After the two of them swept out like a storm, Masumi sagged forward, utterly defeated. Her strength left her in one heavy drop, and she sank onto the bed.
Everything hurt.
Mostly her lower body.
He had forced her into it without a single opening, and then at the end he’d turned gentle. What was that even supposed to mean.
Inside the tent, so silent it rang, last night returned to her whether she wanted it to or not, and she wanted to scream for several different reasons at once. She hurt. The bruised back, the wrists and ankles that had been bound, those were obvious enough, but more than anything the exhaustion was crushing. It was morning, and yet that dull, languid heaviness, the kind that hit right after a field day, came in waves.
This was the beginning of muscle soreness, no question.
If she could get muscle soreness even after death, it was hard to feel satisfied with anything.
When everything here felt so real, so textured, it was easy to fall into the illusion that a second life had begun.
And if it began like this, it promised to be a miserable one.
Half in spite and half in resignation, Masumi flicked her gaze around.
First priority: fix this indecent state. With that single-minded desperation, she searched the tent and found the shells of her clothes scattered everywhere.
What truly stabbed at her heart was the bra, lying by the bed in a shape so unmistakable it might as well have been labeled.
Yes. Kasumireaz had seen it. Absolutely. No doubt. The damage was enormous.
She had insisted nothing happened, but with this kind of shame she could probably ascend again purely from emotional distress. For a woman of her age, it was a spectacularly catastrophic blunder.
At the same time, she found herself wanting to applaud Kasumireaz. He surely had a hundred things he could have said, and yet he had not poked at her or pressed her further. A model of adult restraint.
It did not erase the memory, of course.
Still, what was seen was seen. There was no undoing it now.
So she would do the only thing left and abandon hope with a clean, manly finality.
Forcing that conclusion down with sheer stubbornness, Masumi began picking up the scattered remnants one by one.
“By the way, do we not have something called a bath around here?”
Muttering like an older man talking to his dog, she wandered from corner to corner of the spacious tent.
The place was nearly the size of a small manor. Besides the bed, there were chairs and a table for receiving guests, and an office desk that was clearly meant for work. But there was no sign of water facilities. Whatever counted as a washroom must have been outside. She gave up on the bath almost immediately.
There was something else she discovered while she searched.
At the very start she had gone straight for the entrance flap, half hoping she could manage it. She had not wanted to accept Ark’s claim that “no one can enter or leave without my authorization.” She had assumed it was just intimidation.
But to her surprise, she truly couldn’t go out.
Even trying to touch the fabric didn’t work. It wasn’t only the entrance, either. No matter where she reached, it was as though an invisible wall blocked her hand. The cloth was right there, and yet she could not make contact.
Oddly enough, the world of the dead might actually be more advanced than hers.
The thought slipped through her mind in full seriousness.
If every dead person truly ended up here, then this world would be crowded with geniuses from every era, Aristotle and da Vinci and a thousand names she’d seen in textbooks. If sophisticated techniques had developed, it would hardly be strange.
The assumption ignored religion entirely, but she would set that aside for now.
For the time being, with the two men not returning no matter how long she waited, Masumi remembered something and approached the office desk. She meant to check on her violin, but the sheer presence of the desk awakened her former office-worker instincts first.
It was a heavy, glossy wooden desk, the size of something a department head would use.
So that Ark person really did seem to be someone of rank. For an ordinary employee, half of this would have been plenty.
But it was filthy.
Quill pens, parchment, a knife, fine. Those were at least understandable. But mixed in with them were a pendant set with a gemstone large enough to sit in her palm, and a letter that still bore obvious tears, and other nonsense besides.
And worst of all, there was half-eaten bread, dried into a pathetic husk, just lying there.
A messy desk was a messy mind. The desks of competent people were relentlessly organized. People who couldn’t clean up couldn’t work. There were exceptions, the true geniuses who could drown in chaos and still produce miracles, but whether Ark belonged to that category was beyond her.
“…No, that’s not the point. Who cares if he’s a department head.”
She slapped her cheeks lightly and reached for the violin case.
When she opened it, the violin sat inside exactly as it should.
That surprised her.
She had assumed it had simply been dropped into the molded interior, but even the neck, the black fingerboard strung with the strings, was properly secured with a tie.
Anyone who knew what they were doing would, of course, do that.
But it was shocking that a man who looked like a soldier would know it, and even if he didn’t know, that he could still restore it neatly “as it was.”
Feeling more unsettled than reassured, Masumi loosened the securing tie.
If there were any scratches, she wasn’t sure she could recover. Her heart chilled as she checked, but thankfully there was no obvious damage.
Still, the only true confirmation was to play it.
She was, in truth, quite worried.
It wasn’t rare at all for a violin to take a blow, show no visible wound, and yet have its sound subtly change.
She tightened her usual bow and drew it once over the rosin.
Then she attached the shoulder rest, set the violin on her shoulder, and held it in place with her jaw.
She placed the bow near the frog on the A string and let her wrist glide downward.
The reference pitch was true. Next she sounded it with the D string. Two strings trembled, resonating together. She shifted to the G string and paired it with D, and the lowest, softest resonance seeped from her collarbone through her jaw and into her body. Finally, the E string. Delicate yet brilliant, the one that carried the highest register told her the instrument was ready.
Tuning was complete.
She paused, thinking what to play. What came to her was a quiet 9/8.
Cantata No. 147, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
A passage from a church cantata by the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, written roughly three hundred years ago, in 1723. An old piece, and yet in her world it was among the most widely known and beloved.
Bach had lived in the age of the Holy Roman Empire, near the end of the Baroque period.
That chain of lovely triplets carried a prayer, serene and unwavering.
An era of hardship, of war, and yet Bach had held fast to faith with fierce clarity. The beauty of the melody he created reached human hearts even now, after the long passage of time, without fading.
Like light spilling in.
Believing that salvation’s hand would always be near, clinging to faith even when the heart felt ready to shatter, the piece sang that joy with pure transparency.
Receiving that intent, the strings trembled with delight.
Thank goodness.
With her eyes closed as she played, Masumi’s lashes shook.
It sang. The rich tone had not changed at all.
If she could live with this sound, then it didn’t matter where she was. Even if she truly had died, that was fine. If her chest could still tremble at this beauty, then that was enough.
Even if its shape differed, joy was there. Real and certain.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
She finished the short piece, barely four minutes, and released a thin, long breath.
That was when—
Flap.
The entrance curtain, which had held no presence at all, was thrown open roughly.
At the sudden sound, Masumi gripped her bow and tensed instinctively.
Ark and Kasumireaz burst in, breathless. Their urgency was so sharp it stole Masumi’s breath.
Without sparing even a glance around, Ark marched straight to her.
Masumi had been sitting on the bed; she didn’t even have time to stand, much less flee. Ark’s left hand clamped around her right wrist, the one still holding the bow.
The black eyes looking down at her held surprise, but behind it there was something firmer, something that refused to bend. His eyes were different from last night. Not the relaxed gaze of a man amused by teasing someone, but a look many times more serious.
Before Masumi could ask what was happening, Ark spoke first.
“So you were a musician after all.”
“No, I told you I’m not a professional.”
“But you can play the villard. Can’t you?”
“Villard? You mean the violin?”
She looked down at the instrument in her left arm.
She’d been wondering about that since yesterday. Ark kept calling the violin a villard. There were classifications like violin-family and viol-family, but there was no instrument called “villard” in either.
Had it been called that in older times?
Maybe there simply weren’t surviving sources. Maybe in Ark’s era, that was the name.
As she looked back up at him, his brow was drawn tight.
“Violin?”
The repetition made it clear he believed they were not the same thing.
Seeing that, Masumi explained carefully, not wanting to deepen the misunderstanding.
“What I played is a violin. I think it’s different from what you call a villard. I’ve never met anyone who calls this a villard, and I’ve never even seen whatever a ‘villard’ is. So if you ask whether I can play a villard, my answer can only be no.”
“This isn’t a villard? The color is strange, but the sound was certainly…”
“If it’s a bowed instrument close to the violin family, then sure, the range might differ, but you’d get similar sounds.”
“…Is that so?”
“Probably. I don’t know what a villard is, but it’s supposed to be similar to the violin, right?”
Masumi said it while her wrist was still trapped.
She would really like him to let go.
His grip was strong enough that her fingers were beginning to tingle. If this continued, her circulation would stop and her wrist would turn purple. She tugged lightly as a hint.
It backfired.
Ark yanked her closer, and she was pulled into a half-standing posture.
“Whether it’s a villard or a violin doesn’t matter. Details later.”
“Huh? It doesn’t matter?”
“Play again.”
“…What?”
With his handsome face so close, Masumi shrank back despite herself. Ark ignored it and continued without pause.
“There’s a knighthood investiture ceremony today. You will stand there as my musician.”
“No.”
The answer slipped out instantly.
Just.
Pure reflex.
Ark went still, as if checking whether he had heard correctly. Then he slid his gaze behind her.
Kasumireaz, standing by, wore a similar expression.
A slow inhale sounded.
After a thin, long exhale, Ark narrowed his eyes.
“What did you just say?”
“I said no.”
“…You really don’t understand your position.”
As if saying honestly, Ark dragged over the large chair by the desk and dropped into it. He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and clasped his hands on his knee. Each movement was leisurely, but he couldn’t fully hide the irritation beneath it.
He unclasped his hands and tapped his temple with a long finger.
“Whatever your circumstances, you infiltrated the area near my tent. You were in a situation where you could have been cut down on the spot, and you’d have no right to complain. If you’re a spy, you understand that.”
“I’m not—”
“I told you last night. Prove you are not dangerous. Yet all you do is insist you’re innocent. You take no action. If you want the suspicion cleared, accepting my demand is the bare minimum.”
Under that sharp gaze, Masumi felt as though a knife had been pressed against her throat.
She’d heard the word “knight.” That meant they were military, probably. The pressure in his expression made sense if he was accustomed to violence and conflict.
But still.
If she was already in the afterlife, what was she supposed to fear?
If she had been the Masumi of her living days, she would have behaved more meekly. Life was precious. You didn’t provoke dangerous people. She hadn’t wanted to die.
But unfortunately, Masumi had died young, quick and clean.
Or from her own point of view, she’d “ended up here,” but details aside.
“So why do I have to accept your demand? I’m saying I’m not a spy, and you’re the one refusing to believe me.”
“How fearless. Reckless courage will destroy you.”
“Destroy me? I’m already dead, so what am I supposed to be scared of?”
Unless there was an afterlife beyond the afterlife.
As Masumi snapped back, Ark fell silent for a beat, looking as though he’d taken a blow he hadn’t expected. Then he turned his head slightly, glanced back, and exchanged a look with Kasumireaz.
Why were they going quiet now?
Masumi tilted her head at the oddly frozen pair. After a moment, without speaking to one another, Ark faced her again.
“You just said you’re ‘dead.’ What do you mean?”
“What it sounds like. This is the afterlife, isn’t it? And you two have been dead for more than five hundred years, right? That’s why you can have weird floating fireballs and lights.”
“How did you even arrive at that conclusion?”
“Because you don’t know what a violin is. So I figured you died a long time ago.”
“I don’t know ‘violin,’ but that only means it’s a villard.”
“Sorry, but I don’t know what a villard is.”
“…Huh?”
“…Huh?”
It devolved into a volley of question marks, and somehow both of them ended up wanting to clutch their heads.
She’d had this exact conversation just minutes ago. Why were they running it back again?
None of it made sense.
They kept repeating the same exchange, and still neither side could understand what the other was saying. It was almost impressive.
Confusion spread through the tent.
Ark pressed a hand to his forehead and shut his eyes. His expression was strained enough that anyone could tell his head hurt.
The cause seemed to be the disconnect in their conversation, meaning Masumi’s words, but Masumi’s head hurt too. Being unable to communicate went both ways.
As if steadying himself, Ark shifted in the chair and folded his arms, clearing his throat as though beginning anew.
“Wait. Do you understand where you are?”
“I told you. The afterlife.”
“…What?”
“…What?”
And really, what was this, a conversation designed to end in nothing but question marks.
