——The location of the seal turned out to be surprisingly easy to find.
"So this is… the seal?"
Young
What lay before Emilia was a peculiar door, situated in a space ringed by great trees deep in the deepest reaches of the forest — a door that, despite being a door, was connected to no building. Even if she circled around behind it, there was nothing there. It simply stood alone in the woods, so tall she had to crane her neck to see its top.
"How come it doesn't fall over…"
Wondering at the oddity, Emilia gave the door a push, but it wouldn't budge — not an inch. Naturally, the door itself showed no sign of toppling under Emilia's slender arms. It stood with the tranquility of one enjoying a gentle breeze.
The door appeared to be made of wood, but the cold sensation when she touched it was closer to ice. Its surface was smooth to the touch, giving off the strange impression of polished stone.
At the center of the closed double doors was a lock — an old, weathered thing with a keyhole large enough to fit Emilia's palm. As for a key that size, she couldn't begin to guess whose pocket that might belong to.
"How strange…"
She rapped the door with the back of her hand, confirming that despite its solidity, it produced no echo. Having found it, yet with no understanding of its purpose, Emilia cocked her head.
"I wonder what it is. Right?"
"————"
A faint glow spiraled around Emilia's head as she sought agreement.
Ever since their encounter in the princess room, the fairies scattered throughout the forest had made themselves known. Once Emilia confessed that she was searching for "the seal," they led her to this place with remarkable speed.
She had followed their guidance to reach this spot, but even they did not seem to understand what meaning this seal held. And even if they did, they lacked the means to exchange words with Emilia to convey it.
"Since I don't know, it's boring. But I did find it! Clap clap clap."
Clapping her hands in a solo round of applause, Emilia gave a firm nod and turned her back on the seal.
With this, she'd secured her trump card for when her escape from the princess room was discovered. Even if
She couldn't quite remember what had first sparked that line of thinking.
"Hmph. Fortuna Mother and everyone are the worst. Juice is the worst."
Thinking of the tall man in black, Emilia stuck her tongue out at him despite his absence.
He was the only person besides Emilia who could draw out Fortuna Mother's secret expressions. She knew he wasn't a bad person, but that didn't make him any less of her enemy.
They hadn't confronted each other directly yet, but Emilia had steeled herself with an iron will: if Fortuna ever gave her the chance, she would absolutely stomp on his foot.
"When the fairies leap onto his face and Juice is in total chaos, I'll stomp on his foot. Both feet, even. And with my heel, no less. …That sounds like it'd hurt, so maybe the tip of my toes instead."
Even within her ruthless strategy, Emilia never forgot to leave room for a sliver of compassion.
No one would follow a plan devoid of all mercy. Taking care to be considerate of both the fairies and the enemy, Emilia snuck back from the depths of the forest toward the settlement.
Right now, separate from her escape from the princess room, it was Emilia's usual free time. Fortuna spent this time checking the forest's barriers to ensure none had weakened, and back in the settlement, only the elderly and children Emilia's age remained.
The elderly couldn't keep up with Emilia's grand adventures, and the children all, for some reason, rarely came near her. She sometimes found that lonely, but on those occasions Fortuna would play with her with all her might to make her forget. So not being able to play with the other children wasn't that big a problem for Emilia.
"Besides, I'm probably the only one who knows about the seal."
Something everyone else didn't know, known only to her.
That small sense of superiority bolstered Emilia's little pride. Chest puffed out, she marched through the forest with the fairies trailing behind her.
Her destination was home. Today, she planned to set brush to the large white paper Fortuna Mother had prepared for her — much bigger than usual — and paint to her heart's content.
"Today, Gahaku feels like painting a red sky and a white forest. — Huh?"
While she was mentally painting the image she'd flung onto the canvas, Emilia noticed the fairies' movements had become erratic. She squinted one eye, tracking their drifting paths, and saw them straying from the forest path, drifting toward the undergrowth and vanishing within.
"This has the hallmarks of an incident!"
Normally, the fairies would disappear like motes of light. Seeing them drift unsteadily into the forest depths like this, Emilia judged it an event — or perhaps an invitation to follow.
Stepping off the path, she plunged into the undergrowth, climbing over grass and trees that towered above her head as if it were the most natural thing. Her long silver hair caught on branches time and again as she pushed through the forest, and there — .
"Oh dear. …I'm going to be late for the promised time."
In the dim forest path, she found a man leaning against a slender tree, looking utterly forlorn.
"——Ah."
The sound escaped her lips before she could stop it. Emilia clapped both hands over her mouth in panic. But it was a child's high voice in a silent forest — it carried clearly to the man's ears and drew his attention.
"Who's there?"
Tilting his head, the man turned his face toward the bush where Emilia stood.
A gentle face. Trim green hair. A narrow face, but his frame gave an impression not of frailty but of taut, lean strength. His tall stature exceeded even Fortuna — whom Emilia had to look up at — and towered higher still above the grass and trees Emilia desperately jumped to peer over.
The man was, to Emilia, a familiar figure — none other than the detested enemy himself, Juice.
"————"
Silently, he stared into the bush, and Emilia, clutching her head, accepted that she couldn't sneak past.
In truth, while she was crouching with her hands on her head, Emilia's rear was sticking out of the bush — fully visible to Juice. But Emilia didn't notice, and Juice didn't point it out.
Meekly, with a guilty expression, Emilia emerged from the bush.
"Well, well — what a lovely little lady we have here — !"
Juice had begun to smile warmly at the sight of Emilia, but the second half of his words were cut short by shock.
His eyes flew wide open, and he stared at Emilia, his lips trembling. His fixed gaze was unnervingly uncomfortable. Partly because Emilia regarded Juice with hostility, and partly because the complex emotions contained in his stare remained an enigma she couldn't unravel.
"Young lady… no — you, could you possibly be…"
"————"
Voice trembling, Juice shook his head as if refusing to believe what his eyes were seeing. Looking up at him tentatively, Emilia was struck by a sense of pity at his painfully fragile expression.
It was the face of a lost child — or perhaps of someone who had walked through darkness for an eternity and had finally found light. That coexistence of helplessness and wistful fragility made Emilia forget every feeling she had ever harbored toward Juice.
"…Juice, are you okay?"
"——! Y-Yes. Ah, ah, aaaaah…!"
Stepping closer, Emilia pinched the hem of Juice's black cassock and spoke to him.
The instant he heard her voice, Juice's composure collapsed entirely. As though struck by lightning from Emilia's fingertips on his hem, he shuddered from head to toe and sank to his knees on the spot.
Emilia's shoulders quivered involuntarily. Kneeling, bowing at the waist, Juice brought his gaze level with Emilia's. From his eyes, an unending torrent of tears spilled forth.
The ceaseless flow of tears carved rivers across that grown man's face. Having never witnessed an adult cry before, Emilia could only hold her breath and watch.
Juice took Emilia's rigid little hand and looked straight into her violet eyes.
"I-I'm quite… alright. Yes — yes! Quite alright, truly. There's no problem at all… whatsoever. I — I am… right now, in this very moment, I have been saved more completely than I could ever have imagined…"
"Is that so…? You're crying even though you've been helped?"
"It isn't sadness that makes me weep… It is joy, delight, happiness — that is what brings these tears. Such fortunate tears do exist. I learned this from no one other than… ah — you… you people… and so I…"
Through his trembling fingertips, Emilia could feel the unbearable weight of his emotions, and she found she couldn't bring herself to pull away. She placed her other hand over the one he held and squeezed back.
Juice bowed his head deeply, tears dripping onto the ground, repeating sobs he could not suppress, continuing to shed what he called tears of happiness.
——Was the act of shedding tears, then, a happiness? If so, was he happy right now?
"Even when you're happy… you still cry…"
Somehow, she felt she understood that feeling.
There were nights when Emilia was too lonely to sleep alone. On those nights, she would slip into Fortuna's bed, grumbling softly as her mother wrapped her in her arms, and spend the warm hours until morning.
On those occasions, Emilia would feel herself released from anxiety, wrapped in warmth, and sometimes feel like crying. Was Juice feeling something similar to what she felt during those moments?
Was Emilia able to give him the same thing Fortuna Mother gave her?
"It's okay, Juice. It's okay. It's okay."
"————!"
Consolingly, Emilia stroked Juice's head with her layered hands.
A violent tremor ran through his body. Pulling the bowing man close, Emilia tucked him into her small chest. His sobs resonated through her body, and his warmth flowed inward.
She had planned to stomp on his foot, and yet here she was, doing this instead.
What a hopeless man. An enemy she couldn't help. How could she do something cruel to someone who was crying? Fortuna Mother would surely forgive her, understanding that some things just couldn't be helped.
"Crying all alone is so lonely, you know."
Once Juice finished crying, she would hold his hand and walk back to the village.
She would have to tell Fortuna Mother.
About her walk deep in the forest, and about how a grown man had cried.
Because having shared a secret, they were no longer enemies — they were something like friends.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ——Leaning her back against a solid surface, Emilia jolted back to consciousness from a momentary lapse.
She shook her head, raking her fingers through her silver hair, and grimaced at the continuous high-pitched ringing in her ears.
That dream she'd just had in that brief interval — what was it?
There was no such scene in Emilia's memory. There shouldn't have been.
And yet, as if she had witnessed it firsthand, unfamiliar images came rushing forth. The people in it were all faces Emilia knew, and she herself was unmistakably among them — yet the sheer incomprehensibility of it was like watching a play set in a place she had never been.
She knew Fortuna. She knew Juice. She knew the fairies. She knew her younger self.
And yet, an unfamiliar scene. Unknown landscapes. Conversations she had no memory of ever having.
One after another, scenes Emilia had never known came spilling out, fragment by fragment.
The seal's door. The escape from the princess room. The fairies' guidance. The truth behind Juice and the others in black. Fortuna Mother's final words to Emilia.
"——Ah—ッ!"
A searing, piercing pain lanced through Emilia's brain.
She roughly wiped the tears brimming at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve, her fair skin flushed and swollen around them, and let out a breath.
Ever since the morning her contract with
But she knew that these were not baseless fantasies with no meaning or grounding.
Most crucially, the deepest part of Emilia's heart was neither rejecting nor pushing away these memories.
She knew them. Deep within her heart, she knew these scenes.
If that was the case — were these scenes truly things that had happened? And if so, why did Emilia have no recollection of them in her head?
The past she had seen of herself in the snow-covered forest during the trials at the tomb.
That memory — the one soaked in resentment and malice hurled at Fortuna, the one that made her want to scream. Emilia's memory was missing the crucial link that connected to that moment.
Were the pieces that filled that gap somewhere in the current ocean of memories?
If so, then what Emilia needed to do was dive into the deepest depths of that ocean, scour the seabed, and retrieve what had sunk there.
"I have to… find it… soon…"
Her head throbbed. Her body felt heavy. Her vision wavered, and the strength drained from every limb.
Even so, she pressed her weight against the wall and forced herself to stand — she had to keep going.
Slowly, inch by inch, dragging her heavy body, Emilia pressed onward into the darkness — deeper, deeper — her face on the verge of tears, alone, and moving forward.
Utterly alone.