Vol 2 Chapter 17 – Resolve【Vol 2 — Youth in the Midst of Calamity】

“— Hey. What are you going to do?”

Sophia had put it to me plainly: die here, or love her.

There was no way to choose between those options.

They didn’t even constitute a real choice. It wasn’t sane.

I looked at Sophia.

She wore that unnatural smile, her eyes vacant. She was looking at me, yet looking somewhere far away — somewhere that had nothing to do with here.

The Sophia I knew — so sweet, who had always treated a guy like me with such warmth, like her real little brother — she wasn’t here anymore.

I finally understood.

Sophia wasn’t in her right mind. And neither was Aria. Neither was Elena.

If my own half-hearted attitude was what had led things to this point —

Maybe what needed to come first right now wasn’t my own safety.

— Truth be told, maybe I’d known that for a long time.

“Sorry, Aria — just a sec.”

I gently unwound Aria’s arms from around my back and looked at Sophia.

My eyes met hers — met those hollow, vacant eyes — dead on.

Then a light weight settled against my back again.

“Geez, Will… ah, ehehe, hehe.”

…Aria had latched onto me again, apparently.

This was hopeless.

One look at Sophia still gripping that ice knife told me I couldn’t afford to be too precious about the circumstances.

Awkward as it was, I looked into Sophia’s eyes with complete sincerity.

“Sophia — I… Sophia-nee-san… Sophia. I love you.”

“…Will-… kun.”

Sophia’s eyes widened slightly. At the same moment, I felt Aria give a small jolt against my back.

Sophia began to close the one-step gap between us.

But before she could complete that step, I spoke.

“But I love Aria too.”

“——”

The small space surrounding the three of us — me, Sophia, and Aria — felt as if time had frozen inside it.

Inside that stillness, I kept going.

Even though she wasn’t here right now —

“And I — no, that’s not quite right. I love Elena.”

Those words were serious, sincere, and from the heart.

Something I’d probably known for a long time — a simple truth I’d just been trying not to see.

Those girls who had always been by my side, who had chosen to care about a guy like me — I loved them. All of them.

— That was what I truly felt.

“——”

Sophia’s eyes went wide, and she stood stunned. The unnatural smile that hadn’t left her face, the vacant gaze aimed at somewhere far away — both vanished, leaving only a look of plain, blank surprise.

She almost looked like she was thinking something through.

Aria, still pressed against my back, had gone perfectly still as well. The hot, ragged breathing that had been spilling against my ear just moments ago had gone quiet.

Those few brief seconds of silence felt like hours.

“———————”

Then, slowly, the frozen moment seemed to remember it had somewhere to be.

Sophia’s arm — which had been hanging limp at her side — suddenly rose.

The knife was still in her hand.

My mind went blank.

Before I’d even noticed, Aria had pulled away from my back.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of her face — the expression of someone who had just watched the world end.

“——…ah.”

“…I see.”

Her voice carried something very much like sorrow.

“So that’s how it is with Will-kun.”

And something like total resignation — like someone who had given up on everything.

“Then I’ll kill you, Will-kun.”

All of it wrapped in a gentle smile.

“——”

The ice knife drove into my chest.

“—”

In that instant, I understood everything.

— Crap. I think I messed up.

◯

“Noooo—!!”

The moment the ice knife plunged into my chest, my body erupted in flames.

— It’s burning!!!

Burning, burning, burning, burning — hot, blazing, searing!!

My body was on fire, the air gone from my lungs, and the heat and pain left me unable to even scream.

Somewhere in the crowd around us, someone screamed instead.

The next thing to hit me was a torrent.

A whirlpool of water colder than ice slammed me into the ground. The flames that had turned me into a living torch were snuffed out, replaced by a cold agony that somehow hurt even more.

From the impact of hitting the ground, I could feel blood pulsing steadily from my forehead. Pain tore through me like someone had taken a hammer directly to my brain.

“Move, Aria-chan. Don’t get in my way.”

“No—! No! No, no, no, no, no, No! No! No! No! no… Not that. Not that— no…”

“I’m just killing Will-kun. My Will-kun. Onee-chan’s Will-kun. Mine and mine alone. This has nothing to do with you, Aria-chan.”

“…It has everything to do with me. Because Will is mine. So no. No. Not that. Not ever.”

Even through a level of pain I’d never known in my life, I found myself thinking something completely out of place: surely there was a better way to save me than this.

I pressed one hand against the blood flowing from my forehead and somehow managed to lift just my head.

“I really don’t want to kill you if I can help it, Aria-chan. If you hadn’t done those things to my Will-kun, I would have loved you so much, you know…”

“…I…”

Neither of them spared a glance at me, crumpled on the ground — Sophia and Aria faced each other with sharp, focused eyes.

Aria received Sophia’s sorrowful words and lowered her gaze, as if wrestling with something deep inside herself.

Then Aria shook her head like she was throwing something off and looked forward again.

“— Sophia-chan, if you try to lay another hand on my Will, I won’t hold back.”

“Then I’ll have to kill you too, Aria-chan.”

The next moment, blood splattered through the air.

◯

Several loud screams rang out.

It was the moment the everyday shattered into something else entirely.

The sense of something wrong had already been spreading through the crowd — from my being stabbed, set ablaze, doused in ice-cold water, and slammed into the ground — but this made it definitive.

The blood that had splashed through the air came from Aria, grazed across the shoulder by Sophia’s blade.

The magical explosions that followed made the panic worse.

On the main road, the crowd scattered in every direction, each person desperate to be the first to flee. Where they had been, an open space had formed — a sudden hollow in the middle of the street — and at its center stood Aria and Sophia, facing each other. Nearby, rolling on the ground and groaning: me.

Bad. This is bad. This is really, really bad.

To think that my careless words had brought things to this.

I’d thought being honest about my feelings would make things okay — and it really, really hadn’t.

If things kept going like this, it was going to get seriously bad. Worst case: Aria gets killed, I get killed, Sophia gets arrested by the guards when they finally show up.

Another explosion cracked through the air.

Sophia had already discarded the ice knife. Now she directed a swarm of floating light projectiles at Aria.

Aria deflected them with a protective barrier thrown up in front of her and began chanting a spell.

A full-on magical battle had broken out. No matter how I looked at it, there was no way for me to step in.

Magical explosions overlapped one after another. The ground shook, the air trembled.

It was an all-out battle between two girls who had been called prodigies since childhood.

“H-wah—! Wh— gah—…!?”

Still sprawled on the ground from the shockwaves, I was sent rolling like I’d been kicked by some invisible force and slammed into the wall at the edge of the street.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts — I was scared.

What was I supposed to do here?

I gritted my teeth against the unfamiliar pain and pushed myself upright, one hand braced against the wall.

The battle between the two of them was almost perfectly matched. At least to my eyes, I couldn’t tell which way it was going to go.

No — that didn’t matter.

It wasn’t about who won or lost.

“…I have to stop them. Fast.”

But my foot froze the moment I tried to take a step forward.

There’s nothing I can do against that.

Just as that thought crossed my mind, my eye was caught by a single bag that had rolled to my feet in the chaos.

It looked just like the kind of backpack you’d find back in Japan. It was Sophia’s.

Come to think of it, she’d been wearing it when she’d tricked me into thinking we’d eloped — and again that night she’d been waiting for me after I’d made a desperate escape from home.

Thinking it might help me stop them, I dug into the contents without hesitation.

At some point she had apparently taken my clothes and personal belongings — I had no idea when — but that was irrelevant right now.

I’d been digging through what felt like an unreasonably large amount of stuff for such a small bag when I found a small vial I didn’t recognize.

“This is……”

Inside the clear vial swirled a reddish liquid. Dark, shadow-like wisps drifted through it, and just staring at it gave the unsettling feeling that it might swallow you whole.

When I gave it a light shake, the liquid rippled in a thick, viscous wave.

“—”

As it happened, I recognized the characteristics of that liquid. I’d never seen it in person before, but I was almost certain.

Because that time — Sophia had used this on me.

When we were children, Sophia had been looking at a certain book that belonged to Lucas. On its cover, in ominous lettering, were the words: Forbidden Magic — Cursecraft. Curious, I’d snuck a read of it myself.

Among the dangerous, unsettling spells listed within — the kind that made you feel uneasy just reading them — there was also a section on forbidden magical concoctions.

I remember it well because one of them had captured my attention intensely back then. It was probably unavoidable, given what I was going through at the time.

Unfortunately, the book hadn’t listed ingredients or instructions — but somehow, she had tracked them down.

“——”

And the moment I recognized what was swirling inside that vial, something like a bolt of lightning shot through my mind.

A vague shape took form. If it worked — then I… No — then we —