Once the wagon finished descending the slope, the road leveled out onto flat land.
The cobblestones had long since ended. On either side, what looked like wheat fields stretched into the distance, giving way to a dark forest beyond. With every backward glance, the hill of the royal capital sank lower. By the third time Eiji looked back, the rooftops and castle walls had dissolved into the dusk, practically indistinguishable from the hill's dark silhouette.
Before long, the sun set completely.
The sky drained of color, and the stars emerged. The constellations were completely unfamiliar. Eiji couldn't tell which one was the North Star. Even if he could, it wasn't as if it would help him find a way home. To begin with, there was no guarantee the celestial bodies of this other world matched those seen from Earth.
After traveling for a while, two loaded wagons approached from the opposite direction, both heading up toward the royal capital. The drivers merely raised a hand to each other, and that was the extent of their exchange. As they passed, the man on the oncoming driver's box glanced down into their cart. Two high schoolers in uniforms—which, to the locals, must have looked like strange foreign clothes—sat on a wagon bed of splintered, missing boards. The man started to open his mouth, but when Eiji glared at him, he clamped it shut and faced forward again.
Everyone was heading toward the royal capital. This solitary wagon was the only one traveling the other way.
Just once, the lights of a settlement appeared beside the road. Seven or eight roofs clustered together as if huddling for warmth. A lantern in a window moved from left to right. Perhaps someone was preparing dinner.
The driver didn't touch the reins. The lights drifted behind them, and then disappeared.
(...He's not stopping?)
The horse wasn't moving fast. Given its sluggish pace, one would think there was every reason to call a halt for the night. Eiji leaned out from the edge of the cart and called toward the back of the driver's box.
"Hey, you planning to drive straight through the night?"
"I ain't getting paid for lodging. Taking my time just loses me coin."
"I see... Sucks for you."
When Eiji offered the sarcastic remark, the man threw back, "Not as bad as it does for you folks."
Apparently, the job of hauling Eiji and Yuna away to be discarded didn't include an allowance for an inn.
The kingdom hadn't deemed this man worth the cost of a single night's stay. If the cargo being hauled was worthless, the hauler was treated accordingly.
(They're really thorough about it, through and through.)
The driver fell silent after that. The angle of his cloaked back hadn't shifted an inch since they left the castle.
The horse's mane had been left to grow wild, hanging all the way to its shoulders. Its tail was the same. Even from the wagon bed, the chipped edges of its hooves were plainly visible. No one must have groomed the poor beast in quite a while.
The cart tilted to the right. It did so without fail with every single rotation of the wheel. Yuna gripped the sideboards, bracing and adjusting her posture to match the rhythm. She had been doing the exact same thing ever since they passed through the castle gates.
(Couldn't I fix this wheel?)
Eiji reached out from the cart and pressed the tip of his finger against the rim.
Nothing happened.
A crack ran along the wood grain at the base of a spoke. One section of the hoop was warped inward, jolting the wagon bed every time it rolled over that spot. Remove two spokes, drive in a moistened wedge, and tighten it back down—he could understand how to repair it just by looking at it. But despite understanding the process, not a single word surfaced in his mind.
(Why?)
He kept his finger on it, but nothing changed. The wheel was still turning.
And it was currently in the middle of transporting cargo.
(I get it. Even if something is broken, there are cases where the skill won't trigger.)
It was just like when he had touched the unbroken candlestick in the castle corridor. Back then, he had brushed it off because the piece wasn't broken, but this wheel was damaged. Yet even in its warped state, it was actively hauling two people and their baggage away from the capital.
The appraiser's proclamation echoed in his memory.
"It only takes effect on broken objects and discarded items."
Apparently, being broken wasn't enough on its own. What mattered was whether or not it had been cast aside. When it came to conditions, that was likely the more crucial requirement.
(Good grief... What a pain in the ass. No wonder everyone called it a dud.)
Eiji pulled his hand back and hunched his shoulders.
The night wind seeped in through the shredded fabric across his back. Yuna had healed the wound, but the tears in his uniform remained. The cold night air drifted directly over his newly closed skin.
Yuna finally released her grip on the side of the cart. She opened and closed her palms twice over her knees. Deep red impressions from the rough boards remained etched into her skin.
One of the buttons on her cuff had come undone. When they departed the castle, she had carefully refastened both. The knot of her ribbon had also slipped slightly askew below her collar.
("She'll cry uncle soon enough," huh.)
By Kaito's calculations, Yuna should have broken down and given up long ago. In reality, she was sitting quietly, holding on to the rattling frame and shifting her weight to match each bump without a single word of complaint.
Just what had Kaito been looking at all this time?
Eiji dragged the hemp sack closer and set it down between himself and Yuna. It was bulky enough to cover the gap where the floorboards were missing.
The sack hadn't been opened once since they left the castle. What to do with its contents could wait until they arrived. Since they had no idea what state the abandoned village was in, dipping into their supplies tonight wasn't a smart move.
Dozing off, Yuna spoke up softly. "Sorry... Do you mind if I sleep for just a bit?"
"Yeah. Go ahead and get some rest."
"Okay. I hope we're there when I wake up."
With that, Yuna drew her school bag against her chest and looped her fingers through the strap. Then she leaned sideways. Before she tilted all the way over, her shoulder bumped gently against Eiji's arm and stopped. She didn't move after that.
Eiji kept his arm steady. If he moved, her head would drop.
The horse's hooves struck the dirt in a steady, dull rhythm. He started counting the beats, but gave up after passing a hundred.
As the night deepened, the air grew dry and bitingly cold. The fields came to an end, replaced on both sides by open scrubland. The stars shifted gradually to the right. That was the only proof time was moving forward at all.
There was nothing to do. If there was anything to pass the time, it was simply turning things over in his head.
Twenty years ago. The year the eastern border was breached was the exact same year the village they were heading to had been abandoned. The Prime Minister had mentioned both in the same breath, yet he hadn't linked them together. Were the events unconnected, or did he simply refuse to connect them? Eiji had no way of knowing right now.
There was another set of numbers that didn't add up: the candlestick he had touched in the corner of the great hall. Relicta Inspectio had indicated that it snapped twenty years ago and warped three hundred years ago. Something that had warped before it ever broke had been left sitting untouched for two hundred and eighty years.
Twenty years ago, and three hundred years ago. It seemed this country became remarkably tight-lipped whenever numbers came into the conversation.
What Yuna had discussed with the Prime Minister remained kept in the dark as well.
"Mmm. That's a secret."
That playful brush-off was her classic way of dodging a topic. She had always been like that. When she didn't want to answer, Yuna didn't lie; she simply went quiet. And the person waiting on the other end had no choice but to be patient.
Eiji slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the metal shard.
It was the piece that had broken off the bus's bumper. It was about the size of his palm, with jagged, sharp edges along the fracture. If Yuna happened to brush against it while shifting in her sleep, it could easily tear her uniform.
In the corner of the wagon bed, a fist-sized stone was rolling about—likely a wheel chock used for hills. Eiji picked it up and brought it against the sharp edge of the metal shard.
As he scraped the corner of the metal with the stone, Relicta Inspectio triggered on its own, feeding text directly into his mind.
Steel. Painted. Damaged today. Material required for repair: identical steel, roughly the volume of a thumb-tip.
Up to that point, it was purely about the repair process. Only the final line differed.
Originally crafted for travel. Currently serves no purpose.
Eiji stopped scraping the metal.
Crafted for travel, Relicta Inspectio had said. There was no way this palm-sized scrap could travel anywhere on its own. Relicta Inspectio was referring to the whole machine from which this piece had been torn.
That lump of iron cordoned off with ropes and marked with a wooden plaque in the courtyard. The vehicle whose seams the royal engineers had traced with their fingers, only to pull their hands back in defeat, unable to figure out how to open it.
The machine that had carried Eiji and his classmates... Yes, the tour bus.
(Could it be... that thing can actually be fixed?)
Even as the thought crossed his mind, there was no way to test it. The bus was sitting in the castle courtyard, and Eiji had just been thrown out of the kingdom's gates. He was in no position to get anywhere near those ropes and plaques again.
Still, Eiji tightened his grip on the metal shard. The sharp corner had ground down into a smooth, blunt edge.
The wagon tilted to the right once more.
Around the time the sky began to pale with dawn, the wagon turned off the main road.
The wheels bit into soft earth, and the rattle of the cart shifted. Yuna opened her eyes.
"...Are we there?"
"Not yet. We just left the main road."
Yuna sat up and adjusted the bag on her lap. The impression of Eiji's sleeve remained pressed into one side of her hair. Without bothering to smooth it down, she turned her eyes toward the road ahead.
The wagon ruts disappeared partway down the path. Only the faint outline of a road remained, with tall grass on either side reaching all the way to the cart's sideboards. No one had cut it. No one had walked here.
The grass was drained of vitality, faded to a sickly gray from the roots up. Only the tips of the stalks were a pale, bleached white, refusing to show even a hint of green under the morning light.
Sound had vanished as well. There was no birdsong, no chirping of insects. The only things audible were the turning of the wheels, the thud of hooves, and the creaking of the wagon's worn boards.
Yuna drew a shallow breath through her nose and held it. A long beat passed before she exhaled. Then, tightening her grip on her bag's strap, she lapsed back into silence.
Eiji deliberately refrained from asking anything. Even if he did, they would have their answers soon enough once they arrived.
The horse tossed its head. Its stride shortened, and it nearly balked twice. When the driver clicked his tongue and snapped the reins, it lurched forward again. But after the third time the beast resisted, it was the driver who broke first.
He hauled back on the reins, bringing the wagon to a halt.
The driver climbed down from the box, took the horse by the bridle, and turned the entire rig around. The shafts traced a wide semicircle until the wagon faced back in the direction they had come. Then he walked around to the rear and lowered the hemp sack onto the dirt. He set Yuna's bag down right beside it—not throwing it carelessly, but placing it with deliberate care.
Eiji hopped down from the cart first and offered Yuna a hand. She took it, hooked the toe of her shoe into a gap in the boards, and stepped onto the ground.
Only after watching both of them step completely clear did the driver finally turn to face them.
"I ain't going a step further than this."
Yuna looked up at him, still clutching the strap of her bag. "Why?"
"The mana contamination's gone too far. A place like this ain't fit for human living."
The driver gestured with his chin toward the path ahead. Beyond where the weeds thinned out lay rolling swells of ash-gray terrain. Past that line, even the seed heads of the plants had lost all color.
The driver patted the horse's neck twice, climbed back up onto the box, and gathered the reins. Then, just once, he glanced back at them over the wagon bed.
"...Don't hold it against me. I don't feel like dying either."
Eiji gave a faint wave. The driver turned forward and didn't look back again.
The wagon rolled into motion. Its warped wheel tilted the cart to the right, and then to the right again, as it steadily receded into the distance. The sound grew fainter, muffled by the tall grass, until at last it vanished entirely.
Hardly anything was left behind. A breeze blew, and the grass swayed. Yet despite the motion, the rustle of the stalks was eerily thin and muted.
Yuna shifted the strap of her bag over her shoulder. Then she brushed down the front of her skirt with both hands. Though no dirt had touched her clothes, she smoothed over the exact same spot twice.
(Dragged out to some incomprehensible wasteland... of course she's on edge.)
Yuna took a half-step closer to Eiji, stopping just shy of their shoulders touching.
Eiji scooped up the hemp sack, slipping its drawstring over his wrist. Then he turned toward the direction the driver had indicated.
There, emerging in the dim light before full dawn, stood the village.
Several roofs did, in fact, still remain.