The plateau before dawn held almost no sound. The eastern ridge was dark, with only the outline of the Aobine mountain range cut out by starlight. There was wind. The usual east wind, but tonight it carried moisture. Raid walked along the village's perimeter, considering what that moisture meant. ——It was three days ago that Aira said "I hate them" before the bonfire. Raid still hadn't fully digested those words. He neither denied nor affirmed them. He'd only replied, "I see." He still didn't know if that was right. But——he had one certainty: it was good that he hadn't pursued her then. Human hatred chooses which fingers touch it. He turned back along the patrol route at the village's edge. Passing beside the medicinal herb processing shed, he was checking the eastern fence when he noticed it. Something in the shadow of a rock. More precisely——something collapsed there. Raid stopped. He immediately channeled magical power through his circuits. The blue scar on his left arm grew faintly warm. His body, trained by battlefields, made its judgment first about whether this was an enemy. But the heat quickly faded. Not an enemy. A small shadow——human-like, but small. He approached. Silver hair reflected the starlight. A short bob haircut. A small body collapsed face-down. The cloth around the ribs was darkened. Blood. Around the ankles, rope marks had scraped the skin red. Raid crouched down and touched her shoulder. "Hey." A faint sound came back. Not quite words. But consciousness was there. Barely. An arrow wound in the ribs——the broken shaft still protruded from it. The angle of the wound was sharp. Shot while running, or struck while hiding. He could tell it was a wound received during flight. When Raid saw the girl's face, he went silent for one beat. In the center of her forehead, there was a trace of horns like a pattern. A demon. Once he confirmed it, something changed——or rather, it didn't. The decision to carry her to the shed had already been made before he saw her forehead. The depth of the wound and the shallowness of her consciousness had decided it. He lifted the girl. She was light. Much lighter than he'd expected. --- He lit the shed minimally. He moved the spell formula book aside on the desk and laid the girl on it. He carefully extracted the arrow from her ribs——there was resistance. Deep. But it had missed the vital points. The rope marks on her ankles were just abrasions. He began treatment. He pressed the wound, wrapped it with cloth. In the process, he had to roll up her shirt. Heat transmitted through his fingertips. Demon body temperature was higher than humans——he knew this as knowledge. But feeling it actually in his palm, that warmth was like a heated stone, quiet and certain. The softness no different from human skin. Only the temperature was different. During the Third Frontier War——the final major conflict where the Empire and the Eastern demons clashed over three years——Raid had known that same heat. When he'd confirmed the hand of a demon dying on the battlefield. That time too, the body temperature transmitted through his palm had been no different from a human's. "Demons die at the same temperature as humans." In a voice too low to be a soliloquy, Raid whispered it. Not to anyone. Just confirming. He rewrapped the cloth. He adjusted the pressure to be even. His fingertips touching the wound inevitably felt the elasticity of the girl's skin. Young. In human terms, sixteen or seventeen. Imagining where she'd fled from to receive this wound, something dull settled in his chest. He finished treatment and draped a blanket over her. He pulled back a chair and sat before the spell formula book. He hadn't thought he'd sleep. He didn't. Until the eastern sky began to pale, Raid simply counted the girl's breaths. --- When morning light came through the shed window, there was a knock on the door. "Raid, I have a report." He recognized from her voice alone that she was returning from patrol. Raid stood and opened the door. Aira came in. Morning dew glistened on her leather armor's shoulders. She held a report, her green eyes looking straight ahead——and in the next moment, caught the bulge of the blanket. One second, she stopped. Two seconds. Her right hand reflexively moved toward the sword hilt at her waist. Before her fingers could touch the hilt, Raid's hand stopped her. "Wait." "……Who is this?" Her voice was calm. But it was the calmness of suppressed emotion, not actual composure. Her green eyes went back and forth between the blanket, Raid, and the blanket. Then the blanket moved slightly. Silver short bob emerged. Odd eyes looked at the ceiling first. Then at Raid. Then at Aira. Lilia opened her mouth. "Old man, there's an Empire person here?" The room fell into strange stillness. Aira's hand remained on the sword hilt, unmoving. Raid didn't move a single eyebrow. Only Lilia looked between the two of them with a bewildered expression. After a breath, Aira opened her mouth with due diligence. "I am a knight. Not an old man." Lilia immediately shifted her gaze to Raid, then back to Aira. "Got it. Old man and armor person." Raid quietly looked away. Aira's eyebrow twitched slightly. --- The pleasant atmosphere lasted ten seconds. The moment Aira recognized the horn traces on Lilia's forehead, all expression vanished from her face. "A demon." "That's right." "I demand restraint and handover. Under Imperial law, unauthorized demon residence——" "She was dying when I found her. A wound from fleeing." "Regardless, there are procedures." Lilia grabbed Raid's sleeve. Silently, with only her fingertips. Looking up at him, saying nothing. Her eyes alone posed the question——will I be caught again? That spoiled gesture made Aira's face harden further. --- Before noon, they sat at a table in the back of the Red Tile Tavern. The Red Tile Tavern, an inn and bar, was quiet during the day. The smell of stewed lamb drifted from the kitchen. Toba placed two cups of water before Raid and Aira without a word, then withdrew. Raid and Aira faced each other. "My position regarding that child hasn't changed." "I know." "If you know——" "I know, but I don't agree." Aira exhaled shortly. She placed the report on the table and aligned its edge with her fingertips. It was a meticulous gesture. The discussion continued calmly. Aira spoke based on Imperial law and military regulations. Raid responded with the wound's condition, the manner of flight, and individual judgment read from thirty years of battlefield experience. They spoke the same language, but their foundations were fundamentally different. After a while, Aira spoke quietly. "In a farming village near the East Corridor Fort, twelve civilians were killed by demons last year." Raid paused slightly. "I killed the same number of demons during that war." Silence fell. It wasn't a heavy kind of silence. Both statements simply carried the same weight, canceling each other out——that kind of quietness. Aira looked at the wood grain of the table. Then she wrapped both hands around the water cup and raised her gaze. "……My best friend died caught in demon magic during the eastern defense battle. She was sixteen." Her voice didn't change. It was the tone of stating facts. Information disclosed without emotion. But Raid could sense something clinging to the back of that quietness. It didn't continue beyond that. Aira didn't continue. Raid didn't pursue it. From beyond the kitchen, Toba stirred something in a pot. A regular, calm sound. That sound filled the silence between them perfectly. --- Afternoon sunlight streamed into the shed. Lilia said the bandage was "tight" while pressing it. The wrapping didn't match the swelling of the wound. Raid confirmed and decided to rewrap it. Aira returned to deliver the report at exactly that moment——entirely by coincidence. The door opened. The first thing Aira's gaze caught was Lilia's white skin at the ribs. The cloth was loose, and the skin below the wound was barely visible. Beside it, Raid was on his knees. Aira completely froze. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. (It's nothing. Treatment. Just a treatment scene.) Telling herself this, Aira felt subtle heat gathering in her cheeks. Her green eyes wavered slightly. Unable to direct that anywhere, she kept her expression rigid. Lilia looked at Aira. "Will armor person help too?" "Unnecessary." It was an immediate response. Her voice was as usual. She placed the report on the desk——or rather, struck it down with considerable force——and went outside. The door closed. --- Near the village entrance, a young soldier from the advance guard saw Aira and called out. "Vice-captain, is something wrong?" Aira paused. "——Nothing unusual." The soldier tilted his head. The vice-captain's face seemed slightly redder than usual, but he lacked the courage to point that out. "……I see." Aira passed by the soldier and decided to do a full circuit of the village perimeter. --- Inside the shed, Raid looked at the door Aira had exited through just once while rewrapping the bandage. Near the end, Lilia said: "Old man's magical circuits feel weird." Raid's hands stopped. Lilia's heterochromatic eyes——one pale purple, the other pale amber——looked straight at Raid. Childish purity and the sharpness of demon-specific biomagic sensing dwelt simultaneously in those eyes. Demons possessed three to four times the internal magical density of humans. That sensing ability captured circuit abnormalities at a level术师 couldn't hide. "Weird feeling"——the words sounded to Raid precisely accurate. "……Can you keep it secret?" Lilia didn't answer. She just looked at Raid. That silence was the answer. Not "I can't" or "I won't"——but "I don't know how to handle this," a silence of that meaning. Raid tried to continue speaking, then stopped. He felt that no words would reach through those eyes. Calculations and schemes all changed form before this child. --- When twilight began to dye the plateau, Raid headed toward the watchtower. The wooden observation platform at four hundred twenty meters elevation——Aira was already standing before the fence below it. She was looking at the eastern sky. She didn't turn around. The two stood side by side, looking in the same direction. The Aobine ridge was dyed red by the setting sun. But that red contained something beyond the color of sunset. The Akatsume tide was moving beyond Koetori Pass. Sixty kilometers east to Kazami Village. Quiet time continued. Aira spoke first. "My thoughts haven't changed regarding that child's disposition." "I know." The redness of the eastern sky gradually spread. Wind blew. Damp wind. The wind that always came from the east, unique to the plateau. "……My best friend didn't hate demons." A beat of silence. "I hate them." Raid, still looking east, said: "I see." The same words as before the bonfire. The same low tone. Not pursuing, not denying, not comforting——just returning that answer alone. Aira recognized it this time. She understood it was the same response as that night. And understanding that, she felt——just slightly, truly only slightly——helped by that answer. She didn't let that feeling show on her face. She didn't put it into words. She simply received it quietly, somewhere inside. After a while, Aira tried to pull her hand from the wooden fence. She tried to——her tired body kept its weight on the fence, and her hand wouldn't move. Naturally, by chance, Aira's hand remained there. Three centimeters from Raid's hand. Neither moved. The redness of the east slowly dissolved into the darkness of night. The ridge darkened. Stars began to appear, one by one. The three-centimeter distance neither closed nor widened, simply existing there. --- At that moment, inside the shed. Lilia was looking at Raid's spell formula book alone. With a blanket over her shoulders, s