The Villain’s Ending

Sunset (27)

"How long?"

Seraphina asked.

"How long do I have to wait?

Until you hook up with Kyle, the Saintess settles down in the church with you, and the junior head of Edelgard gives birth to a child whose father no one knows?”

It was hard to meet her eyes, but I didn't look away.

"I've always waited. But... how long are you telling me to wait?"

"Until everything is okay. You, me, and everyone around us."

"You're saying it won't happen in a lifetime?"

I lightly wet my lips with the coffee and skipped Seraphina's answer.

As time passes, I'll be fine too, but somehow I'm talking as if I'm a person who has no chance of being normal.

"Seraphina, it'll sound like nonsense, but the demons are going to invade."

At my out-of-the-blue remark, Seraphina couldn't even answer, just blinked and made a bewildered expression.

More precisely, it was less a bewildered expression and more the kind of look you'd give a crazy person screaming on the street.

"I know, it sounds crazy. If I say the demons are suddenly going to invade from somewhere, heretics are suddenly going to start killing tons of people, and everything you took for granted is going to collapse, you'd probably think about locking me up in a mental hospital or a small room in the estate."

After emptying the coffee cup, I popped a cookie into my mouth.

Disgustingly sweet, but soon we won't even be able to eat these.

On the front lines, we'll be laughing and saying it's good even while eating poorly made cake that still smells stale of flour.

My memory of who I did that with has gotten a bit hazy.

It's been a few years, after all.

Seraphina in front of me is still a person who hasn't experienced anything, and is exactly the same on the outside.

Not some strange thing like me, spinning through the same time like a hamster wheel, getting older on the inside.

As time passes, I somehow feel a sense of alienation.

From myself, or from the person I love in front of me.

"But soon it will be like that, and you'll live in that world. A world where cafés don't open, and even when you look out the window, not a single person walks the busy streets. And in that world, I'd rather not have been born."

"Wha, what nonsense is that now..."

Seraphina couldn't finish her sentence.

I continued.

"It's a thought I've always had. Living in the Edelgard mansion, thinking if this was how it was going to be, I'd have been happier if I wasn't born at all. If I had to be born, I wish I hadn't been born in a place like this. I lived thinking such pathetic thoughts."

Thinking of being born should be done with gratitude, but I was the one who, feeling broken because I was born in an unhappy place, couldn't manage to do anything right and just whined about wanting to die.

I think the me from back then is shabby and disgusting, but if I went back to that time, I'd probably be repeating the same things.

Unless I die and come back several times.

"And if a child is born, wouldn't they naturally think that way?"

"You said you wouldn't even get married, but you're thinking about having a child with me?"

"I want to. Go to a quiet place with you, spend time just the two of us, and live a leisurely, happy life.

Now I can't just have it be the two of us, but still, I want to be with you the longest."

"Then why don't we just do that?"

"Then, should we just spend it, just the two of us? Not have a child, live in a quiet place, just the two of us. I can do better next time, so should we do that?"

I know that what I'm saying right now is the same as saying let's not do anything and run away.

"Run away to a quiet place where neither the Saintess, Levina, Kyle, Lineta, anyone at the Academy, my family, anyone at all can find us, and live just the two of us.

I think we could live quite happily for about five years, don't you think?"

"......I don't understand what you're saying, Lavin."

Seraphina was looking at me like I was completely crazy.

Come to think of it, I wondered if I had ever said this to someone before, and then realized this was the first time.

"Have you ever seen a person who couldn't even use magic properly do something like this?"

Saying that, I levitated a few cookies from the table into the air.

Then I created a small sphere of fire at my fingertip and covered it with a film of water.

I shot it toward the floating cookie.

Steam burst out and the cookie pieces scattered from the impact.

Some pieces landed on Seraphina's clothes, but she didn't move a muscle.

She was just watching the scene, and me.

"You must have heard all about how I met Lineta. Was the me you think of someone who could fight a heretic, easily subdue them, and bring them all the way here?"

Seraphina still didn't answer.

No, she seemed unable to.

When others express opinions about me, they're all negative things spread without properly recognizing my strengths, so the credibility is very low.

But I hear Seraphina is often told that while she's good at magic, not stupid, and looks fine, there's something dull or spacey about her.

Kyle said so, so it must be true.

I think I finally understand, for some reason only now, why Seraphina believes and repeats everything Kyle says as if it were gospel truth.

Kyle just has a strangely trustworthy way of speaking, for some reason.

Maybe it's because of that uniquely honest feeling.

"But Lavin, you're just Lavin."

Seraphina finally opened her mouth.

"......What does that mean?"

"No matter how good you are at magic, you're unreliable; you only talk nonsense but have a strangely excessive amount of affection, getting pushed around by anyone who gets even a little close; and you're still the same indecisive you, wavering this way and that without deciding anything properly."

Seraphina lightly tapped the handle of the coffee cup a few times, then set it down.

"No matter what happened to you, no matter what you've been through, you're still the same. Even if what I dreamed was real, nothing has changed. At least the Lavin in front of me."

Have I not changed?

In front of Seraphina.

I thought I had changed in my own way, but am I still the same?

“If I told you to say you love me, you'd say it. If I asked you to hug me, you'd hug me. If I asked you to kiss me, you'd kiss me. You wouldn't be able to refuse, right?”

Come to think of it, that might be true.

Anyway, as time passed, and emotions that I don't understand how they piled up even after several times, and something I don't know, accumulated, it probably didn't feel very awkward.

Because suddenly, even though everything changed overnight as if it were different, she treated me like I had been that kind of person all along.

Like a capable person who naturally knew how to use magic, naturally fought well enough to train Kyle...

Of course, I am capable, but I wasn't capable enough to hold off the invading demons.

I'll die in the end.

Seraphina in front of me, me, Estelle, Kyle.

This time might be a little different, but it'll just be living a little longer.

I had to put away my expectations.

If I get full of expectations, do all sorts of things, and then get crushed, it's hard to get back up.

I just had to approach it with the mindset that it was a chance I didn't deserve but got again, so I'd try.

So that even if I die this time, I can think, I'll do better next time.

Even if it's cowardly to mortgage the present for the future.

"So?"

Seraphina asked.

"So what."

"Why would that be a reason not to marry me? You're not going to do it with anyone else, are you?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"If we get married, you'll want to have a child first. If I say no, you'll pretend to agree on the surface and then force yourself on me at night. Not just you, everyone would do that and more."

At my words, Seraphina gave no answer.

"I can't marry you, but I'll be with you forever. Until I die."

I spread my fingers so the ring Seraphina gave me was clearly visible, and quietly spoke while looking at my hand this way and that.

But she didn't seem very moved.

She looked at my hand, twitched one eye, shook her shoulders, and then stared blankly at me.

"If you're going to be like that, then I'll just... ah."

Seraphina said that and sniffled, then lightly wiped her eyes.

Then she bit her lower lip and glared at me.

I didn't answer much, just picked up the pieces of the cookie I had just smashed with my fork.

At some point, even that kind of gaze had become strangely familiar.

It seemed like it would be a little painful if she remembered all the words I had said that scattered through time and all the actions that had disappeared.

Kyle would probably try to cut my neck in half somehow.

****

About half a year after graduation, I guess.

The demons invaded.

As always, countless kingdoms and cities, and some quiet territory somewhere, collapsed, and countless refugees began to pour in.

But they couldn't crawl in.

"P-please save me! P-please, just my child! J-just the child!!"

Looking at the child wrapped in a blanket in the arms of a woman kneeling and begging before me, I took the child with one hand and handed it to the soldier standing behind me.

And I had the woman, who had set up a proper tent but was ungratefully trying to crawl into the city walls, and who might be a heretic, taken away.

She'll probably be hanged from a big tree nearby.

With all sorts of crimes piled on.

If her husband had been alive, I would have hung him next to her, but this world is full of people who immediately resort to their fists when things don't go their way.

It is a bit odd that she thought she could take on a guy with a sword, though.

"Lavin, there, there might still be innocent people..."

"That's why I sent the kid back."

"......Still, this doesn't seem right."

"I know."

I answered like that and did nothing more.

Then Kyle silently looked at me, stopped the soldiers dragging the woman away, brought the woman back, gave her the child, and sent her inside the city walls.

I didn't say much.

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