The Way to Love in the Place of Dead Chapter 6

“He will be.”

Aran drank the remaining tea from Iris’s cup. As he sipped and blew soft breaths over it, “Hoo, hoo,” Iris tilted her head.

“He will be? How can you be so sure?”

“Because now I know what he wants.”

“What is it?”

Aran lifted only his eyes, his lips still resting on the cup. Even seeing it every day, it was a face of such beauty one could never get used to it.

“Me?”

Especially when he was being this blatant about playing pretty.

“You’re insane.”

“More precisely, my face, I suppose.”

“Is that a joke or are you serious?”

“I’m purely sincere.”

The mere gaze of those large, blinking eyes seemed so overflowing with truthfulness that she had nearly been fooled. Pure. Sincere. Neither word suited him in the slightest.

“Explain it so I can understand. Are you saying he fell for you or something?”

“If it were something like that, it’d be easier, actually.”

Aran set down the empty teacup and smiled gently.

Back at the initiation ceremony when she first met him, it had simply seemed like the smile of a good-natured man.

“Iris. Have you ever imagined it?”

Aran rose, stretching. He looked out the window crowded with high-rise buildings and murmured.

“A being who has no choice but to absolutely love me.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Back in Willamere, Kay sat atop a pole in the desert where the temperature had dropped below freezing, looking up at the black sky. To the people of Willamere, the land of Limpus that covered their heads was, in a sense, their sky.

“Kay!”

Kay, who had been gazing up at the enormous artificial dome that occupied the place of the sky, turned his head at the voice calling him. A woman carrying a small lantern and a basket was approaching.

“Lea.”

Kay jumped down from the pole and ignited his body, illuminating the surroundings. The visible breath escaping from Lea’s lips melted away in the warmth.

“Why did you come all the way out here?”

“I got the kids fed and put to bed, and then I started thinking about you. Have you eaten?”

“Skipping meals for a day won’t kill me.”

“I’m saying it because I doubt it’s only been a day.”

Lea held out the basket in her hand. Inside the basket, carefully wrapped in cloth, were bread and camel’s milk.

“Eat.”

“…Thank you.”

Kay took the basket more obediently than usual, and after quietly watching the lamp left in her hand, he reached out. He placed his finger into the heart of the burning flame, made the fire shine brighter and brighter, and then withdrew his hand.

“Since it’s dark.”

Lifting the lamp to eye level and gazing at it, Lea marveled.

“The word ‘flame flower.’ Doesn’t it feel like a truly well-coined term?”

The flickering shape, ceaselessly moving and scattering light, looked exactly like a living flower. But as if such praise from Lea made him uncomfortable, Kay turned his back without lingering.

“Go back before it gets any later.”

With a light leap, he sat back up on the pole, the desert wind causing the black cloth wrapped around his head to flutter. Watching his back, Lea shouted.

“Make sure you eat! And sleep!”

At the nodding figure, Lea turned and headed toward the village glowing faintly through the sandy wind. A village at an oasis, at the end of a distance that took 15 minutes if you walked without losing your way—but if you happened to get lost, you’d be found as a corpse in the sand.

A village no different from any slum, where at the street corners those selling their bodies reached out their hands through iron bars, and in the alleys vagrants picking through sprawled corpses brawled amongst themselves.

The scent of death, flowing in with fine sand with every breath, faded as they passed the oasis. At the very edge of the village, the safest place guarded by those born and raised there was bustling even at this late hour.

She hung a bright lantern beside the main gate, strode forward in long steps, and flung the door open.

“You kids! I told you not to make noise at this hour!!!”

The children who had been running around laughing and playing froze as if time had stopped.

Then, all at once, their gazes turned to one spot. There, a man who had been running while bent over to match the children’s eye level was slowly straightening his body.

“Hello.”

A stranger and an intruder. Yet a person so beautiful one could not muster any hostility toward him.

“Are you Lea?”

The handsome man before her was so chilling that it made her despise her own stunned self.

“Who are you.”

At the voice full of wariness, the children, who had been giggling, glanced back and forth between the two. Steven, the oldest among them, took the children and went up the stairs to the second floor. The intruder even waved his hand with a bright smile at the children climbing the stairs, as if to tell them not to worry. Only the young children, too little to understand what tact was, waved back regretfully at the end of the play before disappearing from view, leaving the two of them alone in the living room.

“The children let me in, and I haven’t done anything.”

Spreading both hands open as if to prove his innocence, he stated his business.

“I’m just here looking for someone.”

“There’s no one here worth your coming to look for.”

“You can’t know that for certain.”

“You don’t get it, do you. This is Willamere. There’s no person here that a Limpus human like you—looking clean and dressed perfectly for dropping dead in the desert—would come looking for.”

At the words shot through with hostility, Aran pouted his lips slightly.

“It’s not good to judge people by their appearance.”

“Ha!”

“And I can state with certainty that you do know the person I’m looking for.”

“Who…”

“He says he’s looking for Kay!”

Before she could even ask who, the answer popped out from a child who stuck their face through the gap in the stairs.

“Hey, shh!”

Steven covered the child’s mouth, but it was already spilled milk. Even so, Lea replied flatly.

“Who’s that?”

“Wow. Shameless.”

“If you’re not shameless, you can’t survive. Here.”

“Sarcasm, too.”

“For an uninvited guest, this is practically kind. Now that you have your answer, I’d like you to leave. It’s time for the kids to sleep.”

“If I were the type to just say ‘yes, ma’am’ and leave at that, I wouldn’t have come all the way here.”

Hah. Letting out a small sigh, Aran looked at Lea.

“You know you can’t protect him with lies like that.”

When his smile vanished, the man looked like a completely different person from just moments before. To think that the mere absence of a curve at the corner of his lips could change his impression so drastically.

“There’s no need to protect him in the first place, and knowing his personality, if he found out you died trying to protect him, he’d just blame himself.”

“You speak as if you know him well.”

“People don’t usually come looking for someone they don’t know.”

“You people just want to use him as a weapon.”

“That’s right. If possible, we’d prefer he did it willingly.”

“Then I’ll sooner die than ever speak a word about Kay to you.”

Aran knew the person before him was not lying. So he found it foolish, and irritation rose out of frustration.

“If I kill you and hang your corpse up, finding him would be child’s play.”

“Then do it.”

Aran’s already short patience was pulled taut. He took a long stride, one step closer.

“Don’t!”

Steven threw himself between the two.

“Kay is always outside the village.”

“Steven!”

“Outside the village, there are poles. Most days he sits on one of them, but some days he just disappears and isn’t seen for months. So… even if we wanted to tell you, we don’t know where he is either.”

That much was enough. Having obtained the information he wanted, Aran quietly raised his hand, and the child flinched in fear. A small weight pressed against his leg.

“You can’t kill her. Please don’t kill her. Okay?”

The hand gripping his trousers with all its might was desperately earnest. The small head, not even reaching Aran’s knee, buried its face against him and began to cry its eyes out.

“I-I’ll give you back the present Kay gave me. So please.”

Seeing the child burst into heavy sobs, tears and snot pouring down, Aran froze in bewilderment, then carefully, cautiously stroked the child’s hair.

“I was just joking. As if I’d ever do that.”