Spice & Wolf II (24 page)

He looked up to be met with Holo’s scowl, as cold as moonlight.

“Get back in here, then,” she said and immediately disappeared into the room. Just as she did, the innkeeper opened his door and emerged.

If a traveler staying at an inn were to perpetrate any misdeeds, the innkeeper could also be held responsible. As someone going out in the middle of the night had to be up to no good, the innkeeper had come to bring Lawrence back in.

But Lawrence no longer had any reason to stay out.

He calmed himself and picked the purse up, holding it up lightly to the innkeeper.

“My companion threw it out the window, you see,” he said with a rueful smile.

The innkeeper made a put-upon face. “Try to keep it down, please,” he chided, opening the door.

Lawrence nodded cursorily and headed back up the stairs to the room.

In his hand was the purse with the three
lumione
.

He stood before the door to the first room on the third floor and opened it without much hesitation.

Holo had taken off her robe and sat cross-legged on a chair by the window.

“You fool” was the first thing she said.

Sorry.

Lawrence could think of no better reply. It accurately reflected what was in his heart but was too brief.

Yet no other words came.

“The money...” said Holo with equally short words, a displeased expression on her face. “How did you collect it?”

“You want to know?”

Holo looked away, as though presented with her least favorite food. “What was I to do, run off with your precious money?”

“That’s half the reason I collected it. If my failure means I can’t fulfill my end of the bargain, the least I could do is leave you some travel money—”

He swallowed the rest of the sentence.

Holo still averted her gaze, her lips tight—but tears welled up in her eyes.

It was as if the emotion within her was overflowing, and she was trying desperately to hold it back.

Then a single tear sparkled as it fell. The dam had broken.

‘“Travel...money’...?”

“Well, yes...”

“Of all the absurd..

Defiantly, Holo wiped her tears with both her sleeves, then stood, glaring at Lawrence, her eyes still blurry.

“It is my fault, is it not? If I were not here, you’d shoulder no debt! Why aren’t you angrier? If I were...if I were...!”

Her small fists quivered as the words within her became tears, overflowed, and fell.

Yet Lawrence did not understand.

Holo had come with Lawrence to the trade guild because she was worried about him. She certainly had not known that he would be turned down for loans because he had a woman with him.

And though it had been but a moment’s passion, he had slapped her hand away.

No matter how he considered it, he was the one at fault. He couldn’t find a reason to be angry with Holo.

“But I was the one at fault. You came along because you were worried about me. I can’t be angry at you for—”

She looked at him sharply. The moment he started speaking, Holo turned and grabbed the back of the chair.

“You-”

She picked the chair up—

“-
fool!
”

Alarmed, Lawrence winced, but Holo did not throw the largish chair.

Soon he realized it took all her strength to lift the chair, and she couldn’t throw it.

“Urgh...damn this...” she said, perhaps cursing the heavier than expected chair—or perhaps Lawrence.

But there was one thing he knew. Holo’s thin arms could not hurl the chair by force of emotion alone. Her moonlit body leaned toward the window, hands still on the chair, eyes still glaring at Lawrence.

“Look out!”

Just as the chair leg clattered against the window frame, Lawrence sprang forward, grabbing the chair with his left hand and Holo’s thin wrist with his right.

Despite the fact that she had nearly fallen out the window, chair and all, Holo continued glaring at Lawrence.

Unable to bear that gaze, he looked away.

Not knowing what else to say, he pulled the chair away from her to set it back on the floor and Holo relinquished it unexpectedly readily.

Then, as if that chair had been the entirety of her anger, the strength drained from her small body.

“...You...”

Her eyes dropped as tears hit the floor; her voice was low.

“You’re so naive...

Lawrence put the chair down as she said it.

“I’m...naive?” he asked reflexively, so unexpected was her statement.

Holo nodded, childlike, her hands still balled up into fists.

“But...you are...are you not? No one would loan you money because I was with you, yet...yet..”

"I hit your hand away! I was mad at you—unjustifiably mad!”

Holo shook her head and hit Lawrence’s chest with her free hand.

Her face looked like she wanted to be angry, but she had forgot -ten how.

“I...I...I followed you because I was selfish. When it went awry, of course you were angry. But I never thought you’d hit my hand away like that, so I wanted to be angry—I wanted to, but...”

Lawrence started to understand now.

“H-how could I be angry at you when you looked at me like that?”

Holo wiped her tears again with her free hand.

“I became so foolishly vexed...”

She had been angry when he slapped her hand away, but looking at Lawrence’s face once he realized what he’d done had caused that anger to subside.

Lawrence thought he must have looked quite pathetic.

But that didn’t mean the rage inside Holo had entirely vanished. She had still been irritated at having her hand slapped.

And wanting to be truly furious but not being able to—that was only more frustrating.

She hadn’t responded to him when he returned to the inn because she had not known what to say. Her mind worked far faster than Lawrence’s, yet it had been thrown into confusion without a clear object for her anger.

Then, completely misunderstanding her, Lawrence left her at the inn with the three precious
lumione
.

That was like throwing oil on a fire.

Holo was already upset at herself for not being able to be properly indignant, and him leaving the coin with her only made it harder to be angry.

“I’m sorry...No, what I mean is, when I hit your hand away,

I thought I’d done something I’d never be able to take back, no matter how much I apologized,” said Lawrence slowly.

Holo looked at him with eyes that seemed tired of fighting.

She probably was tired. Despite her quick mind and quicker longue, she had been angry enough to try to pick up and throw a heavy chair. Her wolf form notwithstanding, Lawrence did not think that her small body could sustain such ferocity for long.

“Anyway, I...I just wanted to undo what I’d done. And if it didn't come across, well...I’m sorry.”

Lawrence inwardly cursed his limited eloquence. Holo lightly hit his chest again with her raised right hand.

“...Right, you.”

“Hm?”

“Just answer me one thing.”

Lawrence had no reason to refuse, so he nodded at Holo, whose hand clutched his shirt.

But Holo did not say anything immediately. She hesitated several times before finally speaking.

"Why...why are you so...”

She glanced up at him only for a moment.

“...softhearted?” she finished and then looked immediately away, as if to escape.

Nonetheless, the whole of her attention was focused on Lawrence and Lawrence alone.

It felt like she was anticipating something.

Her wolf ears, which until a moment ago drooped dejectedly, now pricked up slightly, and her tail swished just a bit.

Her small body was illuminated by the moonlight that fell through the open window.

The truth was the reason he had been so stunned by his own actions when he hit her and the reason he had so frantically gathered travel money for her were one and the same: Holo was very special to him.

And that was surely the answer she wanted to hear.

Lawrence looked down at her and tried to answer.

When he opened his mouth to speak, he realized that what emerged was something other than what was in his heart.

“Just my personality, I guess.”

He was afraid of the reaction he would get if he answered honestly.

There was no telling what would come of a frontal assault on the unassailable Holo.

He feared her response, hence his answer. It seemed unfair.

It seemed a consequence of his own weakness.

However.

“Y-you...”

Just as he realized her hand was shaking, Holo smoothly slipped her wrist from his grasp, delivering a punch to his gut as she spoke.

“...Fool!”

Staggering back at the surprisingly forceful impact, he saw Holo glaring at him, still holding on to his clothes as if to prevail his escape.

“Y-your personality? Your personality? At least be a man and tell a lie worth falling for, you dunce!”

Lawrence winced in spite of himself. Holo could see through that much.

“S-sorry. The truth is—”

But that’s as far as he got.

Still grabbing his collar, Holo grinned.

“Hear this, you. There are times when I want you to tell me something even if it’s a lie, and times when if you lie to me it makes me want to give your face a sound beating. Which of these do you think we now face?”

He was so stunned by her malicious smile that he barely managed to say, “The latter,” whereupon Holo gave a long-suffering sigh and shoved him away.

Her ears and tail twitched her displeasure. Her anger was easy to understand.

“Oh, you’re a rare dunce indeed! How many males are there in the world, do you think, who would not have managed to say, ‘I’m in love with you,’ or ‘You’re precious to me,’ or any other line to get a female to fall for him? I can see quite clearly what you are thinking, but I simply cannot believe it—I cannot believe you are such a soft touch!”

Her eyes had gone past amazement and into disdain, but she didn’t seem too irked.