>

Dasa spoke from where she lay practically on top of him.

“Maybe I am.”

“Your heartbeat and your scent are slightly different from before.”

“My heartbeat? I think it’s just—”

—because of what you’re doing right now, he thought, but couldn’t bring himself to say.

By before, Dasa probably meant the times when they had often slept under a single blanket or overcoat together. Now that he thought about it, he remembered how often Dasa had pressed her ear to his chest or breathed in the smell of him. Of course, he’d had his shirt on then.

“Are you worried about something?” she asked. Silently, she seemed to be saying, You can tell me.

She really was worried about him. Ever since Jirina had entrusted Dasa to him, Yukinari had been totally focused on protecting her. He had believed himself willing to give up everything for. But in her own way, Dasa had been looking out for him, too.

He had known that. And recently, he hadn’t been paying it much mind.

Maybe he had been feeling a little tired. He just hadn’t had the time to admit it.

“All this time,” he said with a small smile, “I’ve been trying to protect just what I can see. Like, fighting back when the Missionary Order attacked. Driving off that demigod to help keep the townspeople safe. I’ve been thinking I can get by just protecting what I can see, what I can reach.”

Dasa said nothing, but he felt her stir against his chest. He placed a hand on her back as he continued.

“I basically thought, if I could protect you, that was all that mattered. What did I care about anything else? I’ve already died once, and over here I don’t have an older sister—or any family. I didn’t know what to do, but I wanted to at least do that, to protect you. I thought if I could, things might just work out somehow.”

“Yuki...”

“But lately I’ve learned the hard way that it’s more complicated than that.”

To protect someone, to give them the peace of mind to live their lives, one had to safeguard an environment in which they could be free of worry, in which they could live. But to preserve stability in a fundamentally unstable environment meant ensuring you had the leeway to respond to sudden or unexpected developments.

And for that, it was necessary to take into account an even larger environment.

And...

“I’m sorry, Dasa.”

A questioning silence.

“With everything that’s happened, I’ve come to care about the Friedlanders, too.”

He had only meant to use this town as an environment that he could take advantage of to protect Dasa. But now he found the townspeople meant something to him—not as much as Dasa, perhaps, but something. Here, there were people he was close to, of course, like Berta and Fiona, but also the many townspeople he had met through them. Most of them revered Yukinari as a god; they looked at him with such profound respect in their eyes. How could he not feel something for them?

“But that means I have to look after an even larger environment.”

In order to keep Friedland safe, he had initiated trade with Rostruch, and as a result he had become personally acquainted with Rostruch’s erdgod Yggdra and her familiars, including Ulrike. Ulrike had called him a friend; it was a sign that they weren’t simply partners in trade—they weren’t simply using each other for mutual benefit.

The most important person in Yukinari’s life was still, without a doubt, Dasa. But before, Dasa alone had been important to him. There had been no question of order, because there was no one else in his heart. He cherished so many more things now. There was joy in that, but it also weighed on him.

“I have to look as far afield as I can if I’m going to play the part of the erdgod,” he said. “The townspeople expect it of me. Before, I always just felt I had to do what I could. But if you’re going to play god, there’s a lot more to worry about. From that perspective, honestly, I think I was sort of naïve about what it meant to be a deity.”

In his previous life, Yukinari’s mother had gotten sucked into religion and had all but left her family behind, so he was deeply suspicious of the whole concept of “god.” In his eyes, it was nothing but a way to stop people from thinking, to rob them of their money and time. But...

“Setting aside the morality of living sacrifices, erdgods are really amazing. They can do all this just... naturally. Not that I would want to become one with the land even if I could; I’d lose my sense of self.”

“...Yuki.” Dasa, unusually, interrupted him. He looked at her and saw that she was still on top of him—but she had risen slightly to look him in the eye.

“You’re definitely... working too hard.”

“...Maybe so.”

“You want... to... do everything yourself.”

This made him blink.

“You... protect me, Yuki... so I want... to... protect you.”

“Dasa...”

“With alchemy... humans tried to understand... the laws of nature, and... replicate them. You may... not be a god, Yuki... but one... day... you’ll be able to do the same things a god can do. I’m sure... of it.” There was conviction in her voice. “And I... will help you.”

There was a long pause before Yukinari said, “Thanks.”

Then he mussed her hair. The silver-haired girl squinted like a cat cozying up to its owner and pressed her cheek to Yukinari’s chest again.

●

That night, Berta remained in Friedland proper rather than going back to the sanctuary. As the shrine maiden who had been offered to Yukinari, normally it was her duty to stay by his side, but Fiona had specially requested her to stay and Yukinari had agreed, so she was spending tonight in the Schillings mansion.

Fiona wanted Berta to look after the mercenary, Veronika.

Ultimately, Veronika was allowed to stay in the guestroom of the mansion for the time being. She was obviously strong and seemed to be trying to put on a calm front to avoid any show of weakness. But she had fled from Aldreil to Friedland without proper rest, and she was wounded as well; her fatigue would be extreme. Somebody would need to see to her health for a while.

Currently, Friedland was working on several development projects at Yukinari’s suggestion, chiefly ways to improve farming. Much of the populace was busy working on those projects and unable to help accommodate an unexpected visitor. Hence, responsibility for Veronika had fallen to Berta.

But once she had changed the bandages on Veronika’s wounds, brought her food, and cleaned the room, she found she was out of things to do.

Berta had never really been properly educated. At most, she knew how to keep things clean so as not to cause trouble for other people. She knew that the mercenary’s wounds had to be kept clean and provided with fresh dressings regularly, but she didn’t know much beyond that.

“Um...”

She looked at Veronika, hesitant. Throughout most of her life, she had been surrounded by girls younger than herself—so when faced with a grown woman, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. She thought it might be good to talk about something, but she didn’t know what.

Veronika was a mercenary. Berta knew the word, but she had no idea what the job actually entailed—other than that mercenaries seemed like scary people. And although Veronika was in fact quite lovely, the perpetually hard expression on her face made Berta reluctant to engage her in conversation.

So a supremely uncomfortable silence reigned in the guestroom.

Despite this, Veronika showed no sign of going to sleep, so Berta didn’t even know whether it was appropriate for her to withdraw to another room. For better or for worse, Berta was a very serious person, so when she was told to be with Veronika at all times, she would not shirk her responsibility. But still...

“You.”

Perhaps even Veronika could no longer stand the silence, because she suddenly spoke. Berta responded with a touch of panic, but inside, she was also deeply relieved.

“Oh, Y-Yes? What can I do for you?”

“Would you tell me your name?”

“Oh...” It was only then that Berta realized she had never so much as introduced herself. “P-Pardon me. I’m called Berta!”

“Berta. Hmm...” Veronika muttered the name as if testing the weight of it; then she turned her clear gaze back on her caretaker, sizing her up. Finally, she said, “Sorry.”

“Wha...?” For a moment, Berta didn’t know why the woman was apologizing.

“You’re an attendant or something to that boy Yukinari, aren’t you? And here you’re stuck taking care of me.”

“I’m... I’m not his attendant. I’m a shrine maiden who’s been offered to Lord Yukinari.”

“A shrine maiden?” Veronika asked with a frown.

Someone who lived in the area probably would have surmised from that term that she was a human sacrifice who had been offered to an erdgod, and they’d know that erdgods were animals who had achieved intelligence through one means or another and become bound to the land.

“This... Yukinari. He’s a priest of some sort?”

“No, he’s the honored erdgod.”

“The erdgod? Him? A human?”

“Yes. Lord Yukinari often refers to himself as the ‘acting erdgod’... But for this town, and for me, he’s a very important person, and he is a god.”

Veronika seemed less than convinced, so Berta told her the story: how she had been offered as a sacrifice to the erdgod; how Yukinari had come and taken on the role of Friedland’s deity. Happy to have something she was able to talk about, Berta went into perhaps unnecessary detail as she related the tale.

“...And so, well, I’m the shrine maiden who’s been offered to Lord Yukinari. Although I admit I haven’t really been able to do my job properly yet...”

“Your job? I thought he wasn’t a man-eating monster?”

“That’s true. So offering myself to him can only mean, uh...” Her face was red.

Yukinari refused to treat Berta as property that had been given to him; instead, he was kind enough to treat her as a human being. She wasn’t suited to be food for him, obviously, and she had no special talents, so she thought perhaps she could at least give herself to him sexually. But Yukinari never came close to laying a hand on her. Thus, to this day Berta harbored a lingering anxiety that she was completely failing in her role as a shrine maiden.

Before she knew it, Berta had divulged even this to Veronika.

She had only wanted to help dispel the unpleasant atmosphere in the room, but it had led her to babble on about things Veronika probably didn’t care to hear about. By the time she realized that, however, it was too late to take it back.

Veronika, for her part, didn’t seem to feel she had been subjected to too much chatter.

“...True,” Veronika said at length. Her tone was a touch more gentle than before. “Once you’re used to living a certain way, it’s hard to change. Very hard.”

“Um, Miss... Veronika?” Berta blinked. But Veronika didn’t seem inclined to say anything more; she lay back down on her bed and turned over, silently ending the conversation. She seemed to be saying that she was ready to go to sleep. Berta watched her for a moment.

“Sleep... Sleep well.”

With that, she bowed once and then, as quietly as she could, walked out of the room.