A Bundle of Inferiority
Since I was little, there were a lot of things I hated.
Well, my personality was fucked up.
"Caitlin."
I hated people better than me.
I hated people worse than me.
This one, that one, I wished they would all just die.
I hated the better ones enough to want them dead, and I looked down on the worse ones like trash.
"What are you even so unhappy about?"
Shut up.
You worthless bastards.
"You already have plenty."
"You've got talent people would be jealous of..."
What was I supposed to do about being born like this?
I wished everyone would just die.
I wished no one better than me would be left in this world.
I wished everyone brighter than me would die, so I could be the one shining highest in that night sky.
"If only that happened..."
Would I,
at least a little,
be able to face myself?
***
Zone 3, where sand whipped through the air.
Golden grains spread like a sea, rippling with every gust.
If you forgot this was a field, you could lose yourself in the view without meaning to.
The sun blazed overhead, and gritty sand pressed into the spaces between her toes.
"Haa, haa...!"
Paint splashed in neat strokes.
A scene that looked like a single finished painting.
Crackle!
At the center of that canvas, a chase was in full swing.
A girl's yellow hair streamed against the wind.
Caitlin was wrapped head to toe in electric current.
"Kh...!"
Her breath came hard.
But she couldn't stop her running legs.
High-voltage sparks jumped between the flying grains.
Crack!
"Damn it, my stamina keeps dropping..."
If Zone 1 was grassland and Zone 2 was jungle, then Zone 3 was desert.
Sand covered the whole field, with no shade anywhere under the blazing sun.
It felt like someone had cut out a piece of real desert and dropped it here.
And yet, strangely, the temperature inside the field wasn't hot at all.
Whoooosh.
Far from hot, it was cold enough to numb her hands and feet.
White crystals that should never have fallen from the sky drifted down.
Cutting through a blizzard in the desert, Caitlin pushed forward.
"Fuck... who the hell just changes the whole climate like this?"
That monster bitch.
Caitlin ground out the curse through clenched teeth.
A red flag was tucked in her arms.
"If I can just make it back like this...!"
Swoooosh!
Something rushed at her from behind.
She swung her fist fast and knocked it aside.
"Hup...!"
Bam!
A heavy shock ran through her bones.
What had flown at her back was sword aura chilled to extreme low temperature.
Ice crystals clung to the back of her hand.
Caitlin shook her hand hard.
Current snapped out and thawed the hand that had started to freeze.
"Ugh..."
"I told you to forfeit quietly."
Through the writhing storm, blue hair emerged in calm steps.
Rin stood atop a sand dune.
Her lifeless eyes looked down at Caitlin.
A gleaming white sword tip, flashing sword aura, aimed right at her.
"...Damn it."
When had she caught up?
Caitlin had no choice but to frown.
She had been sure she'd left her far behind, and then there she was, only a few meters back.
"If you're leaving, put down the flag first."
"Hah."
A dry laugh slipped out of Caitlin.
She never expected things to get this tangled.
"Why the hell did I get stuck with this monster bitch all of a sudden?"
A few minutes earlier.
She had completed her role as Sprinter.
She took out the Keeper at the altar in the middle of the desert and seized the flag.
Then, while she was trying to return, the Keeper vanished, and Rin popped out in its place.
"You... weren't you supposed to be fighting the lunatic on our side? You looked desperate for that fight."
"That can wait. Winning this match comes first."
"The match? Didn't know you were the type to obsess over little wins and losses."
"Yeah, I need to win today."
A cold, hollow voice.
There wasn't a trace of life in it.
"You should forfeit."
"Like hell."
"You know it. You can't beat me."
"Who said I'd fight you head-on? In here, if I run well enough, I win."
"You're weak."
"..."
"You can't shake me and run."
"Fuck, you really pick the most irritating shit to say...!"
Kzzzzzt!
Caitlin fired current in a sudden ambush.
High-voltage flashes braided like thorns and shot for Rin's throat.
A clean strike with no wasted motion.
"Useless."
Shrrraak...!
The ambush meant nothing. The lightning spear was torn apart midair.
Boiling cold swallowed the high-heat sparks.
Rin had only traced her sword lightly through the air.
"You're fast. But not fast enough to slip my blade."
"..."
The tip of her sword didn't tremble at all.
That indifference left Caitlin with a strange sense of deprivation.
"You won't move another step."
Fwoooosh.
Cold compressed along the pure-white blade.
It felt completely different from the pressure Rin had shown just before.
The raging blizzard stopped.
More precisely, it was sucked into that single thin sword.
In that instant, the noisy storm died, and the desert screamed with silence.
-Rin Glacia-Style Domain Swordsmanship, Seventh Form: 'Snowfield'
Thunk.
Rin's sword tip touched the ground.
At once, the landscape froze outward from where she stood.
The desert climate was overwritten, and white flowers bloomed across every grain of sand.
Ruuumble!
Zone 3 no longer looked like a desert.
It was covered in snow blossoms, turned into a shattered snow mountain.
No matter how prepared the field was, she had flipped an entire natural landscape on its head.
"Haa..."
Rin exhaled calmly.
Even that breath looked like art.
Caitlin, frozen in place, could only mutter one thing.
"...Monster bitch."
"Give up."
An overwhelming distance.
That monster was showing her.
A gap between them she could never cross.
"I'm not planning to go easy on you anymore."
"..."
Crackle.
Whether Rin said it or not, Caitlin kicked off the ground.
She tried to burst away with explosive acceleration.
But sword aura was already exploding against her back.
Shrrraak!
"Kuack...!"
Cold.
It felt like thousands of awls stabbing into her back.
Caitlin staggered, then lost her footing and fell.
The pain blurred her consciousness.
"Ghk, ugh...!"
"I told you. You can't."
Rin stood in the distance.
She didn't even look like she planned to approach.
She only stared down at Caitlin quietly, with dead eyes.
"F-fuck..."
Her lips twitched.
Caitlin barely lifted her head.
"Forfeit."
"Uh..."
It had been a while.
Back when they were young.
The two had met several times through family ties.
Caitlin had been trampled by Rin every single time.
She was overwhelmed, rolling on the floor in every spar.
Whenever she sat there frustrated and alone, Rin always looked down at her from exactly that distance.
Caitlin clenched her fist.
"Don't look down on me like that...!"
Kraaaak!
With her hand buried in the ground, she detonated a surge of current.
The shockwave blasted up snow and sand, clouding the view.
Caitlin used that gap to force herself up.
With a wobbling body, she kicked off again through sheer stubbornness.
"Haa, haa...!"
Crackle!
She dragged out even more speed.
But that too was still in Rin's palm.
"Stop."
Shrrraak!
White sword aura struck again.
This time it hit her legs directly.
Caitlin couldn't even take a few steps before she crashed into the snowfield.
"Kuh, khaak...!"
"You know it's meaningless."
There was no malice in that sword aura.
That made Caitlin feel even more miserable.
Rin slowly held out her hand.
"Just give me the flag. I don't plan to torment you."
"..."
Her whole body trembled.
Frost spread over her back and legs.
Maybe it was frostbite. She could barely feel anything.
Face down in the snow, Caitlin clenched a twitching spark.
"My body... won't move..."
Her stamina was finally bottoming out.
Caitlin bit down hard.
Her body from birth.
A body born with too little mana.
According to the doctor, it was the worst body possible for learning magic.
Poor endurance became a flaw that always held her back.
"This is the limit."
She lay sprawled out and thought.
Her mind blurred, and strength drained from her body.
"...Why am I even doing this?"
The thought surfaced suddenly.
She'd been dragged here by force, so what had she been clinging to this hard for?
If she lost like this, she'd be free of that demon bastard too.
"Then let's do this."
"If our team loses this match, I'll settle our previous bet."
She suddenly felt stupid.
Why was she lying in this snow?
"Caitlin, please take the Sprinter role."
"It means I trust you that much."
Who asked you to trust me?
Running your mouth with things you don't even mean...
"Who the hell would trust someone like me?"
I hate everything.
I'm sick of all of it.
Through her dim, muddy vision, she saw the blue-haired girl.
Not a scratch on her, casually flicking her sword tip.
That vast gap caught in Caitlin's throat like a thorn.
"Trash bastard."
Trash bastard.
Trash bastard.
Trash bastard.
Who were those words aimed at?
With no target, only the drawn bowstring in her mouth stayed taut.
"Caitlin."
"What are you even so unhappy about?"
I hate them.
I hate people brighter than me.
I hate the people who rot away my mind.
I wished they'd all get wrecked in accidents or just die.
"Why are you so twisted?"
I wished they'd disappear from my world.
I wanted to stick every ugly word I could find on them and curse them.
"You already have plenty."
"You've got talent people would be jealous of..."
There are people who have more.
There are people who shine more.
What use am I in front of people like that?
What meaning does this pathetic, flimsy talent of mine even have?
If it was never a bud that could become the best, it should've been crushed from the start so it could never bloom.
"Why."
I hated talent.
More exactly, I hated talent better than mine.
Instead of admiring it, I envied it, hated it until killing intent boiled up, cried because I was that bitter.
I hated people better than me enough to want them dead, and treated people worse than me like trash.
"There won't be anyone as twisted as you."
"You've got so much already, and you're saying you'll hate the whole world because you're still not satisfied?"
What was I supposed to do about being born like this?
I wished everyone would just die.
I wished no one better than me would remain in this world.
I wished everyone brighter than me would die, so I could be the brightest one in that night sky.
"Caitlin, your feet are the fastest."
Shut up.
Don't pretend to trust me.
Words you don't mean, praise you don't mean.
No one could ever trust someone like me.
"Liar."
Inside, you're laughing at me.
You're mocking me, saying it's worthless talent, calling me a trash bitch.
You're all the same.
"Caitlin Lettuce."
The name I distrusted most.
The name I resented most.
A hopeless bitch.
A girl rotten to the bone with inferiority, living with jealousy, envy, and self-hatred every day.
"Caitlin."
"I'm leaving the flag side entirely to you."
"Let's see it, the fastest feet in the Academy."
What could I do?
I was born like this.
"Cough, ugh..."
"...You're not seriously planning to keep going, are you?"
She forced herself upright, swaying.
Rin still stared at Caitlin expressionlessly.
She only asked, as if she truly couldn't understand why Caitlin was going this far.
Crackle.
She looked pitiful beyond words.
Covered in sand, frost packed between it.
Even so, Caitlin stood with eyes wide.
"Why go this far?"
Yeah.
Of course you wouldn't understand.
For someone like you, this feeling is too petty to grasp.
Caitlin clenched her reddened fist tight.
"I..."
Her voice was ragged.
She muttered through slurring syllables.
"...Losing to people better than me is what I hate most in this world."
Kzzzzzt!
The next moment, current wrapped around her whole body.
Bright yellow sparks shone sharply over the snowfield.
She scraped and scraped at her near-empty mana, gathering the very last handful.
She felt like she could black out any second, but her stubborn consciousness wouldn't snap.
"You're using magic in that condition? It must feel like your muscles are melting."
"Huff, huff..."
"You'll get hurt. Stop forcing it and give up."
"Fuck off."
A middle finger shot up clearly.
The girl gritted her teeth.
The next instant, she kicked off the snowfield once again.
Her current output multiplied, tearing apart the cold wrapped around her.
Kraaaaaash!
"Hup...!"
Caitlin cut across the snowfield.
The end of Zone 3, the path into Zone 2, was right in front of her.
She pierced through every obstacle and ran in one straight line.
Of course Rin wasn't going to just watch.
She raised her sword at once and sent several more slashes.
Shrrraak!
Shrrak!
Every strike landed true.
Cold locked up her body; her limbs felt like they were collapsing inward.
"Kha, ugh...!"
But Caitlin didn't fall.
She pushed forward with even more speed.
She suppressed the pain of extreme cold through sheer will.
Rin, expressionless the whole time, showed confusion for the first time.
"You're taking sword aura hits and ignoring them...?"
It was insane obsession.
Stabbed or not, no reaction, just running.
Rin had clashed with Caitlin many times, but had never seen her this desperate.
Kraack!
Her back was getting farther away.
Rin chased after her a beat late.
But Caitlin had already crossed the zone boundary.
"You can't."
Shrrraaaak!
Shrrak!
Shrrak, shhk!
The moment she stepped on the boundary, repeated sword aura blasts exploded.
No matter how crazed Caitlin was, she couldn't ignore layered chained slashes like that.
"Ah..."
In the end, her body couldn't hold.
Caitlin was blown back and sprawled at the edge of the snowfield.
"Haa, haa..."
The pain she'd briefly forgotten in the rush of adrenaline.
The backlash from scraping her mana dry.
Her hands and feet frozen bright red.
All of those aftereffects crushed down on her body.
Her vision spun, and she felt like she'd pass out any second.
"Ghk, hngh..."
She had fallen with Zone 2 right in front of her.
Forget moving, she could barely stay conscious.
She had no strength left to cross that boundary.
Even in that state, Caitlin wore a ragged smile.
"Ha, haha..."
Her right hand.
At least the hand holding the flag had crossed into Zone 2.
And someone was standing in front of that flag, looking down at her.
"Caitlin."
A masked boy.
He stood before the boundary as if he'd been waiting.
The piercing cold faded, and human warmth wrapped around her.
"Hey..."
He was waiting.
Like he knew she would come.
"Caitlin, please take the Sprinter role."
"It means I trust you that much."
Idiot mask.
Why did seeing that face make her feel strangely relieved?
The pursuit had definitely closed in, but she felt no fear, not even worry.
"I brought it... what you... asked for..."
She forced out a few stuttering words.
As her consciousness drifted, she barely held out the flag.
"If we lose this... I'll kill you..."
"Good work."
A hand took hers gently.
Caitlin was laid down beside a patch of soft brush.
Right before her vision went black, only one line from the boy rang in her ears.
"I'll make sure we win."
Now that she heard it up close, he had a pretty nice voice.
With that pointless thought, the girl lost consciousness.
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