Rebecca ran home to avoid Xion.
And for a long while, she sat in her room clutching her head, agonizing.
‘What was that sword?’
Xion’s sword had been hung up as if it were something very precious.
It looked the same as the hero’s sword Rebecca knew, but she didn’t think it was the real hero’s sword.
Because that would be absurd.
If it had just been a sword hung up for decoration, she could have thought Xion had a hobby of collecting swords or was displaying a replica of the hero’s sword.
But it wasn’t just a sword.
It was a sword stained with blood.
‘And it didn’t look like the blood had been there long.’
When you work at a mercenary guild, you end up seeing all sorts of weapons stained with blood.
Rebecca could at least tell the difference between a blade left so long with blood on it that it had rusted, and a blade from which warm, dripping blood hadn’t even cooled yet.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Rebecca raked at her hair as if she were going to rip it all out.
What shocked Rebecca wasn’t the sight of blood, nor that the owner of the bloodstained sword was Xion.
It was that she had no idea what that sword might have cut.
‘There aren’t any monsters around here!’
There are no monsters in Root.
This is Root Village, a place where it’s hard even to find dangerous wild animals.
Besides, when Xion hunts wild animals, he uses snares and traps and handles it very cleanly. There’s no need to use a sword.
Then what could have gotten blood on the sword in the last few days?
If it wasn’t a monster or a wild animal?
Only one thing remained.
A person.
The villagers were all fine, and no outsiders came here, so there was only one plausible victim.
A knight of Duke West’s house.
“Ahh, no, that can’t be.”
Rebecca felt like she was going mad.
If you mess with a knight, the repercussions will hit the whole village.
If all these assumptions were true, then Xion had simply chosen to dirty his own hands to protect the village. But he mustn’t do that.
An act meant to protect the village would only lead everyone in it to a miserable death.
‘Is that why the knights aren’t around?’
The village had grown peaceful, but it was a peace like walking on a frozen river.
You couldn’t know how thick the surface of the ice was, and you had to take the next step with the anxiety that at any moment you might plunge into icy water.
That couldn’t even be called peace.
‘Xion… must have tried to leave the village.’
She’d thought it strange he didn’t show up while the house was on fire. It wasn’t that he didn’t show up—he had actually left the village altogether.
He must have lashed out at the knights on impulse, and then decided to run away so others wouldn’t be harmed.
For whatever reason he came back, Xion had made a choice for the villagers’ sake to the very end.
‘No, wait. There’s something that doesn’t make sense, isn’t there?’
Rebecca, who had been taking her own delusions as practically fact, snapped back to herself.
‘How would Xion handle that many knights by himself?’
Maybe she’d read too many ridiculous novels and her imagination had gotten out of hand.
There was no way Xion, who’d grown up farming in the countryside, could do that.
Fine, sure. Say by some miracle Xion did kill the knights. Then why wouldn’t he wipe off the blood and just store it as-is?
Because it was his first time using a sword and he didn’t know you’re supposed to clean it after?
Because he was some pervert who enjoyed hanging up a bloodstained sword and admiring it?
“No, no! None of that makes sense.”
Rebecca shook her head hard, both fists clenched tight.
“Right. It must have just been a decoration.”
In the end, that was the conclusion she reached.
The basement had been dark, and she’d fled in a rush and hadn’t checked properly.
It must have been a decorative mock-up that only looked like it had blood on it.
‘I’ve heard there are nobles who like that sort of thing.’
If there are people who like such things, then there will be people who make and sell them.
Otherwise it didn’t make sense.
Xion swinging a sword to attack a person or monster or wild animal didn’t make sense. And if he had killed something, it didn’t make sense that he’d hang up the sword with the blood still on it.
And if something so dangerous were in the house, he would have locked the basement door—so why wasn’t it locked? Obviously because it wasn’t important!
“Right, that wasn’t a sword—it was a decoration!”
Having decided to think that way, Rebecca sprang to her feet.
From knights visiting the village to a forest fire, there had been too many things to worry about, and she’d let her mind wander where it shouldn’t.
Thinking she’d cool her head a bit, Rebecca opened her door.
Someone she’d never seen before was standing there.
“Huh?”
To be precise, it wasn’t the first time.
He was always standing as if hiding behind Xion, or he covered his face with a wide-brimmed straw hat, so this was just the first time she’d seen him properly.
Reinhild, walking down the hall with a stony expression, spotted Rebecca and opened his mouth.
“Hel—”
Bang—!
Startled, Rebecca slammed the door shut.
❖ ❖ ❖
“What the… How rude, this human.”
Reinhild looked at the closed door with an incredulous expression.
It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to greet her.
Since Xion seemed to care about the villagers, he’d only tried to acknowledge her in accordance with human rules.
And she shut the door like that.
‘Humans really are a race you can’t get close to.’
Forgetting all about Rebecca, Reinhild went into the guest room next door.
‘From here you can’t see our house at all.’
He narrowed his eyes and peered out the window, but Xion’s house was nowhere in sight.
So far away he couldn’t see it even with the Demon King’s eyesight.
He wanted to run to Xion that instant.
Creak—
When he heard the door open and sensed someone behind him, Reinhild turned his head, on full alert.
Rebecca was standing at the room’s threshold. It didn’t look like she meant to attack.
Then had she come to say hello?
But just a moment ago, hadn’t she shut the door in the face of a Demon King trying to say hello?
He couldn’t make sense of it.
‘Is this a greeting custom that’s trendy among humans?’
If the idea was that you should approach carefully and greet someone when their back is turned, and that she had shut the door because being face-to-face had startled her—he could extend a fingernail’s worth of understanding.
He’d never seen such a greeting in a book, but whatever.
“Um…”
After hesitating a moment, Rebecca spoke.
“So you were a man after all.”
He had no idea why she was stating the obvious.
“Ah, sorry. I just never got a proper look at your face. Since they said you were Xion’s marriage partner, I assumed you were a woman.”
“Marriage?”
“Aren’t you two married?”
Marriage.
It was an unfamiliar custom among demonkind.
But thanks to the book Rebecca had brought, he had a rough understanding of what human marriage was.
A kind of contract where two humans vow to stay together for life and keep by each other’s side.
‘I do intend to be with Xion for life.’
They’d even promised to stay together.
Xion’s lifetime and his own were very different in length, but he could count that as “the same” for this purpose.
From a human perspective, his relationship with Xion was sufficiently explained by the word “marriage.”
Reinhild nodded proudly.
“We’re married.”
“I knew it.”
All right. Now start asking your questions, human.
Knowing well that Rebecca was curious and talkative by nature, Reinhild braced himself, ready for the barrage.
But time passed, and Rebecca only stared at the floor as if she had no intention of continuing the conversation.
“…”
What was with her?
Her face looked happy… or did it? Was that anger?
Honestly, no matter how much he looked at human faces that weren’t Xion’s, he couldn’t tell their emotions apart.
Aside from when humans were suffering, he hadn’t much cared.
Ah, except for Xion. Xion was most magnificent when he was smiling.
“Say, if Xion had killed someone, what would you do?”
After wrestling with it for a long time, Rebecca blurted out the question unconsciously and immediately realized her mistake, flustered.
This wasn’t it.
Just because someone had a bloodstained sword didn’t mean they’d necessarily killed a person.
She’d been worrying over whether the ones Xion had killed were knights of Duke West’s house, and the words had slipped out wrong.
Worried she’d lobbed a bomb into Xion’s happy home for nothing, Rebecca hurried to correct herself.
But Reinhild’s response came first.
Without the slightest hesitation, Reinhild beamed.
“That would be excellent.”
“…Ah… r-right?”
She’d heard he’d come all the way down to this rural backwater because of some illness, and apparently the rumor was true.
“Th-then… if that’s good, I’m glad. I misspoke. I didn’t mean Xion did that—honestly, that was a mistake. What I meant was, um… ah! Monsters. I meant, what if he had hunted monsters.”
Reinhild nodded broadly as if he understood.
Humans and monsters—easy to mix up.
Humans or monsters, they were all kind of the same in his opinion.
Except for Xion.
“With monsters, aren’t you supposed to hunt them all the time?”
“If you’re from a city, I can see why you’d think that. But there are no monsters around here. You probably won’t see a single monster for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He’d definitely seen an owlbear with Xion, so what was she saying?
As expected, human speech was hard to understand.
Except when it was Xion’s.
“Don’t tell me you came from a city other than Audrit?”
He didn’t know what that had to do with seeing monsters, but Reinhild nodded for now.
“I see. Then you might not know. Audrit is famous for being a peaceful region. Our Root is especially safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
Reinhild clearly wasn’t following the conversation at all.
After a moment’s thought, Rebecca decided to summarize what she wanted to say cleanly in a single sentence.
“There are no monsters around here. Not a single one.”
T/N: “We’re married.” LMAO please start the honeymoon.
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