Interlude...

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The land was white.

The journey taken by the young Menoh and the dark red priest was always shadowed by the disposal of taboo and heresy. The trip that had begun in her white-bleached hometown had shown the girl numerous blasphemies and tragedies. The stark whiteness of the place she now stood was enough to shock even Menoh, well as she knew the folly of the world and its people.

The sky was covered in the dull white of clouds, while the land was merely white. There was a feeling of unreality to the landscape of limitless pallor in every direction one looked, where everything, including any sense of distance, was lost.

“Can you believe it? Back in the day, this was one of the continents where tons of people lived.”

She could not.

The substance that ground beneath their feet was not ground.* What jostled and danced upwards slightly as they walked was white salt.

That was what the entire continent was made of.

“This used to be a massive continent, but ever since it got turned into salt it’s been melting into the sea bit by bit. It’s already down to the scale of a big island. Won’t be long before it’s all melted away.”

The incredible scale of it was almost impossible to imagine.

The red-black priest walked, salt crunching at every step.

“Look.”

A blade was thrust into the salt plain.

“That’s the Salt Sword. A sword that can destroy the world.”

To the eye it had no apparent cutting edge and looked so brittle it would crumble at a finger’s prod. It was this white blade, which seemed to have not a single practical use, that was the calamity born of the Pure Concept that had once occurred.

The embodiment of purity, able to transform anything it pierced helplessly into salt. The range of its corrosion was limitless.

In fact, merely by being struck with its blade, a continent once teeming with life had been turned to salt entire. Its mass was slowly dissolving into the ocean, and it had now been reduced to this tiny island.

As Menoh swallowed at the unbelievable purity of it, the dark red priest spoke to her.

“You get it? This is a Pure Concept. This is the catastrophe otherworlders bring.”

The Human Errors that could destroy the world, the ones called otherworlders.

“So,” said the dark red priest who had brought Menoh to the far edge of the west, “that’s why your town getting leveled was nothing.”

Perhaps it should have made her angry.

The destruction of the home where Menoh was born should by all right be a momentous event. Though her memories had been bleached away, the pale town should have been something significant to her.

Yet Menoh thought ahead of anger.

More than the homeland and memories that had like this salt plain been obliterated in white, she thought of the dark red priest she beheld.

This person.

This red-black one of frightening mien.

Perhaps she had brought Menoh here purposely to speak those words to her.

Perhaps they had taken this long journey only for Menoh, she who could feel no strong emotion about that would-be momentous loss of her hometown, to hear those words.

When Menoh thought this might be so, a single red drop spread ripples through her heart.

“I’ve decided what I want to do.”

“Well then, tell me.”

“I want to be you.”

For an instant, truly only a split second, the dark red priest showed surprised.

“…no idea what you mean. You wanna be like me? I’m the villain.”

“Aren’t you a priest who’s pure and upright, and strong too?”

“You so stupid you don’t know what sarcasm is?”

Though aware that the dark red priest wanted her to abandon the idea, Menoh was unwavering in her request.

“Even so, I want to be like you.”

Her white soul and spirit, having absorbed a drop of something dark red, wished for this.

With the pale hometown where she had begun, the acts of the forbidden she had witnessed on her journey here with the dark red priest, and her arrival on this great plain of white salt, Menoh’s mind was made up.

“You saw a place like the one where I was born, and you didn’t let it be.” What had saved Menoh from her ashen hometown was, without a doubt, the priest’s blade. “If you’re the villain, I’ll be one too.”

“Dumbass.” True to her words, she had a look in her eyes that said she was gazing at someone too foolish to be believed. “You’d be better off being just a regular priest. You could be one that’s just pure and upright and strong, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You’re picking the wrong way of life. You can still make a different choice.”

“Yes.” Though knowing her alternatives, Menoh kept her gaze straight on the dark red priest.

On the one who took the name of pure, upright, and strong priest with bitter irony, the villain.

“…tch. Idiot.” The dark red priest turned on her heel and began to walk. Menoh followed and grabbed hold of the sleeve of her vestments.

As she walked by the side of the terribly displeased-looking priest, Menoh said, “May I ask what your name is?”

“Flare… Nah, call me ‘Master.'”

“Yes, Master.”

These were the events of the day when Menoh decided to become an Executioner.

There, on the pale plain of salt she had reached after everything – her parents, her friends, her home – had been stained white.

For the first time in her life, she had found an answer.

*[The stuff that made a ‘jari’ sound was specifically not 砂利, ‘jari,’ ‘gravel.’ I had to try to keep that wordplay.]

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