Interlude

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

It was like a waking dream.

White snow covered the town. The village where a multitude of people had lived was bleached pale. In the pure white town, stock still, stood the young Menoh.

The wide white vista centered on the pale girl before Menoh’s eyes, and spread.

The girl must have been on the verge of her late teens. Her hair was black. So were her eyes. Her skin had a healthy tan from the sun. She was clothed in a navy vest over a light blue shirt. Not only was the sight of her not white, it was difficult to find any white on her.

And yet in Menoh’s eyes, somehow the girl was nothing but whiteness.

“Ah, aaaaahh, I’m, so sorry…!”

The girl, so pale it was strange, frantically cleared away the snow that was piled on Menoh. She was the one who had spread the snow about, yet for some reason, she brushed at it as though it were a momentous sin.

The town’s people and buildings alike had already had their shapes obliterated by white, and had become pure as white snow. All that was left was Menoh. She too would soon be stained white down to her name, and would turn to snow.

She was not afraid.

Menoh’s spirit was bleached pale. The boundary between herself and the world had grown indistinct. She had already lost most understanding of the difference between other people and herself. The one thing that remained, barely, was her name.

The only thing that made Menoh Menoh was that sole non-white name, Menoh.

“Why, why did this, no, I didn’t, aah, but, somebody, I, I, what did I..”

The whole time she rushed to get the snow off Menoh, the pale girl was murmuring something to herself. The words, whispered as if trying to fasten something down, were terribly unstable. Looking at the pale girl full of tragic resolve, Menoh began to feel sadness.

As Menoh’s sense of self had become hazy, she was sad because the other was sad. If another cried, she too would cry. As Menoh’s selfhood melted into the whiteness around her, the pale girl’s feelings passed to her and became hers.

The surrounding white snow too became sorrowful in sympathy with the pale girl. Everything around them was already her paleness.

At some point, the pale girl had stopped brushing the snow from Menoh and had put her head in her hands. “White, the world is, white, I’m, whi, no, I’m not, I, I want, Japan, ah, I—”

“Hurry up and die.”

A short sword stabbed into the girl’s head.

It was so sudden that there was no understanding it. Menoh could not grasp what was happening before her eyes. It was as though a blade had abruptly grown from the girl’s head.

The pale girl fell to the ground.

Why had this happened? The landscape in front of her uncomprehending, doubtful gaze wavered.

Part of the white vista blurred as though in a flare of heat haze.

What appeared on the stark white field was a tall woman with dark red hair.

Looking at her, ripples lapped at Menoh’s edges.

The dark red of the tall priest could not coexist with Menoh’s white-stained spirit. Though the line between her, the white town, and other people was blurred, the dark red priest was clearly someone else.

“…who?”

“Can’t you tell by the outfit? I’m a priest who’s pure and upright, and strong, too.” The introduction was sardonic, as though she did not believe a word of it herself.

Yet now that she said so, she was indeed clothed in indigo vestments. It took some time to notice that she was wearing blue, the impression of her was so strongly dark red.

“White, eh. No mistake that it’s a bleaching phenomenon, but a funny one. If this is White’s second coming, there’s no chance of any survivors. So—”

The dark red priest cut her words short and placed her palm on Menoh’s head.

Something carried into Menoh from the point of contact.

“Connecting Guidance doesn’t bother you, huh. …Hm. For just a leftover, as raw materials you’re more than first-rate goods.”

The priest took her hand from Menoh and cast her eyes around the area.

The town had become entirely white, and all outlines and borders had been lost. The pale girl who had been stabbed lay fallen on the accumulated snow.

Menoh followed the dark red priest’s gaze and noticed that the pale girl’s chest was moving up and down. Surprisingly, she seemed to still be breathing.

Her body began to give off a white light.

Guidance: Connect — Improper Bonding/Pure Concept ? White ? — Invoke: Where, am I, who, am I

The white Guidelight fired off in all directions.

The whiteness that had been the town gathered to a single point. The whole zone of it focused, centering on the murdered girl. The whiteness that had once been everything in the town but Menoh abruptly reared and towered above her.

It appeared as a pure white, blurrily outlined, and uncannily featureless giant.

“Tch. Looks like this good-for-nothing ninny can’t even die right.” The dark red priest didn’t seem to bear the least fear toward the great white mass that had arisen from the condensed town. Holding a blade that was incredibly tiny in comparison to its bulk, she opened her mouth wide in scornful laughter.

Ah, Menoh thought, and desolation was born in her heart.

She should have been in there too. She should have been bleached, she should have rimed over, she should have been pure white together with them. She who had failed to turn white and been left out, she was a little lonely.

How sad.

It happened at the instant that Menoh’s heart was grieving.

A pillar of light shot upwards.

The Guidelight that sparkled as if to shove aside the white landscape came from the exercise of a large-scale sorcery. A church of Guidelight was constructed by the spreading sorcery. A magnificent bell tolled, walls of clean white were painted, a barrier that would allow no disgrace to draw near was erected, and a stately gate was put in place.

What had taken form was a simulacrum of sacred ground. The white giant was bound within the constructed church, and the bell of Power broke it apart piece by piece.

What Menoh watched take place before her eyes was not the doing of the dark red priest.

Near the dark red woman, an old lady with a cane slowly came closer.

“Constructing sacred ground through a pseudo-church, eh. You’re showing off the kind of skill that single-handedly put up Galm’s protective barrier, aren’t you, Granny Orwell. You sure are an expert at the flashy stuff.”

“Hmhm, and now that you mention it, your fondness for the covert hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Don’t act like we have anything in common, Granny. Our roles are different from the roots on up.”

The one who walked with her hands on the head of a cane was an elderly woman. She wore pure, sacred bishop’s garments, of a different rank than the indigo vestments.

“But I didn’t think this otherworlder’s disposal was the kind of work you’d need to come out for.”

“Oh, but it’s an event in the country of my jurisdiction. Damage from an otherworlder on this wide a scale is a rare thing, and there will have to be some way of dealing with it from a public perspective, won’t there?” The old woman apparently named Orwell turned her eyes to Menoh. She felt as though there were some sort of emotion there. “Who’s this girl?”

“A survivor.” Perhaps Menoh perceived both the dark red priest’s and Orwell’s feelings being stirred. The proposal was made with a nonchalant tone: “Wanna take her? The picturesque stuff like looking after orphans has always been a lot more your bag than wiping the ass of this sort of filthy job.” *

“..my, my. If anyone is going to look after her, it should be you, I believe. Haven’t you lately become a Master? It would be good for you to do some jobs less suited to you, rather than always working on the scene. The Lord would want that as well.” Saying nothing more than that, the old woman slowly began to move away.

“Kch. She didn’t make it to that age by being stupid. She’s a cautious one.” Her mouth open in a smile, the dark red woman looked down at Menoh. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

For some reason, Menoh was being asked.

Seeing through the color that had stained Menoh’s face to the tint of slight confusion that being asked caused in her, the dark red woman continued, “I was thinking there’d be some things I could figure out if I pushed you, being the high-quality sorcerous raw materials that you are, but I’m the one who got pushed instead. I don’t give a fig what becomes of you, so what do you want? If you’ve got any feelings one way or another, spit it out.”

“I don’t.”

Menoh had no especial desires of her own.

She had been painted white. Her soul, her spirit, her memories: all had been bleached away, only barely leaving the name Menoh. The knowledge that made up the name Menoh remained, but she, for whom recollection and all else had become blank, could not so much as autonomously bring forth any desires.

“I don’t want anything.”

The dark red priest looked down on Menoh, who was indifferent to her own future course, as though bored. “Might as well go home. I’ll play babysitter until we get to sacred ground. If you make it that far without dropping dead, then you can do whatever.”

As though none of it much mattered to her, the dark red priestess set her hand on Menoh’s head.

Menoh was at just the right height for that. It felt as though it wasn’t intended as a pat, but that the priest’s hand landed there because holding hands would have taken more effort.

Yet, strangely, it didn’t feel unpleasant.

The touch of this person, one who felt like a boundary line to Menoh, was a very definite thing.

*[Translator’s Note: She says しりぬぐい, meaning cleaning up somebody else’s mess. It really is literally ‘ass-wiping.’]

Like this:Like Loading...