Episode 8
“Here you go.”
When I presented the materials I had organized staying up all night, Aidan looked at my face as if utterly dumbfounded.
“Did you not sleep?”
“You told me to get it all done.”
When I pouted, he crossed his arms and spoke.
“Was there really a need to stay up all night just to do this? I don’t think it was that vast an amount.”
“I compared ten years’ worth of records against my dad’s diary!”
“So did you find out anything?”
At those words, my gaze turned away on its own. I hadn’t found out anything.
“Other than the fact that the vanished name belongs to my dad… Th-There was, strangely enough, a region he visited frequently.”
“A place he visited frequently?”
“Yes. He visited particularly often. It wasn’t just one place, but several…”
Flipping through the documents I had handed to Aidan earlier, I searched for the map.
“If you look here, I’ve roughly marked them out.”
On the continent’s map, I had marked the areas Dad visited in red and written down the dates beside them.
“They aren’t particularly tourist spots. Nor are they places where acquaintances live, so visiting them more than ten times is a bit strange, isn’t it?”
“…”
The space between Aidan’s brows narrowed.
“Why? Is there something?”
Could there be something I don’t know about?
“…The drawing.”
“Pardon?”
“You are terribly bad at drawing.”
“What’s wrong with my drawing!”
Though I was bad at drawing, of course.
“A drawing I made when I was five years old would be better than this.”
Saying so, he pulled the map over and examined it.
“What about you, Young Lord? Did you find out anything at the Gate Research Institute?”
“…The name Ashford Violeta was erased and gone from the research institute as well. Even the discovery of the lodestone was merely recorded as a ‘passing mercenary’.”
Even as he spoke, his gaze remained fixed on my map.
“These regions. Don’t they look like the locations of the Central Neodymiums?”
“Huh? Come to think of it…”
The Central Neodymiums.
While neodymium was installed in every village, among them—in the east, west, south, north, and the capital—there were Central Neodymiums possessing even stronger magnetism.
With magnetic properties slightly different from the neodymium found in ordinary villages, they pulled on one another to form a massive magnetic field that covered the entire continent.
So that even if something were to happen to the neodymium in a single village, as long as these Central Neodymiums existed, a gate would never form.
“Why did Dad visit the Central Neodymiums so often? Could Aclo have been trying to destroy the Central Neodymiums?”
There was a possibility that Dad knew about it and tried to stop them on his own.
“On his own? That’s strange. If so, your father can only be described as an arrogant man. However, the person named Ashford Violeta that I heard about from you did not seem like an arrogant man.”
“You’re right. My dad was actually humble, and in a way, a man who lacked confidence.”
Even though I had lived with Dad until going to the academy, I hadn’t even known that he visited the Central Neodymiums frequently.
“What could have been at the Central Neodymiums?”
What if the reason Dad vanished was because of this?
What on earth did Dad do there?
“There was no special report from the neodymium facilities I examined yesterday.”
Aidan stood up from his seat.
“At any rate, everything right now is mere conjecture. To know the reason, we have no choice but to go see for ourselves.”
“Right. Because we still can’t know for sure who is involved in this matter, either.”
“This weekend, at 11 o’clock.”
Just as I was thinking that if I had known this would happen, I should have gotten a job at the neodymium management facility instead of as an Imperial Palace civil servant, I heard Aidan’s voice. Weekend at 11 o’clock?
When I looked at him blankly without answering, he let out a sigh and spoke.
“Why. Is it because it’s the weekend, so you’re going to wake up late? Then let’s make it 2 o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Pardon? What is?”
When I asked back, still failing to understand, he pointed at the map with his finger as if frustrated.
“We have to go see it, don’t we? The Central Neodymium. Since the closest one is in the capital, we should start from here.”
“You’re going with me?”
“Because you act so stupidly, I have to go with you.”
“St-Stupid, you say?”
It wasn’t something I wanted to hear from Aidan, who had never beaten me even once while attending the academy, but it was true that I had just acted stupidly.
Of course I had intended to go. I had thought that I must go.
But why do I have to go with Aidan again? Didn’t he believe that I was in my right mind now?
“Gates are a disaster on a national scale. Even if it’s the work of Aclo, this isn’t a problem you should solve alone.”
Saying so, he organized the documents on his desk as if issuing an eviction order to me.
“And the capital’s neodymium is on Imperial private land. If you suddenly visit that place and say, ‘I’m going to inspect the inside a bit,’ do you think the knights guarding the neodymium will just say, ‘Yes, understood,’ and step aside?”
“Ugh. Of course not.”
It was out of the question with my status.
However, for the young lord of the Winslow family, they would hastily say understood and step aside.
His family was his family, but right now, he was an aide in the Imperial Accounting Department.
At any rate, since he possessed more power than a low-level civil servant like me, he would be able to make any excuse.
“You have an expression that says you finally understand.”
Without hiding his pathetic expression, Aidan gestured for me to leave.
Instead of suppressing the urge to bite the long fingers waving through the air, I slammed the door shut with a loud bang.
“I didn’t do that! The wind! The wind blew hard.”
Even though I opened the door timidly afterward and made an excuse about the wind.
***
At any rate, the weekend came without obtaining any notable clues.
“He said 2 o’clock, right?”
Starting out now would be a bit early, but since it’s that Aidan, rather than being late, it’s better to go early and wait.
By the way, I should eat something before going, right? I rummaged through the kitchen, but because work had been busy lately, there wasn’t a single scrap of food bought in the house.
“I feel like I should eat something, though.”
Should I buy something to eat on the way?
“Ah, right, there’s the crepe shop, isn’t there?”
A crepe filled with plenty of bitter dark chocolate and fresh strawberries wrapped in unsweetened buckwheat batter.
It was a taste Dad would like, so it was the shop I wanted to take him to first if he came to the capital. Since it was a place that only did business during the day, I hadn’t been able to eat it for a while—shall I try eating that today?
Promising myself the day I would meet Dad again.
“You come out earlier than expected.”
However, to think Aidan would actually be waiting in front of the door.
“Wh-Why is Young Lord Aidan here…”
“We agreed to meet at 2 o’clock.”
“Th-That… was the meeting place in front of my house and not at the Central Neodymium?”
At my words, Aidan, who had been leaning against the carriage, straightened his posture.
“With your leg length, it would take half a day to reach the Central Neodymium. I am a person for whom time is gold.”
“It doesn’t take half a day!”
“At any rate, didn’t you also come out early knowing it would take a long time? Looking at how you came out at this hour, it seems you had no intention of riding a carriage in the first place.”
“That’s…”
Public carriages charge double the fare on weekends.
“Th-The weather was nice, so I was going to walk slowly.”
And while doing so, fill my stomach along the way.
“Hmph, at any rate, get in.”
At Aidan’s jerk of his chin, the waiting servant opened the door.
“Why are you hesitating after having ridden it just a few days ago? Don’t tell me that riding a carriage alone with me actually bothers you now?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
I didn’t want to become someone who was bothered by Aidan. When I hastily climbed into the carriage, he followed inside as well.
“Here.”
As soon as the door closed, he handed over a sheet of document.
“What is this?”
“I visited the Gate Research Institute once more yesterday. To see if there were any materials regarding the Central Neodymium that I had missed.”
What’s this? It seems he cares about this even more than I do.
“So I found out that the Central Neodymium, unlike other neodymiums, possessed something special.”
“Something special?”
“Read that.”
At Aidan’s words, I quickly read through the document.
“This is…”
[Before discovering lodestone, there were exactly five instances where an abnormally strong entity emerged from a gate. We called that entity a Hedron.]
This was content I knew as well, having learned it from history books.
[Upon killing the Hedron of the gate, the Hedron’s nucleus came out.]
However, I had never heard of a ‘nucleus’.
[What we learned while researching the Hedron’s nucleus was that a special frequency emanated from this nucleus. The waves emanating from the nucleus made the magnetic field even stronger. We crafted that nucleus and embedded it into the Central Neodymium, making the neodymium even stronger. The research institute decided to refer to the Hedron’s nucleus by the name Core.]
“A core…”
“However, a problem has arisen.”
Aidan spoke with a sigh.
“All five cores have vanished.”
