Mistaken for a Masked Munchkin

Javert's Iron and Justice (12)

A long story.

About a certain tragedy, and a certain distortion.

"......"

I only listened in silence.

The teacup on the table had gone cold before I knew it.

As I toyed with its lukewarm surface, my finger tapped against the rim of the cup.

My breathing flowed calmly.

Tick, tick.

The silence shifted aside for a moment.

An old man with hair turned white sat before me.

His wrinkled brow was slightly furrowed, adding to the haggard cast of his face.

"......It was all my fault."

Valter Droit.

The old man, silent until then, suddenly broke the stillness with a confession.

"Because the one who made Javert that way was no one else but me."

Valter's eyes were full of regret.

An old man confessing an old sin.

I felt like a priest seated beyond the lattice of a confessional.

Until the old man poured out what was inside him, I simply waited.

"After losing Serian... I sank into grief. I was swallowed by rage as well. Revenge boiled inside me, and hatred and murderous intent kept surging up my throat. All I could think about was slaughtering the ones behind it and uprooting every Cultist in the world."

A blinded old man.

He had lost his reason and chased one straight line on emotion alone.

"So I did not look after Javert."

The old man did not say he failed to.

He said he did not.

A few words drawn out as if scolding his own reflection in the tea.

Perhaps that choice of words came from self-hatred and guilt.

"That child lost her mother before her eyes. She must have thought it was all her fault. She must have cried, blamed herself, resented herself, and missed Serian too."

Only fourteen.

The age when childhood had just ended, when she had only just entered adolescence.

"While Javert suffered so much, I was not by that child's side."

That was the old man's sin.

No. I did not know whether it truly deserved to be called a sin, but at least Valter himself seemed to believe so.

His voice sank another layer.

The marks carved by time stood out clearly along his aged neck.

The old man's eyes looked at the boy, but his gaze was fixed somewhere farther and deeper.

"If I had been a little more in my right mind..."

Humans lived in three times at once.

They remembered today while reminiscing about yesterday, and imagined tomorrow while reminiscing about yesterday.

Beings who lived in the impossible coexistence of past, present, and future. That was what humans were.

Therefore, balance mattered above all in human life.

If you were buried in memory, you became blind.

If you clung to nostalgia, you became an antique.

If you drowned in imagination, you became a soap bubble.

"I should not have left that child alone."

In the old man's case, he was an antique.

His clouded pupils were recalling the past, the days already gone.

"I wanted revenge."

"......"

"So I did not stop Javert when she said she would become an investigator. I thought that was the right path. No, in truth, I knew it was the wrong path. I was simply swept up in emotion and made the choice on my own. I should have talked my daughter out of walking the path of a murderer. Instead, as if showing her an example, I became the one who walked ahead covered in blood."

"That is harsh self-reproach."

"I have not said anything untrue."

Valter Droit.

Javert Droit.

It was said that the father and daughter worked as a pair and tore thousands of dark mages to death.

They devastated several Cultist Branches, and among the active investigators of that time, their standing was overwhelming.

"This was when Javert was only seventeen."

The girl became an investigator at fifteen.

For the next four years, countless killings gathered in her hands and spilled away.

Javert grew cold.

"I do not know what that child felt, or what was in her heart when she stained her hands with blood..."

Was it revenge or hatred?

Or was it an extension of the punishment she gave herself?

"We spent a long, dreadful time that way. We were human, but our lives were not."

Time piled up.

Four years.

The boiling hatred and resentment settled somewhat.

Only then did the blinded old man come to his senses.

Valter looked after his daughter, but it was already far too late.

"......By the time I belatedly regained my reason, Javert was no longer the child I remembered."

The girl became a woman.

She stopped smiling much.

She stopped crying much too.

She acted like a machine whose emotions had vanished.

She was like a doll that moved according to principles and orders.

"That was... the result of me neglecting that child."

The brave, cheerful child was gone.

Only an empty shell remained.

For Valter, there was no way to bring that girl back.

Because the closer he came, the worse Javert's condition became.

"I realized we could not remain on the battlefield any longer. Revenge, which I had chased for years, no longer mattered. I had already sent my wife away, and I could not lose the daughter I had left too."

"So that was why you suddenly announced your retirement."

"That is right. As I stepped down from my position, I placed Javert under suspension from duty. So that she could no longer work as an investigator. After that, the two of us came down to the academy. I hoped the peaceful air here would embrace that child."

"As for why it had to be the academy..."

"That child never had a proper adolescence. When other children her age were learning how to live, Javert learned how to kill. She lived until bloodstains became more familiar than ink stains. So I wanted to return her ruined adolescence to her, even if it had to be this way. And I also hoped the innocence of adolescent children would become medicine for her."

"In other words, the reason you took that position, headmaster, was purely for Professor Javert's sake."

"I know that is not the proper mindset for an educator."

"You love her a great deal."

"......"

The headmaster seemed to lose his breath for a moment.

His complicated expression and wavering eyes were reflected plainly.

"......I am the one who made Javert like that."

"Well. Perhaps you are."

"Sometimes I think about it. Whether I could have said something better in the study that day..."

-"Javert."

-"This was why I told you not to break the principles."

-"Otherwise, everything falls apart..."

"I should not have said such sharp words. I should have held her more gently. I should have wiped away her tears and comforted her, telling her it was not her fault. If I had, many things might have been different by now..."

"......"

Words full of regret.

I stayed silent.

I knew what it meant to lose someone precious.

Because I understood that pain, I did not recklessly blame or comfort the old man.

I only prayed inside that the old man would hurt enough, and that someday he would be able to find an answer.

"Do not worry."

Srrk.

I quietly rose from my seat.

As I straightened my clothes, I left the old man a few words.

"I will handle this matter myself."

A confident declaration.

Doubt, confusion, and faint expectation shimmered from Valter.

"......What exactly are you planning?"

"Hu hu, that is a secret. For now."

"Can you truly turn that child's heart around?"

"Of course. Though what I am about to do this time is closer to a temporary measure. For the more distant future, I will continue to need your help, headmaster."

"My help..."

"I will tell you the exact details later."

I turned my back.

My calm steps carried me into the corridor outside the headmaster's office.

'Then... shall I go meet her?'

The tips of my feet were pointing toward the stairs leading underground.

***

Meanwhile.

Javert was trapped in deep darkness.

The underground prison.

Among its cells, the solitary cell on the lowest floor.

An iron cage of one pyeong, so cramped it was hard even to lie down.

"......"

The red-haired woman sat lost in thought.

Javert had not moved at all for three days.

She had only sat there in perfect posture.

She did not eat, nor did she sleep.

She only sat blankly and stared ahead with dead eyes.

Because of that, the prison guards had to check every so often whether she was even alive.

"......"

The woman sat there in a daze.

She only recalled the scene of one day over and over.

-"Kill me."

-"If you do not kill me, I will run away again."

Black eyes.

A boy roughly subdued and slammed to the floor.

And herself, aiming her fist at that boy.

-"......I can't."

-"I. Cannot. Kill you."

But in the end, she let him go.

Her vision, blurred by tears, had been so ugly.

Emotion had gnawed away at reason.

-"Say it is not true."

-"Say it was all a misunderstanding."

Javert breathed out.

The breath seemed ready to stop.

-"Say that you have no connection to this place, that you are innocent."

-"Say the story just now was a joke."

-"Say you are standing here only because you lost your way and wandered in."

Why had she been shaken?

What had she been so desperate for, to beg like that?

No matter how many times she turned it over, the only answer left was that it had been meaningless.

-"I cannot."

The woman could not kill him.

She broke her principles on her own.

That was all.

The oath she had staked her entire life on shattered in a single night.

The stake she had driven in so harshly before the portrait of an old woman had broken.

-"Javert... our beloved daughter."

She wanted to atone.

Because her mother's death, and her father's unhappiness... all of it was her fault.

She tried to punish herself.

She hoped it would be as painful as possible.

So she lived always tormented by trauma.

She erased her emotions and barely survived within the strictest principles.

-"It is not your fault."

-"You were only unlucky..."

She did not want to repeat the same mistake.

She bound herself with strict rules.

She lived for that reason.

She lived only for that.

'To uphold the principles.'

If there was one reason for her to keep living, it was only that.

And now, she could not even uphold that.

'Is this the end?'

Yes, it was the end.

Javert no longer had any reason left to keep living.

Even the thread of atonement had snapped, so the future before her was empty and meaningless.

'......Should I stop now?'

The woman hinted at the end.

Her green eyes were like withered leaves in September.

-"Javert."

I am sorry.

I am sorry.

I am sorry.

To Mother.

To Father.

To the life as a family that I ruined.

'Because this was a life that made a mess of everything, and could not even atone properly...'

Srrr.

Javert suddenly gathered light at her fingertips.

The woman had no handcuffs or restraints bound to her at all.

It was the headmaster's consideration.

Thanks to that, Javert could move freely.

The gathered light took shape and was soon forged into a single dagger.

'I will end it here.'

The woman's intent to die was clear.

Her hand placed the blade against her neck without hesitation.

She intended to pierce her throat in one stroke.

This was the ending.

The tragedy of a certain broken girl.

The woman was committing the last murder of her life.

Fwoosh.

Dazzling light filled the solitary cell and rippled.

And so the blade descended, just before death finally stole her breath.

"......"

"Investigator."

Thud.

A hand blocked the execution.

The palm that had suddenly appeared caught the dagger gently.

Beyond her pitch-black vision, she saw eyes just as dark.

Then a voice reached her ear.

"What are you doing?"

"......Viktor... student?"

A bare face without a mask.

Sad black eyes were gazing at the girl.

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