Chapter 11: Girl, Gets Grossed Out

 

 

 

Chapter 11: Girl, Gets Grossed Out

 

WINDY Village’s big race ended in chaos. The villagers came to their senses and apologized to each other for the shameful way they had acted during the race.

Nichika landed in that awkwardness paler than a ghost and sucked in a shuddery breath when she saw a black object tumble on the ground. The charred lump that no longer looked human was barely alive. What used to be a chest feebly rose and fell, and fragments of the wind orb pierced through scorched hands.

The need to rush to his side and the repulsiveness of what appeared by all accounts to be a dead lump of flesh weighed heavily on the two sides of her mental scales, preventing her from making a decision.

What is that? Is it really the guy who always has a carefree smile?

Is it alive? Is it still alive? Or is it just carbon?

A person? A thing? What is a person? What makes something a person?

Bile rising in the back of her throat, she retreated a step, and then she heard it, between the wheezing gasps for breath—her name.

“L-Lam!”

The scales tipped. Squashing the fear churning her stomach, Nichika scrambled over and kneeled beside the carbonized body. Her hands shook like a drunken sailor and she struggled to bring herself to touch him.

I can’t. It’s too disgusting. I don’t want to touch him.

Flesh had burned off, exposing bare, white bones and the nauseating stench of charred hair, skin, and fat wreaked havoc on her nose. Tears sprung to her eyes; she didn’t know what to do with the maimed body before her.

She covered her mouth with both hands and muffled her cries. Were they moans of disgust or sadness? She didn’t know.

How the hell am I the Spirit Priestess? If I really was such a saint, I should be able to embrace this lump of fried meat without a second’s thought. Yet the utter disgust I feel is winning out. I can’t be a priestess. I can’t become a pure and selfless heroine like in the stories.

Something terrible and inexplicable wriggled deep inside her heart at that somber realization. Why? Why does it feel like I’ve…felt this way before?

“Eek!”

The blackened pile of meat suddenly fastened around Nichika’s wrist. She screamed and tried to swing her arm loose. Yet the surprising amount of strength remaining in that charred hand wouldn’t let her escape. Lambert, whose eyes had been smashed in, jerked his opposite hand over and touched what he had clenched in a death grip to the back of her hand.

“What…?”

She didn’t know what he wanted and remained perfectly still. And then she heard it—a beep from the wristband. The orb furthest to the right lit up—the last checkpoint marker.

“Congratulations.”

Reading his mangled lips struck Nichika hard in the gut. Lambert’s hand—no, what had once been his hand—limply slid to the ground, never to move again.

“Ah…ahhh…”

Nichika’s scream failed to make a sound and she collapsed to the ground.

“—!!!”

Her soundless cry conveyed more pain and sorrow than even the loudest of shouts.

***

OSWALD silently watched over the girl who didn’t stop weeping even after an hour had passed.

“Is that Lambert?” a subdued voice drifted over to them from behind.

Nichika spun around as if someone had set the ground on fire under her legs. Standing there was the king of wind spirits, his long green hair fluttering around him like a cape. She sprang to her feet and grabbed a fistful of his tunic.

“Lord Sylmia! Please! Please save Lam!” she begged, clinging to him.

The Great Wind Spirit glanced at the girl’s wristband. “You are this year’s winner,” he announced with a tight smile. “I’ll imbue my power into your magic orb as promised.”

“Excuse me…?” she wrenched out.

Sylmia held his hand over the dumbfounded girl’s forehead and whispered something in another language. A gentle green wind swaddled her in its caress. Green light twirled within her magic orb a second later.

“There you go,” he continued in an even voice. “Now you have come one step closer to reviving the goddess.”

“Wh-Why? How…could you?”

A half laugh gurgled past her lips and she stepped away from his outrageous show of calm. Sylmia maintained his cool despite the way she looked at him like he was some kind of monster.

“How could I what?”

His frigid question brought another round of tears to her swollen eyes. “You of all people should be able to tell who is lying over there!” she screamed, pointing to the singed corpse behind her. “He may have been adopted, but wasn’t he still your son?!”

“……”

“How could you…be so…cold…” she wrung out between sobs, earning a blistering sigh from the wind spirit.

He snapped his fingers, activating some sort of spell. Wind swirled around them, creating a barrier that severed them from the onlookers. Sylmia confirmed no one could hear them, then proceeded to ask her a harsh question.

“Can you still say that knowing Lambert is the one who rigged your broom to break apart?”

“…?!”

Bowled over by that possibility, Nichika swung her gaze to the broom pieces scattered about. Each piece had cleanly come apart at the seams, which couldn’t have happened over the natural course of use or from whittling it down too far.

Lambert tried to kill me? How was she supposed to take that bit of information? All she could do was reel back from the shock.

“In other words, you knew and still allowed for this to happen?” Oswald accused.

Sylmia quietly closed his eyes and nodded once. “I feel horrible for mixing you up in my gamble,” he apologized in a heartrendingly flat voice. “As you rightly guessed, I purposely overlooked Lam sneaking that magic crystal into my village.”

The wind spirit’s handsome face twisted as he knelt beside his son. A single tear slipped down his cheek and splattered on the back of his outstretched hand.

“Because I had hoped…this child would find it in him to stop.”

As the one who ruled over all the wind in the world, Sylmia knew everything. He knew the hurting young man behind the polished mask Lambert kept up for appearances, about the black flames of vengeance burning deep in his heart, and how he looked down on the rest of the world.

“I desperately wanted to believe that he had, if only a little, come to care for me and this village. My hopes ended in miserable failure though,” he said, his voice coming out in a quiet trickle.

Having heard the truth, Nichika stopped crying and balled her hands into tight fists. “You didn’t…make a mistake.”

“What?”

“I’m positive,” she continued in a quivering voice, “you, and everyone in this village, had become important to Lam.”

All the fear had washed away. She crawled over to the corpse and held the marred hand that once belonged to Lambert.

“Do you honestly believe he’d risk his life to destroy the orb if he didn’t?!”

Green radiated from her wet eyes. Skin crumbled off the charred hand she clutched. She didn’t even notice as she impulsively berated Sylmia.

“Could you be any stupider?! You should’ve sat him down for a proper talk before testing him! It’s too late once the person is dead!”

Skin peeled off in flakes with each shout. New dermis formed in layers underneath. Wind mana absorbed into his body at the same time, causing it to faintly shine. His skin glowed like a firefly.

“Lam was…I just know Lam was…!”

“Stop it! Release his hand this instant!”

“Eh?”

Nichika was astonished by the changes going on around her that she hadn’t noticed. She suddenly felt like a hundred-ton brick had fallen on her back.

“You are pouring all your magic into Lam!” Sylmia warned, panicking for the first time. “Keep that up and you will drain your soul dry! You might die!”

“B-But his body is regenerating.” She stared at the corpse like she had discovered a new hope. But sadness crumpled Sylmia’s face.

“It’s a lost cause…”

At first glance it looked like a miracle, but it was a meaningless act. The somatic cells were being regenerated with magic, recreating the “flesh”, but the soul had already separated. What the girl was doing was just cleaning up the corpse.

“Please…open your eyes!”

But she couldn’t see reality now that she was blinded by false hope. Sylmia had no intention of watching the Spirit Priestess kill herself in front of him. He turned toward her master, Oswald, and sought his assistance.

“Stop her. You are that child’s master, aren’t you?”

The man cast down his gaze and gave his head a small shake. “She can’t be stopped once she becomes like this. She’s ridiculously stubborn and doesn’t know when to give up. She dreams of miracles that will never happen and believes the world is filled with light. She’s got a bad case of heroine syndrome.”

Oswald thought of the day she told him to come with her and pulled him from the shadows into the morning light. That time things went just as she wanted—no, he allowed it to be as she wanted—but this miracle wouldn’t come so easily, if at all.

“Just let her be until she’s satisfied.”

Though he said that, Oswald was going to stop her if she persisted to the point of permanent injury. For now, he carefully watched his apprentice pour out an endless supply of magic.

***

LAM! Lam!

The young man had recovered his former appearance, but his cheeks were still ashen. At a glance, he appeared to be sleeping. Nichika implored him to come back to her while thinking back on their time together.

The first time you talked to me was through Sumire at Lolo Village. You said you were going to make her throw herself off a cliff, so I thought you were the worst person in the world.

She remembered being shocked by how his casual approach to things and lighthearted comments didn’t match the vulgar actions he took. He acted completely aloof even when she destroyed the medium tethering him to Sumire and fought back against him.

And then I met you, in your own body, at Elminage.

He was a strange guy who approached her without any restraint and yet just as easily backed down. She still couldn’t forget the feeling of his lips brushing against hers when he stole a kiss. Though he poked fun at her, he showed her to the headmaster’s office as promised.

You came to see me when I was at my lowest and gave me the push needed to change an unwanted situation.

His smile as he pulled her into the starry night sky was dazzling. Nichika felt like she had become more of a positive thinker since he gave her a voice to get Oswald back.

“Hey, Lam, I haven’t done anything to repay you. You helped me out so much in your own way, I haven’t even thanked you properly for it yet,” she talked to him with a watery smile, desperate for a reaction.

Wind danced between them, forming a green glowing barrier.

“I still don’t know anything about you. I want to know everything, including the darkest parts.”

The young man didn’t open his eyes. Nichika’s stamina had reached its cap. Her consciousness pivoted, her vision blurred.

“Don’t you love my…magic? Is it still…not enough?”

Like a sponge soaking up water, his body absorbed her outpour of magic.

“Tell me…”

“Nichika.”

She sluggishly turned her eyes to the person softly calling her name. Oswald was looking down at her with a sympathetic gaze.

“Give it up. You can’t bring back the dead.”

Convulsing with sobs, she let her magic bleed out to him, wholly unaware the amount given already exceeded the level Lambert could’ve handled.

Wind mana gathered in droves to the fountain of magic. Nichika’s eyes rounded at what she saw. The light that had been smaller than a firefly had grown into a blinding beam. She shut her eyes against the offensively bright light.

“I don’t believe it,” Sylmia breathed. “Ascension of the soul…”

“What?” Nichika looked back just as the voice she had fervently wanted to hear reached her ears.

“Seriously, you’re too damn nice. Or should I say stupidly tried and true?”

“Ah…”

Lambert slowly opened his eyes and looked up at Nichika as if she was the most dazzling thing his dark green eyes ever saw.

“That’s why you get used by scum like moi.”

“Lam…bert!”

“Girl, you need to get your head checked. Most people don’t try to revive the person who tried to kill ’em.”

He wasn’t an illusion or a ghost. The young man she had come to know was alive and looking right at her. He patted her gently on the head. His warmth brought tears to her eyes.

“Thanks. You saved me.”

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Nichika threw her arms around his neck and cried her throat hoarse.

Even I’m capable of doing something.

Miracles can happen.

As long as you don’t give up hope, anything’s possible.

***

OR so Nichika had thought.

“What about that was a freakin’ miracle, you idiot!”

Nichika shrunk away from her master’s outraged shouts in her guest room at Sylmia’s house. Just shrinking down on the bed made the whole world shake and her head fell back against the plush pillow.

“Agggh. So dizzzzyyy,” she groaned.

“You’re stupider than I thought! I can’t believe there’s actually a person in this world who’s dumb enough to pour out their magic without considering their limits. How’d I get stuck with such a reckless, brainless moron for an apprentice?”

She sluggishly pulled the cold wet towel Oswald chucked at her over her eyes. His verbal assault didn’t relent.

“Blockhead. Overconfident petacolon. Overreaching dime-novel heroine. Pretend priestess.”

“You don’t have to call me that many names…”

His insult parade made her feel as emotionally drained as she did physically.

After all that had happened, Nichika ended up passing out on top of Lambert. The first thing she felt when she woke up was fatigue worse than running twenty miles nonstop, and roiling nausea. Releasing magic beyond one’s limitations was the same as wearing down the soul, thus her wounded soul sought rest and she became bedridden.

“Shed a few tears and say a few prayers, and you can bring back the dead? Ha! That’s the kind of hackneyed plot development people write about in cheap novels.”

“What are you trying to get at?”

He wouldn’t stop slinging sarcastic remarks at her. Why he felt the need to be so pointed with her was simple—

Oswald thrust his finger at her forehead and slapped down his ultimate grievance. “Passing out and losing all your strength over something completely and UTTERRRRRLY meaningless is the act of ignoramuses! MOOOROOON!”

“Don’t say thaaaat!”

Indeed, all her strenuous effort to bring Lambert back to life by pouring her magic into him past her breaking point had absolutely nothing to do with his revival.

“You aren’t done lecturin’ her yet, ol’ pal?” Lambert, the man himself, opened the door and strode inside with a washbowl filled with ice. He placed it on the sideboard.

Oswald turned his narrowed eyes on him and exasperated, “Shouldn’t you be the angriest one here? It’s all because of this meddlesome busybody heroine that you became a ‘spirit enslaved to their body.’”

“Uggggggh…” Nichika groaned, recognizing the massive blunder she made this time relinquished her of the right to complain.

Apparently, Lambert would have revived as a spirit even if she had left him be. Nichika had not only healed his body back to normal, but pumped it full of magic on top of that, drawing a lot of wind mana into it. As a result, his soul returned to the original body it had a high affinity for, and so an unusual half-human half-spirit was born.

But the person in question was entirely nonchalant about it. “Yeah, but it’s not inconveniencing and I’ve got nothin’ to be dissatisfied ’bout,” he answered in the same casual manner as he had when human. “If anythin’, I’d say I’m grateful to have become a more human-like spirit.”

“R-Really?” Nichika looked to him, seeking forgiveness from his comforting words. Someone karate chopped her on the back of the head.

“Getting stupider? Becoming a proper spirit would’ve been incomparably convenient. Without a body to shackle him, he could have freely traveled anywhere he desired and become nearly immortal.”

“I am really soooooooooo sorry!” Ashamed to look at him, she buried her face in the blankets.

“It’s fine,” Lambert chuckled wryly. “Besides, it’s still partially thanks to you that I was able to ascend into a spirit.”

“How’s that?”

He sat on the edge of the bed and smiled sweetly at her with eyes that had turned green during his ascension into a wind spirit.

“You frantically called for me, right? I came back to this side following your voice.” He stroked the top of her head. It was a very affectionate touch. “As someone who only ever thought of revenge, I finally realized that I shouldn’t sadden the one girl crying for my sake more than I already had. That I had to get back to her.”

“Lam…”

“I really am sorry for betraying you and settin’ ya up. I swear I’ll never do it again.”

Heat rushed to her cheeks when he said that with a seriousness that had been absent from him before. Behind them Oswald was highly unamused, but Nichika didn’t notice. He folded his arms and took this as the moment to talk to Lambert.

“So? What are you going to do now?”

“’Bout that—”

“Lam!” Someone charged into the room, cutting him off with their loud shouts. “You’ve been here all this time?!”

“Geh!”

Cloaked in a cape of wind, Sylmia loomed over Lambert with a blue vein bulging in a corner of his beautiful face. “How could you ditch my lessons?! You may have become a wind spirit, but you’re only halfway there! Prepare yourself to be trained mercilessly by me to become my future successor!”

In other words, Lambert had snuck out of his lessons to visit Nichika. His eyes spun before he made a mad dash for the window and jumped off the second floor.

“Wait right there! Do you think you can escape me?!”

Sylmia immediately followed, disappearing through the walls. The master-apprentice duo was left dumbfounded.

“…Lambert’s at a serious disadvantage,” Oswald quietly noted.

“D-Definitely.”

The bulging curtains swayed in the bright sunlight. A peaceful breeze was blowing through Windy Village once again.

 

***

IN the end, it took two days of bed rest before Nichika was up and about again.

Most of her energy was back, so she decided to wash the laundry piled up over their travel from Elminage to Windy Village. It was refreshing to add soap to the clothes in the sink and rub them clean. She enjoyed seeing dirty things getting cleaner. She threw a large towel over the clothes hanger to dry and clipped it in place so it wouldn’t blow away. This spot was nice and sunny, perfect for a quick dry.

Nichika picked up the borrowed laundry basket and finally answered the question put to her. “…Because the name ‘Lambert’ is too long. Anyways, isn’t it normal to call someone you’re friends with by a nickname?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the tall figure lounging on the sofa with a sour look on his face. For whatever reason she could not comprehend, Oswald didn’t like her calling Lambert “Lam” and had been annoying her about it an awful lot since she started doing the laundry. Her master snorted and laid on his folded arms.

“You’re something else for being able to casually call the man who tried to kill you by a cute nickname,” he continued in a voice permeated with his irritation. “Haven’t you been calling him by nicknames since before you became friends?”

“Yeah, because I hadn’t met him in person yet, and some of those nicknames weren’t so nice…”

What’s this guy so mad about? Exasperated, Nichika returned the basket where she found it. When she came back, Oswald had closed his eyes. Without much thought, she sat beside him and stared at his face. She looked extra close at his eyes. Last time his eyelashes looked like they were glowing silver. Had she just imagined it?

Sensing her eyes on him, his lashes fluttered open. When his eyes met hers, his perfectly manicured eyebrows snapped together.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll attack you.”

Nichika swiftly retreated to safe distance. She knew he wasn’t serious, but reacted just in case. Oswald languidly sat up and threw another annoyed question at her.

“You said you call friends by a nickname. That doesn’t apply to me?”

Back to that topic? He sure was hung up on the whole nickname thing.

“I seriously doubt it, but do you want me to call you Osy or something?” she half joked.

“……”

She nearly burst out laughing at the nickname she had picked for him. He noticed her trembling shoulders and the creases in his brow deepened to become a ravine.

“…God-awful nickname.”

“See? You’re the one who told me from day one to never utter your name like we’re friends. That’s why you’re Master or Oswald,” she reasoned.

After a while, Oswald stood with a sullen face. Nichika, who was checking over their travel supplies, glanced up at him. “Where are you going?”

“Off to wander around.”

“I want to come too! All my bones are going to lock up if I don’t go outside and move around. Will you take me with you?”

She had been bedridden for days. Going for a walk was a good place to start. Oswald tossed her a perfunctory glance and left the room with a curt “Do what you want.”

“Wait! Wait for me, Master!”

Nichika promptly pulled on her cardigan and ran after him.