“My best friend died defending me. My guardian died so I could escape. I was the only one who survived,” Adlet said, and his story ended there. “What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, the reason I became a warrior.” He closed his eyes, and as he imagined their faces in his mind, he said, “When I told my master about this, he said that it was because of my guardian and my friend that I was able to become strong. That I became so capable because I believed in what they said; that one day, things would be sure to go back to how they were before and we could live together peacefully. He said people can’t become strong for the sake of revenge. They get stronger when they have something to believe in.”
“…”
“Is that enough for you?” asked Adlet. The story had ended up longer than he’d expected. But the night was long. They had plenty of time to talk.
“I envy you,” said Fremy.
Adlet doubted his ears. “What did you just say?”
“I said I envy you.”
Forgetting the pain in his back, Adlet stood. His hand reached for the sword at his waist. “What did you say? You couldn’t have said that you envy me, right?”
“I do envy you. I don’t even have anything to believe in.”
“…” Adlet’s hand moved away from his sword. He sat down again.
“I was abandoned by those closest to me,” said Fremy.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the fiend who gave birth to me and raised me. The fiend who gave me my gun, gave me my powers as the Saint of Gunpowder, gave me happiness. It abandoned me.”
Adlet didn’t urge her to continue. He just let her talk.
“As I told you before, I was raised among fiends,” she said. “Not peons like those we killed today. Proper fiends with intelligence, courage, and loyalty to the Evil God. I loved them all. I believed they all loved me.”
“…”
“I killed a lot of people on my mother’s orders. I had no doubts. On the contrary, I felt like I had to work harder, kill even more. I wasn’t a full demon, and I had dirty human blood. But I believed that even a half demon could be recognized as a full fiend if I could kill lots of humans,” said Fremy, and her expression looked younger than it ever had. “But I also understood that merely killing weaklings would not count as service toward the Evil God. I had to kill one of the strongest six warriors in the world, break one of the links in the chain. Nashetania and Mora were very heavily guarded. I was unable to approach them. So I decided to challenge Chamo. I believed that if I could defeat Chamo, I would be recognized as a full-fledged fiend.”
“Then you lost,” said Adlet.
“I regret it. I should have gone for Nashetania or Mora instead of challenging that. It was all I could do to escape. And I made another mistake… When she provoked me, I told her my name.”
Adlet couldn’t imagine what the battle had been like.
“I barely survived,” she continued, “and when I came back…my mother tried to kill me, as did the other fiends I had thought of as family. They were done with me. Maybe I should have died then. But I managed to get away.” Fremy stroked her forehead. There was the proof she was a fiend, the scar left by her horn. “What I cannot forgive is not that they tried to kill me. It’s that they pretended to love me. If they had just treated me as their puppet, then the betrayal would not have hurt. If they had always intended to betray me, then they should have raised me as a slave born to fight humans. My mother…my mother…” Fremy was clenching her fists. “My mother pretended to love me.”
“Revenge, huh?”
“It’s not enough to just kill her. I have to destroy what my mother has devoted her life to. I won’t be satisfied until I destroy the Evil God. Once I do, I’ll tell her… Regret what you’ve done. This is what it’s wrought.”
When Adlet had first met Fremy, something in him had resisted the idea of leaving her alone. Now he finally understood why. She was just like him. Her pain was the same as his—the pain of being betrayed by the people she trusted, of losing her place in life. Pain that made her burn with hatred. Revenge is meaningless. Revenge is a mistake. Revenge gives birth to nothing. There were a lot of people who said things like that, but they didn’t understand. Revenge was not something you did because it was meaningful or right or because you could get something out of it. You sought revenge because it was all you had.
“Back then, I was content,” Fremy continued, as if talking to herself. “I had my mother and my friends. We played together, and we fought together. I had a dog. I wonder what’s happened to it now. Are they still feeding it? Or have they already gotten rid of it, maybe?”
“Hey, Fremy,” he said.
“What?”
“Well, um…hang in there.” Adlet sincerely wanted to support her. He thought she might appreciate a little encouragement.
But what he got in return was an even colder gaze, one heavy with suspicion. “Adlet—why don’t you suspect me?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“How can you believe that story was true? You can’t imagine that I just made it up?”
“What are you talking about, Fremy?”
“If you’re really a Brave, I should be your number one suspect. From your point of view, I have to be the most suspicious.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but…” Adlet trailed off.
“If you were a real Brave, the first thing you would do is try to look for proof that I am the seventh. But you don’t. That alone is enough reason to suspect you.”
Adlet thought her logic was strange. But from her perspective, it wasn’t an irrational argument. “I…” He searched for the answer. Several
