Side: Amahashi Kakeru
Noctia was laughing.
"The human race comes up with the funniest ideas."
I'd been telling them about the Dungeon Club that Kitamura and the others had floated, and for whatever reason it had hit her funny bone.
Pricia and Sanctina, on the other hand, looked a little puzzled by it.
"I think it's a good idea. We should widen our ties with people, little by little."
So Filia was for it. None of the others seemed inclined to object either. Given how dungeons were treated and how things stood in this world, it was a reasonable enough call.
"More to the point, about this Kitamura-san. Is this how the men of this world go about getting close to women? I don't really know him, but…"
Pricia was a little perplexed by Kitamura. I felt bad for him, but I'd told her that half of what he was after was getting friendly with Pricia and the others—and that he was a good guy, no bad intentions involved.
It was just that Pricia and Sanctina seemed clueless about romance, you see. If they kept giving Kitamura hope without understanding any of it, that'd be cruel to him.
Sure enough, Pricia and Sanctina—people who'd held real rank—wore faces that said they didn't quite get it. There was a status gap even between the two of them, but they definitely weren't commoners, that much was certain.
"Case by case, I'd say. Commoners don't get the chance to attend the kind of parties where royalty and nobles show up, and for students, the place you go looking to meet someone is school."
Noctia and Filia looked like they understood. Their ages were a mystery, but I had the feeling they grasped what commoner humans were like.
Pricia, for one, always had her ladies-in-waiting and stewards around, and even conversation was only permitted in forms that followed prescribed etiquette. That held true at the royal castle and just the same while she was serving with the army.
I was neither a noble nor a citizen. More than that, I'd been treated as a weapon called the Hero, so I hadn't had etiquette and formality forced on me quite that strictly. Even so, I'd been taught enough not to embarrass myself.
"Ufufu, men are the same in the human race and the demon race. Elves are a little different, since they have poor reproductive ability, but most peoples have the instincts of living creatures. Among commoners, with fewer entanglements, it's not unusual to find people who live for that very thing. For the human race, you wouldn't be able to keep your numbers up otherwise."
At Noctia's words, Pricia and Sanctina looked at me. I'd like to believe there was no particular meaning behind it, but it was almost as if they were asking whether I was that way too.
"Setting aside how she's putting it, the gist is about right. Though in this world, with how hard child-rearing is and how developed our entertainment is, a country like mine keeps seeing its number of children fall."
I had no intention of getting into the futile debate of whether friendship could hold between a man and a woman. It was just that there was no doubt instinct was one of the reasons people sought out the opposite sex. Affection, love, and other things just came on top of that.
In this day and age, there were a fair number of people who denied that part and criticized the opposite sex for it. There was a point to that argument too. Which was why, unlike in the past, more men and women were steering clear of romance and marriage. That was all it really was, I thought.
"Leaving behind children, leaving behind a house or a clan—commoners don't think about that much. Over here there's something called social welfare, a system where even if you grow old and end up alone, you can still get by well enough."
Pricia, of course, but Sanctina too was no less born of nobility. It wasn't as though either of them truly understood, deep down, the feelings of people who could barely scrape by, or of the poor.
To put it another way, the world was stable enough that staying single didn't leave you in trouble. Over in that world there'd been no safety net—no insurance, no pension or anything like it.
How to put it—before the differences between peoples or between worlds, it struck me all over again that mutual understanding was needed because of the differences in each individual's birth and station.
Maybe I needed to talk with everyone more. About the little differences.
Side: Noctia
Pricia and Sanctina were young. For all their talk, you could tell they'd been kept sheltered from the filth of the world and the true nature of people.
Even among long-lived peoples like the demon race, elves, and dragonkin, only a tiny few lived free from the shackles of biology. Not that I cared for that sort of existence, mind you.
No matter the race, I preferred those who lived steeped in desire and grime yet never forgot their reason.
Well, I'd been called an oddball even among the demon race, so I was aware I was different from the rest.
"I'll take part. Doesn't it sound fun? If they were stringing together pretty words about doing it for the world or for the country, I'd refuse. But if they're saying they just want to enjoy it together, why not?"
Kitamura-kun. Not such a rare type. He was the very picture of the young human men you'd often find in that world too. Having fun with himself and his friends, with us mixed in, and, if it went well, hoping for what might come after. Simple, but that much was comfortable.
If there was even a little reason and conscience in him, that was enough.
"It's not as though I'm refusing either. It's just…"
Pricia was earnest and threw herself wholeheartedly into everything, and because of that her view of her surroundings narrowed a touch. The thing was, every living being and the world itself were far more complex and harder to fathom than she saw them.
Ideals and reality. Men and women. Comrades and enemies. Even among us, the tangle of positions still remained. She understood it was impossible to unravel all of it, yet she probably wanted to lay as much of it bare as she could.
It was precisely because of that nature of hers that she'd accepted me so quickly, I think.
"Even in a marriage among royalty and nobility, made with no regard for the people involved, there have been those who found happiness, haven't there? When you're looking for your own partner, choosing by looks or instinct is just about right."
Meetings and partings alike were, in the end, an accumulation of events where the inevitable and the coincidental mingled together. Leaving it to chance and the flow of things was fine too.
Whether the gods decided it or the world did, I don't know—but I'd had quite enough of a fate prepared for me by someone else.
"There's nothing wrong with not thinking too deeply. It's enough to feel happy when you're praised for your looks. Unlike the royalty and nobility of the human race, there's nothing hidden behind those words."
"Filia-san…"
"You know, I understand a little of what Noctia's trying to say. Among the elves there really were thoughtful, lofty beings. But now I find myself wondering—could you really call them alive? I have a feeling that seeking ideals in your relationships with others and overthinking them never leads anywhere good."
Oh my. To think Filia had been holding something close to what I felt. If anything, I'd taken her for the other type. Had being together with Kakeru and the rest changed her, I wonder?
Pricia and Sanctina didn't seem aware of it, but they too were ones whose fate had been fixed to fight the demon race. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say they'd been raised for it.
The two of them needed to spend more time with ordinary people of the human race. As friends. The kids at Kakeru's school might be just the thing.
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