The continued holiday brought steady, dripping rain. On that day, he finally set out from the Academy once more to carry out his first proper massacre.
Being able to go out freely on a holiday was a great advantage. He pulled the freshly laundered black robe up over his head again and walked the damp streets.
From his pocket came the clink of metal knocking together. Today he'd emptied out every last coin he owned, everything he'd scraped and saved from the money the royal family, or more precisely Leopold, sponsored.
Even as he gathered the money, a dry laugh escaped him at the pitiful sum. As if he weren't busy enough, now he had to go earn money too. His head throbbed at the mere thought.
With those few jingling coins, barely enough to fill one hand, Teron Meyer bought bread.
Near the slums, by the lakeside, there was a bridge.
Beneath it, the space was dark, cold, and damp, so no one ever went near it.
Teron walked through the slums as though it were routine and slipped under the lakeside bridge.
A foul stench hit him at once. Countless insects and rats along the floor scurried away the instant they sensed him.
One grubby child stole glances at him.
A child so emaciated that only its belly, swollen from malnutrition, stuck out. Wearing rags so torn they barely counted as clothes, sucking on its own fingers, the little one looked at Teron, and then at the sack he was carrying.
Teron smiled.
“It's white bread.”
The child's eyes went wide. It looked ready to lunge at him like a rabid dog. Teron gave an order.
“Bring your friends. There's plenty of bread. A good child shares. Bring more, and I'll give you more bread.”
Drooling, the child nodded and slipped out from under the bridge. Now and then it staggered or fell, but it sprang right back up as if none of that mattered and ran off. Teron sat down right there on the damp, reeking ground.
Slum urchins. The perfect sacrifices to kill.
No one ever came looking for them, and many didn't even have names. Most begged their way through each day until, before they reached adulthood, they starved or froze to death in the streets.
They were like the insects under the bridge. Gathering them up and killing them all at once would be simple and leave no loose ends.
Hacking them apart with a blade would leave far too much to clean up, bloodstains and all, so he planned to gather them here and kill them all at once with black magic.
He felt no guilt over killing children. If anything, he'd rather kill a child than an adult.
Beings with no formed sense of self, who had never truly grasped what pain was. Animal-like things.
Killing them gave him the same steady calm as killing small animals.
Besides, an urchin would starve, freeze, or, if it somehow scraped by a few more years, grow into an adult of the slums.
He'd come to think that ending a life filled with nothing but suffering wasn't really a sin.
What's the worth of you living? You've starved so long you don't even have the strength to walk anymore. That one over there will starve to death after just one more failed day of begging.
Walk slowly through the slums and you could see their lives. Lives more wretched than death, uglier than death. If Teron were that child, he would drive a blade into his own heart without hesitation.
So this, this was the lightest of all sins.
Gradually the children gathered. The filthy, foul-smelling little ones ran toward where Teron was as if they'd lost their minds. The dark space slowly filled with small children.
“Quiet. I'll only give it to those who keep their mouths shut.”
Roughly twenty of them, by his estimate. Having herded them all into one place, Teron looked at the children with emotionless eyes.
“...Want to eat?”
Twenty little heads bobbed up and down furiously. Teron gave a faint smile. As he drew the bread from the sack, he slowly gathered mana into one hand. A black, prickling energy stirred at his fingertips.
I'm sorry. He muttered the insincere words in his heart.
Teron Meyer's true nature would never change. In this life too, he was, as ever, a demon for the ages and trash who deserved to die. He had no wish to deny it. If a hell existed, he'd never once imagined Teron would fail to end up there.
But their sacrifice would become nourishment and let a sprout bloom. That alone was enough.
The children's clear eyes gazed up at him, bright and eager. Teron had to kill them right now. Black magic blossomed at his fingertips. The sticky energy slid out and cut through the air to coil around a child's neck.
In that moment.
“Teron.”
Teron froze solid. There was no way such a soft, firm voice could sound in this dark, damp place where no one but urchins ever came. He turned his head slowly. And then he saw a sight he couldn't bear to look at.
Damn it. What is that?
In his past life, at around sixteen, no, in fact across his entire life, Teron could count on one hand the times he'd spoken face to face with Leopold Deluah.
Which meant that his being here right now made no sense at all.
Things were getting more and more tangled.
Overcome by an indescribable despair, Teron said nothing and just stared blankly at the golden-haired boy. In a pleasant voice, as if he'd run into an old friend in an unexpected place, Leopold rattled off nonsense.
“I chased after whoever it was doing charity work down here, and I never imagined it'd be you. Since when have you been doing this sort of thing?”
Teron's black magic had vanished at some point. Teron Meyer stood frozen like a fool, unable to do anything. When he came to his senses, Leopold had already come up to him and was studying him with newly astonished eyes.
“To think you're the sort of person who does good deeds like this. Truly astonishing. Where did you even get the money...”
And then he laughed, bright and cheerful, as if in a fine mood. A small dimple appeared beside the corner of his upturned lips.
When Teron said nothing and just kept staring at the ground, the children, tired of waiting, stared fixedly at Leopold.
“What are you doing? Didn't you buy it to give to them?”
Teron watched with unfocused eyes as Leopold snatched the sack away and began handing out bread to the children. The children took the soft white bread as if famished and wolfed it down.
“They'll choke.”
The wretched prince muttered, with a worried look, that they ought to be given water.
“Should I draw some water from the well.”
Is he an idiot? This was a riverside anyway, water was everywhere nearby. It was filthy wastewater mixed with piss and shit, but to them it was as good as a lifeline.
Teron sneered inwardly without holding back.
He had no idea why that man was here now, nor why he, Teron himself, had to suffer through this.
The white bread disappearing into the urchins' mouths had been Teron Meyer's daily sustenance. Since going to the Academy dining hall only earned him glares, he'd meant to hole up in the corner of his room, gnaw on bread, and study magic formulas. And, of course, lure the little brats and kill them!
His chronic affliction, the one that flared up whenever he met Leopold Deluah, was acting up. A headache came surging in, and then his stomach turned queasy too. Teron Meyer glared at Leopold with murder in his eyes.
Impressively enough, the prince of Deluah caught the look at once and shrugged.
“What brings you here?”
Teron stared at the ground. Counting numbers inwardly, he slowly chewed over each word.
Leopold answered in an offhand tone.
“I was walking through here when I saw a child rounding up its friends. Listening in, I heard that a volunteer was handing out bread to the children. I was curious who it might be, and I thought I might grant a reward, so I followed out of curiosity, and... wasn't it you standing there.”
“Why were you walking through the slums?”
“That's what I'd like to ask you. Why are you here?”
“...It's not something for Your Highness to meddle in. What matters is the reason the First Prince came in person to a place like this, the slums.”
Leopold narrowed his eyes. He let out a voice tinged with a bit of mischief.
“You won't answer either, so I don't see why I should be the only one talking.”
Damn it! Teron felt his vision starting to blur with rage.
The man was a truly god-awful bastard.
The slums already had wretched security, and just having someone like this loitering in a place like this was maddening enough. On top of that, he'd shown up at the very moment Teron Meyer was about to mercilessly slaughter a group of children.
It was beyond a spectacle, it felt as if his whole life were unraveling.
Did this mean he now had to watch that man's moods even outside the Academy?
He knew nothing about Leopold Deluah. He had not a single clue what the man usually got up to. Which meant there was no way to predict when he might suddenly appear before his eyes. It was the same now.
Had Leopold shown up even a little later, Teron would already have been branded a hideous murderer by him and had his head cut off.
Later. First, I need to sort out my thoughts...
Teron clenched his teeth and quietly bowed his head. Leopold watched him do it, staring fixedly.
Hidden and hard to see beneath the robe, Teron's cheeks had gone deathly pale.
Negative thoughts seeped in on their own. Mostly things like, Does he hate me that much?
