On the next holiday, a drizzling, gray day, he finally set out from the Academy once more to carry out his first proper massacre.
Being able to go out freely on holidays was a significant advantage. He pulled the freshly laundered black robe up over his head and walked the damp, sodden streets.
The sound of metal clinking came from his pocket. He had taken every last coin he had — money saved penny by penny from the royal patronage, from Leopold specifically — and brought it all with him today.
Even as he pocketed it, the pittance of his finances drew a hollow laugh from him. He was already stretched thin, and now on top of everything else he had to go out and earn money — the headache was automatic.
With just a small fistful of jingling coins — not many at all — Terren Meyer bought bread.
Near the slums, by the lakeside, there was a bridge.
Beneath it was dark, cold, and damp, and not a soul came or went anywhere near it.
Terren walked through the slums with practiced ease and ducked under the bridge by the lake.
A foul smell hit him immediately. Countless insects and rats on the ground scattered at his approach.
One grimy child glanced at him sideways.
A child with a skeletal body, belly bloated from malnutrition. Dressed in rags that had nearly finished falling apart, sucking on a finger — that small child looked at Terren, and then at the sack in his hands.
Terren smiled.
“It’s white bread.”
The child’s eyes went wide. He looked ready to lunge like a dog with rabies. Terren gave an order.
“Go get your friends. There’s plenty of bread. Sharing is what good children do. The more you bring, the more bread I’ll give.”
The child drooled, then nodded and scurried out from under the bridge. He stumbled and fell once or twice along the way, but scrambled right back up as though it was nothing and kept running. Terren sat down on the damp, reeking ground.
Vagrant children from the slums. The perfect offering to kill.
No one would look for them — many of them didn’t even have names. Most of them spent their days begging hand to mouth, and starved or froze to death in the streets before ever reaching adulthood.
They were insects living under a bridge. Gathering them all in one place and killing them at once would be clean, with no repercussions.
Slashing them with a blade would leave too much to clean up — blood and all the rest — so the plan was to lure them here and kill them all at once with dark magic.
He felt no guilt about killing children. If anything, he preferred killing children over adults.
Their sense of self had not yet formed. They had not yet truly come to understand what suffering was. They were closer to animals.
It gave him the same settled feeling as killing a small creature.
Beyond that — street children either starved to death, froze to death, or if they somehow survived a few more years, grew into adults of the slums.
Ending a life filled with nothing but suffering isn’t really a sin, he had thought.
What value is there in any of you living? You’ve starved so long you can no longer walk. That child over there — one more failed day of begging and they’ll simply starve to death.
Walking slowly through the slums, he could see their lives. A wretched life worse than death. If Terren became one of those children, he would drive a blade into his own heart without hesitation.
So this, then, was the lightest of sins.
Children began to trickle in. Dirty, reeking little ones came running toward him as though in a trance. The dark space slowly filled with small bodies.
“Quiet. Only those who keep their mouths shut will get any.”
Twenty, roughly. Terren had gathered them all in one place and now looked at the children with empty, expressionless eyes.
“…Do you want to eat?”
Twenty heads bobbed frantically up and down. Terren smiled faintly. As he pulled bread from the sack, he simultaneously began to gather mana into one hand. A dark, tingling force stirred at his fingertips.
I’m sorry. He muttered words he didn’t mean inside his head.
Terren Meyer’s nature would never change. He was, in this life too, the great villain of the age — trash who deserved to die. He had no desire to deny it. If there was a hell, he had never once thought he would be spared from it.
But their sacrifice would become the soil that let something grow. That was enough.
Clear, bright eyes looked up at him, shining. Terren had to kill them right now. Dark magic rose from his fingertips. The viscous force spilled outward, slicing through the air as it moved to coil around a child’s throat.
At that moment.
“Terren.”
Terren froze completely. In this dark, damp place where no one but street children ever came, there was no possible way that soft, steady voice could exist. He turned his head slowly. And saw something he could not believe he was seeing.
Damn it. What is that?
In the previous life — around his sixteenth year — or rather, across his entire life, Terren could count on one hand the number of times he had ever spoken face to face with Leopold Delua.
Which meant the fact that he was here right now made absolutely no sense.
Things were becoming more and more tangled.
Terren, consumed by an indescribable sense of despair, said nothing — and simply stared blankly at the golden-haired boy. Leopold, in a pleasant, easygoing tone, as though he had run into an old friend in an unexpected place, said something ridiculous.
“I wondered who could possibly be doing charity work out here, so I followed along to see — and to find that it was you. Since when have you been doing this kind of thing?”
Terren’s dark magic had vanished without a trace. Terren Meyer stood frozen in stupidity, unable to do a single thing. By the time he came back to himself, Leopold had already come over to him and was looking at him with fresh, unmistakable admiration.
“To think you were the kind of person who did this sort of good work. Truly remarkable. Where did you even get the money for—”
And then he laughed, brightly and cheerfully, as though in a genuinely good mood. A small dimple appeared at the corner of his upturned mouth.
When Terren said nothing and simply stared at the ground, the children, tired of waiting, turned and stared openly at Leopold.
“What are you doing? Didn’t you buy it to give to them?”
Terren watched with vacant eyes as Leopold took the sack from him and began distributing the bread to the children. The children received the soft white bread as though possessed and devoured it ravenously.
“They’ll choke.”
That damned little prince muttered in a worried tone that someone should give them water.
“Should I go fetch some from the well.”
Is he an idiot? This was a riverbank — water was everywhere nearby. Filthy wastewater mixed with sewage, yes — but to them it would be as good as a lifeline.
Terren Meyer sneered inwardly without restraint.
He had no idea why that person was here right now, and no idea why he himself had to be subjected to any of this.
The white bread disappearing into the mouths of the street children was Terren Meyer’s daily sustenance. There was no point going to the Academy dining hall just to endure glares, so he had been planning to hole up in his room, tear into some bread, and work on his magical formula research. And he had of course also planned to lure the children there and kill them.
The chronic affliction that only appeared whenever he encountered Leopold Delua flared up — a pounding headache came over him, followed by nausea. Terren Meyer fixed Leopold with a killing-intent-laden glare.
Rather impressively, the prince of Delua caught the look immediately and shrugged.
“What brings you here, Your Highness.”
Terren looked at the ground. He counted silently in his head and chewed through each word slowly.
Leopold answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I was walking through the area when I spotted a child rallying his friends together. Listening in from nearby, I heard that some volunteer was handing out bread to children. I was curious who it might be, and thought I might give them a commendation — so I followed out of curiosity, and found you of all people.”
“What were you doing walking through the slums in the first place?”
“That’s exactly what I want to ask you. Why are you here?”
“…That is not something for Your Highness to concern himself with. What matters is why the First Prince has personally made his way out here, to the slums.”
Leopold’s eyes narrowed. He spoke with just a trace of playfulness in his voice.
“You’re not answering either — I don’t see why I should be the only one talking.”
Damn it! Terren felt his vision start to blur with fury.
He was truly, irredeemably insufferable.
The slums had appalling security at the best of times, and the sight of him loitering around in a place like this alone was enough to drive Terren to the brink. On top of that — appearing at the exact moment Terren had been about to massacre a group of children.
It was beyond a sight — it felt as though his entire life had come apart at the seams.
Did he now have to keep one eye on that man even outside the Academy?
He knew nothing about Leopold Delua. Nothing of what he did in his day-to-day life. Which meant he had no way of predicting when he might suddenly appear before him. Today was proof of that.
If Leopold had shown up even a little later, Terren would have already been caught in the act — branded a horrific murderer and had his head taken off by Leopold on the spot.
Later. First. Collect my thoughts…
Terren bit down and quietly lowered his head. Leopold stared at him openly.
Hidden beneath the robe, unseen — Terren’s cheek had gone completely white.
Uninvited negative thoughts crept in on their own. Mostly along the lines of: Does he really hate me that much?
