Please Answer Me - Chapter 74

“Did Mark tell you?”

“Yes. Congratulations.”

The slight smile on his face surprised Asion again, he hadn’t expected to see such an expression on his face.

“…I heard you are married to the daughter of the Basque chief, but thankfully you seem to be getting along well.”

“We’re getting along fine. She doesn’t hate me either.”

Asion knew that wasn’t the end of it. Rashid had that vibe about him now that only someone in love could have. Soft and somehow sweet.

The woman clearly loves him with all her heart. And he must be in love with her, too.

A soft smile tugged at the corners of Asion’s mouth.

“That’s good.”

“Speaking of which, have you heard anything about the disappearance of any noblewomen in Lysa?”

Asion tilted his head at the sudden question. The disappearance of a noblewoman out of nowhere?

“I haven’t heard of anything like that, at least not in Terra. If it had happened, it would have been rumored in the banquet hall long ago. If it was a noblewoman living in a distant province, I might not know about it.”

“…I see.”

Rashid seemed to think for a moment, then changed the subject.

“Let us talk about something else first. Did you find out anything about that incident at the palace ten years ago?”

Asion pulled the map from his arms and spread it out in front of him. 

“This is a map of the royal palace of Lysa, drawn from my own experience. As you know, the temple side was heavily guarded, and it was impossible to get inside.”

“As expected.”

“Yes, it was impregnable. It’s a bit strange, now that I think about it, why the security there is more rigorous than in the royal family’s residence.”

“That much tighter?”

“A soldier chased me away if I even got close to the area where the temple was located. Anyway, since I couldn’t go inside, I looked into what I could find out from the outside instead. One of the things I learned was that ten years ago, there was a fire in the palace’s temple, and the priests who worked there were all replaced at once.”

“Were the priests badly injured or killed in the fire?”

“No. They say the fire wasn’t very big and was quickly extinguished.”

Rashid rubbed his chin and muttered softly, “Still, it’s certainly strange that all the personnel were replaced.”

“Yes, the sudden replacement of everyone in the temple, and nowhere else, is surely an indication that something big has happened.”

Temples were the oldest organizations created by humans. With a strict hierarchy, it’s very rare for the entire personnel to change.

“What’s even stranger is that all the priests who left the temple at that time were dead.”

Rashid stared at him in silence.

“They all died?”

“Yes, I can confirm that every last one of them died.”

“Then you mean that someone killed them on purpose.”

“I suppose so.”

“And such a thing was never known to the outside world?”

“Because priests have no family.”

Rashid was soon convinced. Priests cut all earthly ties the moment they consecrate themselves to the temple, so even if they died, their families would have no way of knowing. Their deaths would be very quiet.

“One thing that puzzles me is the timing of the priests’ deaths. I went to a doctor to find out what caused their deaths, but I couldn’t find a single person who was in charge of them at the time. I know it was a long time ago, but it’s still odd, because it wouldn’t make sense for them to have walked out of the temple alive and then died.”

“Maybe they were already dead at the time of the incident, and it was handled later.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s a possibility.”

Bird hunting.

Maybe the incident killed the king, and maybe it killed all the priests who were there. We don’t know the truth yet, but one thing is clear. Something out of the ordinary had happened that day in the temple of the royal palace.

“And one more thing….”

Asion pulled something wrapped in cloth from his arms and held it out. He unwrapped the cloth and unraveled it to reveal a collection of reddish-colored stones.

“What are these?”

“Every once in a while, wagons loaded with something would enter and exit the palace’s temple. I couldn’t see the wagons going in, so I followed the ones going out instead, and I found this one being thrown away.”

Rashid examined it closely. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary stone.

“It seems strange that they would regularly throw away a stone like this, which is not even a building material.”

Asion was right, it wasn’t the type of stone used in building construction. It was also small and rounded.

“Now that I think about it, the wagons that enter the temple are rather unusual.”

“What do you mean, unusual?”

“It was covered entirely in black. Every nook and cranny seemed to have been meticulously painted with a sticky black liquid, which I’m guessing was tar….”

Rashid’s surprised gaze went straight to Asion.

“You mean a black wagon painted with tar?”

“Ah, yes. That’s what it looked like to me. Do you know something?”

Rashid recalled the wagons the Lysans had abandoned previously. A black wagon, specially constructed, as if to keep out the sun or something else.

Rashid looked at the stone in his hand again. Is this what they were trying to sneak away from here?

What the hell is this?

“Riga?”

Asion cautiously called to Rashid, who hadn’t moved in a long time. Rashid shook his head.

“I need to think about something for a moment…. Okay, I’ll have to think about this one more. Anything else?”

“Well, the last time I looked into the death of the late King, there was apparently something very wrong with the body. Even the Duke of Perdandi, the late King’s closest confidant and younger brother, was unable to identify it. They say he insisted on seeing the body for the last time, but they never showed it to him. The only people who had seen the body of the late King were the current King and Queen. Afterward, the Duke had been saying a lot of things.”

“Was it he who spread the rumor that the king was attacked and killed by a monster?”

“Yes, it was said that some words that came out of an argument with the current King at the time were misinterpreted, though I’m not sure if they were all true.”

A bird, and a monster, though the junction between the two was still unclear.

“It’s unlikely that they would have represented a bird, something they consider sacred, as a monster….”

Asion responded to Rashid’s muttering to himself.

“Not necessarily. They say that pure good is on the same level as pure evil.”

“What do you mean?”

“It means that when people believe in gods, there is something fundamentally aligned with their fear of monsters. Gods are supposed to protect us, but they’re also supposed to judge us, and that’s why we fear them and believe in them. In that sense, it’s not entirely impossible to put a sacred bird and a feared monster on the same level.”

With those words, Asion’s report came to an end. The two left the office and walked through the garden together.

“By the way, have your lute skills improved much? I’d like to check it now.”

Rashid smiled and shook his head. “I’ve been so busy I’ve only tried a few times, and at the last banquet I nearly embarrassed myself by improvising.”

“You rarely play in public, so what happened to you?”

“I just happened to….”

At the banquet that night, Rashid played the lute and sang, with no intention of singing. He did so because the woman suddenly turned pale and looked like she might collapse at any moment.

Rashid remembered her drunkenness that night and let out a small laugh. Maybe he should take back what he said to her before: never drink. In front of him, she could drink as much as she wanted.

No, actually, he’d like to see it again, at least once: her undressing herself, coming up to him without a thread of clothing on, and kissing him.

Rashid gritted his molars, feeling his body harden just thinking about it. It was so unusual these days to have such thoughts without even trying.

“Now let me see.”

Rashid’s expression quickly changed at the sudden voice beside him.

“See what?”

“Rigaina.”

Asion made a sad expression. “I know you were thinking about Rigaina just now. Please give me a chance to get to know her as well. I’m not leaving until you let me see Rigaina today.”

Just as Asion was about to turn on his heels, Rashid stopped walking, his gaze fixed on the backyard.

“Don’t bullshit me, I’ve made it clear. If you don’t let me see Rigaina, I’m going to….”

“There.”

Rashid pointed to a group of women gathered in the backyard. Asion’s eyes quickly scanned the group, one by one.

“Which one of them is Rigaina….”

Then Asion spotted a woman who looked vaguely familiar. She had long golden hair and unusually sparkling green eyes. Her thin, rosy cheeks looked lovely. Now she was hanging the dyed yarn on a clothesline to dry.

“That woman is….”

He had seen her before, surely. Not here, but somewhere else entirely.

Asion stared at the woman.

Rashid asked, “You recognized her at first glance?”

Asion looked at Rashid in surprise. “That woman with the golden hair and red dress is Rigaina?”

“Yes.”

“…I believe her name is….”

Rashid shook his head briefly. “I don’t know her name yet. I have some circumstances….”

“…Rosetta.”

“Huh?”

Asion let out a shaky voice.

“If my eyes aren’t mistaken, her name is Rosetta Viard Lysa.”