Chapter 12 – Breaking Bonds
As the steam rose from the cup, he checked the scent of herbs that rose as well.
After seeing that it was ready, Keita offered it to the small dragon who was sitting by the fire.
“Drink it. It’ll calm you.”
“Mm…”
The incident with the goddesses was settled for now. The dragon god had told them to rest.
“This doesn’t taste like tea at all.”
“Well, herb tea is basically just boiled weeds.”
“When you put it like that, I don’t feel very grateful…”
Fi had reacted in a very sensitive way to Canila’s story, and had cried for some time after it. Perhaps this small dragon was also burdened by something.
“Keita. Have you ever…been betrayed by anyone?”
He nearly dropped the cup he was holding.
“Why…are you asking that?”
And it wasn’t about betraying, but having been betrayed.
“…I…did something that I can never take back. Something horrible…”
“What did you do?”
“I made a mess of everything. His whole life.”
In spite of appearances, this dragon might be older than him. Perhaps he was once a high-ranking dragon.
“Could it be…that you came here…as atonement?”
“…I guess, you could say that.”
“Is this person…still alive?”
“Yeah.”
He sighed and blew the steam from the cup. Judging by what had happened earlier, there was nothing he could say. He was an inexperienced youngster, while this was an older dragon.
“To be honest, I didn’t understand half of what they were saying. Forgiveness and all of that. It’s too complicated.”
“That’s true. I didn’t get it either.”
“But…I think I do understand that feeling of not being able to forgive someone.”
“You mean…the Seer?”
“No.”
That was a far away memory.
An old wound that hurt when he remembered it.
“A long time ago, I had a friend. Though, to that person, I probably wasn’t a friend at all.”
He had been a transfer student. And he had come just as Keita entered junior high school.
“He was a foreigner, and very attractive. When the sunlight hit his hair, it looked blue.”
“…What? Sounds like a character from a manga.”
“Yeah, it does. There was something very different about him. At first, the girls all surrounded him. But since he rarely talked, they started to drift away.”
Keita, on the other hand, did not stick out at all. His desk was at the far back, near the window. And he never knew who to talk to.
“One of those otaku types… You know, right?”
“I’ve seen enough with just my old man.”
“Well, the dragon god seems a little extreme… Anyway, I was dark and forgettable, I guess.”
He explained self-deprecatingly, but the truth was much worse. While he wasn’t violently bullied, everyone deliberately ignored him.
“So? How did you come to know this blue-haired guy?”
“It was when I was reading a light novel during recess…”
‘What are you reading?’
‘Ah…um, it’s nothing…’
‘You’re reading nothing? You’re very strange.’
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Right? I thought so too.”
But as he didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings about what he was reading, he quickly explained it to him.
The reaction was surprising.
‘That sounds interesting. Could I read it later?’
‘Huh? This is the sequel, so you better start at the beginning.’
‘Alright, then let me borrow it.’
“So he was an otaku too?”
“Not really. I don’t think so. Aside from my novel, he also read a lot of books at the library.”
The boy started to approach him more often. First it was about books, and then he would ask about games and anime.
“Uh, he clearly was an otaku then!”
“Uh…yeah… I suppose you’re right. But…there was something different.”
He had felt that when they were watching a certain anime together.