Vol 1 Chapter 23 (1/2)

VOLUME 1-2

Chapter 23

Jumping down from the back of the white wolf, the young girl approached the witch and desperately clung to her.

“Please stop, please just stop it already, Hime.”

“Suzu.”

“There’s no need to care about these guys. We can just make them go away. Just please return to your usual self, Hime.”

“……”

The witch silently looked at the pleading Suzu, an expression of bewilderment on her face. Homura called out to Suzuran.

“—Eri-chan.”

“……?”

At that instant, Suzuran seem to unconsciously react to those words, and she turned to look back at Homura.

“Eri-chan. You have the name Suzuran now, right? I won’t tell you to give that name up. But your real name is Ono Erika. Your mama called you Eri-chan.”

“What are you… Stop it…”

Suzuran vexingly tried to brush away the small feelings that were starting to bubble up inside her.

“I don’t know you! Ever since you people came, Hime has become strange. Just disappear from here already! Leave me and Hime alone!”

Suzuran pushed Homura away.

Even so, Homura didn’t stop calling out to her.

“That thing on your arm, yes, that—you’ve worn it and cherished it all this time, right? That was given to you by your mama.”

Taken aback, Suzuran grabbed her own arm.

“This… I had it when I was picked up by Sekkachimaru…”

Suzuran looked up at the witch.

Standing there dumbfounded, the witch seemed to be fighting against some inner anguish.

“Ma… ma…?”

Even in her confusion, Suzuran whispered that.

The white wolf growled and glared at Homura’s back.

“So you managed to talk to them, huh.”

“Koma-senpai… Taga-senpai.”

Kamikoma and Taga arrived, having finally caught up with Homura.

Taga, having undone his Were-Form, was carrying the unconscious Touya on his shoulder.

Both boys were greatly wounded, but they appeared to be healthy and intact.

Kamikoma warily gazed at the witch.

“…So it is just as Suzuran said,” the witch murmured lowly.

For an instant, Homura’s expression turned joyful, believing that the witch had finally understood.

However, she soon widened her eyes in shock as she once more sensed something strange in the exhausted witch’s behavior.

“Why will thou not leave us alone…?”

The witch glared at them coldly.

“Those who has’t chanced upon the Tengu Kakus.h.i.+ cannot obtain happiness if they returneth to their homeland.”

“That’s not true, Subaru-san,” Homura resolutely rejected the witch’s claim, adding, “‘A mealy primrose’s heart knows the season and waits for spring’, you know.”

The witch repeated Homura’s words in a whisper, and then she made a frightening sneer.

Even Suzuran froze in fear with a stiffened expression at the sight of it.

“That is the traditional warning, the motto of mine family. Those words refer to the isolation of the mealy primrose hidden beneath the snow. It means to simply covet ease and idleness and not achieve anything, thereby not losing anything, or experiencing pain, or realizing that the cold is cold and the darkness is dark.”

As if agreeing with her quiet anger, the wolves visibly increased their blood-thirsty hostility.

Both Kamikoma and Taga became even more on edge and put their hands on their respective weapons.

But Homura restrained them and resolutely continued to try persuading the witch.

“I… I know that girl’s mother. I know how long she’s been continually thinking of her baby.”

Homura held out her hand, and Suzuran looked at her keenly and painfully before turning to look at the witch questioningly.

“Spring shalt not come. It hath already pa.s.sed. If Suzuran also says that she will leave me, I will tell her that tis better to simply remain in winter—”

“Even so.”

Homura squared off against the witch without looking away.

“Even so, spring will come. Spring will come. Even if winter continues for a hundred or a thousand years, spring will definitely come!”

“Why dost thou say that? Tis futile to wish for a chance that shalt never come. Tis an act of folly with no reward. So why dost thou say that?”

“It’s because… I’m an idiot who doesn’t know anything. But!”

Despite her awkward words, Homura’s eyes remained earnest.

“She’s been waiting all this time. Even if several decades pa.s.s, if she can meet her child again, her painful feelings will also be negated at that instant. If the flower blooms there—”

“Art thou saying to forget about winter?”

The witch’s cold tone clearly told Homura that her words hadn’t gotten through to her.

“Hime… I want to meet my mother. I want to meet my real mother.”

Suzuran tried to implore to the witch, but she shuddered at the freezing aura she emitted.

“Do not casually call me Hime.”

Suzuran trembled with a start.

“I am Subaru—Iotsumisumaru no Hime. Mine clan’s fate is to protect and pa.s.s on the Misasagi bloodline and bonds in this land. If thou would abandon the name I bestowed to thee and leave, do not act friendly and yearningly towards me anymore.”

“Hime…… I’ll come back. After I meet my real mama, I’ll definitely come back to you, Hime.”

“I didst not need thou from start.”

The witch’s sleeve hems fluttered and her fingers suddenly slashed through the air.

At that instant, lightning swelled and burst forth like a whip, attacking the nearby Suzuran and Homura.

“—Stop it.”

With a low yell, Taga jumped forward in front of the two girls as they fell and swung his gauntlet at the witch to push her aside, and the witch jumped back to dodge.

“This is the end for those who would disturb mine heart’s balance.”

The lightning attacked Suzuran even more intensely.

Homura, having barely managed to stand back up, glared angrily at the witch.

“You’re mad.”

The witch’s finger flashed, and there was a spirit stone tied to a cord and hanging from it, which now began to shake and sway.

“Oh my…”

Seeing that and understanding what was about to happen, Kamikoma gulped.

“Phosphorous—”

Not giving anyone the time to look closely at the jewel, a fireball appeared right in front of it.

It was a gigantic fireball like none that Homura had seen before—

And peculiar metallic sounds rang through the air like an orchestra.

“Get back, Homura, Taichi! She’s boosting it—”

Kamikoma yelled while trying to forcefully lift up Touya from where he had been put down on the ground.

As if intending to burn everything to ash, the fireball continued to swell and grow larger.

“—Spirit—Merciful—”

The fireball eventually became enlarged to the point where its bottom touched the ground, immediately gouging into the ground and burning away all gra.s.s and flowers in an instant.

Taga grabbed Homura’s shoulder and urged her to run away.

“I can’t—leave that girl behind!” Homura shouted and pointed at Suzuran who had collapsed on the ground in front of the witch.

Throwing off his gauntlets because they were in the way, Taga lifted Suzuran up into his arms, and meanwhile Homura took short yet deep breaths and prepared to use magic.

She no longer had the spirit stone that senpai had entrusted to her.

“—Geyserite.”

The fireball, having reached several times the size of Taga’s body, shot forth to attack them.

It burned away the air and released heat hot enough to make Homura’s chest burn just by opening her mouth.

“——”

There was no longer enough time left for her to form a hexahedron-level pattern and chant the incantation.

However—

“The incantation isn’t necessary—”

Senpai’s words rose back up in Homura’s mind.

“What’s necessary is the image you imagine. The incantation is merely an aid.”

Frantically holding out her hands towards the giant fireball, Homura unconsciously completed the step-by-step process that senpai had taught her by the river and simply imagined the pattern in its entirety all at once.

To give an example, it was like grasping the entire process of a seed budding and growing into a large tree and eventually decaying away as having all been part of that single seed—

Or like grasping the cycle of water evaporating from the sea and turning into clouds and rain that then poured down on the mountains and followed the rivers to return to the sea as a single cycle without impairing the details of the gathering and dispersing process—

She made and repeated that single image and that instantaneous aria countless times in her mind.

It filled the entirety of Homura’s consciousness.

Faster, faster. That was all she thought of.

With a pop, a fireball appeared before her overlapped palms. It was a tiny flame1 that couldn’t even be compared to the witch’s.

The next instant, the small flame multiplied infinitely in numbers and became a wall of neatly lined-up fireb.a.l.l.s that blocked the path of the approaching threat.

Just when it seemed like the wall had stopped the giant fireball, it wrapped around it like a net and kept it stopped in place.

The witch’s fireball and Homura’s wall of fireb.a.l.l.s merged together into a simple lump of flames, standing still in the air between the two of them.

Along with the positive feedback of controlling their spells, the recoil from the two spells warring against each other hit the two spell-casters right to their core.

Losing herself to her burning anger, the witch tried to overpower Homura.

But something strange happened as her lips tried to say the incantation phrase.

“Mine control of the stone… is being stolen away…”

The spirit stone visibly resonating between her fingers was glowing contrary to the witch’s will and becoming incandescent.

“Wake up and… come to your senses already!”

Letting out a howling cry of anguish, Homura forcefully pushed back the fireball.

The fireball shrunk and converged to a single point, and then exploded right before the witch’s eyes.

Color disappeared from the world, leaving only a primeval fire to light the area.

The fragment of true flame that ruled this blank world alighted there for just an instant, and then it became a violent, explosive blast that scattered apart and returned to its place among the world’s components.

The afterimage burned into their eyes gradually faded.

The outline and details of the land near the valley castle returned.

After having prostrated on the ground while buffeted by the raging wind, Kamikoma finally stood up and spun her head this way and that in search of her comrades.

“…Haah……!”

“H-Hey… those burns of yours—!”

Regaining consciousness after having been covered and protected by Kamikoma, the girl in the blue kimono—Suzuran—crawled out from under her and desperately dashed ahead.

She headed straight for Homura, who was standing stock still while grasping one of her arms uncertainly, and the witch, who had collapsed and was lying stretched out on the ground without even twitching.

“…Really, that girl…”

Kamikoma pulled her lute, which had broken several strings, close to her and looked around, and she immediately found Taga as well.

Taga was silently kneeling down on the ground and examining Touya.

They had been blown far away in that brief explosion.

Seeing that the two boys seemed to be safe and unhurt, Kamikoma approached them, but was rendered speechless.