So the wind blows

Fruition without beginning or end

Esther, who sat on the base of the steps, was passed out.

Pride stood directly beside her. And, with the use of the steps framing as a support, his fingers aligned themselves on her lower jar and shook empathetically.

"We can't have that with the way you are now, can we?"

"Nn..."

Esther stirred awake.

Trembling in fear was a logical response.

An audibly sniffled like whine escaped her throat once her eyes met those vile and shameful ones.

Pride's smile widens each time at that faint noise.

His options were limited.

From the start, this was an exchange that had a complete disregard for subtleties.

Several try sounds bellowed at his feet.

"No, Papa!!"

Sloth took off his haori and Dou chest plate with struggling awkwardness first. He then unclipped his Nodowa neck guard and took off his tekkō and Kote arm guard, as well as the shihakushō wear and chainmail armor, thus leaving behind his naked upper body.

Countless scars, bruises, and puncture wounds were carved into his pale delicate skin. Some are very old and some are fairly new.

Esther took a shallow breath...

She did not recoil, but her tears swell and her lips stopped their trembling.

"I have to say," Pride said, releasing his grip. "You are full of surprises. After knowing how your technique works, you shouldn't be a threat." He moved about two tatami matts away from Esther. "Yet here you are."

Dull thuds rang out at each step he took to rendezvous at the main deck.

"I'm not a big fan of people who rely on physical ability. Especially those who can bolster unimaginable strength. I don't like them. That hulky slugger was the scope of physical potential and he solely relied on half-baked strategies that were dependent on pure physicality. Dealing with people like that pisses me the hell off. I absolutely despise those types of people. I am ashamed that I had been caught off guard by that roach, but I still managed to easily finish him off. Not with physical strength, but ingenuity."

"That said," Standing eye to eye, Sloth glared at his enemy. "If I were forced to choose between strength and technique, I'd take strength in a heartbeat, since advanced tactics are useless against unscalable force. Because that is all life is.

As if feeling that this truth couldn't change anything, Pride's expression became fiercer.

"Physicality, strength, and power triumph all." He directed those words not at Sloth, but instead to Esther. "It taught that short hair teacher of yours a lesson—in her final moments."

"........................................................................................................................................................................Huh?"

For a moment Esther didn't understand what that man had said.

Those words were just a murmur so perhaps she had heard them wrong.

But, of all things, why even interpret them that way?

She still hadn't given Uiharu her flowery headband birthday gift yet. So why stumble onto that conclusion in a situation like this!?

Those words sounded so cold.

Those words sounded so sorrowful.

Those words engraved themselves in her brain like a tattoo.