Turning Chapter 1332

If she’d had the leisure to think deeply about Elpokin’s last words, she would have realized why he’d eaten the food so calmly today and been shocked. But Glowe had no such time.

The first floor of this inn, used as both restaurant and tavern, was fairly spacious. And even before Glowe’s party arrived, quite a lot of customers had already taken their seats.

Which meant...

“Hey, what’s the rush?”

...it meant there could be people who heard the commotion over here and came over.

Those eyes made it clear they hadn’t come in blind.

They were obviously in league with the enemy.

The instant Glowe finished judging the situation, she lowered her body in a sliding motion and slipped under the arm of the one who reached for her.

“Uh—?”

Then she stuck to the wall and darted past one more person, lightly hooked another’s foot to break their balance, and leaped over them. Her movements were smooth and quick like a small animal, and belated curses burst out.

“Kh!”

“Ugh, damn it.”

“Get her!”

Back when the Cavalry did physical training, Glowe was always last, or second to last. Even so, she had at least one field she was confident in.

Flight.

Life in a traveling troupe was practically a life of always being ready to run. She’d already been praised as decent at running away, and perhaps thanks to her time rolling around with the Cavalry since then... somehow the enemy’s movements looked very slow.

'Compared to facing my peers and seniors, this is nothing!'

“Ah, customers. What’s all this?”

At that moment, a staffer holding a tray appeared, flustered.

The positioning blocked her path so perfectly that Glowe hesitated for a beat—and the pursuers shouted loudly.

“Why are you pretending not to see? Grab her! Hurry!”

Ah. So the staffer was with them too? Feeling chagrined, Glowe was about to find a gap to punch through—

“I’m very sorry, but in our establishment, multiple threatening acts toward another guest... are absolutely not tolerated!”

'Huh?'

The staffer smoothly twisted aside to open a lane for Glowe to slip past, then hurled the tray like a boomerang at the pursuers.

Clang!

A tremendous crash rang out, so loud it was hard to believe it came from hitting a person, followed by groans of awful pain. Seeing the fallen enemies, the staffer flashed Glowe a quick smile.

“Go on. I’ll handle those nuisance customers!”

There wasn’t even time to ask who they were. Shouting her thanks, Glowe sprinted off again.

'What on earth is going on?'

At the same time. Men’s restroom.

Fay clutched his neck, stamped with a red handprint, and panted for breath. A translucent film wrapped around his body shimmered beautifully, as if protecting its master. From a few steps away, Matten stared at him with a strange look, and his murmuring voice swam dizzily in and out.

“...That’s not what your ability is. What is that supposed to be?”

Right. This shield was not Fay’s ability. He had nothing this useful. It was the result of the power Glowe had laid on him.

But Fay swallowed that and forced out a jeer through labored breaths.

“...Why should I tell you.”

“What do you mean, why. We’re friends.”

“Friends?”

Even now, Matten saying “friend” so casually made Fay’s skin crawl with fear. Shuddering, Fay hacked up a cough.

“Choking me out of nowhere and trying to jab me with some weird needle... that’s what a friend does?”

“That’s because you started saying such strange things, Fay.”

Matten murmured with a faint smile. In his lowered hand, the tip of a long needle peeked out. It was the very needle he’d tried to drive into Fay’s neck a moment ago.

He’d avoided it solely thanks to the power Glowe had set. At the instant the needle’s tip was about to touch his neck, light burst forth and a barrier shoved Matten far away and protected Fay. Even now, the only reason Matten couldn’t approach Fay was that very barrier.

But what would happen when the barrier vanished? The restroom door was firmly shut, and there wasn’t even a small window. He’d shouted, but no one showed any sign of coming.

Cold sweat streamed down his back, but Fay tried with all his might not to let it show. Of course, it did little good.

Matten watched him as if finding his state peculiar.

“You joined the Cavalry and still refuse to answer a few curious questions, and whenever I try to talk to Ms. Glowe or Mr. Elpokin, you keep getting in the way... Then you come to the restroom with a friend who brought you here and ask him to be honest if he’s about to do something bad to you. Is that something you say to a friend like me?”

Yes. He had. But of course it couldn’t be helped!

“You—you guys started acting weird toward Glowe and Elpokin first...! And, and... you even twisted the story about when we met in the village...!”

“Ah. You mean our touching first meeting? What about it?”

“The village elders never tried to lock me up. So why are you talking like they were bad people?”

“Once you ran away from there, it amounts to the same thing. It’s better for you if we wrap it up as a simple story about kind merchants helping a poor Awakener who wanted to leave a closed-off village. It’s not even a complete lie.”

Matten’s eyes narrowed.

“Or did you want us to tell them instead that you’re from a village of Southern runaways? Are you okay with your proud peers finding that out?”

Fay snapped his mouth shut. Terror gleamed plainly in his eyes. Seeing that, Matten smiled in triumph.

“Oh. No, wait. Should I have told them how you came back bullied by the village youths who hated you and hurled childish curses that wouldn’t stick while sobbing? Haha. That really was a pity. Or maybe... the story about how we caught you making dolls of the dead with that ability of yours and playing with them?”

Fay’s face went ashen.

“...I—I didn’t. That kind of... I used my ability on my mother... not like that...”

“Right. Unable to accept your mother’s death, you secretly tried to use your gloomy awakened power to make a replacement. If you’d succeeded, it would have been truly horrible—how fortunate that you failed, hmm?”

“......”

“After doing all these dangerous things, now you say you can’t trust us. Did joining the Cavalry make you think you became something? Should I send you right back to your hometown even now? I feel like you’d be expelled the moment I say where you’re from. Hm?”

Fay’s whole body shook violently.

“You—you said... you said you were of the same blood as me. That you knew, that you understood...! You keep your blood a secret from others too, so why are you saying that...!”

At that, Matten laughed like he’d heard something very strange.

“The same blood? Well, maybe. But you and we are different, Fay.”

“...Different how. Different in what way.”

“Very different. We were acknowledged by the true Children of the Moon as not being ‘Makunata,’ and you weren’t. It’s truly pitiable...”

'Makunata'. The village elders had told him it was a crude slur used in the South for those of mixed blood. But this was his first time hearing it in person. Watching Fay’s blank face, Matten went on.

“But it’s okay, Fay. Just behave and let this needle prick you once. Then you can become like us. Put away the useless thoughts, be our friend like a good boy, and live as a Cavalryman. Our superiors have so many things they want to hear from you. This is a truly special opportunity.”

“......”

After joining the Cavalry, Fay had heard in great detail about how the Cavalry fought Southern merchant caravans in the South. He’d also heard that a brazen Southern merchant who tricked Duke Ta-in and fled had been captured by the Cavalry.

He hadn’t known any of this before entering the Cavalry. The moment the words “Southern merchant” came up, the Cavalry members’ eyes would sharpen. For Fay—who had joined the Cavalry thanks to Southern-heritage merchants—that was truly terrifying.

He hid his origins, and his friends’ stories, as much as possible. Even so, when Glowe and Elpokin said they would go with him, he couldn’t, in his indecisiveness, refuse.

It wasn’t as if caravans with Southern blood existed in only one or two places in the world. No one knew better than Fay that holding prejudice by blood and profession alone was wrong. There was no way the kind friends who had helped him were connected to the bad merchants the Cavalry talked about. So he kept telling himself, over and over, that it would be fine, and came this far.

Because no one would bother paying attention to a nobody like him.

So it would be fine...

But the friend he met again had become strange. No—maybe they’d been strange from the start.

He ate all the food they served him like he was fleeing reality, and before he could say something useless to Glowe, he deliberately let himself get drunk and fall, because he knew Matten would follow him.

When they were alone, he asked things to be sure. He wanted answers that his friends weren’t strange people.

But what came back was a needle stabbing for his neck.

His head spun. Tears streamed down. In truth, his nose was also bleeding because he’d eaten drugged food, but Fay didn’t even feel that.

Faces of his fellow recruits in the Cavalry, his respected commander, and Yuder Aile rose in his mind.

At last he burst into sobs and shouted.

“...Just kill me!”