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There are other immortals besides us.

This was a startling revelation for Elmer as well, but he decided not to pursue that particular issue. It was possible that Czes hadn’t gotten his own feelings under control yet; he didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d just revealed an important fact.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s not the slightest bit good! …Remember what I said? I know better than anyone that human nature is brimming with evil.”

Czes hesitated a little over the words that came next, but soon, as if he’d made up his mind, he spoke.

“…I ate Fermet.”

Fermet. At that name, Elmer fell silent for a while. He hadn’t spoken with him much, but if his memory served him right, the man had been Czes’s guardian, one of the fellow alchemists who’d journeyed with them on the ship.

“Fermet inflicted pain and suffering on me in all sorts of ways, calling them ‘experiments.’ Still, I trusted him. But the pain he caused me just kept growing worse!”

The sudden confession left Elmer silent. Czes had been like a little brother or a son to the Fermet he remembered, and he hadn’t thought of him as the sort of man who could do that.

“Don’t you understand? The man I’d believed in all that time, the man I’d trusted even when he treated me that way… One day, out of the blue, he tried to kill me! I fought desperately, and the next thing I knew, I’d put my right hand on Fermet’s head, and— Do you know the hell that came after that? Do you have any idea how it feels to know that the person I trusted had been full of warped malice, and how much it hurts to live carrying all of that inside me?! …It made me hate the world. I decided to assume that everything, both the world and myself, was just evil incarnate. But if so…if so, why were they all good people?! It…it felt like I was the one vile person in the whole world—and you, and Maiza, and Isaac and Miria and Firo and Ennis, why are you so…all of you, all of you…all of you…”

He didn’t seem able to get any more words out. He lowered his head completely and fell silent.

Elmer stayed quiet for a little while, too, but then he looked up at the stars and murmured:

“I’m jealous.”

At that, Czes slowly raised his head.

“Yeah, jealous. Listen, Czes. Whether human nature is evil or good, just think of it like this: There are about six billion people on the planet, and of those, ninety-nine point nine percent are bad. However, ever since you boarded that train, you kept right on meeting that remaining point one percent of the good people! Those are insane odds! It’s such a huge win, it’s like if the same lottery number came up twice in a row, and you’d bought both those tickets yourself! An asteroid’s going to hit the Earth and chimpanzees will write the works of Shakespeare, y’know?”

As Elmer fired his lighthearted comments like a machine gun, Czes began to feel like an idiot for having spoken seriously. It hurt even worse because he knew that Elmer actually meant what he said, and that it wasn’t just empty consolation.

“…I’m jealous of your optimism, Elmer.”

“Optimism? I’m just stating the facts. While I’m at it, you’re a pretty good guy yourself, Czes, so relax and just live.”

“Don’t try to comfort me. I’m frustrated, that’s all. Nobody else has changed one bit, but I got nastier and nastier… Just me. I’m the only one who changed. I can’t stand it.”

As if to say he had nothing more to discuss, Czes began to walk toward the ladderlike handholds he’d used to climb up. Elmer spoke to his back, mystified.

“You’re a strange one. If you’re going to get all worked up over not being good—why not just be good?”

“Don’t act like it’s easy.”

“You didn’t change. You just grew, Czes. You learned how to see what’s good and bad about the world. You should be happy about that. If you still say you changed, then—just change back. Water might freeze, but it’ll melt again someday. People can change, too.”

Then, scratching his head awkwardly, Elmer smiled.

“If you want to melt again, just let yourself feel the warmth of your environment. Even if you don’t lean on the kindness of the people around you, you should probably at least accept it.”

“I’m impressed you can say things like that without blushing… What’s in it for you if I change?”

“I already told you: Smiling like a kid suits you better. It isn’t just you. Most of the people in the world are designed to look good with a smile. Anyway, if it’ll make you smile, I’ll do anything to help. Oh, but if you could manage it, steer clear of telling me to kill people or die myself.”

At those words, Czes stopped, then turned around. His face was expressionless.

“In that case, if I told you to jump down from here, would you do it? You won’t die, you know.”

“……”

“Don’t say you’ll ‘do anything’ so easily—”

Czes didn’t finish his sentence.

“Okay, roger that. Hiyaaah!”

“Huh?”

With an incredibly goofy-sounding yell, Elmer’s body left Czes’s field of vision.

Splorch.

Just as Czes understood what had happened, a dull sound echoed up from the ground.

Then—right after that, he heard cries from Maiza and the others.

“Elmer?! Elmer, stay with me!”

“What? What’s he doing falling to his death here?!”

“Hmm. Excellent. Let us bind him before he revives.”

With the voices below in his ears, Czes quietly looked up at the starry sky.

Wearing a strange, unreadable expression in the moonlight, the boy murmured:

“I’m sorry, Elmer… Thanks for the thought, but I can’t smile at all…”