[162] Clay Marsha (6)
"I don't know anymore. What kind of person are you, really? Why is everything a lie? What could you possibly gain by deceiving people like that?"
"Why should I tell you? You're just trying to use me! If you really cared, then leave! If you go, I'll believe you! Huh? I mean it! Just go!"
"I'm asking what's real!"
At Shirone's outburst, Marsha's shoulders twitched.
"Don't just say you're hurting—tell me where and how it hurts! I have to know before I decide whether to leave or not! You paint the world with lies like that…."
Shirone stepped so close he could almost touch Marsha and raised his fist as he shouted.
"I can't see how much you're hurting!"
From behind came a fierce cry.
"Marsha! Noooo!"
Amy and Tess turned. Freeman, eyes wild, was sprinting toward Shirone at terrifying speed.
"This can't be. He took a direct hit to the face, didn't he?"
Amy stared as if she'd seen a ghost. The impact of a Flame Strike was bad enough—there was no way someone whose face had been burned could come back alive.
"Who's going to just let him pass…!"
As Tess moved to block him, Freeman leapt. Clearing Tess's height with a single bound, he drew his sword and leaped at Shirone.
Rian turned and swung his blade at Freeman. It felt like his muscles would tear, but if he let Freeman get through now, all their efforts would be for nothing.
"Arghhhh!"
Slow magic hit Freeman too, like everyone else. It was obvious Rian's blade would have cut him in two.
Still, Freeman didn't back down. He had to protect Marsha. He had to pull her away from Shirone somehow.
Then Rian and Freeman both froze with the same stunned expressions. Rian's sword didn't cleave Freeman, and Freeman didn't reach Shirone.
Shirone, sensing what was happening behind him, had suddenly released the slow.
That was the advantage only time magic had: you could expect the same effect in both on and off modes.
Meanwhile, Shirone's fist was tracing a massive arc as it swung.
Marsha could only watch. The cruel boy's fist was coming to destroy everything she had.
Shirone's punch slammed into Marsha's face. Her head snapped back and she collapsed to the ground as if struck by a tremendous force.
"Ma‑Marsha."
Freeman's face went pale. Marsha herself couldn't accept reality. Staring blankly at the ground, she looked like she was already dead.
Shirone realized his magic had returned. In contrast, there was no magic left in Marsha's mind.
"Marsha…."
Freeman approached with a hollow look. The men who'd returned from the teleportation sigil had appeared behind the building, but none of them dared come closer.
Marsha was lying there. They all knew what that meant.
"You okay?"
Freeman's voice was low when he asked. His jaw twitched with suppressed anger.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
Marsha forced a smile. Faced with an immutable fact, people often put on an air of indifference.
She smiled, but most of her emotions seemed to have evaporated. It was as if her soul had slipped away and only a shell remained.
Amy felt no sympathy. Marsha had been the one trying to smash Shirone's life to pieces.
"Serves her right! This can't be the end—there must be a price for stealing someone's magic, right?"
Marsha didn't get angry. That was how equivalent exchange worked. Magic wouldn't have activated in the first place if she hadn't been prepared to pay the cost.
"Yeah. The condition to undo the theft is to touch my body. Then the magic will return. And the price… I tell that person this."
Marsha sat back up where Shirone had been standing. With a terrified expression she spoke.
"You can hug me."
Tess frowned in disbelief.
"What the—?"
She couldn't believe it. Offering something like that as the price—what kind of woman would be so frivolous?
But Shirone understood. Theft is an ability you can't gain without a price comparable to death.
The spell that had forced her to kill her adoptive father that night was a memory she would rather die than recall.
Rian, having guessed the situation, said with displeasure, "What kind of price is that? There's no way Shirone would do it. What happens if Shirone refuses?"
Freeman answered, "Then Marsha dies. According to the rule she set, the moment Shirone refuses, she loses her life."
At the word "dies," Tess grew flustered and fumbled with her hands.
"B‑but still, there's no way he can do it, right? What kind of rule is that? Amy, say something. This is ridiculous, right?"
"Don't ask me. It's Shirone's decision."
Amy was as troubled as anyone. Shirone wasn't the sort to hurt women like this. But when someone else's life is in your hands, who can say what sense of responsibility will move you?
"All right. Living is better than dying. I'll pay the price myself."
Shirone made his decision and moved toward Marsha. Even Amy's heart couldn't help but skip.
Freeman, who'd been silent, suddenly stepped in front of Shirone. His body moved before his mind could—an instinctive act of devotion.
In the end he yielded and stepped aside.
"Please. Save Marsha."
Marsha closed her eyes and waited. She trembled like someone on an operating table, yet part of her thought maybe this was what she wanted.
A loathsome trauma—something she couldn't excise no matter how much she hated it. If someone could cauterize it with a hot iron, she might at least feel relief.
"Freeman, I'm sorry."
For the first time, Marsha said she was sorry. Freeman, who knew what those words meant, bowed his head and retreated.
Shirone moved to Marsha's side.
Trauma is dangerous because it ties present and future to past events. She may never have truly lived in the future since that day.
"Can we go somewhere private? Please."
"No need. Here is fine."
Marsha opened her eyes and studied Shirone's face. He still looked calm.
What was he thinking? Maybe he planned to hold her life as collateral and inflict some hope‑torture before killing her.
'Then again… he did a lot already.'
He had stolen her magic and tormented her countless times. Shirone had probably hit rock bottom in his life as well. Part of Amy could understand the wish to vent that way.
Shirone supported Marsha's back and pulled her upper body close. She obeyed. If she refused whatever he asked, she would only pay a higher price.
Cradling Marsha's face against his chest, Shirone leaned close to her ear and whispered in a small voice.
"I hugged you."
Marsha blinked. Then, realizing what Shirone meant, she scowled.
What kind of childish prank was this?
"What are you doing right now?"
"I hugged you. You said I could hug you."
"Don't be ridiculous. Do you think it'll end like this? Are you mocking me?"
"I told you I would never give up."
"Let go! I don't want cheap pity! You think this makes you great? Just hug me! You're angry at me, right? Take your revenge all you want!"
By the rules of her price, Marsha couldn't harm Shirone. But even if she struggled, Shirone had no intention of letting go.
"You wicked brat! All fake! You're garbage!"
"You're a good person."
Shirone stroked Marsha's hair.
"You're different from Arkein. You can tell by how many people follow you. Even if it's a lie, that's okay. No one knows what's truly in another person's heart—not even you. I don't know either. You just live believing. Even if you can't trust anyone else, you can at least trust yourself. If you truly love someone, there must be someone in this world who loves you back just as truly."
"No! That can't be! What do you know? Who are you to spout that?"
Marsha rejected Shirone's words in fury. Then she froze, surprised to find tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her heart didn't ache at all. So why were tears falling?
"How… why are these tears…?"
How tightly had she shut herself that tears came before any feeling opened?
But not anymore. As memories long sealed rose into consciousness, Marsha finally faced her trauma for the first time.
It was one day when she was seventeen.
Her adoptive father, smelling of alcohol, was approaching Marsha as she lay on the floor staring at the ceiling.
Same situation as always, same violence as always.
Marsha felt the dagger hidden behind her back. The cold touch seemed to chill her skin.
"You can hug me."
Her adoptive father flinched as if shocked.
Marsha still remembered clearly the monstrous emotion swelling in his pupils.
She tightened her grip on the dagger. He was coming. She had no choice but to stab.
But the father who appeared in that moment was different from the one in her memory.
He lifted Marsha's upper body, buried her face in his chest, and gently stroked her back.
"I'm sorry for everything, Marsha. You're my daughter."
The words she'd wanted to hear most in the world.
At that one phrase, the locked door to her heart swung wide open. Ten years of suppressed emotion burst out and she couldn't stop crying.
"Sniff—! Sob—!"
Marsha, in Shirone's arms, broke down in grief.
"Da‑ad! Da‑ad—!"
Shirone said nothing. He only kept stroking her back.
"Dad! Why did you do that? I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Dad!"
What she had really wanted was to be held like this. No matter how violent he'd been, she'd wanted the man who'd taken in an orphan to remain a father to the end.
"It's okay, sis. It's okay now."
Marsha's past was breaking apart. It was being reassembled into firmer memories that could become hope for the future.
"Waaaah! Dad! Dad—!"
Freeman checked the time.
The rule Marsha had set should already have taken effect. But Marsha was still alive.
"What's going on? What happened?"
Only Marsha and Shirone could know what had passed between them. The others still couldn't let down their guard.
Freeman explained.
"The theft was undone. Shirone canceled her magic."
"No way. 'You can hug me'—it really just ended by hugging her? What kind of price is that?"
Freeman hesitated. Amy's disbelief was natural—she didn't know the background.
But it wasn't just a matter of words.
Shirone had opened Marsha's closed heart. He smashed the shell she'd surrounded herself with and showed her a new path.
"Shirone didn't merely undo the theft. He canceled the very condition that triggered it and severed Marsha's power. Marsha's deprivation no longer exists in the world."
Freeman gave a bitter smile. Perhaps it didn't matter to Shirone what Marsha's true suffering had been. From the start, he'd intended to embrace it all.
'I couldn't do that… We were totally defeated.'
"Waaaah! Waaah!"
Marsha's tears showed no sign of stopping. She knew too—if not today, the door might never open again.
Countless memories that had lived in the past were sinking into the abyss after ten years.
Late Lunch (1)
Twenty minutes had passed since the battle ended.
The men of the Angmu Mercenary Corps were sitting down to rest, and Rian had his wounds treated under Tess's first aid.
All the while, Marsha still lay in Shirone's arms.
No more tears came now. But she shivered intermittently, savoring the afterglow.