On a Stormy Night

♪Poet — Present♪

By evening, we arrived at a small country town. According to our plan, this would be the last inhabited place we stopped at before the royal capital.

We were supposed to stay here for the night, climb up and down through the mountains, camp outdoors, and then reach the royal capital around daybreak.

“Shall we look for an inn?”

“No, wait. Let’s enter the mountains before the day is over.”

Growl made a strange proposal, so I immediately objected.

“Mountain climbing at night is dangerous! Why?”

“According to the weather forecast, a storm is coming tomorrow. We’ll be stuck until it passes. During that time, Allegro will probably reach the royal capital ahead of us. Marching in the dark is dangerous, true, but it’s better than marching through a thunderstorm. Judging by the distance, we may still get caught in the storm somewhere along the way, but we should cover as much ground as we can before then.”

“Getting caught in a storm in the mountains is dangerous too.”

“It is. But if we don’t take risks, we won’t reach the royal capital first. That’s another reality we have to face. You can’t get the tiger cub without entering the tiger’s den.”

Growl had a point. It might drain our stamina, but there was no helping it.

“Miss Adagio?”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I have the stamina Allegro trained into this body.”

Being saved by the training our enemy had steadily built up was nothing if not ironic.

The three of us walked along the night road, using the moonlight as our guide.

The path was thick with growth, almost more like an animal trail.

Since the large tunnel had been built on the main road Allegro would likely be taking, merchants often used that safer detour.

But people who knew the land used this path. Especially when they were in a hurry.

The royal capital sat in a basin surrounded by mountains, and there was a lookout point in this range.

Throughout history, armed forces had often built mountain castles here despite knowing how inconvenient it was. But since the area could never become a center of trade or distribution, those mountain castles were always abandoned when their leaders died.

You could call it a dark zone of history. My body trembled, and I felt myself tense up.

“Hey, Miss Adagio. Can you tell us more about that Allegro guy? If we might end up fighting him, I want to know what kind of opponent he is.”

Growl started talking about something unrelated. Well, fine. It was a much better topic than scaring ourselves over the ghosts of bandits who weren’t even here and wearing down our nerves.

Miss Adagio began telling us about herself. Most of it was the same as what I had heard beneath the peach trees last night, but there were also some new details.

“I see. A lot of things make sense now. But there are two things that bother me.”

Growl spoke while waving two fingers in a peace sign.

“First, there’s the part about Allegro being able to control three voices at the same time. My guess is that one of them, the soprano, was separated from him as you, Adagio. The other two voices are still inside Allegro’s body.”

“I never thought of it that way, but now that you mention it, that may be true.”

Miss Adagio struck a pose like a housewife worrying over what to buy, supporting her chin with her hand.

“The other thing is that woman named Canon or whatever, the one you met in the bath. Allegro burned with jealousy because another man flipped Canon’s skirt. But Canon thought Allegro hated her. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Miss Adagio nodded deeply.

“Those two pieces of information may not actually contradict each other. If my hunch is right, Allegro is…”

Just as he was about to say it, light rain began to fall. A short while later, it became a downpour.

We couldn’t use our instruments in the rain, because they would rust. So we created a vacuum with a three-part vocal spell and protected ourselves from the rain.

But water droplets still slipped through the gaps little by little, chilling our bodies.

We could no longer see what lay ahead. We didn’t even have enough leeway to cast navigation magic.

At this rate, the more we walked, the more lost we would become. Had we been too hasty? Should we have waited in town?

“A mountain hut!”

Miss Adagio pointed, and sure enough, there was a lodge. Without exchanging a word, all three of us knew where our feet were headed.

Light leaked from the window. Did someone live there?

“Excuse me. Could we take shelter from the rain?”

When Miss Adagio knocked, the doorknob clicked.

A young wolf-girl came out from inside. Since ancient times, the wolf people who came and went through these mountains were generally assumed to be bandits.

In recent years, however, in order to expand unemployment countermeasures, people with good conduct had supposedly been selected and put to work as woodcutters.

Combined with the need for land development, many cedars had been planted around this area.

“Please come in. It must have been awful out there in the rain.”

“Send them away.”

A man’s voice came from inside. Apparently, there was another resident.

“But Father. Leaving them exposed in this thunderstorm would be too cruel.”

“Do what you want.”

It seemed the parent-child quarrel was over. She beckoned to us, so we gratefully tumbled inside.

“I’m sorry. It’s probably because you resemble my brother.”

The girl whispered that while looking at Growl’s face.

“Don’t go blabbing our family business to outsiders!”

It seemed like a family with a hostile atmosphere. It was uncomfortable, but we were in no position to complain.

“Father, dinner is almost ready.”

“Let them eat it. I’m tired, so I’m sleeping.”

Saying that, he lay down on the floor.

“I’m sorry. That’s just Father’s way of showing kindness. He’s an awkward man.”

We accepted her kindness and shared the meal. Soon, the father began breathing in his sleep. The daughter told us about her family circumstances.

“My brother is an instrumental magic user. His skill with a rare magic instrument called the banjo was recognized, and he was hired by the royal palace’s public relations department. But Father strongly opposed it. I think he wanted my brother to take over as a woodcutter. This job supports important infrastructure, but at the same time, it keeps getting left behind by the changing times. I understand my brother’s desire to do something more glamorous too. We’re being left behind by the flow of the era.”

It felt as though she was also saying, without putting it into words, that she wanted to leave too. Lightning flashed, and a deafening roar followed almost immediately.

The father looked almost like my brother Sonnet.

It wasn’t only elites like us royals or Allegro who had been left behind by the times.

There were many people in the common world who were being hurt in the same way.

The sound of rain and wind, and our silence, ruled the room.

As if the raging waves of the era were refusing to let us escape.

☆　☆　☆

I fell asleep.

Allegro would probably appear again tonight.

What should I talk to him about today?

Once I was seated at the table, Allegro deliberately grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

The surface of the coffee rippled.

“Hey. I hear you’ve been thinking it would be fine if you sacrificed yourself and died.”

I was surprised. It was true that I had thought that several times during this journey, but I never imagined Allegro would worry about me.

I was happy. But after everything that had happened between us, part of me wanted to push him away a little.

“So what?”

“Value yourself a little more, will you?”

“You’re one to talk.”

Allegro raked his fingers through his hair. Maybe I had said something a little mean. Somehow, even I felt like I was playing the woman’s role in a lovers’ quarrel.

“I was never valued by the times or by the world. That’s why I’m fighting for my honor. But you’re different. You broke away from me. You could live a happy life freely, on your own. You shouldn’t have any duty to get this deeply involved with the Rabbit Kingdom. Leave Poet and come down from the mountain.”

I wanted to say, Obviously, it’s to stop you from going out of control. That was the very purpose of this journey. But that would only be me throwing my emotions at him. It would be childish. There had to be a better choice of words.

After a long silence, I managed to force the words out.

“You should be able to find happiness too.”

“There’s no one who can heal my loneliness. Even you, my other self, couldn’t do it. No one is going to appear now.”

“I see. You say there isn’t anyone you like, but I guess you do want to be loved, at least.”

“If anything, I think I want to love someone. I want to devote myself to someone.”

“That’s unexpected.”

“Don’t laugh.”

“What kind of person is your type?”

“Someone of the opposite sex who’s forceful and takes the lead.”

“Hehe.”

Oh no. I laughed. He was proud and clever, but he had these cute sides too.

“I told you not to laugh.”

“Sorry.”

Triggered by that apology, my consciousness slipped away.