“Maybe it would be better not to leave, then?”
“Probably, but..”
“Hmm?”
Elsa was truly exhausted.
“I just need some fresh air.”
Lawrence smiled and finally let her pass. As she closed the door behind her, it sank in that he was the only one there in that dark shop. He sat back down and looked around. It wasn’t a particularly big or small shop, wasn’t decorated in any fancy way, and had just the right amount of open space to feel comfortable. It was kept clean, yet not to the point where it looked like nobody lived there. If only one didn’t fancy a lot of furniture, it could really feel like home.
Lawrence took a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. It was quiet, the kind of quiet that people would find pleasant. But he felt the shop needed another open window. Otherwise how would Holo comb her tail in the sun? The moment he caught himself daydreaming, he shook his head. He was doing this more and more often lately. And the dreams were getting depressingly specific.
Daydreaming was fine, but he had to keep them to himself for Holo’s sake. How could he possibly tell the Wisewolf to settle down and open a shop with him? Heck, she wouldn’t take him seriously even if she wasn’t a Wisewolf. No, this was one dream he had to keep to himself.
“Kinisen..”
He murmured the name and smiled. If Holo wasn’t going to help fight to keep them together, he didn’t have a prayer. She made the choice, and now he had to help her out while he could.
Kinisen was supposed to be a wealthy town, on a gentle but very flat slope. The trees were so green there that people liked to call it a forest town. Holo and Cole would love it there. Elsa.. well, she might struggle, being so sheltered. But even she should find it a comfortable place.
Since it wasn’t far from Endyma, the Ploanian capital, it was sure to have a nice selection of dishes to choose from. It was the perfect place for them to bid farewell. He smacked his cheeks lightly and said it out loud.
“The perfect place for us to bid farewell.”
He always felt that one of his few good points was how stubbornly he pursued his goals, no matter how much he had to struggle. It was a shame Holo didn’t have a bit of that fire in her. Either she really felt that his idea of going back to Yoitsu together was too sad, or she just didn’t have room in her life for another.
Another.. the moment he thought of that, he saw her smiling at someone else in his mind. If that wasn’t enough to completely blow his mind, Flynn suddenly returned. He gently pushed the already-open door wider.
“Oh.. has the holy one finished her letter?”
“Yup. And it took all the fight out of her.”
“Well, at least there’s that, am I right?”
He said that like he was trying to keep a secret. Lawrence couldn’t believe that Flynn, a man who dealt with mercenaries, would smile and act this boyishly.
“Well, people would rather not be so far from their lover to have to write them letters, am I right?”
Only someone who’d experienced something like that would suggest such a thing, so all Lawrence could do was force out a sigh to keep from thinking too much about it.
“Quite right. Find me one person who wouldn’t rather have their lover at their side.”
Flynn nodded pleasantly as he sat down. Elsa’s letter had been folded and left on the desk. Flynn held it up just long enough to confirm whether the ink was already dry.. he looked like he’d rather not actually read it.
“To be honest, I’d like to chat.”
He refolded the letter and spoke like he’d been talking with Lawrence all along. Lawrence was a bit bewildered, trying to figure out what Flynn could want to talk about so cautiously, until Flynn filled in that blank and shocked him.
“I just tried talking with Delink.”
Flynn had flatly refused to help Lou, claiming he had no desire to be seen dealing with Delink. Was it just a ruse? Lawrence really couldn’t believe it was, so Flynn must have been very concerned about something.
“And, well, I kind of did.”
“..Oh?”
If he was just joking around by stalling, he wouldn’t have said it that way. His face was warning Lawrence that a difficult conversation was coming up.
“I supply mercenaries, and I mediate between them. Delink is an entirely different beast. But you’ll find no mention of mercenaries heading to Tolchin here, so I suspected they might have something to do with that.”
He tapped the folded letter.
“Mercenaries always talk with slave traders before a war. They need to know if it’s even worth taking any slaves or not.”
“And..?”
Lawrence was getting anxious, now that Flynn was testing the waters so carefully. Then, he looked at Lawrence with pity.
“I’m afraid Tolchin is going to be attacked.”
It suddenly made perfect sense why he waited to chat with Lawrence alone. Lawrence had already judged that Flynn didn’t have the heart to tell a girl like Holo something like this. And with that look of pity on his face, Flynn must know that Lawrence was the same way. Unbelievable. Lawrence wanted to punch Flynn in the face for being so unfair.
“But I really couldn’t understand why they were going there. It’s just mountains and forests. There aren’t even villages worth naming. What kind of slaves are they hoping to find?”
He looked away.
“They must have found a mine.”
Holo had just asked him if the forests there were still rich. And given how unexpectedly Lawrence had decided to help Lou, Flynn must have realized what they were so worried about: just this kind of situation. He even seemed to share their concerns.
“Still, I may just be overthinking things. All Delink knows is that there’s one mercenary group offering to sell them slaves from Tolchin.”
If they’d found a mine there, it would explain everything. There would be people there, secretly trying to earn cash where no one should be. People with bad luck, yes, but Lawrence didn’t have to get worked up about that. It wasn’t him that was going to be selling slaves.
But then.. Holo had to head back on her own now, and he didn’t want to leave her with such problems. Selfishness just wasn’t in his character. Flynn suddenly spoke up as Lawrence reached this conclusion.
“Oh! And the symbol of those mercenaries, incidentally, is a wolf.”
“A wolf?”
Flynn nodded and tapped the side of his head with his finger.
“They have a weird name, and they’re a pretty small band, but they’re an old one. Let me think.. what was it..”
He finally managed to knock the dust off the correct shelf in his mind.
“The Myuri Mercenary Band.”
Holo’s friends from home.. Lawrence would never forget their names. Yue, Inti, Paro.. they sounded like codewords to him. And the last one she mentioned was Myuri.
“They’re reputedly a small, but well-organized outfit with a terrific leader. They’ve never come here, though, so this is all just hearsay.”
Lawrence took in a slow, deep breath as Flynn stopped talking. Long ago, their sharp fangs and claws had fought in wars. Many had died and returned to the soil, fighting the Moon-Hunting Bear or even humans. Lawrence already heard all of this from Hugh in Gerube. Like proper wolves, they were the first to go to war, and the first to die. Their pawprints had already long since faded in Yoitsu.
Holo had been forcing herself to accept this, and now it seemed that God wasn’t that cruel after all. The wolves of Yoitsu might have survived, to this day using a wolf as their symbol along with Myuri’s name. Of course they would be around Yoitsu now.
Myuri, Holo’s ancient friend, might well be alive, and trying to defend his home against Diva Company’s incursion. It was starting to sound more and more like it might be the best news Holo could possibly receive.
“Well.. I’m sure your friend will worry if she hears only this much. Shall I dig around some more??
??
Lawrence shook his head. Just telling her that the Myuri Mercenary Band was keeping watch on Yoitsu would bring her incredible joy. And the one bringing her joy would himself feel joy at having done so. He wanted to run off to her right now, just to see that joy on her face.
But a part of him wouldn’t let him. It would be a happy moment, but it would also be the last he saw of her. She wouldn’t even need to bother going to Kinisen, she could just fly straight off to Yoitsu in her true form. The very last thing he would see was her tail wagging as she left him.
His trip back south would be filled with questions about whether she reunited with her friends. He couldn’t be there with her in Yoitsu to know for sure. If she could happily reunite with Myuri, he wanted to be there. He wanted Myuri to at least see the one that helped Holo find her way home.
Who knows? If Myuri didn’t hate humans, he might even hear a kind word of thanks, and then.. and then Lawrence fell apart. He couldn’t bring himself to picture what inevitably came next. Mercenary bands never named themselves after women, after all.
Even if Myuri wasn’t her former lover, they were old friends and she never thought she’d meet him again. And right between them would be this tiny wisp of a merchant, staring up at two gigantic wolves. It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so tragic.
Lawrence simply had no place there. He couldn’t just be optimistic this time. The only right thing for him to do now was raise his hands and shout “hurray!” At least he could smile while bidding Holo farewell, saying “our trip has a happy end after all.”
And so, he forced himself to smile and turn down Flynn’s offer.
“No.. there’s already enough worry in this world.”
Flynn stared at him, then finally sighed.
“Quite right.”
His words came out as a murmur.
* * *
The fresh air did Elsa a world of good. She seemed recharged when she came back in. She wasn’t the type to eavesdrop, so she wouldn’t know what Flynn and Lawrence had just discussed, but her keen senses still detected the atmosphere and she looked at them doubtfully.
Lawrence was in no position to pretend he hadn’t seen her reaction, but he wasn’t in a position to tell her everything, either. He’d been lost in thought over what time would be best to tell Holo about Myuri, and honestly wished he could just let God handle it.
If he told Holo now, it would just be another thing on her already-heavy mind. Even if she ran back to Yoitsu, she still had other things to worry about. He also knew that she wouldn’t just ditch him to rejoin her friends. She really did want to depart with Lawrence in Kinisen.
As such, Kinisen would be the best place to tell her. But that felt like so much of a selfish excuse that it ate away at him. He knew he wanted to stay with her a little longer, and he was still clinging to the notion that she was thinking only about him.
Not only that, but he knew better than to think he could keep this hidden from her. She would notice, and worst of all, she would probably let him get away with it. Lately she’d been letting him get away with keeping his secrets while trying to laugh it off. And that’s just all she could do in the end: try to laugh it off, despite knowing that he’d been intentionally keeping it from her.
He was still being a merchant at heart, still trying to maximize his own profits. He understood now just how quickly a person in love could think, and just how useless that speed was. You couldn’t settle on any good decisions in the end. It was a valuable life lesson for him to learn, but all things considered he would rather have passed on the lesson entirely. He sighed, wishing that was possible.
“Hey, we have souvenirs!”
The door suddenly slammed open with that great shout. It was a terrifying thing to hear for someone used to being in a quiet shop. He, Elsa and Flynn all flinched, then froze. They stared at Cole as he dragged a bucket into the shop, then took a seat in exhaustion. It must have been horrible for the frail lad to drag something like that all that way.. Lawrence felt sorry for him. But Holo didn’t seem to care at all. She stood with pride.
“See? We brought today’s lunch!”
Her face was red as an apple, and drenched in sweat. At first Lawrence wondered what was in the bucket, but it smelled so fishy he had to pinch his nose.. the bucket was full of eels.
“They are great, are they not? We wandered around the pier until some fool dropped a bucket and spilled them everywhere!”
Elsa was shocked, but Holo just gave a hearty laugh. She stank of fish, and her sleeves were wet.
“You.. didn’t steal these, did you?”
“Of course not, stupid! He asked us to help, and this was our reward! We caught most of them, did we not?”
Cole could barely smile. The eels actually did look great; they were all large enough to earn even Flynn’s approval.
“Hey, you know.. you really ought to change clothes first.”
“Oh? Ah, yes, we are all wet.. then I shall leave these here! Come, Cole!”
She yanked Cole by the arm as she spoke, dragging the tired boy with her. He was so tired the rest of them were praying that she would just let him rest first, but it was Flynn who finally laughed out loud and told her to stop, not Elsa or Lawrence.
“Hahahaha!”
Flynn’s was an infectious laugh, especially with his hands on his waist and his eyes facing the ceiling. Not even the best actor in a comedy troupe could match that kind of mirth.
“Oh wow, you people are just too funny! Don’t worry about it, you can wash up here. And I’ll get someone to cook these right away.”
“Oh? Really?”
“You’d probably have a cold by the time you got to your inn, so I’ll have the lads boil some water for a bath. As for your clothes.. let me think..”
Lawrence pounced to keep Flynn from going overboard.
“It’s alright, I’ll run back to our inn and grab a change for them.”
“Oh? Alright then, let’s do that. The eels should be nice and cooked up by then. Let’s eat lunch at noon.”
Would Holo actually let her ears and tail be seen? Nah, she wasn’t that careless. She dragged Cole by the arm while Elsa tried to support him, until they disappeared into the room after Flynn. Holo was already so happy right now that Lawrence heard himself sigh in happiness. He really was stupid. She was more brilliant than the shiniest gold coin, and could chase away the darkest cloud in an instant. He scratched his head and stared at the eels with a stupid grin on his face.
“Alright, I’m heading out.”
He aimed his shout at Elsa, who was monitoring Holo and Cole with worried eyes. But just as soon as he turned his back, he heard her reply and her footsteps.
“I’m coming with you.”
An eel flicked some water out of the bucket as she passed by, and she flinched like she was being attacked by a sea monster. After tiptoeing around the bucket, she came up to Lawrence with a look like she couldn’t stand eels.
“I have spare clothes I can lend you.”
It felt strange to receive that offer from Elsa, but Lawrence wasn’t nearly as good as Holo was at detecting ulterior motives. He just nodded and kept walking, without saying a word.
* * *
Just like any other town, the streets of Lenos had their own names. Big or small, it didn’t matter. Each had a wooden plaque declaring its name, and the plaque for the small road they turned onto caught their eyes. It was a lovely sign, and the road was paved with cobblestones. Lawrence’s eyes kept darting from stone to stone, until Elsa could take it no longer.
“I have been wondering this for some time..”
Lawrence suspected she was mumbling to herself, but she continued.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Wha?”
Lawrence couldn’t believe what he was hearing, until Elsa looked him in the eyes and repeated herself plainly.
“Can I help the two of you in any way?”
Her honey-colored eyes w
ere wholly serious.
“Especially you. I know you don’t really want to go to Kinisen.”
He stared right back and smiled.
“What a surprising thing to hear.”
He figured she would get upset at that, but she didn’t react with the kind of anger he expected.
“Don’t even start.”
She kept right on staring at him as they walked side by side down the crowded lane. She would have run smack into a wagon, had he not gently pulled her aside before replying. He didn’t need the weight of having her run over on his mind.
“I’m always surprised when people say that.”
Holo would have acted like a shy, flustered girl if he’d pulled her aside like that, but not Elsa. He knew she wouldn’t, of course, but he still felt like Evan, the young miller, had bested him once again.
“But you helped me..”
It seemed that Elsa had put one and two together after hearing Lawrence and Holo talk. She knew they had to make a painful choice, and couldn’t seem to make it themselves, and so she figured she could solve it by making it for them. It was sweetly innocent, and just the kind of thing he knew Elsa hid behind her cold exterior.
But she wasn’t a businesswoman. Even if Eringin hadn’t strong-armed him into going to Kinisen, she couldn’t really help him.
“I do thank you for the offer, though.”
He smiled sincerely, but offered no reason for his rejection. He really did feel grateful that she offered, after all, and for all her antagonism, she didn’t really hate Holo. This just wasn’t a problem that could be solved; sometimes a person had to cooperate with their father’s cold-blooded murderer, and hatred had to be set aside.
“I see..”
Her disappointment was obvious.
“Why do you even want to help us, anyway?”
It was a pointless question, of course. Elsa was a firm believer, and so helping others was just part of her being. But his sixth sense as a merchant forced him to ask that question anyhow. There was one situation where his ears were more than a match for Holo’s, and that was when someone had a self-interested ulterior motive. He knew Elsa wasn’t just being generously kind. This time, she became just as angry as he expected.