Epilogue: No Expectation of Recovery

A little earlier...

About the time Sven and Mary Ville were conversing on the train platform, a man was reeling around the entertainment district on the outskirts of Ponapalas.

“Warrrgh!”

He had been drinking, pouring cheap alcohol down his throat, but his anger hadn’t eased one bit. The man’s name was Tagkinder. He was the prosecutor who had behaved inappropriately in court and was removed from Miroslav’s trial. Then his organization had forsaken him.

Today, he would receive his new appointment. He would be transferred to a remote branch office of the Justice Bureau in a Wiltian colony on another continent. Supposedly, this transfer wasn’t punishment for his connection to the Peace Faith.

But he wasn’t allowed to refuse. If he did, he would have to quit his profession as a prosecutor. In other words, this was a kind of legal harassment—exile because he held dangerous ideas against the government.

“Argh! Urgh! Argh!!”

Screaming, he kicked the wall and collapsed by the side of the road.

“Pardon me.”

“Who’re you?! Stop starin’! You’re buggin’ me!”

Tagkinder began to chew out the man but closed his mouth.

“Y... You’re...”

“Oh, you remember?”

The man wearing a black coat answered with a smile. It was the same man who approached Tagkinder the night before the trial and gave him the evidence to win the case in a single blow.

“Why didn’t you use the information I provided?”

“Well, um... the information wasn’t reliable enough. You can’t use that in a court of law! That’s the only reason!”

“Hmm...”

The man in black answered without interest and pulled a pistol from an inside pocket.

“What the—?!”

“It was my mistake for failing to notice your relationship to the Peace Faith. You have my sincerest apologies.”

The pistol had a silencer. Despite the many people around, no one would notice the sound of the gun in the noisy entertainment district.

“W-Wait!”

“I truly am sorry. If I had known, I would never have approached you.”

The man had misunderstood when he researched Tagkinder’s background.

Tagkinder himself wasn’t the kind of person to adhere to a rigid ideology. However, his younger brother had been a member of the Pelfe Militia.

The Pelfe Militia were military volunteers who showed loyalty to Wiltia so it would merge with Pelfe. Its members had been sent to a particularly dangerous battlefield on the Western Front. By standing firm despite the brutal onslaught, they proved Pelfe’s loyalty to Wiltia.

Wiltia had sent the Pelfians to avoid endangering their own soldiers. As a result, the number of casualties in the Pelfe Militia had been higher than in other units, with half said to have died.

Tagkinder’s younger brother had been a member of that group.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure your brother is waiting for you.”

“No, don—”

After reassuring Tagkinder with a smile, the man in black pulled the trigger.

Pshmp! Pshmp!

A dry sound rang out several times, but no one noticed. Tagkinder fell to the ground and spoke no more. His heart stopped and he ceased breathing.

“What a shame... Because your brother showed loyalty to our nation, you guys get better treatment than the citizens of Haugen. And that’s a problem.”

He put away his gun as he muttered.

“Being kind to inferior people just makes them uppity. It truly is a problem.”

The man in black wasn’t really smiling. He was without feelings, so the smile simply hung on his face. And it hid fierce contempt.

“Now for one more. The woman.”

The man in black—Agent Belger of the Security Department—continued muttering as he tucked away his gun.

The next morning at Central Station in Ponapalas...

Lud and Sven were in the waiting room before boarding a steam engine from Ponapalas to Organbaelz—or, to be more accurate, to the town next to Organbaelz where the rail line connected.

“What’s the holdup?!”

Sven was fuming as she sat on a waiting room bench.

“It seems there’s been some sort of trouble.”

Lud was sitting next to her and answered as he watched the tumultuous scene of people waiting for the train.

“Forget about our train. It seems the train before ours hasn’t arrived either. I wonder if there was an accident.”

“Just when I thought we’d handled everything here and were on our way home!”

They had been waiting for almost an hour, but there was no expectation of leaving. At this rate, they might not get home that day.

“And we left our lodging, so it’ll be hard to find a place to spend the night.”

“Then we’ll just have to wait this out! Master, I’ll go buy something to drink.”

Inside the station, eager vendors were selling fruit, sandwiches, and drinks like coffee and tea—as well as newspapers and magazines, and even playing cards to help travelers pass the time.

Sven exited the waiting room, and just when she was about to call out to one of the vendors, she overheard two station attendants talking.

“It was the last train yesterday, right? Haven’t they cleaned that up yet?”

“Well, I heard it was a bomb or something.”

“Seriously? I heard there was a terrorist bombing incident in Berun, too. I hope Pelfe doesn’t get attacked!”

They were talking softly, but it was clearly audible to Sven with her superhuman hearing.

“Hey! You!”

Without thinking, she called out.

“Did you say the last train yesterday?! The one to Alohz?!”

“Huh?! Um...”

The station attendants were flustered. Apparently, they weren’t supposed to reveal details to the passengers yet.

“W-What are you talking about?!”

“It’s all right, just tell me!”

An attendant was nervously trying to fix the situation, but Sven grabbed him by his coat lapels and questioned him.

“Oh... did you overhear us? It’ll cause an uproar, so please don’t tell any other passengers, all right? You’re right. There was an incident involving the last train last night, the train bound for Alohz.”

“How bad was the damage?!”

After leaving Sven last night, Mary Ville had boarded that train.

“Well... just before dawn, the bridge collapsed. They say it was a bomb.”

“A bomb?!”

“It seems all the passengers... everyone died. Clearing away the debris has been difficult. We still don’t know who was on the train or how many passengers there were, but there are no reports of survivors.”

“Oh no!”

Sven’s face paled.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. There was no way such a bombing would accidentally occur at that precise time. Mary Ville Mehl had been liquidated.

“Waaaaaaaaah!”

Sven wailed loudly.

She should have stopped Mary Ville from leaving, by force if necessary.

Mary Ville loved Lud but she also hated him? Who cares!

Sven should have dragged her along by force to see Lud again. That alone might have been enough to change her mind.

Mary Ville could have helped Lud bake bread at the small bakery in Organbaelz. She had been articulate and would have been a better teacher for the apprentice Milly. She might have joined the fight between Sven and the nun Marlene over Lud. They might have become surprisingly good friends. And Jacob, who was crazy about beautiful women, might have unsettled her with smooth talk surprising from a ten-year-old boy.

As the days passed, she might have smiled—not the sad smile Sven had seen when they parted, but the bright smile she had been capable of until ten years ago. And the sight would have pleased Lud more than anything.

But now that would never be. Because Mary Ville Mehl had died.