Chapter 222 : Chapter 222
Chapter : 222
The cleanup of Gerhard Viden was not particularly difficult.
Magic, by nature, often bestowed even miracles that should never have been granted to humans.
Moreover, the fact that this had happened in the back alley only made the cleanup easier.
The people of the back alley did not concern themselves much when someone disappeared. Besides, digging all the way down to the depths where Iris had buried the body would require either magic or an immense amount of manpower, and at least in this back alley, there was no one capable of mobilizing such things.
By the time she had buried and buried Gerhard’s body, hiding it deep underground where no one could ever find it, Iris looked like a mouse drenched by rain.
The blood she had been covered in at the final moment had been washed away by the rainwater.
No one would ever know that Gerhard had been murdered.
Yes, no one.
“Iris Nuna?”
“Ah, it’s you, Mordin.”
Her voice was hoarse.
Whether it was because of the mad laughter she had burst into, or because she had cried, even Iris did not know.
The rain truly was falling hard.
How fortunate. The fact that Gerhard had existed here, and that he had been killed by his only daughter, would be erased by this rain pouring down like a downpour, and that truth would remain only with Iris.
“You know, Mordin. I am going to leave this place.”
She had always planned to leave, but now there was even less reason to stay here.
“I intend to leave and never come back.”
Even Mordin, who had always maintained a calm attitude, seemed surprised in that moment, and his eyes widened slightly.
At the sight of the little brat, who rarely showed his emotions, looking surprised, Iris tried to smile. But soon, she could not.
Am I… someone who is allowed to smile? Someone like me, who murdered her father?
“That’s good.”
The words that came a little late contained sincerity.
Iris looked at the child standing still in the rain.
“Then, do you want to come with me?”
“Huh?”
It was an utterly impulsive question.
In the happy future Iris had drawn, Mordin, this little brat, had been there as well.
A future that could no longer be fulfilled.
Even so, Iris slowly continued speaking.
“I won’t be moving into the dormitory. I do not have the money I’ve saved until now anymore, but… I plan to find a house somehow. Work there as a servant.”
“A servant?”
“Yes. I won’t be able to pay you right away, though.”
Ah, I should have done this long ago.
Why had I stupidly allowed a man like Father to hold me back?
“I don’t need payment. Instead, teach me magic.”
“Ah, I can do that much as often as you want.”
It was not a particularly difficult thing to do.
Ah, but would teaching him magic be enough?
What if Mordin ends up like me too? No, does that even matter?
Wouldn’t being with me be better than rotting away in this back alley anyway? Yes, no matter how I think about it, that is right.
At the sight of Iris muttering softly like someone whose soul had left her body, Mordin hurriedly gripped the hem of her clothes.
“Nuna, are you all right?”
“Yes, what?”
What on earth had I just thought?
Disgust toward herself surged up violently.
She felt so horribly disgusted with herself that she almost wanted to die.
But she did not want to die. Contradictorily, although she wanted to die at any moment, she absolutely did not want to die.
Iris swallowed those thoughts and tilted her head.
Looking at her, Mordin murmured.
“It’s nothing.”
Mordin had good instincts.
It was enough that he had noticed this moment and escaped from this place.
That was why he must have known. If he did not leave with her now, he would never be able to see Iris again.
Now, she felt as though she understood why people thought children knew nothing.
Because they were children, they could see and feel more things.
But because they were children, there were also things they could not know.
By choosing to look away, young Mordin did not know that he had missed the chance to keep Iris from breaking and to set right everything that had gone astray.
But who could possibly blame Mordin?
He, too, had been nothing more than a child, and he had paid a cruel price at her side.
Yes, it was no one’s fault.
It had simply been a path gone wrong from the very beginning.
---
After that day, many things about Iris changed.
“Iris? Are you all right?”
It was not as if no one at the Academy noticed the change.
At Artemia’s question, Iris smiled.
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“…I heard you left the dormitory.”
“So the rumor has already spread. I found a new house.”
Iris smiled gently.
Dealing with Artemia made her somewhat uneasy.
So she had no choice but to discourage her as best she could.
“I see.”
“Thank you for worrying about me. You don’t need to worry anymore.”
She did not think Artemia would truly stop worrying just because she said that.
Still, she drew a line.
Artemia, who was both a mage and a doctor, would not cross the line Iris had drawn until Iris asked for help.
“It is only natural, since you have been through something difficult… but if there is anything hard on you, I sincerely hope you will feel free to come to me for counseling.”
The professor, whom it would not be an exaggeration to call her mentor, spoke with serious eyes.
Iris’s magic ability, which had been improving by leaps and bounds each day, had at some point stopped as though it had struck a wall. As her teacher, it was perhaps only natural for Artemia to worry.
In truth, however, Iris’s growth had not stagnated for even a single moment.
She was merely hiding it.
There was nothing in this world more foolish than revealing one’s entire hand.
If there was one not-quite complaint left—
“…….”
At Evan Lisitoel’s persistent gaze, Iris laughed soundlessly.
He was the only human who knew that Iris was hiding her true ability.
That hypocritical gaze suddenly felt unbearably disgusting.
So much so that she wanted to gouge out those eyes and trample them underfoot.
But Iris could distinguish between what she could and could not do.
The death of Evan Lisitoel clearly belonged to the latter.
Therefore, Iris decided not to grow greedy over something pointless.
Evan Lisitoel was unmistakably something other than human.
So much so that treating such a thing as a fellow human being felt unpleasant.
Ordinary people held only two feelings toward him.
Reverence, or maddening jealousy.
Boreas Nevera was the latter. Bound together by an inferiority complex, he hated Evan.
It was laughable. Evan Lisitoel, the person concerned, did not care in the slightest, while Boreas was desperate to tear him apart.
Then again, humans were creatures who naturally longed for what they could not possess.
Evan Lisitoel’s talent was more than enough to provoke jealousy, envy, and an inferiority complex.
Boreas’s ambiguous talent must have made him even more miserable.
“X-damned cripple.”
The snickering mockery that surrounded him must have doubled that misery.
Perhaps she had felt a sort of kinship with Boreas Nevera.
Or perhaps it had been the joy of a researcher who had discovered something suitable to use.
“He is such an irritating person, isn’t he?”
Iris seeped into Boreas like a slow-spreading poison.
It was not particularly difficult to inflame his inferiority complex.
No, Boreas Nevera was such a broken human being that merely provoking him a little was enough for him to erupt with uncontrollable murderous intent and hostility.
“Iris Viden.”
“Why? What is it?”
Iris smiled coyly.
It was clearly an attempt to change the subject, but the cold look in his eyes remained unchanged.
Under that gaze, Iris had to work terribly hard to maintain the smile that felt as though it might burst at any moment.
That gaze, as though it saw through everything, felt only disgusting.
“If you intend to play innocent, that answer is enough.”
Evan answered bluntly and left at a leisurely pace.
That was the last time she met Evan at the Academy.
After all, it took Evan only three years to graduate from the Academy, something that usually took six years, or more than ten if one took a long time.
‘An irritating man to the very end.’
It would be difficult to be irritating to that degree.
Evan seemed to possess everything.
But precisely because he possessed everything, there were things he lost as well, and Iris was one of the few people capable of knowing that fact.
Because Evan was perfect, he had lost his humanity. He could not share ordinary exchanges with ordinary people.
‘Then what am I?’
She graduated from the Academy in due course and created a merchant group.
Mordin, who became Iris’s stand-in, came to be newly called ‘Mordegar’ and contributed greatly to growing the merchant group.
She spent far more time with Mordin than she ever had while attending the Academy.
Before, spending time with Mordin had certainly seemed very, very enjoyable. But it no longer did.
Only emptiness surged over her madly.
‘Is it because Mordin is different from me?’
Had the broken me become unable to associate with anyone except broken people?
Then should I break Mordegar too?
In truth, breaking a human being was not very difficult.
For Iris, it was even simpler than breathing.
“How filthy.”
She had not told Mordin, but Iris and Golden had many enemies.
Many—truly, so very many.
Of course they did. Golden had grown greedily and endlessly, and if left as it was, the only conclusion awaiting them would be to be swallowed whole by Golden, without even bones remaining.
The day before a major transaction with the Alchemy Association was the perfect day to break Mordin.
“…Iris Nuna.”
Had Mordin known?
That day, Iris had deliberately left open the door to the basement that should have been firmly locked.
He was an unusually perceptive child, so Iris was well aware that if she did that, he would surely come.
“Mordin. Ah, the screams were a little too loud, weren’t they? I woke you up. I’m sorry. I’ll finish cleaning this up and go soon.”
Iris answered shamelessly.
“What on earth is this….”
Even if he had been a little brat rolling around in the back alley, facing a tortured corpse must have been difficult.
Looking at his wandering eyes, which did not know where to turn, Iris had to work terribly hard to hold back her laughter.
“An assassin sent by a hostile merchant group. Honestly, it should be about time they gave up.”
Torturing assassins personally was something she was used to.
“There is something important tomorrow, so think of this as a dream and go back upstairs.”
Iris knew Mordin would not be able to do that.
Human beings were such foolish creatures. They could ignore something covered beneath the shadows, but once that same thing unfolded before their eyes, they could not bear to look away.
“…That applies to you too, Nuna.”
Just like this.
Ah, it was so hard to hold back her laughter.
“That is why I am the one handling it.”
It had not taken very long for the blood on her cheek to stop bothering her.
Mordin had merely kept looking away from an obvious fact until the very end.
“D-Die!!!”
The rope she had intentionally tied loosely came undone, and the assassin thrust the sharp dagger hidden against his chest toward Iris.
She could have counterattacked.
But Iris did not. Instead, she stared straight at Mordin.
Now, what will your choice be?
“N-No!”
A flame drew a red arc and struck the assassin directly.
“Ah.”
Shock rippled through Mordin’s young eyes as his mouth fell slightly open.
“I, I did not mean to….”
Iris knew that shock.
The shock of knowing that a perfectly breathing human being had died with a single gesture of one’s hand. The self-loathing of having become trash who had killed a person. The feeling of all of it rushing in at once.
She knew it.
But she had become unable to sympathize.
“Ugh….”
A sound close to a groan escaped him, and then Mordin shoved his fingers into his throat.
“It seems the shock was rather great.”
Even so, she could understand that feeling.
Yes, it must be shocking. It must hurt a great deal.
Iris patted Mordin’s back.
“It’s all right. He was our enemy. The people who hired an assassin in the first place are the bad ones.”
No human being wanted to die.
The assassin must have wanted to live. Certainly.
Iris gently embraced Mordin, patting him again and again.
“You are not bad. You were trying to save me.”
When a human being commits evil and begins to rationalize it, perhaps that, in truth, symbolizes the end of humanity.
Iris thought so as she savored the thick smell of blood permeating the basement.
“You know it too. How insignificant a person’s life is. How laughable it is. Even if someone dies in the back alley, no one cries for them.”
No one had mourned Gerhard’s death.
“It is all right. This is how the world works. You have finally come to know the same thing as I do.”
You, too, have merely broken, just like me.
“I am going to hell.”
Yes, that was true. Since the place I am headed is hell, the place you should head to must be hell as well.
“It’s all right. You are not the only one falling into hell.”
Iris smiled at him.
“Mordin, you won’t abandon me, will you?”
Now, break together with me.
Iris whispered more sweetly than any candy.