The merchants' street had erupted into an uproar.

The defeated knight and his master, the nobleman Danor, pointed at Najin, their faces crimson. They spouted worthless arguments invoking justification and social standing.

Even the crowd gathered in the street knew these were the desperate protests of losers. In other words, noise not worth hearing.

"It's gotten noisy."

Dieta had no desire to listen to that noise, or to let it spoil this moment. Rising with Najin's assistance, she whispered to him.

"Shall we run away?"

"Are we allowed to run away?"

"We can deal with the aftermath later. I'm in a good mood for once, and I don't want anything ruining it."

She seemed to be saying she didn't want to think about such things right now, and Najin nodded. He swept his gaze over the street, then looked at Dieta's shoes. They weren't suited to running.

He crouched and turned his back to her.

"... You're going to carry me?"

"Didn't you say we should run away?"

It would be hard to run in those shoes.

His tone was matter-of-fact, without the slightest hint of an ulterior motive. After a moment's hesitation, Dieta carefully climbed onto his back.

She gave a start.

As Dieta pressed her palms against Najin's back, her shoulders briefly trembled. She hadn't realized it just by looking, but his back was quite firm. She could feel sharply defined muscles through the thin leather.

"Hold my shoulders, not my clothes."

Muttering that, Najin stood.

The clamor of the crowd. The pointing nobleman and the growls of the knight who had lost the duel. Leaving all that noise behind, Najin took a step forward.

Then came a sharp footfall.

TAP

"Aah...!"

Dieta lurched forward in an instant.

Najin had lowered his stance and started running. Feeling she might fall if she kept clutching his clothes, Dieta wrapped her hands around his shoulders.

"Have you thought about where to go?"

"Anywhere without people...!"

Dieta shouted from his bouncing back.

Wind rushed past her ears, and the scenery flew by. She pressed herself a little closer to him.

'This isn't as bad as I thought—?'

She felt just like the heroine of a fairy tale.

That thought lasted only a moment before Dieta realized something. Fairy tales were only fairy tales; fleeing in real life wasn't nearly so romantic.

"Hic!"

His back kept bouncing.

The scenery changed in a blur. Her field of vision bobbed up and down. Being carried at a Sword Expert's sprint was more than Dieta could easily handle.

'I'm going to throw up...!'

She had to bite her lip hard just to avoid the disaster of vomiting on Najin's back.

2.

"We're here."

Najin stopped.

Partway through, Dieta had succumbed to motion sickness, closed her eyes, and buried her face against the back of his neck. Now she slowly lifted her head.

"..."

Dieta quickly wiped the saliva on Najin's neck away with her sleeve, then tapped his shoulder.

"P-put me down, please."

She stood on the ground on trembling legs.

Taking slow, deep breaths, she patted her chest. Her stomach still churned, but breathing deeply made her feel a little more human.

Dieta looked around.

An unobstructed view spread before her. They were on a low hill overlooking all of Cambria, the City of Opportunity. The open vista and the cool breeze made for quite a pleasant setting.

'Was there a place like this in the city?'

It was rather unfamiliar to Dieta, who spent her days around the ever-crowded merchants' street and the Central Guild. The hill was probably on the outskirts of the city.

"..."

Dieta glanced silently at Najin.

He, too, was gazing down at the city in silence. There was nothing unusual about that. The Najin she had observed over nearly a month was fundamentally a man of few words and little change in expression.

Yet precisely because of that...

She couldn't forget the smile he had shown earlier. It had been like looking into a mirror. Dieta's lips shifted before she spoke.

"Why did you do something so outlandish?"

Najin tilted his head at her question. Looking at her as though she were asking the obvious, he answered.

"I told you. I just didn't like it."

"My smile?"

"More precisely, I didn't like that resigned attitude. It's very familiar to me," Najin said.

"This is how I deserve to be treated. I've endured it so often I'm sick of it, but it doesn't bother me anymore. They seem to want me to get angry, but I never will. I'll just keep smiling..."

The boy who had always worn a false smile in the underground city murmured,

"That's the kind of smile it is, isn't it?"

"..."

Dieta fell silent.

"It doesn't bother—"

"Thinking it doesn't bother you because you're used to it is a mistake."

Najin cut her off. Looking straight at Dieta, he continued.

"People who don't understand say, 'Why not just refuse to engage? Why not ignore it and move on?' That's all bullshit. It's easy to say anything, isn't it?"

Najin gave a scornful laugh.

"That might work once or twice, but keep doing it and it builds up. Constantly."

Ever since he was old enough to read other people's expressions and think for himself, Najin had lived that way. He had bowed his head in servility and lived in resignation.

"Who could possibly be unaffected? You're just letting it keep eating away at you. So I simply didn't like seeing it."

Najin sighed.

"Maybe I was meddling where I shouldn't, but I did it because I couldn't stand it. Watching it irritated me."

"... That's all?"

"Do I need another reason?"

It was a trivial reason.

And an absurd one, too. Dieta regarded the young man before her through half-lidded eyes. A faint smile rested on her lips.

"Were you always this kind of person?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought you were quiet, meticulous, unemotional, and methodical."

Dieta's judgment hadn't been wrong.

What she had seen in Najin was a remnant of his days working as a hound in the underground city. Of the time when he had restrained his emotions and given up on his desires.

He might have cast that off when he left the underground city, but traces of it still remained.

Yet that couldn't be called his true nature. It was merely a mask he had worn. By nature, Najin was impulsive and emotional.

"I didn't know you could be this impulsive."

"This is closer to my real personality."

Najin chuckled.

"Just as you wear a mask, I wear one too."

Everyone wore a mask. It was just that theirs were unusually thick, made to conceal unhappy childhoods.

And so,

"We're alike, aren't we?"

Dieta and Najin felt a kinship with one another. Letting out a long breath, Dieta looked down at the scenery of Cambria, the City of Opportunity.

A mask. Was that what he had called it?

It was truly an apt expression. Dieta smiled bitterly. She had fled her house and kept running without rest, branded an abandoned child.

'Twenty years.'

The mask forged by the twenty years of her life was thick and hard. Before the head of her house, her sisters, the servants, and even her own mother, Dieta had lived wearing a false smile.

A mask built over twenty years.

It wouldn't shatter easily.

But earlier, the young man before her had pried open a crack in that mask and peered beneath it. The bewildered yet exhilarated expression Dieta had unwittingly shown him...

That had been her real face.

Dieta slowly exhaled, then looked at Najin. His expression, too, was a little more relaxed and lighthearted than usual. That was probably his "real" self.

「... Arbenia's discarded whore.」

A gap in her loosened mask.

As she faced Najin through that gap, the nobleman's earlier words echoed in her ears.

"... Excuse me."

"Go ahead."

"Aren't you curious why I'm an abandoned child?"

"Not particularly."

"That was a very quick answer."

"I don't see why I need to know that much."

Najin answered without much interest.

"You seem to want to keep it hidden. Is there any need for me to pry?"

The nameplate he had seen when they first met.

Seeing the scratched-out word "Arbenia" on it, Najin had guessed that her house was a past Dieta wished to cast aside.

If so, was there any need to learn about it?

In a way, that might have been consideration, indifference, or a defense mechanism. Najin had just as much of his past to hide as Dieta did. To her, however, his indifferent attitude was simply refreshing.

"It's strange, somehow."

"Is it?"

Before they knew it, sunset was upon them.

The evening glow was fading. Najin had promised to guard her until sundown. With the falling dusk, their eventful stroll was coming to an end.

"I enjoyed today," Dieta said.

"It wasn't quite what I'd expected, but... I haven't felt this satisfied in a long time. Like you said, perhaps it's all right to act recklessly like this once in a while."

Dieta's hair gleamed in the sunset light. With the sunset at her back, she looked at Najin.

"Hmm."

Her lips moved uncertainly, then she let out a long breath. With that sigh, the false smile and the impression of a sly snake fell away, leaving Dieta's real face. Her mask removed, she looked at Najin.

"I hope we can keep getting along, Mr. Ivan, the twenty-eight-year-old adventurer."

An identity that was probably false.

But the smile and actions Najin had shown now were not false. Revealing his personality in full, he chuckled and held out a hand to Dieta.

It wasn't a hand offered to escort her.

It was simply an invitation to shake hands.

Najin offered a handshake to Dieta, who had shown him her real face. She carefully took his hand. A hand callused by countless swings of a sword met Dieta's fingers, steeped in the metallic scent of gold coins.

"There's something I meant to say last time but didn't get to."

Still holding her hand, Najin spoke.

"You've helped me quite a lot since I came to this city. You said it was mutually beneficial, but..."

Najin knew it too.

All the terms favored him. Although he knew she had motives beyond simple goodwill, the fact remained that Dieta had helped him.

"Thanks to you, I was able to establish myself quickly and rise through the ranks."

"That was thanks to your own skill—"

"Even with that skill, you're the reason I had the chance to use it."

Settling in so quickly. Being able to participate in the Red Eye Mercenary Company's commission. All of it had been possible thanks to Dieta's help.

"I owe you a debt."

And so...

"Just once, whenever you choose," Najin said, "I'll help you without questions or objections. So long as it doesn't stray too far from my principles."

"That's rather vague."

Dieta chuckled.

She wasn't fond of verbal promises like this. More often than not, people failed to honor them as though they'd never made them at all, and she had seen countless others talk in circles to refuse.

Then let's draw up a contract instead. Let's leave legally binding evidence with precise terms.

That was what Dieta would ordinarily have said.

But for some reason, she didn't want to today.

She liked the view from the hill and the cool air. Above all, she liked the open, unreserved smile on the young man's face.

"No twisting your words later."

"I tend to keep my promises."

3.

"Berheigen, knight of House Schulhauser."

A voice rang out across a plaza that seemed modeled directly after the Round Table from the legend of King Arthur.

"He slaughtered his own master."

He had broken the precept of loyalty to one's master.

"He murdered his comrades."

He had broken the precepts by betraying his comrades-in-arms.

"All these deeds were committed through dishonorable ambushes, and the sword he wielded held no pride."

A sword with neither pride nor honor.

A sword wielded in violation of the precepts.

"Finally, he colluded with a demon. He stole an artifact containing a sealed demon, contracted with it, and gained its power."

The voice grew louder still.

Laden with anger, it echoed through the plaza.

"Berheigen has lost his honor. He has abandoned his pride. By colluding with a demon, he has trampled upon the Knight King's last wishes. Can such a being truly be called a knight?"

The answer came at once.

The knights gathered in the plaza shouted as one. Absolutely not. He could no longer call himself a knight, nor should he be called one.

"Berheigen has sullied the honor and pride of knighthood."

Judgment was pronounced.

"Therefore, we shall pass judgment upon Berheigen."

The man standing at the center of the plaza.

The most knightly of knights.

Godif, the leader of Atanga, shouted,

"The sullied name of a knight can be cleansed only by a knight's sword."

Those who upheld the ancient precepts of knighthood.

Knights who judged other knights.

The knights of Atanga gathered in the plaza struck the Atanga crests engraved upon their belongings. Some struck their armor with their fists, others their swords, others their bannered spears, and still others their shields.

"Pursue Berheigen and execute him."

Judgment had been passed, and Atanga was moving.

To uphold honor and pride.

To make it known that even in an age when the word "knight" had lost so much of its weight, there were still lines that must not be crossed.