I Withdraw the Request

The outing had been pointless, and yet there was a certain satisfaction in having visited a guild I had only ever seen inside a novel. It felt like touring a place I had known solely from films. Ironic, considering the place was an assassination guild.

"I should head back."

I started walking. The guild's back door opened onto the deepest part of the slums, and absurd as it was, more than a few people had been unlucky enough to die on the way home after placing a request. Most visitors posted their own men by that door in advance. The only subordinate I had brought was a single coachman, and even he was waiting somewhere safe outside, which meant I had to cover the rest of the way alone.

Just in case, I slipped a hand inside my clothes and found the bell's cold touch waiting there. While I had been waiting for Jay, the sun had gone down, and a street without a single lamp had drowned itself in darkness. I quickened my steps—and in my hurry collided, shoulder to shoulder, with a group coming the other way.

"Hey—what the hell!"

The man whose shoulder had struck mine clutched it and staggered back. I stared at him, dumbfounded. We barely brushed. If that was enough to hurt him, wasn't the problem his own body? He had run into me on purpose as I tried to step aside.

"Feels like you broke a bone. How are you planning to pay me back?"

"Doesn't look like you're from around here. You walk into someone else's territory, you follow the rules."

The rest of the group snickered at his words. I bowed my head in apology, and of course it did nothing. When I stayed silent beneath my hood, one of them must have decided he was being ignored. He closed in before I could dodge and yanked the hood back.

The long black hair I had pinned up spilled loose at the same moment. The man's face went blank once he saw me. The others stared as well, looking thoroughly stupid. Something about them—as if they had been bewitched—made me close my hand around the bell inside my clothes. When the moment came, I meant to put it in his face. Only a glancing blow. I had no intention of killing anyone.

Silence stretched. After a long moment, the man who had pulled off my hood reached for me and opened his mouth.

"You—"

That was when it happened.

"What are you doing over there?"

At the sudden appearance of an uninvited guest, every head turned as one. There were no streetlamps, but the moonlight was bright enough to show his face clearly.

Platinum hair that called the moon to mind, and crimson eyes that seemed to hold blood.

He was exactly as he had been described. Walking toward us with the moon at his back, he felt like the moon's own incarnation—silver light gathered around him, and two points of red burned vivid within it. For all the grimness of the alley, his steps were light as he came our way.

"Jay..."

I said his name quietly.

"Well, look at that. You're actually calling me by my name."

The original Aine had never used it. She called him Ruby, the way one might name a jewel kept in a collection case—a nickname and a pet name both, because his eyes looked like rubies. I had no intention of calling him a gem. The relationship would be severed soon enough, and in any case, calling a person an object sat wrong with me. Just now, the shock had simply knocked his name out of me before I could think.

"And what's this? This woman your lover?"

"And if she is?"

"Even better. Hand her over."

The man, now close enough to touch, abruptly began negotiating with Jay. I looked at Jay with a don't-tell-me expression. He was a man who would end a life if the money was right, but surely he wouldn't sell even his own lover for it—

"All right."

Right. My mistake, for trusting you. I looked at Jay again, the sting of betrayal fresh. I had always known what kind of man he was, but living through it felt colder than merely knowing.

"Good. Then get lo—"

"One billion gold."

"...What?"

The man's face went stiff at Jay's words. I turned to Jay, incredulous. One billion gold. A sum that large could raise a castle. There was, of course, no chance that anyone loitering through the slums could produce it. Which meant the figure was a roundabout way of saying no—and, at the same time, of spitting in their faces.

"...You joking? How the hell is a person worth one billion gold!"

"Your eyes broken? She's right here. One billion gold."

Jay looked at me. Huh? Me?

A beat late, I realized the fortune Aine had poured into his guild came to roughly one billion gold. So that was why. I could follow the logic, more or less, but it was an appallingly unkind explanation. I only caught it because it was me. The men seemed to think Jay was simply toying with them.

"If you won't hand her over, then die!"

The whole group rushed Jay at once. In size and in number they had him utterly outmatched, but I wasn't particularly worried. He was the head of an assassination guild, after all. If he couldn't handle this much, he wouldn't qualify as a receptionist, let alone a guild master.

As expected, Jay cut their throats one by one at his leisure. Each time his hand passed, the squeal of a pig at slaughter rang down the alley. No one came out to see. For the people here, watching others die was an ordinary day.

If anything, I was glad. I had met Jay after all. The thought that I could finish this before the day was out left me a little buoyant—and in the middle of that thought, my eyes met his.

For an instant I had the illusion that time had slowed. He smiled a smile I couldn't read. My eyes went wide.

Time found its place again, and Jay turned his back on the last man to look at me. I was horrified. The man was charging at Jay's back with a knife, and Jay didn't so much as shift. His gaze was fixed on me alone. He was completely defenseless.

That lunatic!

I snatched the bell from inside my clothes and aimed it at the man at once. There wasn't even time to hesitate.

"Jay!"

I screamed his name and pulled the trigger. Jay twisted aside. Condensed fire passed him and struck the man square in the abdomen.

A chime rang through the alley. Smoke curled from the muzzle. The man who had taken the bell lay facedown on the ground. D-did I kill him?

I dropped the bell. Among offensive magic tools, it ranked at the very top, powerful enough to kill a person—or a monster—in a single shot. The fear that I might have killed someone set my body trembling. My eyes burned red.

"He's not dead. It missed the vitals. He'll spend the rest of his life half-broken, though."

Jay picked up the bell and came toward me as if nothing at all had happened.

"Ah. So that's how. The reason you could walk into the guild without a guard. I'd only ever heard about it. First time seeing the thing."

He held the bell out to me where I stood frozen. I didn't take it.

"Why... did you do that?"

My voice shook. Only then did Jay look me straight in the face. A fine crack ran through the ease that had never left him.

I swallowed my tears and glared at him through reddened eyes. If I was going to cry, I would cry—just not in front of this man.

"You could have dodged. You could have beaten him easily. So why."

Why did you look at me? Why did you try to take the hit on purpose? Resentment surged up. I had believed he would never die. Jay had betrayed that belief and tried to let a knife run him through while I watched. If I hadn't fired the bell, he would have been stabbed. Right in front of my eyes.

"Who knows. Why did I? You just seemed a little too sure of yourself."

Jay muttered it in a low voice. Then he smiled at me like an angel.

"I wondered how you'd react if I got hit?"

"...You lunatic."

The curse finally slipped out. Jay kept smiling anyway.

I was genuinely sick of him. Risking his life just to see what I would do. Meanwhile someone had felt her heart drop straight through the floor. When I glared, Jay held my gaze for a moment, then tilted his head and spoke as if he truly couldn't understand.

"Why are you so angry?"

"You're asking me that now—"

"Don't tell me you were actually worried I might die?"

"..."

"Now that would be unexpected."

Jay laughed as if the idea were absurd.

The truth was that he was right. For a moment I had been seized by fear, and I had worried. Jay was hardly the sort to die so obediently, and yet he also seemed like someone who could throw his life away without a second thought. Even so, I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to show him any more weakness.

"Let's stop."

I fixed him with eyes that had gone cold. A questioning look crossed his face. I said it to him once more.

"The request that you become mine—I'm withdrawing it. Let's end this."

"..."

I left the words behind me and walked past him. His voice followed from behind.

"What's the reason?"

Even now, he didn't understand why I was angry.

"Because I tried to get myself killed? Or is it that man? Your fiancé, the one they're praising as a war hero these days."

The moment Asad entered it, a shudder ran through me before I could stop it—even though I knew Jay was taking me apart, piece by piece.

"Don't get the wrong idea."

I turned back to him.

"That man has nothing to do with this."

"Then?"

"Because you—"

Because you're going to kill me. So I meant to throw you away before that. But I couldn't finish. A bastard forsaken by God. That was what this novel called Jay. He already carried the memory of being abandoned. I couldn't bring myself, on top of that, to say that I was abandoning him too.

In the end I left the words unfinished and walked away. Jay didn't stop me.

I don't know in what state of mind I made it back to the carriage. When I reached the estate I never even managed to see the Duke. I only told Rita that I wanted to rest, and then I collapsed facedown on the bed. Even tactless Rita, faced with the look of me, quietly left the room.

"Ha..."

Body and mind were both worn through, but I couldn't simply lie there as I was, so I started taking off the clothes I still had on.

"Ah, the bell..."

In my daze I had left it behind. And it wasn't as if I could ever get another. Having removed only my coat, I dropped facedown on the bed again.

This was the worst. I had nearly killed someone, and I had lost the bell.

"It would have been better if I'd never met Jay."

Then I could have held on to some vague hope about him and fallen asleep with a lighter heart. Jay was far more twisted than I had thought. I didn't have it in me to endure a man like that. I was astonished that Aine had made such a man her lover, and the heroine who would one day gather him in and soothe him was remarkable.

But.

Whatever the circumstances, I had definitely told him it was over. This wasn't how I had meant to part. The plan had been to sit across from him and say goodbye calmly. Instead I had come home having done nothing but rage.

"Then why does this feel so unsettled?"