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lightnovel-2048

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"Heh, I see we both took a firm stance in the first round."

Elfaria's first bet was four tokens on red. The roulette wheel was composed of eighteen red spaces and eighteen black spaces, numbered 1 to 36, in a circle with an uncolored 0 and 00 space dividing them. That made the probability of winning on a color nearly 50 percent; and with twenty tokens and five turns, betting four tokens on the first round was a reasonable sum.

"I can't lose too big here, after all."

Kiriha made a similar bet with four tokens on an uneven result. The same as with red and black, the roulette wheel was divided evenly between odd and even numbers. So despite the difference in their actual bets, Elfaria and Kiriha had the same strategy.

Really, Kiriha had guessed that Elfaria..."

Was Emi fine with Chiho and Maou being an item but not Rika and Ashiya? She began to suspect that she knew all along Rika had no chance, and it sickened her. Maou was being ridiculously indecisive, and as Laila, Suzuno, and Ashiya all pointed out yesterday, he didn't have it in him to act totally heartless toward the girl who admired him. Meanwhile, Ashiya had shed a fair bit of his callousness toward the human race in general, but during his whole time on Earth, he had always stuck to his guns. He was a demon, and someday he would return to Ente Isla and help conquer it again.

If he had turned Rika down a little while ago, maybe Emi, despite their friendship, would've seen it as merely one less obstacle to taking that demon down. But now she had seen him, and Maou, and Urushihara as individual people. She was different now. The remaining traces of her old Hero's soul was asking what she was hung up about, but right now Emi Yusa knew this person named Ashiya had hurt Rika's feelings, and it enraged her.

"It's so selfish..."

It was. It was extremely selfish. This rage of hers wasn't appropriate, for someone who had gone on for so long about killing them and hoping they'd die soon. But the truth was two of her most valuable friends were in love with people from different worlds, different species.

Wincing at the disorganized noise that prevailed in her heart, Emi came across someone familiar at the intersection up ahead. "...In this cold?" she couldn't help but blurt out—a voice mixed with annoyance, resignation, and a slight tinge of happiness that not even she picked up on. Not joy exactly—nothing that lofty. Just pure, childlike happiness.

"Oh, um, hello, Emilia. Back from work?"

It was Laila. How long had she been standing here, shopping bag hanging from her wrist? Ever since that apartment visit, they had crossed paths here a few times, Laila choosing this spot on the way home to ambush her. Her motives were obvious. The gap was ever so slightly narrower between them now, and she wanted to close it further. But the clumsiness of the move, coupled with the outright hatred Emi felt for her not long ago, made the situation seem almost comedic.

She didn't take this path home every day. Sometimes she had a quick bite elsewhere with the crewmates she had become decent friends with. Sometimes she stopped by the store to shop for Alas Ramus or Suzuno or Nord, her father. If Laila wanted to see Emi, she could always just wait at Room 101 in Villa Rosa Sasazuka. She knew that.

"How many hours have you been standing here?"

"Huh? Oh, um, no, I was going to your father's place today, and I was just done shopping along the way, so..."

"Your nose. It's bright red. And that bag's from the supermarket across from Sasazuka Station."

"Oh...!" Laila instinctively brought a hand to her nose.

"You know you can just stay at Father's place if you're cold."

"N-no, but then I wouldn't be able to talk alone with you..."

Laila's motives made sense. She was a long-lost mother, struggling to find the right distance to take in this relationship. But the logic she chose made her sound like a stalker.

"...I'll take that."

"Huh? Ah!"

With a small sigh, Emi took Laila's shopping bag.

"That—that's pretty heavy, Emilia..."

"With as many shopping trips as I've done with Bell and Alciel, this is nothing."

Without waiting for a reply, Emi began walking home. Laila froze for a second but snapped out of it and began to give chase, walking side by side a slight distance away. Emi, sensing that Laila was trying to find something to say and failing, finally spoke up.

"So what? You didn't get your apartment all messy again, did you?"

"Huh?! N-no, no, it's totally clean! Um, still!"

"Oh, come on."

Emi smiled a little, then went back to her usual scowl. She couldn't give Laila an honest smile yet.

Previously, when she visited Laila's apartment to find out what kind of life she was living in Japan, she found the place so astoundingly cluttered and unkempt that a robot vacuum would take one look and trundle right out the door and off the walkway to its death. Emi had dived in first to start cleaning it up, and really just the cleanup took the entire day. The only talking the whole time was done by Laila and Nord. Emi and Laila, with no idea what to talk about, said almost nothing apart from when they bickered over what pile of strewn clutter should go where. Even this, however, was clear progress from how things were before—and now the gap was narrow enough that they were actually walking down the street together.

"Is work keeping you busy?"

"Well, every company's short-staffed during the holiday season. But unlike you, I'm not working against the clock to save millions or anything, so it's all good."

"Um... Oh. Well, good."

Emi didn't know what was "good" about that—it wasn't like she had said she wasn't busy—but this, at least, was an actual conversation. It continued along in fits and starts as they walked. When they reached Sasazuka Station, Emi suddenly stopped, looking at the intersection ahead and the Shuto Expressway overpass that hung above it.

"Emilia?"

She could recall Urushihara attacking this overpass, Chiho almost getting crushed under it, Maou and Ashiya transforming into demons, her fighting against her supposed friend Olba, and then Chiho's face at the end, still smiling despite knowing everything that had just happened.

"No, um, just a..."

I wasn't expecting any of this.

How many times in the past year-ish had she had that thought? If only she or Maou had just got on with it and erased Chiho's memory, neither of them would be standing here right now. But after defeating Urushihara, Maou had showed no sign of doing it. So Emi, recalling this as she stood there with Laila, decided to bet on a possibility that nobody who knew the Devil King Satan would dare imagine. It wasn't a bet she had ever discussed with Emeralda or Albert. Really, it was just something she had half-jokingly suggested to Maou before even making friends with Chiho. She didn't expect him to say yes, and he didn't, of course, but now Maou had everything he needed to make it happen. That's just how it seemed to her.

If Ashiya said no, what about Maou?

"Hey, Laila?"

"Yeees?"

"Why did you get married to Father?"

"Huhh?!" Laila practically jumped off the ground. "Wh-why? Where did that come from?! I just... I mean, if you love someone, you marry them, don't you?"

"..."

Something Emi had thought back when she asked her father how they came to know each other was that the way a husband or wife describes their partner had a far deeper, more profound impact on their children than either could ever imagine. Now that feeling was coming back.

"I'm not asking about that. You're a millennia-old angel, and my father's a human who won't even make it to a hundred. What made you want to get together with him?"

"Um...?"

"Because to you, the time you spend with him is nothing but a blip, isn't it?"

"...Oh, that's what this is about?"

"Sooner or later, you're going to be separated, and you're the one who's gonna have to see him go. So why...?"

"I wouldn't have joined him if I wasn't prepared for that."

Her voice was gentle as always but strong as well. It was rare, coming from her.

"And no, the time I spent with him in Sloane wasn't that long a part of my life, but it was one of the most fun, precious, and wonderful times I ever had."

"...So what made you choose Father?"

"Choose him?"

"He's a normal human being. He's not nobility, not the descendant of some great Hero. He couldn't contribute anything to the type of battles you're fighting. So why?"

This, in a way, was the biggest question Emi had about Nord and Laila's relationship. However, Laila's response to it was as simple as it was aggravating:

"Emilia, don't tell me you've never been in love before?"

"Whaaaaaat?!"

Not only was it not an answer at all, but it sounded like nothing less than taunting. It made Emi's face turn bright red, but her flying into a rage was nothing Laila hadn't seen before. Instead, she gave her daughter a worried look.

"E-Emilia, you're not the kind of woman who asks a man what his salary is before anything else, are you? Like, figuring out his job and promotion prospects so you can hit the with that joke, but it looked like it was a complete misfire.

"All right, I'll admit it wasn't a great way to do it. But I figured you'd activate your venenum the moment you noticed something was wrong, and that's exactly what happened. But you guys just finished a long battle. I shouldn't have gone along with a plan that made you use your venenum. Tiat and Phyr were with us, too—"

He was cut off before he could continue.

Chtholly stood still.

Willem stopped, too, two paces ahead of her, and turned the upper half of his body back to look at her.

"You know that's not it."

Her cool voice criticized him.

"When I said a dangerous way, I wasn't talking about us. We were in no danger at all. You were ready to fight the second you sat down on the crate."

Oops.

"No, I wasn't. I was totally relaxed."

"Three seconds."

...

"What was?"

"First you would take down the sheep behind you on the right. After the pebble feint, you would stick the sole of your shoe into his chest, then in the recoil leap, move a half step before the two deer to the right, then lob off their heads to take them out. Those two had knives, so you would pick one up, throw it, and take out two more. That would all be a little less than one second. To render them all powerless like that would be three seconds. Right?"

(Man, I can't believe this...)

She'd seen through most of it.

She was watching his gaze more carefully than he thought. No doubt she was watching everything, down to the subtlest changes in his posture. It had crossed his mind that she was being oddly quiet, but he couldn't believe she had been thinking about this.

"You're overthinking things. There's no way I could fight so recklessly, taking out five guys in one second or ten guys in three seconds like you."

"Don't say you can't. I'm probably the one person in the world right now who knows best how strong you are. Did you forget already? You're the one who taught me how I fight now."

"...Right. You're way too adept a student. I forgot."

Though she said taught, it had only been for a few days. And most of that time was spent drilling into her head how to use the Carillon properly. Even the physical techniques were not much more than paired move sets. He showed her all the named special moves themselves but never taught her the actual names.

Would anyone have predicted that her powers of observation would grow so quickly after just that?

"I'm sure the reason you mentioned for luring those guys out was partially true, but I think it was partially a lie. You could have found a safer way to do it. I don't know why, but—" Her sharp gaze pierced him. "You wanted to fight, didn't you?"

Ah, yeah. He finally realized that possibility when she mentioned it.

Maybe, unconsciously, he wanted to fight. Maybe he wanted to get violent. Maybe he wanted to take the risk pushing his wounded body.

Maybe he wanted to thrust his feelings of distress from sending the faerie soldiers into battle while he stayed behind in safety onto a place that didn't matter, onto people who had nothing to do with him.

"I don't know what you're up to. But stop. You don't have to fight anymore. I... We shoulder your battles now."

"—I have nothing to say to that. You really are watching me closely."

"Because I'm in love."

She spoke calmly.

"C'mon, you're slow!"

Way ahead of them, Tiat waved her hands around angrily. He waved back lightly, and the two picked up the pace.

The Road Home, Still So Far Away

"Phew! Finally on our way back!"

As they neared the aire-port, Ithea cried out for joy.

"I'm gonna sleep forever when we get back. I'll be snoring like a man!"