When Kanna brought Sakumura to the mountain gate, Fujimaru Ritsuka was chatting with Sakamoto Ryoma.
"Oryou-san looks really sleepy."
Fujimaru Ritsuka squatted on the ground with one arm around her knees and reached out with the other to poke Oryou-san's puffed-up cheek as she lay drowsily atop Ryoma.
"Don't mess around."
Oryou-san raised a hand and swatted Fujimaru Ritsuka's away, then turned over and continued dozing.
"Because it's always been safe here. Even if there is danger, it only comes at night."
Ryoma smiled gently as he helped arrange Oryou-san's beautiful black hair.
"Yeah. Since Ryoma would never get hurt no matter what, Oryou-san can sleep peacefully."
Oryou-san opened one eye and glanced at Ryoma.
Hearing Oryou-san's words, Fujimaru Ritsuka froze instinctively.
Never get hurt, no matter what.
She—
Could not help recalling certain things.
Namely—
The death of Sakamoto Ryoma.
How had Sakamoto Ryoma, hero of the Restoration, died?
He had been assassinated.
And who had assassinated him?
The "companions" who had pursued the Restoration alongside him.
Ryoma had been one of the most powerful figures in the Restoration faction. He had advocated for a bloodless transformation by forcing the Tokugawa Shogunate to surrender its authority. Yet precisely because of that, his companions, who madly wished to settle everything through war, deemed him weak—a coward who had delayed the Restoration. So, taking advantage of the time when Oryou-san had gone out to buy food for Ryoma, they killed the Dragon of the Restoration on the fifteenth day of the eleventh month of the third year of Keio.
Following Ryoma's death, Oryou-san had walked into the sea and fallen into an endless slumber.
Not long before Ryoma's assassination, Takasugi Shinsaku—another Restoration hero and one of the Four-Person Alliance—had also died of illness in Choshu.
With two of the Four-Person Alliance