“Let’s leave aside if she’s the real thing or not for meow and think about this,” said Hans. “I reckon that even if Fremy is a real Brave, we should steer clear of her.”
“Why?” asked Adlet. “She let me go.”
“Yeah, for now. I think she’s gunnin’ to ultimately kill ya.”
“Why do you think that?”
Hans’s eyes shone sharply. The flippant attitude he’d displayed thus far disappeared. What Adlet saw there now was a coldhearted and unfeeling assassin. “Fremy lives in darkness,” said Hans. “She don’t love no one, and she don’t trust no one. All she’s got in her life are enemies and people bound to become her enemies. That’s the world she lives in. Ya know?”
“…”
“I live in darkness, too. But where she is, the darkness is even deeper,” said Hans.
“Is that what you think?”
“Yep. She’s a totally different kinda critter—not like you. Yer thinkin’ about trust and friendship and comrades. Don’t assume you guys are just gonna understand each other.”
He didn’t think Hans’s warning was fake. Hans was telling him, in his own way, that he was concerned on Adlet’s behalf. But Adlet didn’t agree that it would be impossible to build trust between himself and Fremy.
“Adlet, Fremy hates you, even after ya tried so hard to stick up for her.”
“…”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. She’s not playin’ hard to get or nothin’ like that. She hates you sincerely with all her heart—naw, she loathes ya. At least, that’s what it sounded like from how she was talkin’ this mornin’.” Adlet had thought that had been an act.
“Well, forget about Fremy,” said Hans. “We’ve gotta talk about this locked-room meowstery.” On that note, they dropped the subject.
After Chamo’s defeat, Adlet had told Hans that he was going to find Fremy and left the temple. Hans had emphasized over and over that Adlet should be careful.
The boy thought about Fremy. The previous night, the two of them had talked about each other’s pasts. At the time, he’d felt that they’d made a connection, however small. He couldn’t imagine that feeling was just in his head. He didn’t think she trusted him, but there was no good reason for her to hate him, either. He didn’t know what she was thinking. He couldn’t read her mind. Was ignoring Hans’s warning the right decision? Adlet would know soon.
He spotted Fremy deep in the fog. He could see her blurry outline, and it seemed as though she was looking for him. He waited for a bit, just to get a grasp of the situation. There was no sign of anyone else around. He steeled himself and jumped down in front of her.
“I’m impressed you’re still alive.” That was the first thing Fremy said to him. Her hand was on her gun, finger on the trigger, but she didn’t point it at him.
“It was exhausting,” he said. “There were a bunch of times I thought I was gonna die. When I went back to the temple, Hans was there, and—”
“Just talk about things relevant to the deactivation of the barrier,” Fremy said coldly.
Adlet flinched a little, but on further consideration, her attitude wasn’t something to be concerned about. She had always been like this. “I have an idea,” he said. “I want your opinion on it and some information.”
“That depends on what you have to say,” she replied.
“I’ve figured out part of the seventh’s trap.”
“I’m listening.”
“First of all, we had it all wrong. Or rather, the seventh gave us the wrong idea. It wasn’t that someone activated the barrier immediately before I opened the door to the temple. When I opened the door and went inside, the barrier hadn’t been activated yet.”
“That story doesn’t sound very plausible,” said Fremy.
“Just listen. We know how the barrier is activated. You thrust the sword into the altar and order the slate to activate it, and it turns on the barrier. Who gave us that information? It was the soldier who was at the fort, Private Loren.” His eyes fixed on Fremy, Adlet continued. “But what if Private Loren was working with the seventh? Neither you nor I even knew that the barrier existed until Private Loren told us. And it was just yesterday that Nashetania and Goldof heard about it for the first time. Mora knew, but she said she didn’t know how to activate it, and she’s the one who told Hans. And just now, I checked with Chamo. She said she found out how to activate it yesterday from me. In other words, none of us would know if Private Loren was lying.”
“…Continue.”
“This is how the seventh’s plan was set up: First, they’d use Private Loren to tell us a fake way to activate the barrier. Then they’d use fiends to lure all of us inside the barrier. They estimated when I would open the doors to the temple and then used some means to generate fog throughout the forest. That would trick us into thinking that someone had activated the barrier and then fled the scene, when in fact, the barrier wasn’t actually active at all. It was just regular mist. And the sword had been stuck in the altar from the beginning.”
“…”
He continued. “Then the seventh would approach the altar, looking totally innocent, and activate the barrier for real. Everyone was fiddling with the pedestal in an attempt to deactivate the barrier, right? The seventh used all that as cover to turn it on. After that, it was revealed that there had been no way in or out of the temple until I opened the door. So once they pinned the deed on me, the trap was complete.”
“Hans was the one who accused you of doing it,” said Fremy. “So does that mean he’s the seventh?”
“I don’t think so. The seventh most likely planned to make the accusation, but Hans happened to know a lot about the Saint’s doors, so they left the talking to
