The Frondier in front of my eyes put all his effort into appealing for himself.
What had happened in the past, what they had gone through together.
They were stories I knew as well. When I’d fainted after reading the diary, the flood of Frondier’s past memories that had poured into me.
For me, they were memories that had flowed in, but for the real Frondier, they were things he had experienced himself. He pulled those memories out one by one and showed them to Atjie.
Childhood memories, trivial conversations.
Watching Frondier, I thought.
There was no need for that.
Even without doing any of that, Atjie already—
“Right.”
Atjie closed his eyes deeply, then opened them again.
“You’re my younger brother.”
Atjie knew.
He might be deceived by the fake pretending to be his younger brother,
But there was no way he would fail to recognize his real younger brother once he met him.
“Haha! I knew it! You really are my hyung! I knew you’d recognize me!”
Frondier was overjoyed, practically jumping for joy.
Then he soon turned a gaze full of hatred toward me.
“Hey, fake! Give me back my body!”
“......”
I had nothing to say.
I didn’t know any way to return this body to Frondier.
......If I had known.
If I’d known, would I have given this body to Frondier?
“Give it back! You fake bastard!”
Thump, thump, thump.
Grab!
Frondier strode over roughly and grabbed me by the collar.
I didn’t resist.
I had no right to.
No, I had no will to.
“But Frondier.”
Atjie opened his mouth.
Without meaning to, I glanced at Atjie, and in return I received his cold gaze.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“......”
Frondier, who had been pleased, looked at Atjie.
“Yeah! Hyung, what is it?”
“Let me ask you one thing.”
“Sure, anything!”
Frondier grinned. He loosened his grip and looked at Atjie.
Atjie asked,
“Why are you here?”
“Uh......?”
Atjie’s emotionless gaze.
Frondier let out a brief, flustered sound, then hurriedly answered.
“Like I said, hyung. That bastard killed me! He snatched my body for himself and turned me into a soul!”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
Atjie shook his head.
He looked around, then gazed down the far end of the passage, then looked back at Frondier.
“Why are you standing here in front of Tartarus, waiting to go inside.”
“......Ah, uh......?”
When Atjie said that much.
Only then did I feel something was off and opened my eyes.
Tartarus was a place where only the worst criminals came. It was similar to Nastrond.
There was a separate place for people who died normally. Helheim was the representative example, and there was also the Underworld ruled by Hades.
So why was Frondier here.
“The you I knew was a lazy and timid child. Our family encouraged that. We did.”
Atjie’s words halted for a moment there.
But with not a single change on his face, he spoke again.
“We were a family that injected a sense of inferiority into you.”
“......!”
When Atjie said that.
I swallowed wrong, and it felt like that breath had turned into a rock and dropped down inside me.
'Why me?'
I wasn’t Frondier.
I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be hurt by that.
“Hy-hyung.”
“But Frondier. Even so, the you I knew hadn’t committed sins that would send you to a place like this.”
Atjie tilted his head.
“What did you do, Frondier.”
There was a familiar scent to his way of speaking.
Yes, this was how Atjie’s voice had sounded when he spoke to Frondier.
Frondier rolled his eyes, then said,
“No, this is, uh, there must’ve been some kind of mistake! See, I didn’t die properly, so the process of coming here wasn’t normal either!”
To that,
“No, that can’t be.”
Campe spoke.
“The only one who can send someone to Tartarus regardless of their sin is Thanatos. But you didn’t die like that. You came here legitimately, Frondier.”
In other words, there was no mistake.
Frondier had committed a crime.
Atjie asked Campe,
“What’s this one’s sin?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s the sinner’s one and only right. Even if you’re family, it can’t be blabbed without the person’s consent.”
After saying that, Campe gave a provoking smile.
“Want to guess it? This one’s sin.”
At that, Atjie lowered his gaze.
And soon, those eyes turned,
Toward me.
“......What do you think?”
“......What?”
“If Frondier has stayed here for three years, then conversely, you’ve lived as Frondier for about three years.”
I couldn’t give any answer to Atjie’s words.
Of course, he was right. Atjie’s guess was accurate.
But because I didn’t know the intent behind these words, my mouth froze up.
“So try to guess.”
With eyes that still revealed nothing, Atjie asked me,
“What is my younger brother’s sin?”
***
Elodie stared at Vishnu with a blank expression.
A fake? Who? Frondier?
Ha. The corner of Elodie’s mouth lifted. The words were so absurd she laughed.
So she turned her head away from Vishnu and looked at Rudra. Believing he would be making the same face as her.
But.
“Elodie.”
Rudra spoke.
“Frondier’s soul was switched about three years ago. Around the time the fake Mistilteinn was found in the dungeon and the meeting was held about it.”
Rudra said something strange.
He was telling her when Frondier had changed.
Right, it had been then. When she had first felt that something about Frondier had changed.
When she had discovered a different light in the eyes of the human sloth that was Frondier.
And now they were saying that hadn’t been Frondier turning his life around.
That he’d simply been a different person.
“......That’s ridiculous.”
“Elodie.”
“That’s ridiculous. There’s no way. Who would do something like that? How could someone use that kind of magic, and for what?”
Step.
Elodie stepped back.
She widened the distance between herself and the five gods.
It looked like she was taking a distance to fight, and also like she was simply trying to run away.
The five gods each addressed her in turn.
“Elodie. Frondier is a soul the giants brought for humanity’s victory.”
“They brought someone with a mind that wouldn’t be greatly shaken even by all kinds of unjust circumstances. The one who fit that best is the current Frondier.”
“Never thought it was strange? The way Frondier spoke to you, his eyes, the knowledge and information he possessed that even you, his childhood friend, didn’t know. All of that was just because he ‘turned his life around’?”
“Think about what Frondier used to be like.”
“The current Frondier is—”
At that moment, Elodie’s mana exploded.
“Shut up──!!”
Wuuung─
Elodie’s voice rang through the pure white space.
“Shut up, don’t talk that crap. There’s no way. Frondier, he......!”
“He hated you. Elodie.”
Vishnu’s voice.
Ha. Elodie let out a breathy laugh and looked at him again.
“Elodie. You know now. How the old Frondier thought of you.”
“......The past.......”
“You thought you were forgiven, didn’t you?”
Vishnu took one step closer.
Clack.
Rudra blocked his path.
“Don’t come any closer. Vishnu. We agreed not to torment Elodie with anything beyond the truth.”
“I’m just talking. What’s your problem, Rudra. What I’m saying is more important than mere ‘facts’ you all love so much—it’s the truth.”
Paying no mind to Rudra standing in his way, Vishnu spoke past him to Elodie.
“Frondier was ignored by his family. They believed he had no ability, no talent, and that he was lazy. But in truth he could decipher ancient script, and that laziness was the curse of Sloth. The people around him, who didn’t know the truth, looked at Frondier with contempt. And the one who stood closest to him was you, Elodie.”
“Vishnu!”
The warning tone in Rudra’s voice.
At that, Vishnu’s eyes, filled with killing intent, turned to Rudra.
“Don’t bark pointlessly. You insolent thing.”
“......!”
“Is there anything I’m saying that isn’t one of those ‘facts’ you like so much? We agreed that Elodie would know all the information, grasp the entire situation, and that we’d leave the future choice to her. If you’re going to interrupt me, then claim I’m lying, or defend her, or prove that this is unnecessary information. Just shouting won’t solve anything here.”
After saying that, Vishnu smiled again and turned his gaze to Elodie.
“Isn’t that right? Elodie. You’re his childhood friend. Your families were close, so it couldn’t be helped.”
“......”
Elodie didn’t react at all.
But she heard everything clearly.
Vishnu’s voice. Those words. Every bit of content and the emotions behind them.
“You’re the one who completely broke Frondier, who had already been staggering under his family’s and everyone else’s gazes and evaluations, Elodie.”
“......!”
“Inferiority, helplessness, jealousy. Falling into defeatism, Frondier thrashed about. You realized that only later, and so you were tormented by guilt, and it turned into a trauma.”
Frondier had hated Elodie.
After she realized that, all Elodie could think about was how she might be forgiven. She couldn’t have put it into precise words herself, but that unconscious feeling kept growing and growing, eventually becoming a trauma.
And in the dream born from that.
“You thought you’d been forgiven, didn’t you? By Frondier.”
“......Then, that dream too.”
“Of course.”
Vishnu shook his head.
“He wasn’t Frondier.”
“Ah.......”
“He’s committed a sin, Elodie.”
The Frondier Elodie had met in the dream.
The one who’d told her he was jealous of her, and that he was actually sorry to her.
That man.
“He pretended to be Frondier and acted as if Frondier had forgiven you.”
“Ah, aaah.......”
“Frondier has never forgiven you, Elodie.”
Elodie’s hand trembled.
With that hand, she touched her own face. The feel of her face was like rough burlap. Her senses were strange.
Looking at such an Elodie, Vishnu spoke.
“And so, this is a choice. Elodie.”
“......A choice?”
Elodie asked back weakly, and this time all five gods nodded.
Agni spoke.
“If you have forgiven the current Frondier—meaning, the fake—then you’ll have to send him back to his original world. With your own hands. You’re the only one who can, the only one who can use the Four-Element Combination.”
Next, Indra spoke.
“But if you can’t forgive the fake, then you’ll have to fight him without sending him back to his original world. Or you can expose his truth yourself and drag him down into ruin.”
In short.
If Elodie forgave the current Frondier, that would mean a farewell.
If she couldn’t forgive him, then naturally it would become a chain of hatred and conflict.
Either way, Elodie would never meet Frondier the way she had up until now.
Either way.
“You’re...... telling me to choose that?”
Elodie asked in a powerless voice, and then,
Thud.
She collapsed where she stood.
She didn’t have the strength to stay standing. It was like all her strength had drained out through her feet; she stared blankly into empty air.
She had no idea what to do.
What would happen if she refused to make a choice like this.
If she pretended she hadn’t heard anything they’d said.
Would she be able to meet Frondier again and talk to him?
──Would I be able to see that person as ‘Frondier’?
“Ugh.”
Elodie bit her lip. She hid her face behind her arms. Her face was twisted up. Her eyes shook.
The five gods silently watched her.
Vishnu looked at the other gods; without words, his eyes spoke.
‘Elodie wasn’t ready.’
Just as Vishnu had said at the beginning.
It might actually be true.
Elodie had no desire to make a choice.
If she did choose, what would happen, and how.
What it meant for preparations of the heart to be this difficult.
Sitting there, Elodie wrapped her arms around her knees. Silent sobbing. Her shoulders occasionally shook.
An old childhood habit again.
'......Frondier.......'
Memories of the time she had spent with Frondier rose up.
─I wonder if I ever managed to tell you thank you?
─Because you weren’t okay, I......!
─Since puberty has come, I am going to run away from home.
─I’m sorry, Elodie. I’ve been jealous of you for a very long time.
─If I had been the least bit late and you had vanished from the world, Elodie, then the principal’s next enemy would have been me.
─Just as I remove my potential enemies, I’ll remove yours too, Elodie.
Bit by bit, further back into the past.
She traced back the memories of that someone she had believed to be Frondier.
“......Fron......”
And at last, those memories reached,
─I know.
“Ah.......”
A very old memory she pulled up.
Frondier’s words to Elodie when she had been foolishly agonizing over whether to join a club.
─You’re like me.
─It feels like you’re all alone.
─Like you’re stuck in some isolated place, and you feel like you’ll never be able to get out of that remote place.
─Even if you talk with people and smile, you think they’ll never really understand you.
“......Right. Back then, you.”
I see.
So that was it.
“That’s what you meant.”
Words he couldn’t say to anyone, words that would have been dangerous if he did.
He had said them only to her.
Because she was like him.
Even if it was pain that no one else could ever understand.
He couldn’t just swallow it all down alone.
They were words I wasn’t supposed to fully understand, but words he could entrust to me.
Those hadn’t been the words of Frondier de Roach.
They had been your words.
“I understand now.”
Elodie spoke.
The light returned to her eyes.
Life came back into them; her teary eyes sparkled,
Holding more than the tears she’d shed.
“I didn’t like Frondier.”
I──
