Lucia Hears How Maria Feels

Everyone’s eyes gathered on Miss Maria after His Highness’s question. Of course, I was no exception. Would she return home, or would she stay in our world? The thought of this weighed on everyone’s minds.

“I...” She looked downwards, uncomfortable with everyone’s gazes. “Um, I’ve been thinking. What if I could go home, but have some way to come back here...”

She twirled her hair around a finger, still facing downwards and avoiding everyone’s eyes. Did she mean that she wanted to leave and then come back?

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one wondering what she meant. His Highness gently urged her to continue. “And that would mean?”

“Um, I do want to go home, of course... But Ed and Lucia are here, so I don’t really want to leave. So I’m kinda...undecided.”

“If there was a way to come back to our world, you would?”

“I dunno...” Miss Maria sighed and continued, looking at the ground with unsure, half-lidded eyes. “My world is a lot easier to live in, and it does feel better for me, but...you guys aren’t there. So since I’d be sad to never see you again, I can’t decide... I was just kind of hoping there’d be a way to maybe come back.”

Hearing her answer, the prince gave her a troubled smile. “The way we summoned you was by placing the hidden stone of the Sacred Maiden on a summoning circle, and touching it with a magical crystal filled with mana made specially by the Academy. It wouldn’t be that simple.”

Eric, one of the Academy’s mages, furrowed his brows at His Highness’s explanation. “So that’s what it was used for... Mmm, which means, it’d take quite a few years to make another one, Sacred Maiden. And we don’t have enough mages at the Academy to make another one. Too many of us died in the dragon attack in Aquilani.”

“How long would it take?”

Eric answered, an apologetic expression on his face, “Uhh...just estimating, maybe seven years... No, probably ten. It’d take a bit less time if we got some powerful new mages. The magical crystal that was used to summon you took years to make.”

As Miss Maria’s face dropped, Lord Reynard put the final nail in the coffin.

“And even if we were to summon you in the future, unless there were multiple ‘Drops of the Cristallo Sacro,’ you would never be able to go back to your original world again. We would hate to put you in the same position as you are in now, and you would have no choice on the timing. It could end up being once you’ve gotten used to your original world and are living happily. It wouldn’t be right for us to selfishly call you back again...”

Miss Maria looked dejected after hearing Lord Reynard’s explanation, and Sir Gaius added another painful blow, “So it’d mean you’d either never come back here, or you’d only be going home for a few years before you’d get pulled back, never to see your world again. You’d have to choose.”

Miss Maria’s shoulders drooped at the Canalis brother’s words.

“Okay... So either way, that means I can’t hold off on deciding...?”

“Yes.”

“Yep.”

His Highness chimed in with an unexpected idea for the dejected Sacred Maiden, “There’s another option. If we could at least prepare a magical crystal, we could give it and the hidden stone to Maria when she leaves. Then maybe she could open the door from her side when she wants to come back.”

“Your Highness, the hidden stone is a royal treasure,” Sir Agliardi asserted. “The King would never allow it.”

“There would be no problem if I became the King before the crystal was ready, would there? But if Maria wanted to leave before then, of course we would let her.”

“But—”

The Commander shook his head as the prince quietly rejected his opinion, “Fernando, you know that my father isn’t long for this world. It’s getting too difficult for him to rule while ill. I’ll be ascending the throne within a few years.”

There was no emotion in his voice. He was only saying what the plans were. But I didn’t know that the King was sick. Thinking back, he didn’t look very well when I saw him.

“Still... There’s no proof that she’d be able to return here that way,” Sir Celes spoke up from beside me.

His Highness nodded, as if he had already thought of that. “Yes. It would be a gamble, unfortunately, for Maria.”

“But, Ed, isn’t that hidden stone thing really important? I shouldn’t bring something like that back...”

The prince smiled at Miss Maria as she worried, before turning his emerald eyes onto me. “That’s fine. Our country won’t ever need to summon a Sacred Maiden from another world again. This world needs to make do with its own residents. And...our world has its own Sacred Maiden.”

His gaze shot right through me, and for a moment, I didn’t understand what he was saying.

“Maria doesn’t need a crystal to use her magic. The same goes for Lucia, doesn’t it? It’s a special kind, not using the Cristallo Sacro as a catalyst like other magic. And its effect is ‘cleansing.’ Kyriest’s tree was purified with your power alone. If Maria is ‘another world’s Sacred Maiden,’ then you must be ‘our world’s Sacred Maiden.’”

His Highness explained his opinion, but I couldn’t be a Sacred Maiden. With Miss Maria, she was strong, beautiful — just as you’d imagine a Sacred Maiden being. But I was just an ordinary person. We weren’t comparable. I shouldn’t try. It would be absurd for me to call myself one!

But part of me agreed...

I myself may have been too ordinary to be called a ‘Sacred Maiden,’ but my power was too abnormal to be called ‘ordinary.’ It could clear away things from stains on clothes to even miasma, and I didn’t need a crystal to cast it. I hadn’t considered it when I only thought it made soap bubbles, but my power being able to cleanse even the Cristallo Sacro was...extraordinary.

“We had only thought of the Sacred Maiden being Maria, from another world, but maybe our world’s Sacred Maiden had been Lucia all along. The purification of the trees was something we should have done by ourselves, and that’s why Lucia has her power. It’s possible that sixteen hundred years ago, there was someone else who had your exact power somewhere in the world. They might have just not found them, and by chance, another world’s Sacred Maiden managed to purify the trees. That must have been why we were convinced that we needed to summon a Sacred Maiden from another world.”

His Highness grasped Miss Maria’s hand comfortingly as she sat still. When he touched her, she gave him a flat look and said, “So you’re saying I was just a spare Sacred Maiden?”

“No, you’re not anyone’s spare. You’re undoubtedly a Sacred Maiden with the power to purify — you just aren’t our world’s Sacred Maiden. Of course, this is all just my guess, but I don’t think I’m far off. We should have worked harder on our own. Instead of going the easy way of summoning a Sacred Maiden, we should have done all we could to try to do it ourselves. So...I’m sorry, Maria. We did something terrible to you. If you’d ever forgive me for my selfishness, I... I want to give thanks that I met you.”

“You really are selfish,” she said bluntly.

“I realize that. But that’s love, isn’t it?”

“I dunno. Why don’t you ask one of the lovebirds?”

“You aren’t in love?”

Miss Maria was back to her usual self, giving His Highness a look before bursting out in a tingling laugh. The prince was smiling beside her, too.

“What? You’re really gonna flirt now?” Eric groaned.

“You’re gonna get charged with treason, kid.”

“Huh, but weren’t we having a really serious conversation? Did I miss something?”

While I was hearing Eric and Sir Gaius speak, my mind was in mayhem. I didn’t want to be treated as a Sacred Maiden all of a sudden. What should I do now? If he’s talking about it here, does that mean he wants something from me?

We’d been talking about the incident in Fatna. Then, His Highness had asked Miss Maria about what she wanted to do...because he wanted her to stay with him. And after that, he’d talked about giving her the hidden stone as atonement, and that had led into him calling me a Sacred Maiden. Hm? Did that mean he didn’t actually want me to do anything? It was just how the conversation turned out?

While I worried about what to conclude from His Highness’s words, Sir Celes softly took my hand. Looking up, he had a horribly grim look on his face. We might have been holding hands, but it definitely wasn’t romantic.

“Sir Celes?”

“Ah...no, it’s nothing.” His attractive face grimaced awkwardly. It looked like he was trying, and failing, to smile, and I got worried.

“What’s wrong?”

He wouldn’t answer me. He just held my hand a little tighter.

I couldn’t get rid of the worried feeling I had. All I could do was hold his hand back.

◆ ◆ ◆

After His Highness spoke to us in the camp, our journey to the last Cristallo Sacro in Maynard went without incident.

While His Highness had seemed down before, talking about it must have helped, because afterwards he looked refreshed. And though Sir Celes had seemed odd, he’d been smiling as usual since then. Sir Gaius still had fun with Lord Reynard and Eric, and Eric himself sometimes pulled out a notebook to write something or other. Lord Reynard would smile as he dealt with his brother or the Commander, and even Sir Agliardi, who had never spoken much, had opened up at the end of our journey, and would sometimes have fun talking with Lord Reynard. Miss Maria would play with Shiro and talk to me, and everyone was absolutely normal. Actually, it was strange how nothing else happened.

Finally, we arrived at the forest surrounding the last Cristallo Sacro. Maybe it was because we had already purified two of the trees, but a group of boars with venomous bristles just glanced at us before calmly walking back into the bush.

All we could hear was the clacking of the horse’s hooves, the creaking of the carriage, and the chirping of some birds. The strong rays of the sun didn’t reach our skin through the forest canopy, and the breeze blowing through the treetops actually felt quite nice.

“It’s scary how quiet it is...” I mumbled. The fact that absolutely nothing was happening as we approached the tree was making me nervous.

Sir Celes agreed with me. “You’re right. We’ve never had so few encounters with monsters. It’s worrying. We should get ready for something to happen.”

“You’re right.”

But once we purified the final Cristallo Sacro, our journey would be over.

I had heard that there would be far fewer monsters after all three of the trees were purified. No one else would have to die to the monsters like my father did. When I thought about it like that, it meant a lot for me to be here.

No one else would lose their family to monsters like I did. It would be wonderful that there would be fewer people losing their loved ones, or children being left alone. And if the monsters were gone, the people who had to go out and exterminate them, like Sir Celes, wouldn’t be in danger as much. That was very important to me.

“Wow...”

I didn’t know who had cheered. It might just have been everyone.

The sight of the last Cristallo Sacro stopped us in our tracks. We all knew how beautiful the tree, which was now still surrounded with black miasma, would look once it was purified. And seeing it meant that the end was upon us.

“So this is the last tree...” Miss Maria muttered, looking up at the huge tree as she got out of the carriage with His Highness. Shiro, still in her arms, mimicked her with a squeak.

“I’ll go check if there are any monsters nearby.”

“Alright. Reynard, Gaius, you check as well.”

“Understood.”

“Okay.”

They must have still been worried about the monsters, because all of the knights went off, one in each direction. Before, we had always prioritized purification over guarding against them, but because we needed to find the ‘Drop of the Cristallo Sacro,’ we had to be sure we were safe.

“This’ll be the last one, huh, Lucia?” Miss Maria spoke to me, standing still while looking up at the Cristallo Sacro. Shiro slipped out of her arms, and flapped his way over to the dark branches.

“Yes...”

“I hope we find it.”

“We will. After all, it didn’t come from any of the other trees.”

I didn’t ask her what she was talking about, because I knew it was the Drop. When I softly took her hand, she looked down from the tree to me, and began speaking. “I’m gonna go home first. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I’m really worried about my home. I want to see my mom and dad. I don’t know exactly when I’ll go, but...I’ll be able to go home, right?”

“...Yes, if you want to, you will.”

Miss Maria looked at me with wavering eyes, continuing, “It’s true that I really don’t want to leave you guys. I’m sure I’d do just fine staying here — but, my family is different. They’re my biggest supporters. It’d be too hard to never see them again, not even to say goodbye.”

I could tell how important her family was to her. If she would never see them again, she wanted to at least say goodbye. The fact that she wanted to do that was proof of how dearly she was raised.

“Will you be there when I go home?”

“Yes, if I’m allowed.”

“I’ll request it, even if someone says no. You’re my best friend. I want you to see me off. Say ‘see you later.’ And when I get back...”

“I’ll say welcome home.”

“Yeah.”

Making our small promise, we looked back up at the Cristallo Sacro.