Chapter 252: Applause (1)
……Oswin moved together with Adria.
The printing shop that had produced the leaflets. The leaked list of names. Using those and the many other pieces of evidence as clues, they traced each lead one by one. Some places they had others investigate, while others the two of them personally went out and checked.
And so, after many days of questioning, investigation, and stakeouts—they finally arrived at a single ‘point’.
An abandoned textile mill on the outskirts of Zestfall. While searching its interior, the two of them found a suspicious passage.
“Knight Adria! This, this looks like it.”
When they lifted the neat square tile hidden under the pile of straw, dust puffed up in a soft cloud and a staircase came into view.
“……Let’s go.”
Oswin gestured with gentlemanly composure. He meant for her to take the lead.
Adria was about to descend when she paused and looked back at him.
“Ahem.”
Feeling her gaze, Oswin cleared his throat awkwardly.
“……You are the knight, after all.”
In any case, as they made their way slowly down the stairs.
“……Wait.”
Adria threw out a hand and stopped Oswin. Her fingers closed tight around the hilt of the sword at her waist.
“Someone’s down there.”
The two of them advanced, holding their breath.
At the end of the staircase.
A single wooden door was blocking their way.
The moment she took the handle and carefully pulled it open.
“…….”
Adria’s breath faltered for an instant.
For a knight it was an obvious blunder. If an enemy blade had come flying in at that moment, she would have died.
And the man on the other side was more than skilled enough to have managed it.
Adria spoke his name.
“……Julian.”
Julian sat in a chair in the middle of the room. Reading the scroll in his hands. Corpses strewn everywhere around him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Reading the evidence.”
Julian answered curtly. His eyes stayed fixed on the scroll.
“……And these bodies?”
They had clearly been dead a good while; rigor mortis had come and gone, leaving the bodies slack and sprawled.
“Who knows.”
Rustle. Julian turned to the next sheet of the scroll.
“Were they the Blue Rose Society, I wonder.”
‘Were they, I wonder.’
Neither plainly past tense nor mere conjecture. Such a peculiar way to end the sentence.
“……Did Maximilian send you?”
When no answer came to her question, she lowered her sword half a span and continued.
“If you’re thinking of damaging or fabricating the evidence.”
Only then did Julian raise his head and look at Adria. Mana gathered along Adria’s blade, and the same light welled in the eyes that met hers.
A taut, wordless standoff.
─Gulp.
The moment Oswin swallowed.
──Thunk.
Julian set the scroll back where it had been.
──Thud.
He rose from the chair and left.
He neither damaged anything nor took anything away, nor did he offer any explanation for his actions.
“…….”
“…….”
The two of them stood frozen a while at the bizarre turn of things.
“Let’s get moving.”
“R-right, let’s.”
Before long they began searching the space. Adria started with the scroll Julian had set down.
It was a written exchange. Records of the conversations that had passed down in this basement.
As she stared intently at them, a thought flashed through her mind.
“……The handwriting.”
“Hm?”
“If this is the Blue Rose Society’s true base, then these written exchanges are their originals. Which means, we can compare all of the handwriting.”
The list claimed dozens of people were involved.
But what if the handwriting on all these papers came from only three or four people?
“There’s no way that many people could have constantly come and gone through a cramped space like this. That fact itself becomes evidence.”
“……You’re right!”
Oswin clapped his hands. Then the stench of rotting flesh washed over him, and he clamped his sleeve over his nose.
“Then…… what about these bodies?”
“Most likely.”
Adria’s expression darkened for a moment.
“They’d be the ones who came here to fabricate evidence.”
Bodies long dead. Julian must have gotten here before them.
“Julian…… stopped them.”
A faint sorrow crossed Adria’s face.
“So that they couldn’t destroy or fabricate the evidence.”
Julian had held them off, and knowing everything, he had left the evidence exactly as it lay and walked away.
Instead of confiscating it in the name of the Sentinel Knight Order, he had allowed it to be discovered by unaffiliated hands.
This was his way. Proving what he believed through action rather than words.
“First let’s secure this evidence. The bodies will make fine evidence too.”
“Where? Is there anyone we can trust, the way things stand?”
At Oswin’s question, Adria looked down at the corpses and answered.
“……Counselor. I am still a knight.”
A private knight’s office was practically a small institution in its own right. Which meant she had more than enough space to store evidence of this scale.
* * *
──Because of all that, Oswin Mason put himself forward before the Sentinel Knight Order as Joshua’s defense counsel.
Every knight looked at him as though he had lost his mind, but Oswin was brimming with confidence, and Maximilian, of all people, approved his appointment.
“Joshua!”
“……Oswin?”
The interrogation room. Oswin rushed over to Joshua and first examined his condition. His face was utterly haggard. Fortunately, there were no injuries on his body.
“Please, have a seat.”
Maximilian offered from across the table. Oswin was not intimidated. In fact, he spoke before even taking his seat.
“Before that, there is something I wish to ask Joshua.”
“……Of me?”
Oswin hesitated a moment.
The moment he asked this, Joshua might no longer be able to leave this place alive. At the very least, his own crime would become certain.
But Joshua nodded as if to say it was all right, and Oswin looked him straight in the eye and asked.
“The textile mill on Reclover Street, at the western edge of Zestfall. Is that basement your hideout?”
“…….”
Joshua stared at Oswin for a moment, then answered with a faint smile.
“Yes. It is.”
“Haa…….”
Oswin drew a deep breath and turned toward Maximilian.
“In that place, I obtained evidence.”
The written exchanges Joshua had shared with the Blue Rose Society. And yet the handwriting across all those pages amounted to three different hands in total.
A list containing dozens of names, and the handwriting of three people.
That evidence had been obtained by Adria in her capacity as a ‘knight’.
“If a trial is held, Knight Adria will join the defense counsel and present the evidence.”
He was telling him to hold a trial.
Maximilian asked back, offhandedly.
“In that case, where do you suppose that list came from.”
“…….”
Still playing dumb, even now?
Keeping his expression neutral, Oswin calmly replied.
“Someone’s doing, surely. Someone who wants to see Zestfall broken.”
“And who might that someone be.”
Maximilian smiled. At that twisted look, Oswin clenched his teeth. He meant to hold it in, but in the end the words came out.
“You, I’d say.”
Silence.
Joshua and Oswin watched Maximilian’s mouth. It seemed at any moment something like ‘Correct’, or ‘And?’ might come flying out of it.
“No. It wasn’t me.”
Yet the response that came back was such a casual denial that it almost took the wind out of them.
He showed no anger toward Oswin for suspecting him, nor any agitation at his deduction, remaining as still as air without wind.
“……Ha.”
If anything, Oswin went cold as ice.
“Maximilian. You sent men there intending to plant fabricated evidence.”
“No. The opposite.”
“What—”
“Knight Julian was most likely there.”
Oswin’s shoulder twitched. That reaction itself was the answer.
Maximilian continued quietly.
“I hold him in personal esteem. And the reason he was down in that basement was, most likely.”
Maximilian’s gaze drifted slowly over to Joshua.
“Joshua.”
His eyes tilted slightly. For some reason, the look in them seemed almost pitying.
“To protect you from betrayal.”
“……?”
Joshua’s face went stiff.
“……What did you say?”
Oswin, too, asked back blankly.
Maximilian took a moment to straighten his clothes.
“Ideology is a truly dangerous thing. Because now and then there are men who throw away the meaning it holds and pick up nothing but the shell.”
He drew a sheet of paper from his inside pocket and laid it on the table. The single most decisive piece of evidence behind Joshua’s arrest─the eyewitness statement.
“Those people were never interested in the ‘meaning’ in the first place. The only thing they desire is the ‘fracture’ an ideology can create. And for that alone, they do everything in their power.”
His finger came down on one name in the statement.
“Do you remember, Joshua. That street sweeper who claimed to have seen you at dawn.”
Joshua’s pupils wavered.
“I tracked this cleaner down first.”
Tap. Tap.
His fingertip lightly tapped the name.
“His family register had been forged.”
A forged family register.
“Which means he was not Aran.”
In that instant, the entire weight of the witness statement was overturned.
“You testified that you neither made these pictures nor spread them.”
Then Maximilian picked up a stack of prints.
Crude drawings caricaturing him. He simply smiled as he looked at them. There was no sign that he felt insulted, nor any trace of anger he was trying to suppress.
As though being belittled meant nothing at all to him.
“Joshua, I believe what you say.”
Joshua’s eyes widened. The prints Maximilian had spread open dropped onto the table.
“Because you’re Aran.”
A few sheets slid across and came to rest in front of Joshua.
“The tumor in this empire is the men who try to use this. Men who inflate small things to stir chaos inside the empire, who mean to cut out the empire’s intellect.”
His eyes moved back and forth between Oswin and Joshua.
“I came here to catch them.”
“…….”
Oswin’s dry lips parted, but in the end they never formed a sentence.
Joshua asked instead.
“……Did you believe me from the beginning?”
His voice trembled.
Maximilian seemed lost in thought for a moment, then subtly shook his head.
“I believed in the you that Julian believed in.”
* * *
Pitter-patter──
On a rainy night. Georgen Inspector Gewin drove along while whistling.
He was really looking forward to the credit he would get for this one. At this rate, he might even make Chief Inspector in no time. And get a huge bonus on top of that.
Heh heh heh.
He was driving lost in thoughts like these when he turned into some alley.
“Huh?!”
Screeeech─!
He slammed on the brakes.
“Fuck…… what the hell?!”
A truck was sitting across the narrow road ahead, almost as though deliberately blocking the way.
He tried to reverse, but a car had already come up behind him.
“Ah, shit.”
He rolled down the window, craned his neck out, and shouted.
“Hey! You in back! Move it!”
No answer.
“You deaf? I said move the car!”
Patter, patter─ the falling rain drummed on the bridge of his nose.
“Fuck’s sake. Hey! Do you know who I am?!”
Still, there was only silence from both ahead and behind, not even the sound of an engine.
“What the fuck are these bastards…….”
In the end Gewin got out of the car.
The instant he strode toward the rear.
Rumble!
Thugs came pouring out of the darkness on both sides of the alley. Six…… eight? Ten?
“What the fuck, guhk!”
A fist flew at Gewin as he backed away.
Thwack!
As he staggered from a direct hit to the temple, arms reached out from every direction and seized him.
“You assholes-”
‘I’m an investigator who came up out of the army, and when it comes to a brawl I’m an old hand!’
“Come at me, fuckers!”
An elbow up into one bastard’s jaw! A kick into another one’s shin!
Thwack! He took another one in the face.
“Agh! Okay, I surrender!”
Thwack! Thwack! Thwaack!
“I─sur─render!”
He dropped to his knees in a hurry. He’d thought that might buy him some mercy, but instead someone’s foot slammed into his ribs. A fist crushed into the back of his head.
Beaten like a dog, he must have taken a few dozen blows.
“Stop.”
Shhhhhhh─!
A familiar voice mixed into the sound of the downpour.
—Splash. Splash.
Someone came toward him across the puddles.
“I should at least see your face before I send you off.”
“Haa. Haa…….”
Gewin looked up through eyes swollen black and blue.
A man half-hidden by the pouring rain, Inspector Fried.
“……Ha.”
A hollow laugh spread across Gewin’s bloodied lips.
“Inspector. What’s all this?”
“Tsk. That’s what you get for not knowing when to stop showing off.”
Fried crouched down slowly, right in front of Gewin’s face.
From between his crooked teeth came a voice as flat as a man reading off a report.
“Why did you do it, Sergeant Gewin.”
“I told you, I’m an Inspector.”
“Why did you take bribes from the printing shop, and why did you steal confiscated evidence and sell it off?”
“……What?”
Fried grabbed a fistful of Gewin’s hair and hauled him up to eye level. Beside him, one of the thugs drew a dagger.
“That’s what the report will say. Corrupt Sergeant Gewin, blinded by his hunger for promotion, fabricated his achievements, picked a fight with back-alley thugs, and died in the street.”
Gewin stared back at him through a face drenched in blood.
Every word Fried recited that way was evidence.
“Kuhk…… incredible.”
Grin. He smiled.
“It’s all turning out just like Sir Knight said.”
His blood-frothed voice spread low.
Fried’s brow furrowed.
“……Knight?”
Shhhing─!
A flash of sword-light streaked through the alley.
It pierced straight through one thug’s heart, and the blade ripped free with a sweep, scattering blood like rain. People stormed in immediately afterward. The smoothest-moving shadow among them pinned Fried down against the ground.
“Gahh!”
Watching him snap the cuffs onto Fried’s wrists first thing, Gewin grumbled.
“……You’re late, sir. It hurts like hell.”
Knight Julian.
He pressed firmly against the back of Fried’s neck. The man’s complexion turned deathly pale before he lost consciousness.
Agh! Gaaah! Hurgh!
For the rest of the thugs he held nothing back. Every one of them was caught in the act, so the agents swept through the rain and cut them down.
“Ugh.”
Gewin dragged himself unsteadily to his feet.
“So Inspector Fried was the mole. I had a feeling about him. I knew it from the moment he beat up Niko.”
A joint operation.
Julian had suspected a mole inside the Georgen from the start. Because that was where the list had leaked from.
So Julian had given Gewin one instruction.
When bringing in the professors from the list, take not only the professor but his assistants and students as well— that is, haul in people who were ‘not’ on the list along with them.
Because the person who had written this script would hate variables outside his control,
he would undoubtedly move personally.
“……High five?”
Julian stared flatly at Gewin, whose hand had shot up, and said nothing.
Ahem. Looking sheepish, Gewin let the hand slide back down. Instead he raised an umbrella and held it over him.
“Your hair’s getting wet, Sir Knight.”
He chattered on with a smile missing two front teeth.
* * *
Hannah Usar. She had tracked down and brought in two of Joshua’s comrades.
“…….”
From a distance, Joshua stared at them inside the interrogation room.
Special Magic Glass.
Those inside could not see out, while those outside could clearly see in.
Standing on the opposite side of the glass where he himself had been imprisoned until recently, this time Joshua was the one looking in.
They were Ezenheim.
Joshua had known they were Ezenheim and still— no, precisely because he knew, he had held them all the closer as comrades.
And the result was a betrayal like this.
The place where his ideals had stabbed him in the back. Joshua looked through the glass.
“Joshua Vanhetten. Come with me.”
A knight whose name he did not know took hold of him. The face was neither Maximilian’s nor Julian’s.
“Yes.”
Though he was the ringleader of the Blue Rose Society, he had been ‘promised’ a fifteen-year sentence. On the grounds that he had helped resolve a far greater case.
Apparently, there was even some possibility of having his sentence reduced?
“Get in.”
Was his name Simon? Joshua climbed into the car together with the knight, who was even younger than him.
Rattle. Rattle.
How long did they drive like that.
“Out.”
At the knight’s word, he got out of the car.
Joshua looked around. There was nothing but a tall concrete wall dividing inside from out.
“You’re here.”
Maximilian appeared from somewhere. The knight who had brought him snapped off a hurried salute. A heavy security detail stood arrayed nearby, yet Maximilian himself looked perfectly relaxed, as though he had merely come out for a stroll.
“This is the Special Detention Camp. The place where you’ll spend the rest of your sentence.”
Maximilian nodded toward the wall.
Joshua suddenly asked back.
“……Are the professors here as well?”
“They are.”
“They’ll be released soon, won’t they? They were imprisoned because of me…….”
Maximilian smiled faintly.
“You’ll be able to see for yourself inside.”
“……Yes.”
Joshua entered under the guards’ guidance and walked through the dark passage with his hands cuffed.
—Thud. Thud.
How long did he walk through that long darkness.
And then the space that opened up inside…….
He threw up a hand against the bright shafts of light.
“……?”
Joshua’s eyes widened slowly.
That was how strange the sight was.
“This is…….”
Gravel walking paths curved across neatly trimmed lawns, and at their end, on a low hill, sat a small landscaped park.
Red-roofed houses nestled among the trees like a village, and through open windows he could see studies lined with bookshelves, fireplaces, a chessboard someone had left mid-game.
There were no iron bars anywhere. The walls were so distant they did not even enter his field of view.
A dog raced across the grass with a ball in its mouth, and on every sunlit windowsill cats lay curled and sprawling.
On a bench in front of one of the houses, two professors shared a newspaper and argued over it.
Rather than a prison, it resembled a quiet university town.
A scene that somehow felt like an invitation.
“Joshua.”
Someone called him. It was his teacher, Salzmann, who seemed to have come out to meet him.
“Professor……?”
“Even in here, I heard all about you.”
Salzmann strode over and looked his student up and down. As he took in that gaunt face, the rims of his eyes reddened for a moment.
“It must have been hard on you.”
Joshua looked at the hand held out to him for quite a long while.
~~~
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