Chapter 2. Prologue (2)
To Those Who Fight
For those who fight
Everything and nothing becomes a person,
and beside the whole stands the incomplete.
He shall suffer no violation
from anything born beneath this sky.
A thousand years are but the passage of time,
and their end is but a moment.
When the beginning of the end arrives, four suns shall rise,
and the woman who came from a distant place shall return to where she came from.
—The Prophetic Poem of the Shaman Kelpharanuen
The would-be assassin of the Crown Prince remained at large even after the new year began.
The nobles and wealthy, gripped by unease, strengthened the security around their estates and gardens. Those who owned nothing, those who lived from one day to the next, and the colonials spat toward the golden dome of the Imperial Palace, convinced that the Crown Prince would surely be killed the next time.
According to the official announcement, the Emperor had long since withdrawn from public affairs, declaring politics too tiresome to concern himself with. The Crown Prince therefore directed the affairs of state, making him the more accessible target for assassination—not the Emperor, but Crown Prince Nelkor.
There had been five known attempts on his life. Including those that had failed before they could be carried out and those quietly buried without consequence, there had already been more than a dozen.
Those loyal to the Empire believed the Crown Prince’s continued survival to be the clearest proof that the Seven Gods watched over the Empire and the Imperial Family.
Even Juaiye had to admit that the Crown Prince seemed almost unnaturally fortunate. If the gods truly existed, then one of them was certainly favoring him openly.
Juaiye was a twenty-year-old woman living in Ilgenisglar, the capital of the Ilgentavita Empire.
She was neither tall nor short, but there was something about her appearance that naturally drew people’s attention. Her unusually pink hair fell in soft curls past her shoulders, reaching down to her armpits.
Her face was still youthful, with some of the softness of childhood remaining. Her skin was clear and flawless, her nose delicately shaped, and her lips naturally red as flower petals even without rouge.
Yet, incongruously for such a sweet-looking face, her eyes were always clouded by resignation, melancholy, distrust, and worry.
Her irises were a deep violet, like amethysts.
She was a rare beauty in Repauté Street, the notorious slum known as the rotten appendix of Ilgenisglar.
A year earlier, shortly before the attack on the Crown Prince’s summer palace, she had suddenly appeared in the boardinghouse district of Repauté Street and rented a room without paying a deposit.
When she first moved in, she had been wearing an embroidered silk dress. After selling it and paying six months’ rent in advance, however, she began wearing the plain work clothes worn by young female factory workers.
Even in clothes that looked as though two tablecloths had been thrown together and roughly stitched, there was no concealing the sharpness of her eyes or the piercing gaze within them.
As was only natural for a young woman living alone, everyone was curious about her.
Her next-door neighbor, Violetta, initially assumed Juaiye was either a restaurant girl like herself or a factory worker. She was startled, however, when she noticed how pale and delicate the backs of Juaiye’s hands were.
Still, she kept her surprise to herself.
Violetta worked at a restaurant that served food and alcohol from evening until dawn. She sang, danced, carried dishes, and washed plates before finally returning home around sunrise to sleep during the day.
Juaiye, meanwhile, left in the morning, returned before evening, and went to bed early.
When Violetta asked what she did for a living, Juaiye answered awkwardly.
“I give private lessons.”
“Private lessons?”
“Yes…”
Violetta blinked in confusion.
Weren’t private lessons something wealthy children preparing for university received, or perhaps the children of families with even the slightest connection to the nobility?
What could a girl who looked so young and delicate possibly teach?
Violetta decided that the girl was either crazy, lying, or both, and put the matter out of her mind.
She simply felt sorry for her and decided to treat her kindly.
Perhaps it was because Juaiye reminded her of herself fifteen years earlier, when she had fled home without even a pair of shoes after her stepfather tried to sell her.
In any case, Juaiye really did earn her living by giving private lessons.
After paying the rent and buying enough bread to last a month, she had almost nothing left. And there was no telling how long she would be able to survive on tutoring alone.
Still, she taught mathematics to university students.
Not elementary mathematics, either, but trigonometry—the most difficult branch of mathematics, considered an advanced subject and challenging even for university students.
Sometimes, when she found herself wondering, How did my life end up like this?, she had only enough money left to buy a bottle of cheap wine.
Even so, she was grateful that she was supporting herself.
She asked for nothing more.
Nor did she have the time to think about anything else.
