Editing Rakuin no Monshou:The Little Fugitive (section)

=== Part 4 ===

Like a dark veil billowing in the wind, the night sky started to rapidly spread out over Sasha’s head. Once the sun had sunk, this alleyway which was currently almost devoid of any signs of life would be filled with coarse and vulgar laughter or with the piercing noise of a turf war.

Sasha trotted along the unpaved road and hurried to the pawnshop at the end of the alley.

It was different from the pawnshops along the main streets. Stolen goods were often sold there and rumour had it that it was a base for criminal operations.

It also didn’t give half the value of shops on the main streets. Still, she couldn’t be picky.

The bald-headed owner had a habit of peering at people from below and when she stretched out her hand to receive the money, he forcefully tugged it forward.

“What are you doing?”

As Sasha screamed, she felt his alcohol-laden breath against her ear.

“You’ll have a reason too. There are lots of criminals and runaway slaves here.”

“Unhand m– Aah! Let go!”

The shop owner was terrifyingly strong and easily pulled her down. As despair as dark as night was descending on Sasha’s heart, several shadows approached the shop from outside.




When she heard a sound coming from the window, Alicia hastily stood up and opened it herself.

Orba came in as though trying to hide himself. He was wearing his mask.

“What happened?” He asked when he saw Alicia’s agitated state.

“Mama hasn’t come back,” the girl answered, her gaze more restless than usual. “Normally she should already be back… Say, you didn’t see her outside?”

“No.”

Nelwin wasn’t in the room yet. That was because it was an hour earlier than when Orba had chased him through the window last time, but even so it was already late at night. He didn’t need to see Alicia’s trembling eyes to understand the depth of her anxiety.

“Where does your mother usually go? If you know where she works, I can go there.”

“Mama…”

After she had gotten that far, the girl’s words broke off. Orba did not press her by asking what was wrong. From within his mask, he simply watched her pale face attentively.

After a short while,

“You don’t know?”

“Mama…, was always at home. But recently, she often goes out…”

As though she was wracked by an invisible pain separate from her restlessness and worry at her mother not coming back, Alicia’s face contorted and she collapsed on the bed.

It looked as though, like with her father, Alicia’s awareness was thrown into disarray when she was about to touch on a specific topic. According to Orba’s guess, that topic was,

''The difference between her life ‘before’ and ‘now’.''

For some reason, when it came to either her father or her mother, Alicia firmly believed that things were the same as ‘before’. Or she was trying to believe it. But she was also aware of ‘now’. And so, when the discrepancies were pointed out to her from outside, her consciousness became tangled and her heart was almost laid bare by the contradictions.

“Mama is…”

“Wait.”

Suddenly halting Alicia’s words, Orba pressed himself tightly against the wall and peered out of the window through the gap in the curtains.

“W-What is it?”

“Ssh.”

Perhaps overwhelmed by Orba’s suddenly tense mood, Alicia turned pale.

A number of shadows had  sprung into sight under Orba's eyes.  It was almost as though the filth collected along the evening road had grown human limbs and started to walk but there was no doubt that he could see the gleam of their drawn blades.

“That's...”

A group of swordsmen wrapped in black clothes. There were seven or eight of them.

When Orba put his hand to his waist, he heard Alicia gasp. She had heard the sound of his sword slipping out of its scabbard.

“Orba, what is it? Has something happened outside?”

“Who knows,” Orba answered as he continued to carefully peer out of the window. “But it's unlikely that they're allies. You could say that the evil magician's underlings have been sent after Princess Katjua.”

The gladiator Orba had passed through many scenes of bloodshed but there was the unmistakable sound of tension in his voice. Perhaps because she was sensitively aware of it, ragged breaths started to escape from Alicia's nose and mouth.




Dach was in front of a stone building. In the past, this area of Solon had been at the very foot of the cliffs. Originally, this was a facility which would lodge several labourers.

He had seven of his men with him. Considering their prey, their numbers were excessive. But Dach was by nature the kind of man who moved with caution. He would have preferred to act only after having investigated the surrounding area and the people who lived nearby, but there was no helping it since Jurgen's order was to settle things tonight.

Even now, he had just sharply admonished a subordinate who had been cracking obscene jokes because the opponents were two women.

“If by any chance they escape, my sword will have your blood as compensation.”

Dach's face as he darkly issued that threat was like that of an eastern priest pronouncing a death sentence. And for all that they were a pack of ruffians who bore scars at their ankles, all his men simultaneously fell silent.

The door was soon unlocked and each of them quietly crept in.

Dach was the second to enter.

The people living in the area were mostly penniless thieves who were unlikely to inform on them, but it was of course preferable to leave as little information as possible for any third parties. It would be best if they made it look like a normal robbery.

And so, they would start by murdering the pair. As swiftly as a gust of wind. After that, they would wreck the rooms and tear the clothes off the corpses so as to give the impression of violence and to make people believe that had been the goal from the start.

These were the actions of a brute but then Dach had originally been a sword slave. In order to survive, he had killed countless people. His entire body had been smeared in steaming blood and entrails. He never wanted to go back to that place. Even if he defeated and killed a formidable enemy one day, he might be made to fight two opponents the next day simply at someone else's whim. Even when he slept, tomorrow's hell would steal into his dreams. Many people including his master Jurgen compared Dach to a dragon, but they were completely off. Dach knew better than anyone that his heart was frail and human. That was why he worked so diligently. In order to continue protecting the nights in which he slept under a roof and without nightmares.

Dach was never careless.

Which was why, when he sensed bloodlust coming from his left, he was able pull up his sword and parry.

The one in front of him however had his head split open and died.

Dach shouted “Fall back” and leaped backwards himself. The glitter of steel struck from all directions. As yet more strokes rained down, he returned them with his own sword.

– They had been caught in an ambush.

As the only one to instantly realise as much, Dach shoved into his men while spurring them into action.

It was unclear how many enemies there were. As a blade yet again fell towards him, Dach knocked it away with a sharp swing.

“Dammit!”

“Shit!”

Dach’s men finally started fighting back. The clash of weapons resounded within that shadowy space.




The sound of fighting also reached Alicia’s room on the first floor. As she was blind, her sense of hearing was her only point of contact with the outside world and now that it was dominated by the sound of violence, she was paralysed.  

Her heart was beating fast. On top of the fear of imminent danger, for some reason an inexplicable horror was welling up inside her.

His sword in one hand, Orba glanced over towards the girl.

“They’re not likely to simply be thieves,” he said and Alicia’s shoulders shook convulsively. “If they were, they wouldn’t launch an assault here. Any idea why you’re being targeted?”

“I don’t… have any idea.”

“It might be related to why your mother hasn’t come home.”

“No!” Alicia struggled for breath. “Orba, no. I, if I lose Mama too, no! If Mama goes too… I, I, what do I do?”

“Then remember, Alicia. There has to be something. A reason why thieves came here. There’s definitely a reason why you and your mother are being targeted.”

Orba turned her away in a voice so cold it was cruel.

The fight going on downstairs was not currently a problem. Having expected things to turn out this way, Orba had of course had his men lie in wait inside the building.

Moreover, it was Orba himself who had leaked the information of the whereabouts of ‘Oddwill’s wife and blind daughter’ to Jurgen in the first place. He had guessed that if he did so, Jurgen would definitely make a move and if Orba was right about that move, then there would no longer be any doubt that Jurgen was deeply involved.

Alicia was blinking over and over. It felt as though the turbulent sounds that were reaching her eyes were stirring something in the depths of her heart. It was as if something which had been hidden behind a tightly sealed door had rapidly started waking up as soon as it had sensed the first hint of violence and was now squirming madly.

Violent noises. Blood. Screams…

As though longing to blend into one another, the memories of the past and the current world were stretching out their tentacles through either side of where the door had cracked open, were intertwining, and at any moment now would grasp hold of each other and blow away the seal.

At that moment, there was the sound of someone hurrying up the staircase. But it wasn’t as heavy as when Alicia’s mother Sasha had raced up back when Orba had first visited her room. Alicia noticed of course that they were not her mother’s footsteps and she suddenly went rigid.

''Oh'', behind the mask, Orba’s eyes went wide.

The plan had been for his subordinates, Shique included, to settle everything downstairs. That an enemy had managed to cut through even so meant that there must be a formidable swordsman among them.

“Hide,” Orba ordered shortly.

Alicia stood up unsteadily but her feet would not move. It was not only because of fear.

To keep away from the violence, all alone in the darkness… There was a part of her that fiercely resisted that course of action. It was a voice that rose from within her.

“Hurry!”

Orba forced her under the bed where he himself had once hidden. Just at the point where it was unclear whether her figure was concealed or not, the door was violently flung open.

The man who barged in had a face like a dragon’s – Dach.

He rushed at Orba without a second’s hesitation. As though they were synchronized, Orba instantly drew back sideways.

A look of surprise crossed the man’s oval-shaped face as he had not thought it would be possible to dodge. Moreover,

“That mask! You – you’re Orba, the winner of the Sword Festival?”

“I’m honoured that a suspicious-looking thief remembers my face.”

“You’re definitely the crown prince’s… Fuck!”

Dach realised that by coming here they had fallen into a trap. Across from him, Orba answered with a smile but he had little room for manoeuvre. Because of the injury to his collarbone, his right hand only had half of its usual strength. He would certainly have needed some nerve to fight such a skilled opponent with only his left arm. Which was why he grasped his one-handed sword with both hands.

Dach attacked with enough force to raise a wind.

It was a blow strong enough to smash a person’s face in and Orba was barely able to deflect it with the tip of his sword. The left side of his body caught the heavy impact.

If the fight went on for too long, he would be at a disadvantage.

While the two men aimed for their vitals in that narrow room, Alicia’s world was nothing but darkness and the crash of sword strikes.

Her heart was racing.

''That'' time too she had been watching like this. And that time too she could only watch without being able to do anything.

''I watched… I ‘saw’.''

Alicia’s past and present were now closely entwined and as they swelled up, the locked door in the depths of her heart was wrenched open from within.

''That’s right, I… I saw...''

As the door opened, vivid memories flooded her mind.

That evening, her father and mother were both late coming home. Alicia, who was house-sitting, was bored and thought to surprise her parents who would be coming home tired by hiding under a large set of shelves in the living room.

Her father had come home not long after that but before Alicia could jump out, a visitor had turned up.

It was a middle-aged man who looked like a noble and who was accompanied by an attendant. The noble did not apologise for his rudeness in calling so late and was the first to speak, urging her father to reconsider.

“I’ve told you I will give you a share. What amount would satisfy you?”

Alicia’s father Oddwill gathered and despatched labourers to work in the mines near Solon but Jurgen, the aristocrat who had jurisdiction over those mines, wanted to appropriate for himself a part of the funds allocated for their development.

And so, he had accused the miners on a trumped-up charge and had them reduced into slavery.

Since slaves were a disposable and easily replaceable workforce that didn’t need to be paid any wages, efficiency had increased. Jurgen had apparently tried to bribe Oddwill into keeping this a secret but Alicia’s father had vehemently turned him down.

“It’s also in the country’s interest for the mines to be developed more efficiently. It would be sheer stupidity to let the country decline simply because you’re bothered by a small sacrifice.”

“Enough. That will all be for the palace to decide.” Oddwill had remained firm to the last.

“I see,” said Jurgen, “that you’re a stubborn one.”

The noble had smiled. It was a gentle expression that made you want to smile back but at that moment, Alicia ‘saw’ it. Jurgen had drawn the sword that was at his waist and had pierced her father through the abdomen.

The noble was still smiling. An unthinkable amount of blood had splashed down. Alicia’s entire field of vision and her childish heart both became dyed in the viscous colour of that blood.

Jurgen sighed fiercely and kicked at the silent corpse.

“Set fire to the house later. Wait for two hours after I’m gone, got it?” His rough footsteps were leaving as he spoke.

She could only dimly remember what had happened next.

The men Jurgen had left behind must have been on standby outside the house but coming home late, her mother had noticed their presence from a distance and had deliberately come in through the backdoor. When she found Alicia, hidden and trembling, and saw the living room spattered in blood, her mother had quickly gathered some luggage together, had taken her daughter by the hand and had fled out of there.

''Papa –''

The furious clash of steel still raged on.

Since the moment when she had witnessed her father’s death, Alicia’s sight and memory had been locked away.

She covered her ears with her hands. Her instinct was telling her that the same thing was going to happen again. She mustn’t look. If she watched, this time her heart would be torn to shreds.

''Somebody –''

Inside her heart, Alicia voicelessly cried out for help from a world as dark as night in which there was not a single star to be seen. She could only desperately pray that someone would come and save her from these shadows like the young man had helped Princess Katjua – that guided by a golden bird, they would appear like the main character from a story.

At that moment,

“Oh, is that it for the skill of the winner of the tournament? Clovis whose name you received must be crying,” Dach jeered.

Because of his injury, Orba had gradually been forced into a defensive fight. Dach thrust forward. As he retreated, Orba’s back hit the wall with the window.

In a flash, Dach started to close the distance.

Orba sensed it with an animal intuition. As it met the fierce blow from Dach’s sword, the weapon in his hand would be sent flying in the air and Dach would lunge again in a consecutive attack – it happened just as he had pictured it in that instant.

So Orba placed his foot on the wall behind him, kicked himself off of it, bent forward and dove into Dach’s chest.

“Guh!”

Orba’s fist slammed into the pit of Dach’s stomach.

His breath was cut short, his legs hung still and it looked as though he was about to topple over.

Dach’s lower limbs were tough though. With a desperate expression, he shook Orba off. In the empty space between the two of them, he once more raised his sword high.

Was it a coincidence or not?

She thought that she heard a sharp cry then a small shadow suddenly leapt from the direction of the window and slipped into the gap between the two men.

''Yamā!''

For a moment, it seemed to Alicia as though there were people outlined by a shining light in the darkness in which she had shut herself.

Right now, Alicia could ‘see’.

The man with a sword was Jurgen while the masked swordsman facing him was her father himself. And when Yamā soared forward, for a second she ‘saw’ the twinkle of golden wings.

Before she had realised it, Alicia had leapt out from under the bed. The main character was none other than her. She had always imagined it that way while within that long darkness. She threw herself forward to shield Yamā and in doing so slid between Dach’s legs.

Caught by surprise, Dach had his posture thrown off. Seizing that momentary gap, Orba picked up the sword that had rolled at his feet.