“This is the Albarique Empire.”
“Alba—… huh? What did you just say?”
Masumi failing to catch a word she’d never heard before was hardly a crime.
And yet Ark, wearing the sort of face that said this is within expectations, repeated it with infuriating patience.
“Albarique. A sovereign nation that still exists, located at the northernmost reaches of the Central Continent.”
“The Central Continent… Europe?”
“No.”
“Then the Eurasian continent?”
“No.”
“…Africa, then? Seriously?”
“That’s also wrong.”
At that point, listing the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica felt pointless, and Masumi fell silent.
Was the era gap really enough to make them look at her like she’d committed a felony?
Or—could it be that the two men in front of her somehow hadn’t realized they were dead?
No. Surely not.
To go five hundred years without noticing you’d died was beyond “a bit slow.” It was inhuman. If they hadn’t noticed, maybe they’d died suddenly in an accident—but in the Land of Golden Zipang, the rule was clear: the ones who died without knowing became lingering spirits, vengeful ghosts.
And yet the fact remained: nothing was lining up.
Masumi’s mind ran in circles while two large men watched her with the same wary, probing caution. The air between them was unmistakably a mutual appraisal.
“Where are you from?” Ark asked.
“Japan. Though what was Japan called five hundred years ago? If I say Zipang, does that help?”
“Your name.”
“Tōdō Masumi.”
“Tōdō… what a strange name.”
“It’s not strange, it’s my family name. My given name is Masumi. We do family name first in my country. And while we’re at it—don’t call people’s names strange when you’re walking around with a tongue-twister like Arkresterv—whatever-the-hell-it-was.”
If she held back while he didn’t, she’d lose. That was Masumi’s rule.
So she said what she wanted to say, all of it, and waited to see what came back.
Nothing.
Ark didn’t move. He simply stared at her head-on, still with his arms crossed, his head tilted as if examining an unfamiliar specimen. Kasumireaz, half a step behind, also chose silence.
Fine. Then she would push the conversation forward herself.
“I fell down the stairs, hit my head, and died. My stuff’s gone. I was at a station, and then I woke up in some random field I’ve never seen. Everything hurts—probably because my cause of death was full-body bruising. If you don’t think that means I died, something’s wrong with you.”
She hadn’t wanted to die, not even a little, but what was done was done.
“I’m new to the afterlife. I don’t know right from left, and I get dragged in here, threatened to death, and on top of that nothing you say matches anything I know. That’s why we’re here.”
“…You probably aren’t dead.”
“Huh?”
“You probably aren’t dead.”
The same line, repeated with the same flat, unreadable tone.
Masumi blinked, her mouth going slack.
What was he talking about? Half the things around her made no sense unless she was dead. What kind of delusion was he clinging to?
“Not dead? Why?”
“Because I told you—this isn’t the afterlife. This is Albarique.”
Masumi repeated the word in her head like a parrot.
Not Yomi, not the underworld—Albarique.
Unfamiliar, but Ark clearly said it as something distinct from “the afterlife,” as if he understood the concept and was rejecting it.
“We aren’t ghosts. We aren’t anything like that. We’re living humans.”
“Liar.”
“…What?”
“I’m not buying it. Then why are you walking around with will-o’-wisps and doing ‘authentication’ like some kind of cursed security system?”
“You don’t even know what magic is? Did you crawl out of some backwater so remote it isn’t on any map?”
“I’m from an island nation in the Far East, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a backwater.”
Being called “backwater” was bad enough. “Backwater” didn’t even begin to cover the look he gave her—like she was some uncontacted tribe.
Ark let out a rough, amused sound in his throat, half a laugh and half a sigh.
“This is impressive. We don’t line up at all.”
“On that point, I could not possibly agree more.”
“Maybe it’s amnesia. Maybe you’re delirious. I don’t know what the cause is.”
“Could you stop talking like I’m the only one with a broken brain?”
“You’re the one who showed up in a garrison uninvited.”
“From my perspective, you’re the ones who appeared out of nowhere!”
“You’ve got a mouth on you. A normal woman would be shaking or crying by now.”
“Because if I’m dead, begging for my life would be meaningless.”
“…You need to fix that assumption.”
Ark rose abruptly and seized Masumi’s arm.
She didn’t even have time to yelp in protest before her face was pressed into a wall of hard chest and muscle. She struggled, tried to pull away, but he held her head and back steady—hugging her from the front with a grip that left no room to escape.
What was this supposed to be?
If she were sixteen and he were some tall, handsome stranger, perhaps she’d have squeaked something cute and turned scarlet.
Masumi was twenty-eight.
And she wasn’t naïve. She had no “sweet and innocent” reaction left in her body.
She glared up at him, openly suspicious.
Those obsidian eyes met hers from above.
He was tall—absurdly so. She’d thought her cheek had been pressed to his chest, but it had been near the lower edge, around the line between his abdomen and chest.
They were separated by more than a head’s worth of height. And even then, her shoulders were narrower than his torso.
What sort of physique was this?
His eyes, so sharp a moment ago, dipped slightly, and something almost gentle seeped in—just a trace. It startled her.
It didn’t make the situation any less incomprehensible.
“Hey. I can’t breathe.”
“Can you not? I’m barely using any force.”
“Could you consider the fact that we are not the same size?”
“Like this? Does this hurt?”
“W—hey—ow, ow, ow!”
A very undignified scream escaped her as he squeezed her midsection hard.
Of course it hurt. He was crushing her like he meant to wring out her lungs.
Masumi balled her right hand into a fist and hammered it into his side—once, twice, three times—purely to communicate stop.
He didn’t budge.
The man was made of stone.
Then, suddenly, the pressure eased. Air finally rushed back into her lungs.
“What the hell was that!?”
“Proof that you’re alive.”
“…Huh?”
“A dead person doesn’t feel pain.”
It hurt, didn’t it?
Ark asked it like a casual confirmation, and Masumi went silent.
Yes. It had hurt. Yesterday, today—everything hurt. She’d even complained to herself that no one had warned her that death still came with pain.
Which, now that she thought about it, was… odd.
“Obviously, we’re alive too,” Ark said.
He took her hand and pressed it against the side of his neck.
Warmth.
And beneath it, a steady pulse—unmistakable, rhythmic, stubbornly real.
His heartbeat.
There was no arguing with it.
“I don’t know what you are, but you’re alive. And we’re alive. Which means this isn’t the afterlife. Understood?”
Masumi couldn’t answer.
She didn’t want to accept it, but she had no evidence to deny it. If she truly wasn’t dead, she ought to be relieved.
But she couldn’t feel relief.
Because the weight of a far worse reality was crashing down on her.
She was alive… in a place she didn’t understand.
And whichever way she tried to explain it, every possible answer sounded insane.
One: If this was Earth and it was still modern times—some unmapped wilderness in Europe, a hidden underground civilization—then how did she get here? She didn’t have teleportation.
Two: If this was Earth but in the past or future—then how did she time-slip? She’d only seen that in books and movies.
Three: If this wasn’t Earth at all—some other world, another dimension—then again, how?
At this point it was such an absurd case of getting lost it made The Drifting Classroom look tame.
Her head hurt.
Living was good. Living was supposed to be good. But she couldn’t grasp what had happened to her at all.
Masumi pressed a hand to her forehead and sank back onto the edge of the bed. She could feel Ark and Kasumireaz’s gazes on her, but she was too stunned to respond quickly.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
“Now,” Ark said, “let’s go back to the original issue.”
As if to match her eye level, he sat again.
“You are a suspicious intruder we apprehended, and your fate is mine to decide. And I’m telling you your minimum condition for clearing suspicion is playing at the investiture ceremony. I don’t care if that instrument is a villard or not.”
Right.
Her misunderstanding—the afterlife assumption—had derailed everything, but the core demand had never changed.
He wanted her to perform at some knighthood ceremony.
And she’d refused on instinct.
Which was why things were escalating.
Ark seemed genuinely baffled that she would refuse in this situation, but Masumi had reasons.
Reasons she did not want to lay bare to a man she barely knew, especially not like this. She hadn’t sorted them out. She hadn’t accepted them herself.
While she sat there, gripping those reasons in silence, Ark moved first.
“Don’t think you can claim you can’t play,” he said. “Both I and Kasumireaz heard you.”
Just like that, her retreat was cut off.
But if she gave up now, she would have folded last night. This was not the moment to start being pliant.
“Two grown men standing outside listening in is low.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“At this point, you should accept it. You don’t want to be hurt again.”
“And if I still say no?”
She knew she was being stubborn. She knew it. But she couldn’t stop.
From behind, Kasumireaz looked faintly surprised, as if he’d expected her to yield long before now.
Ark, on the other hand, let out a long, dramatic sigh.
“You still think you have the luxury of choosing?”
He rested an elbow on the arm of the chair and propped his cheek on his hand. Those dark eyes narrowed.
“Someone suspected of spying goes to the cells. That’s the default. Frankly, you wandered into my territory without permission. If you’d been beheaded on the spot, you’d have no grounds to complain. I’m the one being generous by asking for your consent. It’s a gracious offer.”
“Is it just me,” Masumi said, “or does that sound like there’s basically no choice?”
“Good. You’re catching on.”
“What if I say the cells are fine?”
“Rejected. Even if I have to be rough, you’ll play.”
“Then why did you even ask!?”
Masumi slammed her fist down into the bed.
Thump.
Soft. The mattress absorbed it without consequence.
But she wanted the feeling to land somewhere.
Damn it. She’d been cornered.
If she’d truly been dead, she could have been reckless, because what did it matter?
But if she was alive, then being threatened by someone stronger wasn’t something she could shrug off.
Worse, her earlier words—If I’m dead, begging is pointless—had revealed a weakness.
She had shown him what she was afraid of.
Damn it.
This man had seen the outcome from the start. She’d been the only one who believed she could dodge it.
All she’d done was get threatened repeatedly for no gain.
“You understand now,” Ark said, eyes half-lidded as he leaned back.
“Loud and clear,” Masumi replied, utterly unwilling.
In this place, she was the outsider. She didn’t know the land, the rules, or even the vocabulary. They had a base, a hierarchy, an organization. The advantage was brutally, unmistakably theirs.
It was infuriating, but she couldn’t deny it.
Ark’s gaze caught hers.
He seemed to weigh something, then spoke.
“And while we’re at it—don’t even think about running.”
“…Why not?”
“You really are an idiot.”
So blunt it was almost refreshing.
His expression was openly mocking, and Masumi’s temple twitched.
She’d fallen into this same trap earlier. She remembered it. And yet here she was, stepping on the rake again.
Ark continued, as if he’d already decided she would be foolish and he was simply explaining the world to a child.
“Even setting aside the fact that nobody can slip past my eyes or Kasumireaz’s, let’s say you get out. You don’t know magic. You have no mana. How do you plan to survive?”
“I’ll… work?”
“You think you can reach the town alive?”
“Wait, is it that far?”
“It’s not about far. If an unarmed person without sword or spell can walk a road full of magic beasts and come out unscathed, then knights and mages wouldn’t exist.”
Masumi’s mouth tightened.
She wanted to call it a lie.
But she couldn’t. Not with “magic” already a reality here. In a world like this, “magic beasts” were not even the most unbelievable thing she’d heard today.
“Go on and doubt me,” Ark said calmly. “Put your life on the line if you want. I don’t recommend it. You won’t die nicely.”
How could he threaten people so casually?
She hated that she couldn’t dismiss it.
The more she forced herself to think clearly, the more she saw how desperate she was.
“I don’t know if your memory’s been locked away, or you’ve lost it, or what,” Ark said. “But you barely understand the basics of this world. I’m not saying this out of kindness. Stay under my watch. It’s safer.”
“You’re still calling me a spy, and you want me near you?”
“Clearing the suspicion is the priority. Also, it’s annoying if another knight order decides to meddle. Either way, if you truly aren’t a spy, then prove it. Contribute to the Albarique Empire as a musician. Do that, and I might consider taking responsibility for you.”
He barreled through her objections with the confidence of someone who had never once been refused.
And what could she say?
She’d been pushed cleanly to the edge.
She had no leverage. No map. No phone. No money. No way out of the tent without his “authentication,” and apparently no way down the road without dying.
She had wanted to believe this was the afterlife, because at least the afterlife came with rules she’d heard of.
This came with none.
Masumi’s shoulders sank.
In that instant, something that could generously be called an agreement—though it looked more like a leash—tightened around her.
And just like that, an arrangement was made that was so unequal it barely deserved to be called a contract at all.
