shirone asked.
"You said it yourself—protecting Uorin is everything. Couldn't you have stopped her? Why join?"
"Uorin…"
Sadness clouded Kido's eyes.
"She doesn't like me. I can only do this. If I don't give her what she wants, she'll leave my side."
That wasn't right.
Uorin wouldn't abandon Kido, but his aching heart was understandable.
Shirone said, "I'm worried about Shiina. And about Mr. Kuan."
Tormia had given up on Shiina; the only one left who could rescue them was Shirone.
We've wasted too much time here. Kuan won't hold out long.
Through Omega, he knew the Pungjang's combat power—one hundred strong.
Especially Yulla…
As Shirone eased his hostility and turned, Kashan's guard began to move slowly.
A truce of necessity, but as Kido passed Shirone he said, "I owe you."
Shirone's eyes warmed.
"Kido."
They passed, then turned back; Shirone smiled and asked, "We're friends, right?"
Kido pushed off the ground and replied, "Of course."
No one in the Pungjang screamed, but Shiina wanted to cover her ears.
The sound of flesh being sliced, bones snapping, organs letting out air—
It was like her own body was screaming.
"Stop it…!"
From the whirlwind of blood before her, she could not tell how much of it was Kuan's doing.
"Shiina!"
Around Kuan, who sprang forward like a fiend, a rain of blood and flesh fell.
The Pungjang's numbers were now twenty-four.
Given that he had cut down seventy-five alone, the Pungjang's annihilation was already decided.
Yulla murmured, "Amazing."
The Pungjang were wind.
They were strongest because no one could evade the wind—but—
"You can't touch him."
Kuan was avoiding the wind.
One-legged, one-armed, one-eyed, one-eared—now even his mind couldn't be whole.
No, there was no need to think.
Watching the sword ghost's dance, Yulla shuddered as memories rose from a distant nostalgia.
Was that it?
You couldn't sketch ideal swordsmanship with the mind, but there was a sensation that surpassed the five senses.
The swordsmanship the girl had dreamed of.
A killing machine that ignored every force-based element and could cut down countless people.
"I wanted to be the strongest swordsman." Yulla had become the Pungjang's leader, able to command ninety-nine prodigies like extensions of her own hands.
And now the prodigy she had ruined was destroying all that meaning.
"Shiina…"
Each time Kuan dragged the blade while limping, the Pungjang's black curtain was stained red.
I cut it.
He'd severed an Achilles tendon.
That should have ended the path of the blade, but Kuan had still come here by a long detour.
Was it to protect this woman?
If a sword exists to kill, then Yulla had been the world's greatest swordsman.
Kuan's sword was—
A sword to protect someone.
"Let's finish this."
Yulla set Shiina down on the ground and walked toward Kuan, who had already cut down ninety-nine.
His back was exposed—there was an opening.
Just as Shiina was about to enter the Spirit Zone, Yulla spoke first.
"Do not make a mistake."
How sensitive was she? Shiina wondered.
I know a swordsman's sensitivity. There's nothing obviously different from other swordsmen, but still—
A feeling that it's faster, or a delusion?
If there's an area beyond human measurement, Yulla's sense was monstrous.
"If you want to fight, then fight. But think carefully whether your actions will help or harm that man."
Shiina could not intervene.
I don't even know how to help.
Yulla took another step.
You can reach him.
The Pungjang embodied fluid dynamics in their bodies, but her level ran far deeper.
My senses are fixed in stillness.
Even a calm surface is made of countless atoms moving in chaos.
The peak of stillness-in-motion.
To Yulla's eyes, Kuan seemed to flicker, but she aimed straight for his black heart.
"Go."
Kuan and Yulla moved at the same time.
Their speed, painfully slow compared to their nothingness, puzzled Shiina.
But what happened at the instant of collision, she could never know.
A wind blew. The two who had quietly crossed paths stood back-to-back in silence.
The owl mask split in two, revealing Yulla's pale, smiling face.
A thin line of blood trickled down her forehead, over the bridge of her nose and her lips, to her chin.
"Ha… ha."
With an unerring, inch-perfect depth, Kuan's blade cleaved through Yulla's chest along the centerline, cutting the abdominal muscles and emerging. Blood spouted like a fountain from the linear wound, and the force of that eruption toppled Yulla's body.
"Kuan!"
Shiina rushed to the kneeling Kuan.
"Kuan! Are you all right? Kuan!"
"He didn't touch me."
Startled by Yulla's voice, Shiina turned with wary eyes.
"He almost touched me… but he didn't."
Why?
Ah.
The confusion in Yulla's eyes settled into calm.
Will you protect her?
To Yulla, Uorin had been a cause to be realized for the sake of her convictions.
How noble.
She had become the noblest person in the world—nobler even than the Empress of Kashan.
She had no breath left to exhale.
I'm sorry, Your Majesty.
She died hoping that one day Uorin might meet someone who would truly be there for her.
"Kuan, Kuan."
Shiina shook him again.
"Shiina."
"Kuan! Please wake up!"
Her face had flushed with color, but seeing Kuan's condition, it went pale again.
"…I protect."
He said it again.
"No. It's all over now. You won. So come back."
"Shiina… I…"
"No!"
Shiina could not accept it.
What kind of law is this? Without telling me! You said you'd stay by my side!
Never, never…!
I won't leave. Realizing the contradiction in that vow at last, she buried her face in Kuan's chest.
"Aaaa! Aaaa!"
Shirone looked at the scattered chunks of flesh, Yulla's corpse, and Kuan murmuring the same words, and he understood.
"Teacher…"
Before Shiina's sobbing, he could think of no words of comfort.