https://ncode.syosetu.com/n5562hc/84/
Win or Lose
Without really feeling it, I walked to the front of the stage and took a seat in the fourth chair.
At Heath’s urging, I put the tiara there on my head and accepted the applause from everyone in the venue.
After that, the ceremony continued on without me having to do anything other than sit there. One after another, great people whose faces and names I’ve never heard of came out to give us their congratulations and encourage us for the future.
I found Akatsu sitting in the very front row of the general audience. The way he was smiling was obviously weird. He….absolutely had something to do with this.
Money, violence, power. I don’t know how he did it, but he took the votes that should’ve gone to Lily and gave them to me.
And now, the first place Lily didn’t qualify while the person in last place, me, danced my way past every other contestant and claimed the fourth position.
Maybe it’s because he’s just a naturally quarrelsome guy, but things have ended the worst possible way for me and Lily. I shouldn’t have gone against him. I could’ve convinced Lily somehow and had the two of us drop out together. Living comfortably under the Ruhuna family was the best compromise available to us. This is the punishment for me being greedy.
Lily is Lily, so she’ll almost certainly end up accepting her arranged marriage out of some sense of responsibility. She’ll say she isn’t in a position to marry who she wants just because of something like love, and she isn’t the type of person who could move on and pretend those issues don’t exist.
I kept trying to come up with some solution I could use with my title as hero, but there aren’t any ideas coming to mind.
Turning down the title won’t improve things for either of us. The only thing I could figure right now was to use my position for maximum effect when the time came.
As I was running through my thoughts, the ceremony continued on without me, and before I knew it, we were almost at the end.
They wanted to finish with each of the candidates talking about their how they carry on into the future as a hero. Ran already finished up her own speech, and she handed the loudspeaker over to me.
What am I supposed to talk about? My mind is still a mess, but I opened my mouth anyway.
“Thank you to everyone who voted for me. My name is Liffy Ruhuna.”
I waited for the obligatory applause to pass.
“I…. um…. I made a promise during my pledge that I would create a world where anyone could live freely. That wasn’t a lie. Believe in me. I will absolutely help you. I promise.”
It must’ve sounded arrogant to most of the people listening, but I didn’t care. Rather than the nation, it is more important that a single person hear my thoughts right now. This time, I will be the one to save you, Lily.
After I finished my greeting, I returned to my seat and glanced towards Lily. She was already gone.
♠
After the ceremony came to an end, us chosen who were supposed to become heroes were meant to gather so what happens next could be explained to us.
I used the break they gave to us and told those in charge I needed to use the bathroom before going to search for Lily. As has always been the case, the people who dropped out of the contest quickly returned to their dorm rooms to pick up their belongings before leaving.
Lily might already be back at the dorms, or maybe she’s still unable to accept the results and is sitting dumfounded in an empty building.
I run through the hall’s back entrance. My heels were getting in the way, so I threw them aside and ran barefoot. The tiara was causing its own problems, so I took it off and lazily threw it on a random bust in the hallway.
While I was running around, a miracle happened. Lily told me before that miracles happen by human hands, and this is proof of it.
Through the crowds of milling people, I just happened to catch a flash of silver hair walking out the door.
I weaved my way through the throng of people crowding the exit and pushed through until I spotted that silver-haired person’s back.
“Lily! Wait!”
That silver-haired person slowly turned around. Her eyes are hollow, like someone swallowed in despair and contemplating a future jumping off a building. Lily’s eyes….should never look like that. Lily is someone who is always noble and strong. And yet, there’s no doubt that this person is Lily Ruhuna.
“Lily….um….please don’t go! Let’s run away together!”
Lily shook her head.
“A candidate is one thing, but it is unheard of to have a proper hero disappear. If I were to go with you, it would cause a large nuisance to not just our families, but our friends as well. Give it up.”
“I won’t! I’m not giving up on you Lily!”
“Now that I think about it, I have yet to congratulate you. Congratulations Liffy. The world you are on your way towards seems like a comfortable one. I look forward to watching you from inside my birdcage.”
“Why have you already given up!? You can always move past this and try again!”
“Because it’s impossible!”
Lily’s voice resonated in the empty air.
“It’s not impossible. This ended with me becoming a hero. What is it that your father actually wants to accomplish here? We can work together and fight back!”
“Father? Why….did you make a deal with him? You said you turned him down.”
A spark of life lit up in Lily’s empty eyes. Some emotion came into her voice as well. The fact that her criticism is aimed at me catches my breath while my heart feels like it’s being torn to pieces, but thank goodness Lily’s spirit isn’t completely dead.
“I did refuse. But it makes no sense that my rank went up so high. It had to be him. That person took your votes away and gave them to me. Nothing else makes sense. He probably thought that we would end up fighting with each other if this is how things turned out.”
“Oh….that’s what you mean. You’re wrong. I did it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I had a dream. You and I would become heroes together and travel the world. And so, to make that dream a reality, I took a gamble. I am guessing Father was aware I was taking this gamble. And so, contacting you and getting you to agree to drop out was his first arrow while allowing me my gamble and hoping it would cause me to fall was his second.”
“You….gambled?”
“The reason why I’ve been able to remain in the top position this whole time is because I had a dedicated source of votes who would most certainly vote for me. The first group is those from the Ruhuna territory while the others were from Olive….the Elijah family territory. Olive and I have been desperately making our preparations ever since the first Hero Audition was announced.”
With the spark of life relit in Lily, she’d become more talkative. I doubt she was purposefully hiding it from me, but I had no idea Lily had that much guaranteed support.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the race was rigged, but it is definitely an advantage that none of the commoner competitors would have. Then again, the end result has three commoners and one emerging aristocrat as the finalists, so it doesn’t look like all the nobles were cultivating votes like this. Both Lily and Olive probably had to rack their brains in order to prepare all this.
“As long as I can become a hero, it does not matter if I am unable to acquire first place. And so beginning in the second round, I started pouring votes from the Ruhuna territory away from me and towards you. Of course while this would mean my own position would become endangered, I had confidence I could make up for it by winning votes from the locals while being safeguarded with the votes of the Elijah territory. I figured that by properly balancing the amounts, I could have you come in fourth place while I would fall to third.”
“All that….”
“It would be worth it. I was serious about you.”
So it’s true that Lily’s votes went to me, but it was all part of Lily’s plan, not some ploy of Akatsu.
If the votes coming from the Ruhuna territory were greatly changed, Akatsu would definitely hear about it. Of course, he would’ve let Lily do whatever she wanted even after learning about it. Lily’s support is going down, so he could get what he wants by just watching.
That unnatural rise in my rank during the second round makes a lot of sense now that I know it was because Lily was helping me. Lily said it herself back then. Miracles are something built by human hands. She just failed to mention whose hands they were.
But ‘was serious’ she said. Does she mean her feelings have already cooled down? Or, has she already decided to live while killing her feelings? I….don’t know which option scares me more.
“It was Olive’s betrayal that caused my major miscalculation. She gave up on me at the last moment and decided to support you instead. And so, I didn’t have anywhere near the votes I required….no, it doesn’t matter. I never expected Ren to rise up as much as she did. Nerine resigning threw everything into a mess I couldn’t properly read. It was always a risky gamble since I’d never know fully how the people of this nation would vote. I simply lost my bet.”
I think she’s trying to assure me that her situation isn’t my fault, but the short of it is that Lily gave me her votes. And now, she has fallen.
It’s a ridiculous story. Lily is someone cool and confident who avoids mixing her personal and professional worlds, yet she ended up sabotaging her own future because she prioritized love.
“Did Olive-san really betray you?”
“She never had any intentions on becoming a hero herself. She is busy working herself so she may be recognized as a female head in noble society. I promised to provide my support both as a daughter of the Ruhuna family and as a hero.”
Lily was remaining calm despite talking about how her friend had betrayed her. Their relationship must just be that complicated.
I remembered the secret conversation I overheard between Olive and Lily inside Lily’s room before the first screening had even started. Olive had said it was thanks to her family that Lily came in first, so she had funneled votes from her territory to Lily in order to get her future support.
“But, I think your promise really struck a chord with her. She must have sensed my feelings for you and realized I would funnel my votes over to you even in the finals. If I failed, she would have lost everything with nothing to fall back on. So she made her own bet. And won.”
Olive spoke to me after my interview. It turns out she was measuring me up to see if I was worth voting for.
“If you put the one person, one vote idea aside, you can think of this win as you being able to win Olive and me over to your side. Be proud.”
“That….That’s not….”
“I, really am a fool. I never imagined I would lose myself like this. Love is a terrifying thing. But, I’m happy I got to experience it at least once in my life.”
“The way you’re talking….will you die?”
“No. I will just live as if I had.”
“What about what you said to Nerine? ‘Whether you have the courage or not, you will only ever have one life. If you wish to avoid the future where you end up having to marry a nobleman, you will have to do something.’ Isn’t that just as true for you right now?”
Lily looked surprised, but she quickly looked away from me. Lily’s failure must have completely shattered her heart. I will just have to take my time to help her slowly heal.
“She died once. Maybe I will be able to think the same if I do too.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“It’s almost time. Goodbye.”
As soon as I was starting to make way with her, she forcibly ended the conversation and made a hasty exit. It’s not like Lily to just give up like this. If I cornered her any further, it would only make her suffer more.
As I was about to head back to the venue with my shoulders slumped, I found someone standing in the shadows nearby.
I braced myself assuming it would be Akatsu, but his gentle smile and deep wrinkles covering his face gave way that the man was much older. It only took me a second to realize it was Heath.
“Sorry, Heath-san. I will return now.”
“No need, let’s speak a little bit while we’re here. I happened to have been dumped once right near this very spot. It was like looking into a mirror of the past. I tried stopping her, but all my efforts were in vain as she left for a distant village on her own.”
Heath’s eyes narrowed like he was gazing back to a moment far in the past.
“Sorry…. I’m not feeling very well. Let’s talk about the past some other time.”
I started moving along as if I was the one running away this time from Heath.
“That person I tried to hold back was a dancer named Erica. Have you ever heard of her?”
If someone tells you they aren’t feeling well, why would you keep talking and trying to catch their attention?
It’s not like I’m actually physically ill though, so I stopped and turned towards Heath.
There’s no way he wouldn’t be able to catch my attention. Why’s he bringing out Grandma’s name?
Experimental Translations 