# Chapter 91
Both Rite and Arden were tired, but sleep wouldn’t come. Arden couldn’t close his eyes as his mind was restless with anxiety.
Although there were significant differences between districts within the city, Rosmunt was home to many wealthy and powerful individuals. The majority were merchant class who had made fortunes at a young age rather than nobles from old families. That background was the reason why the second largest contingent of knights, after Moran, was stationed here.
Despite the considerable risk posed by the knights’ presence, one had to pass through Rosmunt or take a long detour to reach Moran. The journey to Moran from the north wasn’t easy due to the large river flowing there.
Fortunately, all knights stationed in Rosmunt were apprentice knights. They wouldn’t recognize Arden’s face, which made this route viable. The problem was that they had encountered Rey in Idelven.
Considering the time it would take to send a letter from Idelven to Moran, and then for knights to be dispatched from Moran to Idelven, they should still be fine. To be precise, they should be safe until they entered the city. If the palace learned about them, a warrant would be issued, and after that, no amount of caution would be enough.
If only they could maintain their freedom until they reached Moran. Arden sighed.
“What did you do when I wasn’t around?”
Rite spoke just then, as if trying to cut off Arden’s deepening worries.
“When you weren’t around?”
“When I was away from home.”
Nothing came to mind immediately. There hadn’t been anything special, and he couldn’t properly remember either. Though the perceived time felt longer than the actual time, looking back, he couldn’t recall any specific details. His only impression was that it had been terribly quiet and stifling.
“Just this and that. Similar to usual.”
The words that came out of his mouth were more refined than his actual thoughts. Arden was clumsy with expression. He hadn’t learned how to express not only negative emotions like sadness and anger but also joy and pleasure. Living with the robot Pini and Plin, who was even more mechanical than a robot, he’d had no one to observe and imitate.
So he always just swallowed his feelings. Just pressing them down until they exceeded his limits.
“Ah, I also read your books.”
“Which ones?”
“Various ones. The last one I read was… ‘The Song of the Black Flower,’ I think.”
“How was it?”
Rite’s eyes lit up as he leaned forward. He seemed expectant, but Arden had never given a review of anything in his life. The most he’d ever done was to briefly compliment Rite’s sculptures by saying they were well-made.
“I haven’t finished it yet.”
“You can just talk about what you’ve seen so far. How far did you get?”
“Um… up to the scene where the protagonist says he’s going to commit suicide. I didn’t understand why they wrote so much about it when he obviously wasn’t going to die.”
Rite laughed softly at Arden’s words. “Why are you laughing?” Arden asked, and Rite shook his head.
“You sounded so certain. He actually dies.”
“What?”
“He ends up committing suicide there. If you’d read just a bit more, you would have seen it.”
“What happens if the protagonist dies?”
Though Arden hadn’t read many novels or plays, he knew that basic rule. Without a protagonist, the story ends. The part Arden had been reading wasn’t even halfway through—it was still the beginning. If the protagonist died there, who would lead the rest of the story?
“Is that really so surprising? Anyone would think someone you knew had died from your reaction.”
“Then how does the rest of it go? If the protagonist dies so early, how does the story continue?”
This time Rite laughed a little louder. “It would be better if you read it all yourself,” he murmured before speaking up. It was a peaceful fragment of daytime that hadn’t been felt in a long time.
At some point, a thick fog began to set in, and the train gradually slowed down. Sensing they were almost there, Arden opened Rite’s bag and threw out all the tools and aether collectors inside. It happened in an instant.
“What are you doing? Why are you throwing those away?”
Rite rose halfway in surprise, but everything had already disappeared outside. Arden looked out the window against the strong wind, then closed it and turned to Rite. Through his disheveled hair, his determined eyes were visible.
“We need to get rid of anything that could reveal my identity right now. I should have thrown them away when we were in Idelven, but I didn’t think of it because we were in a hurry.”
“…Is it okay to throw them away?”
“There’s a river below. It would be difficult for anyone to find them.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Those were items you’ve used for a long time.”
Arden calmly nodded with an expression that asked what the problem was. “It’s fine.” Then he immediately reached out to draw the curtains. It was better to be exposed to the outside as little as possible.
Before closing the curtains, Rite looked outside. They were crossing a bridge built over a massive river. No, looking more carefully, it wasn’t just a bridge over the river. Irregularly rising buildings and the smoke billowing from them overwhelmed the observer.
The city situated on water looked like one enormous machine. Hazy masses on the foggy water seemed to be moving individually as if alive. Huge cogwheels attached densely to the outer walls kept turning, and what seemed to be a pillar of the building smoothly moved to the opposite wall.
The last thing Rite saw before the curtain closed was an airship. A massive inflated cylindrical balloon carrying a ship was sailing smoothly through the air. Without the slightest tremor, completely stable.
“Did you see that, Arden?”
“Rosmunt?”
“No. Well, that too… but there’s an airship outside.”
For Arden, who had seen airships several times a day while living in Moran, there was nothing particularly fascinating about them. But he still remembered the first time he saw one. He was an engineer, after all. It had been impossible not to be amazed; he had wanted to see it up close, and his heart had raced.
“It is amazing. Do you know how it can float in the sky while carrying such a heavy ship?”
Rite showed interest. Arden recalled cross-sections of airships he’d seen in books and the actual engines of airships he’d observed.
“Basically, it floats due to hydrogen buoyancy. When pressure acts on an object in a gas or liquid, the object rises against gravity. Recent airships add steam engines and propellers to create propulsion. The additional component in that engine is aether. You know what that is, right? They compensate for the airship’s limitation of slow speed with external engines and aether, but there are still some drawbacks. That’s why military versions don’t use buoyancy but…”
“…”
“…That’s how it works.”
Rite remained quiet without saying anything, but Arden felt preemptively guilty and quickly concluded his explanation. His habit of getting excited when discussing topics he was interested in had kept Arden awake many nights. He had sighed with regret more than once or twice, thinking, “Why did I talk so much back then?”
The train doors opened, and people rushed outside in a hurry. Rite and Arden also moved quickly among the flow. Without time to prepare mentally, they stepped into Rosmunt’s First District.
It was so modern that finding similarities with the stations they had seen until now would be more difficult. The tracks were placed on steel frames floating in the air rather than on the ground, so that a misstep could lead to death. The high ceiling was made of glass, providing good lighting.
It was strange. The outside of the city was foggy, yet how could the lighting be so good here? To Rite, who was standing among the people looking up at the ceiling, Arden whispered softly.
“It’s an artificial sun.”
Before Rite could be surprised, he was pulled along by Arden’s hand toward the ticket gate.
Rite was certain that just the people in this station alone outnumbered the residents of Winterishe. Many people were standing in long lines, moving slowly.
“…Why are there only this many lines?”
Arden mumbled, craning his neck to look ahead.
“What do you mean only this many lines?”
With so many people? Rite gestured to the people standing in front of them.
“I mean horizontal lines, not vertical ones. There used to be about ten knights stationed at the station, but now there are only two lines.”
Because of that, the number of people wasn’t decreasing quickly. Arden, whose eyesight wasn’t good, narrowed his eyes to look ahead.
“Rosmunt is divided into eight districts in total. We’re in the First District. We need to go to the Eighth District. There’s another train station there.”
“Why make two stations?”
“To catch criminals who might be hiding on the train. The next station is Moran. They need to filter out as many as possible here.”
Those criminals were none other than Arden and Rite. Somehow, that fact made Rite want to laugh. Not an emotion that suited the situation. Arden thought he was gradually losing his sense of reality. It seemed possible, as Rite had said, to return home safely and even travel.
As the line steadily shortened despite its slowness, and the knights’ faces came into view enough for Arden to see them, his fingertips began to tremble with tension. Upon confirming their faces, Arden’s expression hardened.
They seemed too old to be apprentice knights. The two knights were sitting in chairs with bored expressions, either shaking their legs or just looking at their watches. They weren’t even opening passengers’ bags to inspect them, just waving people through with casual gestures. Arden’s mind began to race.
