Chapter 151: Sunset (34)

After opening my eyes, I looked around.

A pure white bed, pure white blankets, and a pure white ceiling.

It was a familiar yet bitterly unfamiliar scene.

My body wasn't in one piece.

Running my hands over myself, I found bandages wrapped around my head, and my leg was fixed in place with something, unable to move.

It felt like gauze was attached to my cheek, and my hands and arms were likewise wrapped tightly with something.

Inside my mouth, that unpleasant, musty, stale rotten pomegranate taste still lingered.

If I just lay here like this, I felt like I wouldn't want to do anything.

But I couldn't lift my body.

I tried to raise myself just a little, but the pain I felt made me lie back down.

Not long after, I heard the sound of the door opening.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant sound.

I didn't know who had come in, but since I didn't want to have any particular conversation, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, but it seemed that was of no use.

"I already know you were squirming around like a bug, so stop pretending to sleep."

"...Sis."

"...Don't suddenly call me s-sis."

Levina entered the room and sat down on the chair by the bed.

She crossed her legs and arms, looking down at me with an indifferent gaze.

"I heard you jumped."

"I did jump."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Probably, I'm more sane than you, at least."

"You really have lost your mind."

"...I haven't. And I don't want to hear that from you."

"Don't call me 'you' either. So insolent."

"......."

"It's fortunate, really. If you'd died, it would have been complicated, but it ended as just a pathetic commotion from a mad fool."

Levina approached and stroked my cheek, speaking in a low voice.

"Now you have to pay for living like garbage.

You've been cast out of the family, there's not a single person left who will love you, and everyone hates you, right?

You've been kicked out of the Academy, and I don't know if you'll have anywhere to go, but you must have gotten a hefty allowance from Father.

You're loved, after all. If you just save your money, maybe you could live decently. As if that would ever happen."

...So this is how Levina always was.

Right, she's insane.

The fact that I'd been forgetting that, even for a moment, made me feel a distant sense of dread.

So this is the kind of person I share blood with.

We were supposed to care for each other, exchange words of affection in our own way.

With this?

Me?

"Ah, fuck."

At that, Levina bit her lower lip tightly, looked at me, then stood up and slapped my cheek.

She hit me hard enough to shake my body, even though I was a patient.

"You've become quite insolent."

Turning my head slightly to see Levina's expression, she was wearing a smile.

With a face that seemed truly, genuinely delighted.

"What were you even thinking in the first place?

You jumped in front of your fiancée, apparently.

Why, did you think if you died right in front of her eyes, she'd be devastated, tormented, and regretful over some pathetic bastard like you dying?"

"Shut your mouth, my head hurts."

"Lavin, wake up. Nobody gives a damn whether a pathetic piece of shit like you lives or dies."

Levina climbed onto my stomach, patient though I was.

"You're not a child, and if some disgusting excuse of a human killed themselves right before your eyes, you'd be happy if anything, wouldn't you? There's no way anyone would grieve.

Isn't that right, Lavin. Huh?"

And clenching her fist, she began hitting my face with it.

"There's not a single person who'd grieve over you dying, there's no one left to mourn you once a vermin like you disappears, and your fiancée abandoned you too."

Her punches weren't all that strong, but they weren't weak enough to not hurt either.

"This is why I told you, didn't I? Not to come to the Academy.

I clearly told you it wasn't a place for you."

Levina looked down at me with a blank expression and kept throwing punches.

The gauze that had been on my cheek must have fallen off, as blood began to stain her fist.

"Born a bastard, receiving treatment beyond your station, raised in the household, why would you try to leave? Why, of all things? Someone like you?"

Leaving this place, the place I open my eyes to should have been that room again.

Then I'd just sigh, smoke the cigarette in my pocket first, and have to clean the room reeking of must and cigarette smoke.

"Not knowing your place. Yes, not knowing your place is the problem.

From the moment your mother and you, one after another, crept into the mansion without knowing your place and lived there, that was the problem."

And from a light argument...later, I'd run into Seraphina, who'd get so emotional the moment she saw my face that she'd flee, and I'd have to clutch my throbbing head, agonizing over what to do next.

What is this.

Really, what is this.

You're telling me everything I'd managed to hold onto by dying just disappears in an instant?

That doesn't make sense.

It has to not make sense.

I thought we'd grown close.

I thought we'd become people who could see each other as human beings.

How could I possibly stay sane.

It feels like every person who loves me in this world has vanished.

This has to be just an unpleasant dream.

An unpleasant dream.

Since it has to be a nightmare, maybe that demon put a curse on me after piercing my head.

I'm not dead, I'm still alive, wandering around right now.

Anything else doesn't make sense.

Levina, after hitting me for a long while from atop me, caught her breath and tidied her hair slightly.

"As I said, before long the family will cast you out too.

The broken engagement will proceed soon as well. That said, I don't intend to just leave you to die."

She took a handkerchief from her bosom and lightly wiped the blood from her fist.

"It's because a useless piece of shit like you happened to grow up with me in the Edelgard household, if you die, people will talk badly about me.

So just live like a pathetic fool, wandering the streets as you did before.

The very idea that someone like you could graduate from the Academy and accomplish something was the problem."

"...Get out."

Levina approached and stuffed something clinking into my pocket.

It seemed to be money.

"Consider this my help, in my own way. We did live in the same mansion after all, didn't we?"

"I don't need it."

Even if I took it, it'd be pocket change.

Someone like me, better off than most knights, had no need to accept money.

"I've called someone to treat you, so don't be insolent, after you're expelled, don't even think of appearing before me again."

She spat out those arrogant words and turned her back, and I wanted to smack the back of Levina's head as she left the room, but my body was still in this state.

Back then, I thought I might die somehow after being expelled, so...well...I think I might have died once... My head hurts.

I couldn't even clutch my throbbing head, so I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself back to sleep.

****

When I opened my eyes, all the bandages wrapped around my body had been removed.

My injuries seemed to have fully recovered as well.

I'm familiar with this sensation.

"This is my first time seeing the notorious delinquent who's Levina's younger sibling."

"......."

"They're not as ferocious nor as unpleasant-looking as the rumors say."

Estelle was sitting in a chair, nibbling on an apple.

When I stared at her for a long while, she took out another apple from her pocket, rubbed it on her clothes, and handed it to me.

"What are the rumors saying?"

I said, accepting the red apple.

"....ou. Do you not know me?"

"Is there anyone who doesn't?"

"I suppose that's true. But you know, Young Master, you're famous in a bad way, and I'm famous in a good way."

Estelle giggled and continued.

"Then shouldn't you use what's appropriate? The formal speech, honorifics, respect, the things those high and mighty folks particularly like. Didn't the Edelgard household teach you such things?"

"They didn't, perhaps because I'm a vermin of a bastard child."

"Ah, um. How should I put it... That's a shame. Though it's not exactly what I wanted to hear."

Estelle cleared her throat and continued speaking.

Looking at her now, she seems a bit awkward around me.

She's an odd one who, apart from Levina, doesn't have a single person she could call a friend, so she's probably unused to holding a one-on-one conversation with anyone.

"By the way, do you know you're incredibly famous right now?"

"Famous..?"

"You got your engagement broken by your fiancée, tried to kill yourself by jumping off a building, and unfortunately survived.

On top of that, you've now been kicked out of the family. It's even questionable whether you'll be able to stay at the Academy."

I got up from my seat and lightly stretched my limbs.

Then I stretched my body this way and that.

As expected, my body is a mess.

Compared to the body that used to run around all day swinging a blade, it can't help but be inferior.

"Are you listening? The Saintess is specially saying that, for the sake of a friend's face, she can at least help that sibling."

Estelle kept chattering away beside me.

At first, I thought I might be scared, but now that I look at it, it's just amusing to watch.

And as luck would have it, she seems to be trying hard to strike up a conversation with Levina's younger sibling.

I'd heard that the Saintess had visited the mansion a few times when we were young, but whether Levina had diligently hidden it or not, I'd never met her even once.

"Thanks to that incident in the forbidden archives, of all things.

Aren't you curious who did it?

Even though it's been revealed that it wasn't you, there's not a single person who believes you, right?"

"I don't know who it was, but it seemed like something the Church did."

At that, Estelle blinked her eyes briefly and paused, then grinned and spoke in a low voice.

"Why do you think that?"

"It's a world where priests disappear even from perfectly ordinary houses, after all."

I looked into Estelle's two red eyes, and seeing no affection or confusion reflected in them, I moved my steps.

I didn't have shoes, so I was barefoot, but it didn't matter.

"...Where are you going?"

A voice came from behind.

"I don't know. I have nowhere to go."

Without even turning around, I walked blankly down the hallway.

Estelle didn't follow.

We weren't the kind of people who would.

Every time I passed students in the hallway, they whispered amongst themselves, seeing me in a slightly disheveled uniform, barefoot, and with a faint smell about me from not having washed while lying down.

It felt like it had been a long time since I stopped being conscious of such things.

A bandage, as if dried blood had hardened and stuck to it, was still wrapped around my head a little.

It felt itchy, so I roughly grabbed it, tore it off, and tossed it to the floor.

Everything is, just as it is.

As it was originally, with nothing changed, just as it is.

Disturbingly so.

I don't want to go back to that room either.

There's probably nothing there anyway.

I have nowhere to go.

What do people with nowhere to go do?

The thought crossed my mind that becoming a shitty mercenary or some adventurer somewhere wouldn't be bad... but what would be the point?

As I walked blankly down the hallway like that, Seraphina, who was heading somewhere while chatting with her friends, came into view.

She didn't seem to have noticed me, so I turned my back and started heading elsewhere, but then I heard hurried footsteps from behind.

And then, someone grabbed at my clothes.

When I turned around, it was Seraphina, unsurprisingly.

Our eyes met, but neither of us could manage to speak first.