Chapter 104: Goodbye, Ciel (Patreon)

As for Water Gate City, it lay far away across towering mountains and distant waters, and the road there was perilous.

In the original timeline, when Anastasia invited the Royal Selection candidates to Water Gate City as her guests, Emilia's camp had spent a full twelve days traveling from Roswaal's new manor. Making it there in two days, as Priscilla demanded, was admittedly a tall order.

But that was only hard for people going the ordinary way, on the legs of a ground dragon. Reinhard had the Divine Protection of Wind Evasion, a far finer thing than any ground dragon. It let him charge ahead and ignore wind resistance entirely, and anyone he carried shared the effect. With two people slung over his shoulders, he could cover ground like a teleportation spell.

Of course, Natsuki Subaru could also carry people through the shadows. The experience might not be the most pleasant, but at least the speed was guaranteed.

So, with these two walking cheats working together, a journey of ten days to half a month got squeezed into a two-day, two-night "high-speed express."

The only one who suffered was Old Man Geuse. Julius was young and strong, so he could naturally take it. But for a man already in such terrible shape, being carried at breakneck speed on the shoulder of the current the current Sword Saint had nearly shaken the life out of him.

By the time they landed at the vineyard outside Priestella, the former Sin Archbishop was deathly pale and couldn't even stand. He could barely walk, and only with Reinhard supporting him.

Emilia, naturally, had it far easier. Subaru had carried her through the shadows in a princess carry the whole way. Frequent shadow travel could bring on dizziness and nausea from the warped sense of space, but clearly, compared with a chance at close contact with Subaru, such a minor problem wasn't worth mentioning!

Their last shadow jump deposited them in the shade of a street corner by a canal in Priestella's District One. Subaru gently set Emilia down, shoved both hands into his coat pockets, and looked toward the mouth of the alley.

"Looks like we got lucky. It's pretty quiet here, nothing big going on. For people dressed like us, it's a perfect place to start."

Having said that, he looked down at his tattered black coat, then at Emilia, who was still in the same white dress and long boots she'd worn when they first met. Even he couldn't help laughing.

The two of them wouldn't exactly blend into a crowd. If anything, they'd stand out like a single flower in a field: a silver-haired half-elf and a black-haired outworlder. Neither looked anything like an ordinary Priestella citizen passing by, and it would be hard not to attract attention.

"Hey, you know, I think it's a real shame we didn't bring the Bowel Hunter along," Subaru said, glancing outside. "If she clung to my back, I could've carried one more person. Her assassination skills might've come in handy here."

"N-no! You can't!"

Emilia's eyes went wide at once, and a faint blush spread across her cheeks.

"Miss Elsa... she... no, wait, that would be too hard on you, Subaru, wouldn't it? I just... I just thought... if it was only the two of us, things might go more smoothly... Ugh!"

Listening to her stammering explanation, Subaru more or less understood what was bothering her. Ever since she'd heard that he and Priscilla were a "married couple in name only," Emilia had become extremely sensitive about him spending time with other women. He had no idea who she'd picked up that habit from.

Man, where had the cold girl who kept everyone at arm's length gone? How had she turned into a little jealous pot? He had to admit, that "Sin Archbishop of Envy" title Emilia had given herself... surely it hadn't turned from a joke into the real thing?

Subaru chuckled to himself, but kept the teasing off his face. Instead he stepped half a pace closer and bent down slightly, lowering his gaze until it was level with Emilia's.

Caught off guard by those dark brown eyes so close to hers, Emilia instinctively tried to back away, only to find the stone railing already behind her with nowhere left to go. She froze on the spot, her small hands nervously clutching the tassels of her cape, her ear tips red enough to drip blood.

"S-Subaru? Why are you suddenly so close...?"

"Because I need to take a good look."

Subaru raised a hand with a perfectly straight face and rubbed his chin with his index finger, like a meticulous appraiser.

"I'm trying to figure out which sewer this silver-haired half-elf miss, who calls herself the 'Sin Archbishop of Envy,' dropped the dignity of a 'Sin Archbishop' into."

"Back in the royal capital's sewers, you made people kneel and cry for their mommies. So how come something as easy as carrying one more person on my back has you this wound up?"

"Mm... I'm not wound up!" Emilia puffed out her cheeks and protested in a small voice. "I was just being honest. With someone like Miss Elsa... what if she did something strange on the way..."

"Okay, okay, I'll stop teasing you."

Subaru laughed softly, his eyes gentling. Quite naturally, he raised a hand and ruffled the top of her head, pressing down a small tuft of silver hair that had sprung up stubbornly.

That was how he comforted children, and it worked wonders on both Beatrice and Felt. He didn't know how well it would work on Emilia, but it was clear she enjoyed it.

"Subaru... you're such a sly idiot."

Emilia lowered her head, letting a warm current crash into her heart. Her pulse began to race again. She cupped the hair beside her face in both hands to hide her thoroughly crimson cheeks and muttered under her breath, though the corners of her mouth curved up no matter how she tried to hold them down.

"Right. Before my brothers get in position, let me scout out the situation here first."

Seeing that Emilia was mostly soothed, Subaru nodded, tugged his hat brim low, and slowly sank into the shadow beneath his feet. Before vanishing completely, he still made time to wink at her.

"Stay put here for now. I'm going to check out the local color, and I'll grab you a couple of apples while I'm at it. Bye! See you in a bit!"

Once inside the shadows, Subaru could come and go from any dark corner of Priestella as he pleased. He spent about ten minutes giving the whole city a rough sweep and got a general picture of how it was laid out.

In all fairness, on the surface the city seemed even more vibrant than the royal capital.

Priestella's layout was fascinating. Seen from the sky, it was like an overturned dome, high around the edges and low in the center. The water ringing the city was channeled toward its heart through crisscrossing canals, like a fine silver web dividing the metropolis into districts of various sizes.

Gondolas painted vermilion and dark green glided lightly over the water, and the boatmen at the sterns sang work chants in a Kararagi lilt. Open-air stalls along both banks were piled with grilled fish smelling of exotic spices, brightly colored fruit, and glittering mana ore trinkets of every hue.

Children chased the white gulls skimming the water. Young men and women sat on the steps of stone bridges, talking and laughing in low voices. The air carried the smell of freshly baked bread and cool, damp mist. It was peaceful and prosperous, with an intoxicating air of languor and ease.

There wasn't a trace of the Witch Cult's ravages, and not a hint of panic over the coming war.

Yet Subaru's hands, hanging in his coat pockets, quietly clenched into fists.

"What a quiet city, Natsuki Subaru."

With Deathwing's malice-filled chuckle, the horned girl in the nun's habit rose from the lava in his mindscape once again. Without giving him any chance to refuse, she suddenly leapt onto his back, wound her two slender arms around his neck like a tender lover, and tapped a fingertip lightly against his face.

"The crisis of the world's end is about to descend, yet those oblivious human cubs on the shore are still laughing and tossing breadcrumbs into the water... Don't you find that amusing? It's precisely a scene this lovely and peaceful that is the most fun to destroy."

The girl brought her lips close to Subaru's ear. Her sharp canines grazed it lightly, sending a prick of pain through him. She seemed to be getting better and better at provoking people with these suggestive gestures. In fact, the effect was quite remarkable: she'd succeeded in making Subaru's urge to drag her out and give her a beating surge.

"Do you have no hobbies besides destroying this and that? Miss Mad Dragon?"

Subaru, irritated, brushed away the fingers she was poking at his face and moved to throw this naughty girl off his back, since she'd climbed on without permission. But before he could act, the girl seemed to read his intent and slid off on her own.

"What a pity. To burn all things and destroy everything is the reason this one exists."

The girl covered her mouth and smiled. Her sweet expression stood in stark contrast to her cruel words. Then the dragon tail behind her quietly coiled around Subaru's wrist.

"Especially now that that detestable, arrogant woman is here too. It makes one itch to cause a little destruction! Come, dear... you know this one is the only being truly worth relying on. Let us make this calamity the starting point of our rule over this world!"

In reality, Deathwing's agitation made Subaru's blood boil throughout his body, and a pattern of dragon scales surfaced on his face. He barely managed to force that urge to destroy back down.

That wasn't even the worst of it. Hearing what Deathwing had just called him, goosebumps rose over Subaru's whole body. He could only conclude that this dragon had gone completely mad... wait, she'd always been mad, hadn't she? Either way, this was far too creepy!

"Allow me to decline this proposal."

Subaru wrenched himself free of the Black Dragon Nun's tail. He really didn't dare talk to her any longer.

If Deathwing had used her usual violent tone to order him to destroy everything, he could have come up with countless retorts with his own mouth. Teasing a brainless lunatic was easy, after all. But now that she was like this, urging him to destroy the world while also expressing some ambiguous feelings for him... had she turned bad or turned pervert?

"Haah... this mad dragon is getting harder and harder to deal with."

Back in reality, Subaru let out a long sigh, tugged at his collar, and picked up his pace.

"Next I should go find Ciel. If I don't show my face soon, that hot-tempered princess is probably about to draw her sword and start cutting people."

After meeting up with Emilia, the two of them soon arrived at an inn in Priestella's District One called the "Water Plumage Inn," a luxurious inn in the Kararagi style.

Kararagi style or not, its wooden construction was unmistakably Japanese. From the outside it looked almost identical to the hot-spring inns of Subaru's old world, only with a more luxurious finish. It even connected to the widest viewing gallery in the whole district, with a direct view of the central control tower and the main canal running east to west.

Choosing a place like this as a base was certainly in keeping with Priscilla's style.

Besides, Subaru had been itching to complain about this for ages: there had to be something to this Kararagi place. Leaving aside that the so-called Kararagi style was simply Japanese style, the Kararagi dialect was straight-up Kansai dialect. Whether that was his automatic translation of otherworld languages kicking in or the way it really was, everything made him feel that this world had long been influenced by the culture of his homeland.

Could it be that a transmigrator had come to this world hundreds of years ago and played the Great Sage and Teacher for the locals or something?

Subaru thought that was highly likely. Remembering the "Flugel was here" he'd seen on the great tree of Flugel, he reached a conclusion almost instantly: Flugel was a transmigrator! And a fellow countryman from Japan, too!

This wasn't like Ciel's fake countryman act. This was a genuine transmigrator who'd come over from Japan, and it explained a lot. It was even possible that Ciel's knowledge about Japan had come from information left behind by that Flugel.

Sadly, four hundred years had passed. No matter how long-lived someone was, they'd surely kicked the bucket long ago, and that left Subaru feeling a little wistful. If he ever got the chance, he'd have loved to have a chat with the legendary Flugel.

Back to the matter at hand. Following the room number Ciel had given him earlier, Subaru led Emilia behind an attendant to a luxurious suite in the middle of the inn. He slid open a door carved with exquisite patterns, and a slender white figure sitting quietly at the tea table in the center of the room slowly turned her head.

She had just lifted her teacup and taken a small sip of the steaming tea. At the instant her gaze met that of the black-haired youth stepping through the door, a clear ripple rose in the depths of the girl's calm, deep black eyes.

Unlike Emilia, Ciel's reaction was rather muted. There was no gasp, and no emotional rush toward him. Only the hand holding the teacup, with its little finger lifted lightly clear of the handle, trembled briefly before the finger finally came down.

The girl straightened, folded her hands in front of her stomach, and set the half-finished black tea back at the center of its porcelain saucer with gentle, steady movements. It made a faint "clink."

"You've arrived."

Just three simple words, clear and faintly cool, carrying the particular steadiness of a long-awaited reunion. They were like a white stone dropped into water, enough to stir a vivid ripple in the heart.

"Sorry I'm late, Miss Ciel. I kept you waiting."

Subaru took off his hat and bowed lightly in greeting.

Ciel looked at him quietly and didn't answer right away.

Her black eyes swept over Subaru's chapped lips, passed over the faint dark circles beneath his eyes, and finally settled on the mud spots and road dust left on the collar of his coat by the long journey.

After a long moment, the girl stepped forward with light, unhurried steps and stopped in front of him.

She was so close he could smell the faint, familiar citrus scent on her.

As Emilia watched in a daze, Ciel slowly raised a hand as white as jade and laid it gently on the fabric over Subaru's right shoulder. Following the creases of his collar, she brushed away the dried dust and bits of grass clinging to it, bit by bit.

Her movements were so natural, as if she had repeated them a thousand times over countless mornings and evenings.

"Welcome back, Lord Subaru."