The remark was unforgivable, and it came out the very moment Masumi, however unwillingly, agreed to “work.”
It had begun with a simple question on her part.
An investiture was hardly decided overnight. If this “musician” truly held such an important role, then why had they not secured one properly from the start? Ark had declared, with a face like a verdict, that he would make her play even by force. That alone told her how critical the position was. It had worked out only because Masumi had fallen into their laps. If she had not, then what, exactly, had they intended to do?
Had they ever heard the phrase, plan ahead?
She kept the urge to say so to herself and asked instead, as mildly as she could manage. Ark’s expression twisted as though he had bitten down on something bitter.
He insisted it was not a matter of poor planning.
That a musician’s importance was common knowledge, and naturally, they had originally brought one along under contract. And yet that musician, in a spectacular display of nerve, had attempted to flee last night.
Kasumireaz himself had been responsible for keeping watch, with what should have been an unassailable arrangement.
So why had the man escaped?
Because they had detected the intrusion of a suspicious presence. Kasumireaz had been forced to leave his post to confirm it, and the musician had taken advantage of that moment.
In other words, Ark’s conclusion had been simple.
This was Masumi’s mess to clean up.
He said it with the calm certainty of someone who had never once considered being wrong. Masumi, however, had a question she wanted answered before she “cleaned up” anything at all.
“You said you had him under contract, right?” she demanded. “So why would he run right before the ceremony?”
If someone ran, it meant there had been something he could not accept. Masumi might have caused a disturbance, but disturbances did not create betrayal out of nothing.
It was not as if Ark had used some sort of trap or extortion.
Putting that aside, the most common reason an employee balked was pay. So was that it?
“Don’t tell me you were being cheap.”
“Don’t throw accusations around,” Ark snapped. “He was paid in full, in advance, at his stated price.”
That was, frankly, an astonishing condition.
Then perhaps a family emergency? A telegram that screamed Grandmother critical, come home now?
“Did something happen to his family?”
“There is no family,” Ark said. “He was unmarried and alone. That is precisely why we contracted him. We chose him to avoid that kind of complication.”
So they had taken precautions, at least. Masumi found herself grudgingly impressed, though she also suspected the history that had driven them to such measures.
She decided not to ask.
“Then… did he fall ill?” she tried. “Maybe he lost confidence physically. But if it was that, he could have said something.”
Ark fell silent.
“Why are you quiet?” Masumi pressed. “Why are you looking away?”
Until then, Ark had denied every line of speculation without hesitation, and now his certainty had stalled. His gaze slid aside as if he could hide unease behind thoughtfulness, but it only made the awkwardness clearer.
He was concealing something.
Masumi’s instincts, honed by years of reading people, flared.
“Don’t tell me you dragged a sick man here and tried to make him play,” she hissed. “That’s disgusting.”
“Watch your mouth,” Ark snapped, the edge in his voice sharp. “He was perfectly healthy. He ate enough for two at supper.”
“Then why did you look away?”
“That’s…”
Ark’s words caught.
Masumi sifted through what he had said, carefully.
The musician had not been ill. Ark had denied that plainly.
Which left the other half of her suggestion: that he had lost confidence in his stamina. Ark had not denied that part at all, not once. If there was something they did not want to admit, it was there.
So she aimed for the heart of it.
“Is it that hard?” she asked. “Hard enough that he wanted to run even after being paid in full?”
There was no denial.
Ark and Kasumireaz looked at one another in silence.
Masumi’s stomach turned cold.
Not even a token, polite, “Of course not.” Not even a lie to soften it.
That silence was a confession.
So you knew.
The two of them had known exactly why, and still they had cornered her into saying yes.
Her thoughts turned uncharitable, and she could not help it. It felt like fraud, like the classic scam where you sign a blank page and only afterward discover the clauses added in a neat, vicious hand.
She had been worrying about the runaway musician, but the person most in need of concern was herself.
And yet, watching two grown men stand there with that bleak, awkward quiet between them, her indignation began to drain. She wanted to shout that this was not what she’d agreed to, but in the end she had said yes. Whatever the reasons, she was already committed. She still had to clear her name in a world she did not understand. Picking a fight now, when she lacked every advantage, would only make her life harder.
So she swallowed her anger.
“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. What is it, then? What am I supposed to do that’s so brutal?”
“…You’re surprisingly decisive once you decide,” Ark muttered.
“That’s what happens when you threaten me to my face.”
“I threatened you with facts,” he returned, and his eyes narrowed. “For the investiture, you only need to keep playing. Anything will do. You can repeat the same piece if you like.”
“That’s it?”
It was almost disappointing in its simplicity.
With the way Ark had been glaring, she had expected the impossible, the sort of demand made by tyrants. Something like, Play Paganini flawlessly on sight. Instead, he was saying she could repeat a single piece.
Yet Ark’s expression remained heavy, as if the weight lay somewhere else.
“You will regret saying ‘that’s it,’” he said quietly.
“If you’re about to tell me I have to play for twenty-four hours without food or water, then yes, I’ll regret it.”
“No,” Ark said. “At most, it won’t even be thirty minutes.”
Again, the same sense of being wrong-footed.
Less than an hour, no demand for dazzling difficulty.
If she played poorly and the crowd threw stones, perhaps she might worry, but surely a formal ceremony would not descend into that. She had braced herself when she heard the previous musician had run away, but now that she understood what was required, her anxiety eased.
At least, it did for Masumi.
It bothered her that the two men who needed her most still looked grim, but they were not forthcoming, and pressing them further felt like a waste. She chose to let it drop.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
Perhaps because she had relaxed, her senses abruptly sharpened.
The moment she accepted that she was alive, the first thing she became keenly aware of was the sticky discomfort clinging to her skin. If she was to stand before others and play, she wanted a bath first.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “So let me bathe.”
“A bath?” Ark repeated.
“If you don’t, I won’t play.”
The instant she said it, Ark and Kasumireaz stared at her so intensely it felt as though the air itself had turned sharp.
It was the kind of look that would make a child burst into tears. Masumi did not flinch. This was a line she would not yield. Even suspects had human dignity.
“You…” Ark said, his voice low. “You’re really going to take advantage of the situation.”
Masumi kept her face serenely blank. If anyone had created the need for this demand, it was the man standing in front of her. Surely he was old enough to understand that.
She turned her face away with an exaggerated air of indifference. A small, frustrated sound reached her ears.
Then Kasumireaz, the calmest of the three, spoke as if stepping between them.
“If she bathes now, we will not make noon,” he said. “Considering time for adjustment.”
His expression was troubled as he looked to Ark.
“Do we delay the start?”
Ark held his breath for a long moment, as though forcing a decision out of his own pride.
“…This time, it cannot be helped,” he said at last.
Masumi frowned.
What could be so inconvenient about letting someone bathe? She was not the type to soak for an hour. Give her thirty minutes and she would manage. There did not seem to be such a thing as a hair dryer in this world, but she could tie her hair up so it would not drip.
She had asked partly out of spite, yes. Agreeing to their demand did not mean she had accepted the whole situation with a smile.
Still, they were acting as if she had demanded something outrageous.
“Wait,” she said. “What do you need to ‘adjust’? Is it something to do with me?”
“Musicians want at least an hour before ceremonies,” Ark said, looking genuinely perplexed. “Tuning, focusing. That sort of thing.”
Now Masumi’s brow knitted deeper.
Kasumireaz’s expression also slipped into confusion.
The three of them stood there, each silently accusing the others of nonsense.
The stalemate lasted only a handful of seconds before Kasumireaz recovered first.
“Let us calm down,” he said. “I believe our customs and habits differ. That is why we are failing to understand one another.”
Only then did Masumi and Ark truly look at one another, as if noticing for the first time that they were standing on opposite shores of common sense.
Masumi had thought she was dead. Ark had assumed she was an enemy spy. The suspicion had begun to blur, but her ordinary standards remained far from theirs.
They needed to meet each other halfway, carefully.
Kasumireaz said as much, then addressed Masumi directly. His gaze held an unusual heat, as if something in him had shifted.
Masumi found it strange, but she listened.
“A musician,” he said, “approaches a major ceremony with meticulous preparation. Performing for mages and knights demands considerable effort. Therefore, in our understanding, a musician enters the venue hours in advance. We believe it is wrong to hinder that.”
Masumi nodded.
Now their earlier reactions made sense. Even if she had been coerced into the role, once she agreed to perform they considered it proper to show a certain level of respect.
It was a strange sensation.
Knights, people who lived by violence, offering deference to musicians, who seemed the very opposite.
Masumi could not find much common ground between the two.
The only point that snagged her attention was Kasumireaz’s phrase: considerable effort. If the audience were enormous, then perhaps the strain was not physical but mental.
She had no sense of the venue’s scale.
But she had once stood on an international stage. She had advanced to the finals and been recognized, though not as the winner.
The memory of being branded “emotionless” still burned, but the act of being judged while she played was not new.
She did not need hours of ritual to face it.
“So if that’s the concern, it’s fine,” she said lightly. “I don’t need the adjustment time. Give that time to my bath instead.”
Ark and Kasumireaz exchanged another look, their faces heavy with doubt.
Masumi could almost hear what they were not saying.
Is she sure? Does she understand anything at all?
She raised her chin.
“Just tell me where to stand and when to start,” she said. “And when to stop.”
“You don’t need to worry about position,” Ark said. “Kasumireaz will guide you. Start playing when the light overflows. My color is blue. When I grant light to the final knight, you may end it however you like.”
“Sorry,” Masumi said. “I forgot we’re dealing with a different world. The way I asked was bad. That explanation is… impossible to picture. Can you say it in more detail?”
If “light overflows” was meant to mean a spotlight, she would eat her own words, but she doubted it. This place had will-o’-wisps and “authentication.” It had magic, beasts, and mages. She had no idea what sort of spectacle awaited her.
Kasumireaz took on the explanation again, steady and precise.
The investiture, he said, was the rite by which one became a knight, and it held profound importance.
Young men gathered before the commander of the knight order, and in exchange for their loyalty to the Empire, they were granted sword and shield. Then they were given the power required to fight, and they swore to live as knights.
It was the moment they were recognized as men, and the moment they assumed social duty.
The chosen piece played by the commander’s musician blessed that loyalty.
That blessing was said to guard the knights throughout their lives. The more beautiful the music, the more vivid their lives. The more heroic, the more brightly their deeds would shine. Many common people attended the ceremony not only to glimpse the new knights but also to hear the blessing itself.
When the rite ended, the venue would shift to jousts.
For a full week, it would continue, from single combat to group battles. The events changed by day, but the stalls and crowds remained constant, and every night the commander hosted feasts. Knights and townsfolk mingled until the entire city turned festive.
When Ark had said, “When my blue light overflows,” he had meant the moment after the weapons were bestowed, when the commander divided his own power among the knights.
It was the climax of the investiture, and without it, one could not be recognized as a knight.
Why?
Because not everyone was born with enough power to fight.
Such people were rare. Whether mage or knight, those who sought the path of battle required power granted by those above them. They had to receive investiture.
The commander’s power, Kasumireaz explained, was like a banked ember.
From that ember, the knights received a spark. Through training, that spark could grow into flame. The talented would burn more fiercely, and even those not born gifted could, with effort and the blessing’s support, become first-rate knights.
That right, however, did not belong to just anyone.
The color of the power one received never changed throughout one’s life. By it, one could know at a glance whom a knight had sworn to, or whom a mage had studied under.
Such bearers of ember-power were scarce.
Ideally, the number of knights and mages could be increased at will, since they were tied directly to national strength. In reality, it was impossible. Thus, investiture was held only once a year, gathered by region.
“That is the broad outline,” Kasumireaz finished.
“That seems fine,” Ark said, and his tone was as casual as if he were discussing the weather.
Kasumireaz did not seem to mind. He turned his attention back to Masumi.
“If there is anything else you wish to ask, I will answer.”
“I get it,” Masumi said. “It’s important. That’s enough.”
“Are you certain you need no more confirmation?” Kasumireaz asked, clearly bewildered.
“It’s fine,” Masumi replied. “I’ll just play something I can play. I can’t promise the ending will line up perfectly with your timing. I’ll probably finish a little late. That’s just how it is, so please overlook it.”
“You say ‘just play,’ but…”
“There’s no point arguing,” Masumi cut in. “Let me bathe.”
No amount of debate would change her technique in the remaining time. If that was so, dragging this out was pointless.
And more importantly, she wanted the bath.
She urged them again with the relentless persistence of a man demanding his morning wash, and she knew it even as she did it.
Kasumireaz still looked troubled, but Ark tossed out a lazy, final verdict.
“She says it’s fine. So it’s fine.”
With evident reluctance, Kasumireaz finally nodded.
