Ch. 2
Chapter 2
Best to act exactly as I had before.
There was something I still had to receive from him.
“Mago?”
“Ah... it’s nothing. You said you had something to give me.”
Until that moment, I had to speak as meekly as ever.
I rose and bowed at the waist.
“Young Master, did you enjoy your studies abroad?”
“Not really. Spending all that time just studying felt like a waste.”
So he had actually studied.
“The northwest?”
“Yeah. It snows there every single day. Mago, have you ever seen snow?”
I shook my head.
“When it’s really coming down it’s beautiful, but even the snow already on the ground is gorgeous. Imagine the whole world painted white.”
I couldn’t picture it, yet I knew it must be stunning.
“And the feeling when you take the very first step onto untouched snow—not a single footprint!”
“That must... have been wonderful.”
“The snow is only part of it, Mago.”
The Young Master rattled on, bragging endlessly.
I, who had never been allowed past the gate, could not share his delight no matter how vividly he described it.
“The most dazzling thing of all is the aurora. It’s so beautiful you want to pluck the sky out and trap it in a glass bottle.”
He spoke of beauty in a way that sounded almost violent.
He spread his arms wide.
“A night embroidered with the Milky Way. Curtains of every color unfurl across the sky.”
I thought of the white curtain that had flown away.
It had soared like a winged thing and finally vanished over the stone wall.
“No, no—‘unfurl’ is clumsy. Can words even capture it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You’ve lived your whole life as a slave.”
He rummaged in his pocket and drew out a small wooden plaque.
“That’s why I want you to see it too.”
A pair of overlapping wings was carved upon it.
“The Mark of a Free Person.”
The first time I had been startled out of my skin; now I was merely calm.
I knew this moment was fated.
“It’s yours, Mago.”
Even though I also knew it would lead to disaster.
“I didn’t just play while I was away. Studying changed the way I think. I came to hate treating people like property. We’re the only nation left that still keeps slaves—like frogs in a well, blind to the ocean.”
So saying, he handed me freedom.
“If I go to the Northern Country, will I learn such things? Things so new they change the way I see the world?”
“Pretty much.”
“They get snow every day. And auroras.”
“And from today, you can go there too.”
He pressed the plaque into my palm, then folded my fingers over it himself.
A tight grip.
As though steeling my will.
“Do you want to go? To the North?”
I nodded.
“It’s been my dream for a long time.”
“Good. But you’ll need money. How about working here in the mansion—officially?”
“Officially...”
“You’ll receive the same wages as the other servants. Save up and leave whenever you’re ready. You’re free now, so I can’t stop you, but I’d like you to stay a little longer, if you can.”
A single wooden plaque and a few words from the Young Master overturned my fate.
At the time, my joy was matched only by shame.
A scrap of wood.
A handful of words.
The idea that such trifles could steer my life was horrifying.
Yet now I felt no shame at all.
This time I would be the one to change his fate.
“They may not be happy memories, but you’ve lived here all this time. In a way we’re family. You can treat me like a friend now—”
“Kinjo, where is your family?”
“Huh? That was fast, dropping the formal speech... well, I don’t mind.”
“Where are they now?”
“Uh—my mother and my siblings?”
Kinjo flustered, trying to adjust to my new tone.
“They’re waiting at the cemetery. I’m supposed to carry the coffin with the relatives and go to them.”
“You have to go now.”
“I said I would.”
“Right now.”
“I can’t leave this instant. We’ll go once everything’s ready. Why the sudden rush?”
If we don’t go now, we’ll need more coffins.
“Forget it.”
“Mago...?”
Ignoring him, I ran toward the stable where the commotion had been.
A servant blocked my path.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I need a horse. I’m leaving.”
“What nonsense. You’re not allowed outside the gate. Planning to become a runaway slave?”
I pulled out the Mark of a Free Person Kinjo had given me and held it up.
“Out of my way.”
“Ah—wha...?”
I shoved past the servant before he could finish.
I untied the rope knotted around a stable post.
“You don’t even know how to handle a horse...!”
I jerked the reins and stroked the brown horse’s neck as if to spite him.
The animal stopped kicking and settled.
I’d ridden war-horses far wilder than this pony; a docile mare was child’s play.
Reins in hand, I stepped out.
The servant’s blank stare flicked past me.
Kinjo, too, gaped as though I’d sprouted a second head.
“Let’s go.”
“Do you have any idea how insane you look right now?”
“Don’t care. Doesn’t matter.”
“Mago, I can see you’re thrilled, but—”
The Young Master gave a thin laugh.
That smile jarred a memory loose: the fire-arrow jutting from his eye flashed across my mind, and for a moment I heard again the scream that wasn’t there.
More shafts would follow.
I tensed, ready to move.
“You still need to calm—”
A blazing arrow shot straight for Kinjo’s eye.
My left arm was already up; I snatched the shaft mid-flight.
The burning head never came closer than a finger’s breadth to his face.
First change.
The future I knew had already shifted.
“Th-that...” Kinjo stammered.
A ripping sound tore across the sky.
I whipped my head toward it.
A volley arced over the garden wall.
“Kinjo!”
I tackled him flat.
An instant later dozens of fire-arrows punched through the mansion—through its people, through the mourners—setting everything alight.
Screams rose like sirens.
Outside the main gate a cavalryman in navy uniform shouted:
“Demon-beast invasion! Evacuate now!”
Demon beasts.
“Move! The north wall’s already fallen!”
North.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
As I opened my mouth to yell at him, an arrow took the soldier and he toppled.
I hoisted Kinjo into the saddle, vaulted up behind, and bolted for the rear gate.
“Mago—Mother, my sisters—!”
“I’m already on it!”
I spurred the mare to a gallop.
Last time the rest of his family had died in agony; if we left now, maybe the story would change.
Teeth clenched, I lashed the reins.
We reached the cemetery in minutes.
“M-Mother...?”
But cemeteries hold only the dead.
No one was left breathing.
Kinjo would keep his eyesight, yet some endings are carved in stone; the moment the others fled here, they were already lost.
“Kids...”
He crawled among the bodies, murmuring, while his own clothes soaked red.
“Kinjo, we have to ride. We’re on the wrong side of the evacuation route—if we stay, we die too.”
“No. They can’t be—”
“Kinjo.”
“How am I supposed to live alone...?”
“We’re leaving.”
I seized his arm; he tried to shake me off, so I clamped harder.
“Mago!”
I heaved him bodily into the saddle.
“I can’t! Let me stay—!”
I ignored him and slapped the mare’s flank.
“Want to die with them? Don’t be absurd. With the eyes I just saved you’ll save thousands—so start acting like it.”
His gaze stayed fixed on the graves, his hand reaching back, while we thundered away.
There was no other direction left to take.
Time passed.
I turned my head and looked back.
Everything we had left behind was burning like stacked firewood.
Goblins and orcs swarmed into view—hundreds of green bodies in the vanguard, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Farther off, two wolves approached: a Red Wolf and a Black Wolf, each the size of a mountain. Steam rolled from their backs; fire dripped from their jaws. Black specks—winged demon beasts—burst from their hides. At this distance they looked only like dots, but I knew them for what they were.
The sight struck me even harder the second time. The futility I had felt in my previous life swelled until it threatened to crush me.
“I’ve been a slave all my life, and freedom finally came—”
I tightened the reins until the leather groaned.
“—only today, when I finally reached my homeland and saw my family again...!”
Kinjo muttered behind me. His hands, clutching my coat, shook with rage. My right hand still bore the Mark of a Free Person he had given me.
“I was about to set out on a journey... For the first time, the dreams I’d only dared imagine felt real.”
The northern aurora had seemed close enough to touch.
“I wanted to show my family how steady and ordinary life could be—so ordinary that even my wild past would fade into a harmless memory.”
A happy home had felt within reach.
“I wanted to show them white snow, the Milky Way, the aurora.”
“I was going to take my mother and my siblings north, to the beauty that changed me.”
The same moment twice, yet the ache was deeper than before.
“All of it—because of me.”
“All of it...”
Our separate regrets tangled into one curse, one snarl of rage.
“I’ll kill them.”
* * *
Half a day later the mare’s stride finally faltered, exhausted. We had joined the south-bound exodus toward the capital.
“Look—over there!”
A refugee pointed to the right. Black horses, black uniforms: the Imperial Special Task Force, nicknamed the Black Knights.
“Those tax-thieving bastards! Where were they while our homes burned?”
“Special Task Force... damn, they’re fast. Too late for my house, though.”
The crowd’s reaction split cleanly between hope and despair.
“Mago, that’s them, isn’t it? The Special Task Force. Too late, as usual.”
“Actually, they’re early. Elite units normally move in only after the enemy’s momentum is broken, to deliver the final blow. If we can already see the Special Task Force, it means the rest of the army hasn’t even left camp. Without these people, there’s no chance at all.”
“Huh? How do you know that?”
“Just... picked it up.”
“Hmm... Mago.”
Kinjo glanced from me to the black column and back.
“You’re strong and fast, and you look like you can fight. Have you?”
Too many times to count.
“Yeah.”
“Could you beat demon beasts?”
“Right now? I could.”
He thought for three quiet seconds, then spoke the verdict he had already reached, swearing vengeance under his breath.
“Then come with me and join the Imperial Army. Become a soldier.”
I could have refused, hired myself out as a mercenary, or simply walked away. But I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know the ones I had failed. At last I had a chance to drag them back from death’s threshold—and to live without regret.
“All right.”
It was the only choice that made sense.