Chapter 71

Chapter 71 : Recruiting Party Members to Grab the Past by the Collar (3)

Quiro.

According to Murel, they had been one of my closest confidants, a subordinate who would absolutely never betray me. He said Quiro had spilled blood beside the lord from long before Murel joined, back when the war had overheated and grown brutal.

I had wondered why someone like that was now keeping their mouth shut beside Karon and doing everything they were told, but if they had been leashed, it made sense.

The form was like a word-binding restriction. Judging by how it activated when they said “My Lord,” or when I touched them, it must have been a restriction tied to the words Underworld Lord.

I sat in a chair, propped my arms on the table, rested my chin on my hand, and stared hard at Quiro as they snored.

“As expected, I still don’t remember.”

They said we had been together for a long time, but in my head, they only felt unfamiliar, as though they had been deleted whole from my memories.

Just as I was starting to feel rather bitter, thinking some trigger might need to happen before even a hint appeared, like when Sek’s Lost Data had been shared with me, Murel came back inside after cleaning up the bloodstains outside.

“Why is this one still sleeping?”

“Because their stamina is drained.”

“……Is that connected to the leash? They weren’t this weak.”

“You should probably think they’re enduring well enough just by not dying…… oh, they’re awake.”

For someone who had been groaning the whole time and then fallen asleep, Quiro opened their eyes with a fairly refreshed expression. They even stretched and yawned before our eyes met.

“Mm. Sleep well?”

When I smiled with my eyes and tried to make my expression as gentle as possible, they sprang upright, neatly folded their hands over their knees, and straightened their back.

Before they could vomit blood again and wander to the edge of death, I covered their mouth and listed the precautions first.

“No My Lord. Like Murel, call me by name. Iwon or Riwin.”

“Yes! Lord Iwon!”

“If you create another situation where you vomit blood, from next time on, you’ll be the one cleaning it up.”

“……Yes.”

“I understand roughly what is going on, so if it’s difficult to explain, you don’t have to.”

“……Yeees.”

Quiro’s answers grew more and more drawn out, and by the end, their eyes were rolling as they studied my mood.

Even they must have thought their own situation was pretty absurd.

“Dummy Quiro can only answer yes.”

Murel, standing beside me with his arms folded, openly mocked Quiro.

Just what had their relationships been like two hundred years ago for them to act like this? Feeling half-enlightened, I sent Murel over to Fluffnix and quietly stared at Quiro, who was still sitting stiffly.

From what I heard, they had notified me that they would stay by my side, but this was not a lodging.

I scratched my forehead and looked awkwardly at Quiro, whose eyes were moist with tears.

Is one an obsessive fan, and the other a crybaby fan?

“Stay at the ruler’s castle. This place is a cramped workplace with nowhere to stretch out and sleep.”

“Murel is…….”

“First come, first served?”

“I will commute.”

“You really don’t need to.”

“How could I leave Lord Iwon’s side?”

“You’ve been away just fine until now.”

Quiro could not answer my words. It must have been an answer that would make them vomit blood again.

It seemed Karon could not bring himself to kill an obedient dog he found too useful, so he had only leashed them and rolled them around here and there.

Tch.

It was impossible to release it right away. If I cut the leash he had tied without a countermeasure, it would be no different from holding a megaphone to Karon’s ear and shouting, “Sek is here, come find him.”

Fortunately, it did not seem to be the kind of thing that reacted to Sek and transmitted information remotely. It was closer to a kind of shackle that controlled Quiro’s actions.

So it did not need to be handled immediately, but…….

“I’ll release that soon.”

Even if I had to threaten Pan instead of doing it myself to find a way.

“Lord Iwon……!”

Even if one got used to a shackle, the suffocation was the same, and it was bound to affect one’s surroundings too.

Even if it was invisible, watching them dangle under Karon’s grip did not sit right with me.

“Let’s hear the details then.”

“Yes!”

“Um…… you can relax.”

I waved a hand at Quiro, who was still sitting in a perfectly disciplined posture, and called Murel, who was peeking out from behind the inner bar table.

“You should take this chance to stay at the ruler’s castle with that one too.”

“Why?! I don’t want to?!”

At Murel’s fierce resistance, I raised my brows and dug at my ringing ear.

From the start, this place had only been arranged in one corner of the office for one person—me—to live in. I had even been staying at the ruler’s castle back then, so I had brought only the simpler things here.

As one freeloader after another kept increasing, I could no longer tell whether this place was an office or a guesthouse.

It was not as if there was a proper sleeping place either, and Murel had been curling up and sleeping in the corner of the sofa. I had meant to solve that soon, but going with Quiro would not be bad.

“Are you abandoning me again?”

“No.”

“Then please grant me the comfortable sleeping place provided by the sofa.”

At Murel’s firmness, which showed signs of separation anxiety, I lost the words to respond. When I saw Quiro, sitting on that very sofa, rolling their eyes, I resigned myself.

Just because I said first come, first served, this would not turn into a sofa scramble, right?

---

“Oh-hooo. So an Underfolk Frame can be used in this way too. Fascinating.”

Ru, whose eyes had been shining as she examined Quiro from head to toe, clapped and spun the chair she sat in round and round.

“You know by now that Underfolk Frames are focused on changing the surroundings, aaand…… this is an expanded version of that! The current lord, Karon, used his Frame to force obedience.”

“A Frame? From that distance?”

I frowned as I looked at Ru, who kept spinning her chair in a distracting way.

I had questions about whether a Frame that had been planted once could be maintained indefinitely without distance restrictions.

Before that, I was also curious about Quiro’s circumstances, since they had obediently accepted obedience no different from having their limbs bound. Well, I could ask about that gradually.

I grabbed the chair Ru was sitting in, stopped it, and looked at her sparkling eyes, demanding an answer.

“Can it be released?”

When I had gone to Pan to resolve the leash, Pan, who had been struggling under backlogged work, recommended Ru.

He said that if it was Ru, who understood not merely records, but the forest’s history, there was a high chance she could recognize things set by the Underfolk as well. In reality, Ru spent her time researching things other than records too.

I held on to hope, and Ru shook her head.

“A Frame belongs to a separate domain. Releasing it is possible, but the owner of the Frame will naturally find out too…… will that be all right?”

I shook my head too.

He was already certain I was Sek, and I had no reason to hand him more evidence.

If he threw the Peace Agreement or whatever else aside and went mad for his own objective, the current me could not handle it.

“Ah! I heard resentment mixes into the Underworld Lord’s Frame. If you go find Ochel instead of me, wouldn’t she know more clearly?”

“Resentment?”

“Ochel is a member of the Mist, so she sees things others cannot.”

“There’s nothing more I can dooo,” Ru said as she rose from her seat.

In Ru’s arms was the one bottle of the ruler’s liquor I had hidden away.

It was the liquor she had demanded as the condition for checking Quiro’s leash. She truly had only looked when I asked her to look, but still.

The cause had roughly been revealed, so even if I was disappointed, I did not ask for it back. That liquor was stolen goods anyway.

“There are three bustling Underfolk here…… I’d like to set a day sometime and ask for help with my research.”

“What exactly is that research?”

“If I say enemy analysis for war preparation, you’ll cooperate even less, so should I call it deepening Surface-Underground understanding?”

I understood it as Ru’s research meant to grasp Underfolk weaknesses, with the first goal being the real one, and moved on. Then I tapped Quiro’s shoulder, since they had not hidden their displeased expression the entire time Ru examined them.

“Thank…… you.”

Still, it was only right to make them properly thank Ru, who had come all the way to the office to release the leash.

If they were going to stay with me here, that was more important than anything.

Because if they caused an incident, my resolve to hide quietly and spend peaceful days would collapse.

Ru greeted hidden Murel and Fluffnix, who was stretched out in a sunny spot, then grabbed the office doorknob.

“Riwin.”

“Yes?”

“Do not take Karon lightly.”

“I never have.”

“Karon is…… perhaps the reason Riwin ended up here. He is trying to break the peace of the past hundred or so years.”

Karon had agreed to the Nonaggression Pact negotiations. Ru had never even met him in person.

That judgment was future foresight based on the slight past read by Ru’s Frame.

Even so, I could only smile back.

Take him lightly? I am so scared that even now, I am hiding as much as I can.

“Where is Ochel?”

---

For the first time in a while, I shut the office completely.

Ochel stayed at the ruler’s castle, so I decided to go with Quiro, who happened to need to return to the lodging.

While I was at it, I also brought along Murel, the hanger-on who had been faithfully returning to the ruler’s castle lately, and Fluffnix, whom I could not leave alone.

Perhaps because the night market lights had begun turning on one by one and the lively voices were dying down, the conversation between the two following along behind me and bickering felt like a rhythm.

“What were you doing for two hundred years that Lord Iwon has to go through the trouble of solving your problem too?”

“Have you forgotten that I was the one who held the position while you were gone?”

“If you had held the position, Lord Iwon would not have lost his memories and ended up like that.”

“Like that? Watch your words. Two hundred years have passed, and yet your vulgar way of speaking is the same as ever. Did you age for nothing?”

“Yeah, Mr. Wobbly, whose stamina turned to garbage.”

“……I mean that sneering way of speaking.”

“Yeah, Mr. Mmph, who can only say yes.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Watch where you are going. It sways.”

“Oooh, are you scared?”

“Hey―!”

Mm, they get along.

Quiro had worried about Murel, who had been gone for two hundred years. Murel had also wondered about the change that had befallen Quiro.

Was this a bond between two people who had stood close by, looking only at Sek and holding their positions?

I shrugged and was about to warn them to watch their steps when I blankly watched Murel run ahead past me and Quiro follow right after him.

What is this? Catch me if you can?

I had decided to go to the ruler’s castle and look for Ochel, but I was able to meet her easily in an unexpected place.

It was thanks to Quiro, who had thrown themselves into the chase, running after the rampaging Murel and bursting through an ornate door.

It was a door with engravings even more splendid than the door to Pan’s office, so I instinctively tried to stop them before they barged in, but my stamina was truly too pathetic to handle those two bastards.

“Riwin?”

“……This is not a place where Underfolk should be entering.”

A round table, a small number of chairs, various documents spread over it, and most of all, another member of the forest standing guard.

Standing by the door, I pressed a hand to my forehead and apologized.

“I will keep those two in line.”

“Pfft. It is not something you need to apologize that much for, Riwin.”

Pering handled the other member with a sigh, and Ochel gathered the documents she had been holding and approached me.

In the meantime, I grabbed Quiro and Murel by the collars once they had come to their senses in the suddenly chilled atmosphere. With an awkward smile, I first sent the two outside.

“I did not know it was a meeting room.”

“It is all finished already, so it is fine. Is it not, Pering?”

Pering, who had been explaining something to an Elder, nodded.

I had wondered what scheme he was planning after leaving all the work to Pan, but surprisingly, Pering had been carrying out his aide duties faithfully. If anything, the problem was that he was too quiet.

“Did you come to see me? Or Pering?”

“Ochel. There is something I would like you to examine. Ru recommended you.”

“It is an Underfolk matter, yes? Hmm. This side of work has not been wrapped up yet. Ah, it needs to be organized.”

“If you have urgent work, it does not have to be today.”

“What a hurtful thing to say. If you wait at the lodging, I will come soon. It is the place you used before, Riwin.”

“Ah, yes.”

Do not tell me Murel had decided to give up the sofa and go to the ruler’s castle because the lodging was the place I had used. I had wondered why he had been so passionate, saying he could not let Quiro have it all to themselves.

While thinking back on whether I had left anything in my old lodging, more items than expected came to mind, and I frowned.

I decided to stop thinking about that situation.

I glanced at Pering, who was speaking with the Elder in the distance, then left the meeting room.

Since Ochel was one of Pering’s watchers, she would tell me if something seemed wrong.