## Side Story 3: The Azure Knight and the Ashen Witch
### Chapter 5 (Continued)
Enzhe Lopetrefer spent her time staring blankly at the pile of cookies in her hands. She would occasionally take a bite when she felt like it.
She never looked up at the sky. Not on the way back to the house after her guard duty, not even when I left her at her doorstep, telling her to be ready for tomorrow. She just kept staring at the small cookie in her hand.
***
Late that night, I returned home, changed my clothes, and sat down at the table.
A lit candle and a few blank parchments were on the table.
I thought for a moment, then picked up a quill and started writing on the parchment. It was hard to write by candlelight at first, but I got used to it. Now I could even read clearly without a candle.
I was writing a letter to someone.
I would write until I ran out of paper whenever I had something to say, but I never sent the letters.
Because I didn’t know where the recipient was.
*[To Sue,]*
The letter always started with the same name.
The quill moved smoothly, as I had a lot to say today.
About how Ariel had restarted her research from the Imperial Palace, how Gushu had found a new undertaker, how a boy named Aik had shared cookies with us, and how Enzhe Lopetrefer had eaten those cookies.
The letter, which I had started writing to Sue Byron, had become a diary of sorts, a way for me to express my inner thoughts.
I couldn’t send her the letter, but she often sent me letters. So I knew where she was traveling, who she had met, and what she was thinking.
But Sue probably didn’t know where I was, who I had met, or what I was thinking.
She would probably be shocked to find out that I was in the trash dump. She might even faint if she knew I had followed Enzhe Lopetrefer here. I chuckled at the thought.
But my laughter didn’t last long. I had finished writing the letter. I folded the parchment in half, its surface filled with words, and pushed it aside.
“…Sigh.”
A strange emptiness always washed over me after I finished writing a letter.
*To think I was writing trash that no one would read, hoping that someone would read it.*
*‘Who am I hoping will read it?’*
I asked myself. There was no easy answer. It didn’t matter who read it. I just wanted to see my friend.
***
The next day, Ariel and I received letters through the guards. We received letters from our acquaintances about once a month.
I briefly checked the ten or so envelopes and put them in my inner pocket. I would open them when I got back to the house.
I saw a lot of familiar names on the return addresses. Most of them were from the Knights. Of course, Sue Byron’s name wasn’t among them. She didn’t know I was in the trash dump, so she would still be sending letters to the Imperial Palace.
“Senior! Senior!”
Ariel, her face flushed with excitement, came running towards me as I was cleaning my sword scabbard, sitting on a rock. She had never looked this happy since she had arrived in the trash dump.
“What?”
“Senior Soran is coming here!”
“Soran Halo?”
I frowned, surprised by the unexpected name, and Ariel, her hands clasped together, nodded dreamily.
“It’s true…!”
She shoved the letter in my face, as if she wanted to prove it.
“I told you, Senior Soran is researching trash dump purification and barrier expansion. So she’s coming here to conduct a simple experiment!”
“Yes, I get it, just back off…”
I pushed her away and took a breath.
*Soran Halo was coming to the trash dump.*
But I was more excited about the possibility of seeing some familiar faces from the Knights, who might be sent to escort her.
I didn’t know when Soran Halo was coming, but I was already imagining a happy reunion with my comrades, when…
“That special recruit, she’s coming here?”
Enzhe Lopetrefer, suddenly appearing, spoke to us for the first time.
“Coming here?”
“…Y-yes.”
Ariel, flustered, nodded.
“I see. She’s coming here.”
Enzhe Lopetrefer, whether her curiosity had been satisfied or she was thinking about something else, just repeated, “She’s coming here,” in her usual sullen voice and went back to her dark green sofa.
“W-why is she… acting like that?”
While Ariel was clutching her chest, I stared at her retreating figure.
*‘…Could she be… planning revenge?’*
The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.
Soran Halo had played a major role in capturing Enzhe Lopetrefer.
And Enzhe Lopetrefer had lost to Soran Halo in a magic duel in front of Crown Prince Lawrence at the academy. The Enzhe Lopetrefer back then, who had lived for her pride, must have felt deeply humiliated.
*‘She can’t go on a rampage with the magic control device, but I should keep an eye on her.’*
I made a silent vow, when…
A deafening roar, like thunder splitting the sky, suddenly erupted. And then, the ground started to shake, as if there was an earthquake. A suffocating, unpleasant wind blew past me.
I recognized the familiar feeling.
“Senior, this is… Ha…”
Ariel, her face pale, shoved Soran Halo’s letter into her pocket and hurriedly grabbed her staff.
Even Ariel, who had experienced this once before, knew what was happening.
“It’s a monster.”
I drew my sword, suppressing the oppressive feeling that was weighing down on me.
I looked at the center of the ruins. Enzhe Lopetrefer was still sitting on the dark green sofa, her blank eyes staring at her palm.
“Why do we have to do this, instead of her?!”
Ariel, whining, infused her staff with magic power and tried to pinpoint the monster’s location.
“…Ah, found it! It’s in the upper left!”
I immediately ran to the left. Ariel, having finished her detection spell, followed me.
“There it is!”
We found the monster quickly.
Because it was huge. It looked like it could easily crush a house owned by a wealthy merchant.
The monster’s appearance was completely different from the one we had seen before.
It was green and translucent. It must have been completely transparent before, but it was gradually turning green. That’s why we hadn’t noticed it.
Its translucent, gelatinous body vaguely resembled a human form, but the more I looked at it, the more I doubted it.
And then…
“Aaaaaah!”
A scream, and then a loud thud, as if something huge had fallen to the ground.
“T-that… That’s…”
Ariel dropped her staff and collapsed to the ground. Her face was even paler than before. She pointed at the monster’s lower abdomen with her trembling hand.
“….”
I couldn’t have missed it.
The monster’s lower abdomen was swollen like a giant green gelatinous sac, and there were people inside.
Not just one. Two, three, four… There were too many to count, their limbs tangled together.
A strange liquid was oozing out of the gelatinous sac, and the people who were hit by it were rapidly melting.
The only good thing was that the people inside the sac were already dead, so they weren’t in pain.
“…Ugh.”
My grip on the sword loosened, and I tightened it again.
Since when had this monster appeared? Since when had it started eating people? What had I been doing all this time…?
“…Ah! That’s…!”
As I was overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and despair, I saw a person being held captive in the monster’s right arm.
The person wasn’t melting like the people in the gelatinous sac, and they didn’t seem to be dead.
And I knew that person.
The boy who had shared cookies with us yesterday.
It was Aik.
“Aik…!”
I couldn’t suppress my gasp.
Aik’s limbs were dangling limply, but he seemed to be conscious, his eyes slightly open, looking at me.
His eyes were pleading for help.
Ariel was in a state of panic, she couldn’t fight anymore. I had to save him. I had to save him if I could.
It didn’t take me long to move my legs.
I charged towards the monster, assessing its threat level.
Its massive size, its unknown gelatinous substance, its lack of a discernible weak spot, the number of people it had consumed…
*‘At least A-rank…’*
It was a level that even a skilled knight couldn’t defeat alone.
But I had to save Aik. Even if it meant my death…
That thought consumed me, and I raised my sword and charged towards the monster.
But my suicidal charge didn’t reach the green gelatinous mass.
*— Fwoosh!*
That was the sound it made.
The monster’s gelatinous body, except for the arm holding Aik, suddenly started to constrict, like a wet cloth being wrung out. The gelatinous monster, its body shrinking, let out a strange groan, then exploded.
I caught Aik, who was falling, and checked his condition. He was unconscious, but he was breathing.
*‘What? Did Ariel use magic?’*
I wiped the green slime off my face and made the most plausible assumption.
But when I turned to look at Ariel, I realized it wasn’t her.
She was still trembling, her body curled up, unable to calm down. She didn’t even seem to notice that the gelatinous monster had suddenly died.
“…Could it be…?”
I already knew the answer.
“Lopetrefer…”
I turned my head towards the dark green sofa, and my eyes met hers.
Enzhe Lopetrefer was standing up from the sofa where she had been sitting. And she was pointing her arm towards the spot where the gelatinous monster had been.
*She had used magic.*
*Enzhe Lopetrefer had killed the gelatinous monster, and Enzhe Lopetrefer had saved Aik.*
“Why…?”
My meaningless question dissipated into the air.
Enzhe Lopetrefer stared at me with an unreadable expression, then whispered,
“I’m sleepy. I want to sleep.”
Her black eyes, deep-set and serene, sparkled like the night sky, peeking through her long, messy hair.