Time passed.
Year 75.
Barbatos's journey had not changed.
Only when she came to a city did she always visit the various workshops. The painting shop. The sculpture studio. The instrument maker's. She would step into ateliers where artists and craftspeople worked and say:
"Excuse me. There's a man who's rather quiet…"
"Gloomy."
"Unlucky-looking, with eyes that are dark for no good reason."
There was such a man.
"He looks like he's carrying all the misfortune and suffering in the world…"
"No, it's not like he's entirely dreary all the time."
"He does laugh fairly often, in his own way."
There definitely was such a man.
"He tosses out pointless jokes constantly."
"A real brat whose hobby is tormenting other people."
"…That's just his way of communicating."
It was a little hard to put into words.
The more Barbatos described Dantalion to the workshop owners, the more she tried to explain him, the more often she found herself at a loss for words. She understood Dantalion far too deeply.
Excessive understanding got in the way of explanation. After all, how many physical conditions and clarifications were needed just for a single human being to open a door and simply walk through.
He had to punch through the resistance of the air. He had to land safely on a floor spinning around the sun at thirty kilometers per second. If he set foot even a fraction of a second too early or too late, the floor would have vanished several kilometers away in an instant.
And the floor wasn't even solid. Stepping on it was practically the same as planting one's foot into a swarm of flies.
He took the gamble and set down his foot. Then one fly in the swarm collided with him. On the next step, another fly struck him from above. He fell countless times, and every time, a fly knocked him back.
A string of coincidences layered upon coincidences—on a line of nothing but bizarre conditions—a man opened a door and walked forward. Where to even begin. How could one speak of "Dantalion"? Could a single gesture ever be explained?
"What kind of man?"
The workshop owners generally understood nothing. They always asked again what kind of man she was looking for. Barbatos would answer with an embarrassed smile.
"…A man who smiles even when he's depressed."
She could say no more.
"A man who suits black."
There was a strange man.
Barbatos liked that man.
She had come to like a strange man.
"I don't know."
After listening to all of Barbatos's explanations, the workshop owners shook their heads in unison. Not "I haven't seen him," but "I don't know." That answer carried two meanings. That they didn't know such a man. And that they didn't understand what she was talking about at all.
"I see. Thank you for listening."
Barbatos bowed her head.
There were people who could grasp the meaning in a single sentence, and there were people who couldn't understand even after a thousand. Barbatos knew this well. Since that was how it was, she felt no disappointment or frustration and headed for the next city.
Time passed.
Year 89.
'Dantalion has absolutely no talent for music.'
Barbatos stared at her now-tattered parchment map and thought.
She had covered the entire Anatolia Empire. Just in case, she had checked every last island village. But continuing a hobby in a remote corner of the world that far removed was difficult. The chances of him staying in a secluded island village were slim.
Just in case.
For that sole reason alone, Barbatos had wandered through hundreds of islands.
'The likelihood of him being absorbed in music is low. Singing too. It would be painting or sculpture… hmm. He could be immersed in both.'
Barbatos shrugged. Eighty-nine years had passed, but her resolve had not changed. If anything, it had been honed to a sharper edge. She understood Dantalion better now than ever before.
The more she came to understand him, the more she came to understand herself.
A diver descending into the deep sea gazed into the abyss and, at the same time, saw the limits of her own body. Just like that, Barbatos looked at Dantalion and realized she was reflected there too. When she thought about him, she felt as though she were sinking into cold seawater.
"…."
This was a place to let go of breath.
The slowly falling petals had no direction.
It was neither time being pushed forward nor time being pulled away, yet it was like the lingering note of a cello that had just stopped—extending some extra measure of time even as it played nothing at all. Barbatos could feel time passing through her body and fading away.
"Yeah. It's okay."
Barbatos opened her eyes.
She looked down at a single cherry blossom petal that had fallen into her palm and smiled softly.
"I've only made it about halfway now."
Time passed.
Year 120.
Barbatos crossed from the Anatolia Empire to the Kingdom of Moscow. Unlike Anatolia, where desert stretched across the south, Moscow's snowfields extended endlessly the further north you traveled.
One winter day. Barbatos gazed at the landscape blanketed in white all the way to the horizon and realized she had wasted her journey. Desert or snowfield. She had assumed Dantalion would surely favor one of the two. What a terrible miscalculation.
"…I was an idiot."
Dantalion most certainly resided in the snowfields.
The desert did not suit him at all. There were oases there. There were nomads under a cheerful sun. Dantalion looked utterly wrong beneath blazing sunlight, and even more wrong next to girls dancing beside an oasis.
This was the place.
Barbatos could feel it. Dantalion was here. Not anywhere else—right here.
Sometimes, packs of snowfield wolves attacked Barbatos and tore her body to shreds. She swung her self-defense longsword, but holding off an entire pack of wild beasts at once was no easy task. Barbatos's crimson blood fell onto the white snow.
There were plenty of days she was set upon by bandits as well. When they recognized her as a young girl, the bandits leered with greasy smiles. But Barbatos met their grins with grins of her own, stripped off her thick fur coat, and bared her naked body for all to see.
"Go ahead."
The bandits' faces twisted in disgust.
"If you want to ravage me, be my guest."
A body horribly disfigured by blood-red and violet burns.
The flesh was so mangled that even looking at it made one's stomach lurch with revulsion. A leper's skin would have looked less grotesque. Even bandits who hadn't seen a woman in months spat on the ground at the sight of Barbatos's body.
The bandits called it bad luck and didn't even bother robbing her of her cash. They feared she might be afflicted with some contagious disease or curse. Barbatos watched them flee with their tails between their legs and laughed out loud. The freezing winter wind washed over her entire body.
"You idiot, Dantalion!"
In the middle of the snowfield.
Barbatos spread her arms wide, naked.
"Just wait a little longer—I'll come bash your face in!"
Her booming voice echoed across the vast expanse of snow. Even so, the fury wasn't spent, and she let out a scream. Aaah, aaaah—a cry with no meaning and no shape burst forth endlessly. It was laughter.
"…."
Barbatos lowered her head.
The echoes that had been ringing out slowly died away. There was no sound left in the snowfield. Or rather, there was no sound loud enough for the snowfield to have to reckon with.
"…ng…."
There was only a feeble sound too faint to even reach the eye.
In place of a sound, hot drops fell one by one onto the snow. Barbatos's arms trembled. Her shoulders shook. She clenched her teeth hard, yet her lips wouldn't stop quivering. The dam she had held back for over a hundred years crumbled.
"Nn…ngh, aaah…"
Dantalion.
"Really. What the— I hate this…nngh…"
Dantalion.
"…Ah, ngh… you bastard…"
Tears streamed down her face.
Barbatos wrapped her arms around herself. White breath escaped her lips in an unsteady rhythm. It was too cold here. Year after year, this wretched body was falling apart.
Two hundred years was not a reprieve granted to Dantalion alone.
Barbatos, she too, had been given only two hundred years at most.
She could feel the mana remaining inside her body draining ever further. Her existence was fading away. Before even the last dregs pooled at the bottom ran dry, Barbatos wanted to meet him. She wanted to show herself to Dantalion.
"Dantalion…"
Appear before my eyes.
Let me hear your voice.
So the thought that you might already be dead no longer echoes in my head.
So I no longer suffer under that thought.
Barbatos held back the plea that threatened to spill from her lips at any moment and murmured Dantalion's name over and over. Dantalion might already be dead. If she said it out loud, she felt as though everything would truly collapse.
He'll be alive.
—Then why isn't he right in front of me?
He won't have died so easily.
—Then why doesn't he answer my voice?
If Dantalion died before I could find him.
If I died before I could find Dantalion.
"…."
Barbatos stared straight ahead with tear-filled eyes. Without her noticing, a red sunset had settled over the snowfield. Even against that blinding light, Barbatos looked straight into the sun.
Not yet.
She could hold out a little longer still.
Barbatos pulled her cloak around herself and set her feet in motion once more. Footprints remained where she stepped. They would vanish without a trace when the snow fell again, but until then, they would remain clearly imprinted—those brief, fleeting marks. Trusting in those very traces, Barbatos kept walking.
Time passed.
"…A man who suits black?"
"Yes. I was wondering if you might have seen him."
Barbatos arrived in a city called Novgorod.
In the early days of her journey, she had peeked into every house in a city one by one. But now she had learned a better way: she visited the workshops located in the city first. She didn't forget to check the bars and breweries either. If it was Dantalion, he would surely make a habit of stopping into breweries on a regular basis.
A woman who owned a painting shop asked carefully:
"…Was there some business you had?"
In that instant.
Barbatos's eyes narrowed.
The nuance in what the woman had just said. The tone of her voice. Even the way she was sizing her up. Barbatos's sharp senses picked up on all of it. But she didn't get excited. There had been sixty-four cases like this so far. All sixty-four had turned out to be duds.
"I had something I once borrowed."
Barbatos put on an embarrassed smile.
"It wasn't me, but my ancestor who took it, and it's been passed down through the family for generations. My father left a dying wish that I return it to its rightful owner no matter what, so I've been traveling alone."
This level of excuse should be appropriate for dealing with humans.
Barbatos feigned a pure demeanor while coldly studying the woman's attitude. The woman was hesitating. The pause lasted one second—maybe even less than that—but to Barbatos it felt glaringly obvious.
The woman lowered her head.
"I'm sorry. No such customer has ever visited our shop."
A lie.
"Oh, so that's how it is. Sigh. When will I ever find him…"
"Were you planning to stay in this city for a while? I could ask around for you with other customers."
"No. I don't have much time. I'm leaving first thing tomorrow."
You're lying right now.
Barbatos left the painting shop with conviction. She slipped straight into the alley across the way. It was the kind of narrow, cold lane where only cats would roam. Barbatos concealed herself among tattered rags and lay in wait in the alley.
The next day, the woman set out pulling a cart toward somewhere.
"…."
Barbatos trailed her at a steady distance. Past the streets, past the city walls, the woman gradually turned into a dim forest path. Occasionally she glanced behind her, but that was fine. Barbatos had not withered to the point where she could be spotted by a common woman.
At the end of the path stood a manor.
The woman knocked on the door, and shortly after, someone came out. Barbatos hid behind a tree and watched the gap of the door from far away. The woman's body blocked the wind, and she couldn't see the other person's face clearly. But the woman shifted her position gradually, and each time, the figure on the other side came partially into view.
When the woman finally bowed deeply at the waist.
"————————."
Barbatos saw.
A figure cloaked entirely in a black mantle.
A man with a bitter smile.
A smile that resembled someone from memory.
"Ah…"
It was only for the briefest of moments.
The woman left, and the door closed.
A moment as short as a lie.
When she came to her senses, Barbatos had been crying silently. She didn't even know when the tears had started. She simply couldn't believe that she was crying. Inside her, there had been this many tears all along.
"I found… him…"
"I found him…"
"…He's not dead…"
"Thank goodness… yeah, thank goodness…"
"He's not dead… I'm so glad…"
Barbatos could not move.
She sat right there and wept through the night.
Year 179 since the journey began.
A girl wanted to meet a man.
And so, she found him.