Ryota hesitated one more moment, and the heavy knocking came from the door again, so loud the door rattled in its hinges. He growled under his breath and stomped to the door, yanking it open. “What?”
The officer on the other side went from stern to shocked in a second, and quickly dropped into a stiff formal bow. “Ah… Third Prince. Our apologies for disturbing you.” He stood and continued. “Er, a fugitive fled this way, into the hotel, a beautiful young lady in pink and yellow. We’re going room by room checking in on everyone to ensure she isn’t hiding in one of the rooms. Would you mind if we checked your room?”
Ryota hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder.
The officer raised his brows. “Sir? Is there someone else in the room?”
“Er…”
“Hey Ryota, do you have a spare pair of boxers?” Rhys asked, slopping out of the bathroom butt-ass naked and soaking wet. He made eye contact with the officer, squeaked, and hopped back into the bathroom.
The officer’s mouth curled into a big O shape. He backed away, pushing the door shut. “Oh. I see. Er… sorry for disturbing you two. I’ll leave you to it.”
“It’s not—he’s not… we aren’t…”
The door clicked shut. Ryota sighed. “Rhys…”
“Would you rather have him come in here and examine my mana signature in detail, or do you want him to assume a few things about your sexuality that people are probably already assuming and move on without examining things closely?” Rhys emerged from the bathroom again, this time dry and fully clothed.
Each room in the hotel had its own barrier for the sake of the inhabitants, so that everyone didn’t see everyone else’s business in their mana senses nonstop and nonconsensually, and this room had extra bonus protections befitting a prince. It was the reason why he’d beelined to Ryota, even if it meant getting a little too close to involving the Third Prince for his comfort. He had the perfect disappearing act, and if the police had been prone to pushing a little further for a nameless, unassociated assassin, they certainly weren’t interested in pushing a little further into a prince’s business… though they hadn’t even come to that. All it took was a little bit of making the officer uncomfortable, and they were left alone without so much as a room examination.
“What do you mean, that people are already assuming?” Ryota demanded.
“What? You’re a celebrity, man. The girlies are writing fanfics about you and every other prince right now. And probably half the other celebrities in town. Oh—don’t worry. I’m sure some of them are straight pairings.”
“Explain yourself.”
“I just did! Have you never heard of fanfic?” Rhys shook his head in disappointment.
“Fanfic?” Ryota thought for a minute. “Oh… you mean the thin pamphlets they pass out in dark alleys for the uncouth.”
“Uh… sure! Do they come with instructive illustrations?”
“Some of them… not that I’d know.”
“Right, right.” Rhys winked.
“I don’t recall the princes being the subjects of the, er, fiction, however.”
“You were probably too young at the time. Trust me, go out there now and you’ll see yourself and half the other princes beaming back at you.” Rhys thought for a second. “Well, not beaming. Focusing. You know. Looking all sweaty and distracted. Like—”
“I get the picture,” Ryota interrupted him, annoyed. “Would you like to explain why you brought the police to my door now?”
“If I’m being honest? No. How about you be distracted by the incest yaoi for a little while longer? And yuri, since I just learned that some of you are female.”
Ryota turned and marched toward the door.
“Wait, wait, wait! Okay, okay, relax. Just settle down, and I’ll explain, I swear.”
Ryota paused. He turned back, then leaned his weight against the back of a chair, not sitting or retreating from the door.
That’s fair. Rhys took a deep breath. “So… where do I start?”
“Start from the reason the police are chasing you.”
“Yeah, but that’s not my first kill.”
Ryota lifted his brows in irritated surprise. “Rhys, did I not tell you to stay quiet?”
“I stayed very quiet. Kind of quiet. You didn’t hear about one of them.”
“Unless I did. There was a sudden profusion of plant sprites wandering the streets. Some of them bore the appearance of mages who’d recently gone missing. They were left to their own, since they only wanted to find their loved ones, but there was quite a bit of mess over the fact that some of them were actually well-known or well-connected, that they knew things only the people they appeared as should know, and they all had a very limited time to live. They claimed my brother Tooru was to blame, and that he was dead, but wouldn’t explain what happened to him.”
Rhys pointed at himself. “Me. I happened to him.”
“So I gather.” Ryota sighed. “I can’t complain, since my brother was clearly up to no good, but what the hell, Rhys?”
“I was just trying to advance my magehood, like any good mage would. The good deed part was kind of a whoopsie. Let’s call it a happy accident.”
Ryota stared at him. He lifted his hands to his temples and slowly began to massage them. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Great plan. Anyways, they were telling the truth: Tooru was doing some fucked up shit to them, and I came along and set them free. For what it’s worth, I did deliberately throw away almost all the bonus energy I picked up from Tooru to give them a chance to say goodbye.”
“You know, however you got there, I’m glad you did that for them. They didn’t deserve to be my brother’s playthings.”
Rhys nodded. “My thoughts exactly, more or less. As for the one that actually got me in trouble…”
“Yes?” Ryota said threateningly, shifting toward the door.
Rhys lifted his hand. “No, no, there’s no need for that. I just realized I don’t know his name or number. I have no idea who I just killed.”
Ryota put his face in his hands. “Rhys. What the hell.”
“It was for a good cause. You’ll agree once you hear it. Uh, he likes to hang out in the brothels.”
“Doesn’t narrow it down.”
“Right… but like, he acts like he owns the place. Not the ‘splashes out and acts big’ but like, pretends he’s a small-time mob boss. Gave me a whole spiel about how he controls the red light district. And he really hates the Fifth Prince, Hanako. Told me to kill her next.”
At that, Ryota finally perked up. He snapped his fingers. “The Twenty-fourth Prince, Haruhiko!”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
“Looked kind of droopy? Liked lounging real low in his seat? Kind of depressed?”
“That sounds right.”
“It was Twenty-four, for sure. Well… of all the princes you could kill, Tooru and Haruhiko were good choices. Tooru was always odd, and Haruhiko… he’s always been a problem child. He wasn’t well liked by any of the powerful princes, and his clan had more or less already given up on him.”
“What about Hanako? Is she a good pick?”
Ryota snorted. “If you want to get yourself killed, sure. She controls a good portion of the capital and she was at one point a top contender to obtain the throne. Some bad rumors and an aggressive campaign to disparage her by one of the even-better-liked princes have since lowered her chances, but her clan still sees her as a contender. She personally seems to have given up, but even so, her clan will come after your head if you take hers.”
Rhys nodded. It made sense, really. If someone gave him the choice to kill someone else before he died, he’d either pick someone he really hated, or he’d pick whoever he thought was most likely to kill his killer or get them caught. Ideally, he’d choose someone who did both: someone he hated who would also get his killer in trouble.
On the other hand, if Ryota was right, then putting that together with what he’d already learned from Haruhiko, she’d already lived out the villainess arc from every villainess/holy maiden light novel/game ever, which made her peak trash. He couldn’t just leave her be. He had to go take a look.
“I don’t like that look in your eyes,” Ryota commented dryly.
“Dunno why not. It’s an earnest, honest look.”
“Is it.”
Rhys nodded.
Ryota waved his hand. “So what about this grand conspiracy? So far you’ve just confessed to murder, which isn’t that interesting. You mentioned something else earlier, though. Something about me?”
“So true! Murder? Cliché. Tell me about myself, now that’s cool.” Before Ryota could give him another exhausted-disappointed-parent-look, Rhys cleared his throat. “The fierce mana in you… you know how it’s in all those random mortals we encountered?”
“Right.”
“The other princes have fierce mana seeded in them too. When I killed them, the fierce mana darted out of their cores and flew out into the world. If I kill one more, I should be able to figure out where the fierce mana is going… but I know it’s somewhere in the capital.”
Ryota blinked. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. But I suspect it’s got something to do with your fierce-mana-berserk state.” Why did Ryota go berserk? Why did he have a hole in his core leading to the fierce mana plane, while all the other princes had tiny bits of fierce mana hidden inside their cores? Why bother putting tiny bits of mana inside the princes at all, when it put their plan at risk? What did it gain them? For that matter, what was the whole point with trying to juke Rhys in particular with Ebi, the chubby merchant? Or are they just trying to get Ryota out of town? But that leads to its own ‘why.’ He had way too many questions, and not enough answers.
He waved his hand. “I’m hoping that if I kill one more prince, I’ll have enough points of data to figure out where the fierce mana is going, and hopefully I can answer half the questions I have about this whole situation.”
Deliberately, he kept the information about Ebi to himself. Ryota would gain nothing from knowing that Rhys suspected the guy was a distraction, and bringing him up would only lead to more questions Rhys didn’t have the answers to. Besides, he was the one who’d decided to go with Ebi. He was the one who could decide not to go with Ebi, and he was a whimsical enough person that Ryota wouldn’t seriously question his whiplash decision. There was little benefit to trying to explain why he suddenly doubted Ebi’s motives, so why bother?
Ryota shook his head slowly, frowning at the floor. “This doesn’t make any sense. Why… why would they have the mana in them? No… how? They should all have been handed top tier cultivation techniques from their clans, so it’s not as if they would study any random book they came across like the mortals would. And their families and the palace both would be watching them closely, to make sure they didn’t have any contact with demonic mages. Haruhiko I believe could have come in contact with some, but Tooru? Tooru barely left his house. He was always so timid. He’d run from a demonic mage, not seek them out.”
“He was killing people. Lots of people. Serially killing people, even,” Rhys pointed out.
“Weak people,” Ryota emphasized. “Not strong mages with powerful techniques he has no answer to.”
Rhys nodded, granting him the point. Tooru had struck him as a coward; he was so afraid of talking to real women that he’d tried growing his own. As horrific as that had turned out, it was an action rooted in cowardice.
He hadn’t even considered what Ryota had brought up—that these powerful princes with factions at their backs somehow had fierce mana implanted in them, whether unwittingly through their own actions by trying some forbidden technique or another, or through someone else’s actions. The idea of them picking up an unknown technique book was unlikely, but at the same time, who would be able to reliably access all, or at least several, of the princes to forcibly implant mana in them from outside?
He leaned forward, thinking. It would have to be someone with access to the palace, someone seemingly unaligned. They could’ve done it when the princes were children; it seemed even more unlikely that someone would hunt them down once they’d scattered to the winds for the succession battle. Of course, they’d have less supervision during the succession battle, but at the same time, they’d individually be more vigilant when all their siblings were trying to kill them.
Damn. This is a mess. He felt like he had it in his fingertips, but every time he clenched his hand, it slipped between his fingers. There was too much he didn’t understand. There was either one key piece he didn’t have yet that would tie it all together, or a whole cluster of details he totally lacked; either way, he needed more information to figure out this mystery.
Rhys sat up and took a deep breath. “In conclusion, I need to kill another prince. If I do that, I can trace back the fierce mana to wherever it’s running off to. That either leads me to the plotter or gets me close enough to start piecing things together, and from there, we can figure out all the rest of it.”
Ryota put his hands up. “I understood the rest of it, more or less. Why are we killing my siblings, again?”
“Hey, man, in case you forgot, we’re in a succession battle. You’re supposed to be killing your siblings.”
“Not in the capital city, we aren’t.”
“Says who?”
“The patriarchs and matriarchs. Everyone stronger than me!”
Rhys shrugged. “I don’t see them stopping me. I’m not even being that quiet about it.”
Ryota sighed. “Fine. Just… not Hanako. It’s too risky.”
“Sure. I can find someone else. Maybe.”
“Rhys…”
“It’s my head, not yours. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of me.”
Ryota scowled in disapproval. He stood, stepping forward, his body tense—and then he threw his hands up and dropped back to sit on the top of the chair. “Sure. Whatever.”
He’s getting fed up with me. He couldn’t act free-willed for much longer and still count on Ryota’s support. Rhys considered for a moment, then shrugged. Hanako sounded ideal for him in a lot of ways, and for that matter, Ryota hadn’t been in the capital for ages. Hanako’s family supporting her could very well be old news.
I’ll go take a look. If she isn’t ideal, or it looks like her family is still supporting her, I’ll back off, but if it isn’t the case, I’m not going to hold back. At the end of the day, supporting Ryota was something he’d done at his own whim. He liked the guy, but he wasn’t going to give up on advancing his own strength for the sake of the prince; nor would he expect Ryota to do the same for his sake.
“I’m going for a walk,” he declared, standing.
“Already?” Ryota asked, exhausted.
“Yeah? I mean, I’m not going to go see Hanako right away. I’ll give things a minute to calm down, first. But I’m not going to stay cooped up in here, either. You seem bothered by something, and I can already tell I’m pissing you off more, so I’d rather give you your room than have you explode on me.”
Ryota grimaced, but he didn’t counter Rhys’s words. He waved his hand. “Try not to get caught.”
“I evaded a whole Empire. I think I can manage a few police.” With a final smirk and a wave, Rhys vanished.
--
Sitting all alone in his room, Ryota stared at the closed door, then sighed and put his head in his hands. Why did he feel like he’d made a deal with the devil? It really was true: when you rode a tiger, it was hard to get off.
Back when they’d first met, it’d seemed ridiculous, a braggart’s line, but now that he knew Rhys better, he couldn’t help but wonder. “Did he really take down an empire…?”