"Oh? I didn't expect to catch you drinking alone, Kirei."
Later that night, in his own room, Kotomine Kirei took a bottle of red wine from the cabinet and sat alone in a single armchair, sipping from his glass in silence. He heard the voice before seeing anyone.
He didn't need to look up to know who it was—someone who had just shifted from spiritual to physical form, now lounging lazily on the nearby sofa.
Gilgamesh.
Kirei didn't respond to the golden Servant's teasing. He simply stared at the wine in his glass without a word.
"Hmph, you look troubled, Kirei." Gilgamesh picked up the wine bottle, filled an empty glass, and gently swirled it. "No matter. Speak your mind. I'm bored anyway, so I'll entertain myself by listening to your woes."
"Bored?" Kirei found that strange. "Tenkei Shiomi gathered all the Masters in the Holy Grail War and announced something that major. You don't plan to act at all?"
Gilgamesh took a sip of wine. "Purifying the Greater Grail? The more I hear it, the more unbearably dull it sounds. A cup tainted by malice is perfect for drinking wine—its only flaw is that it might have a hint of blood in the taste."
"...If you're so dissatisfied, then why not oppose it?" Kirei asked.
"Because while the plan is boring, the man behind it is quite amusing," the King of Heroes replied with a cold smile. "With just a few words, he consolidated the interests of all those mongrels, achieved the consensus he needed, and set everyone on a path toward his own goal. And he doesn't even realize it."
Kirei had some personal familiarity with Tenkei Shiomi from past collaboration—enough to trust him to take care of Caren.
But... in truth, he didn't know much about Shiomi as a person. What he could say was that the man was grounded, practical, never prone to idealism or lofty dreams.
Just that alone made Kirei feel Shiomi deserved a high evaluation.
Whether as a Magus or simply as a person, he was far more "normal" than Kotomine Kirei himself.
"What do you mean by 'realize it' exactly?" Kirei asked.
"Forget it. It's unrelated to the matter at hand," Gilgamesh replied, clearly withholding deeper knowledge he wasn't inclined to share. "Back to the real question, Kirei. What moved you to start drinking? Was it that person you're so obsessed with?"
Kirei fell into silence.
Earlier, to entertain Gilgamesh and cooperate with Tokiomi's plan, he had complied with their request to have Assassin—Hassan of the Hundred Faces—gather intelligence on the other Masters.
But after all that effort, Kirei hadn't gained anything meaningful—aside from Gilgamesh casually asking a few extra questions about Tenkei Shiomi out of curiosity.
"I don't know," Kirei muttered, taking another sip.
He had originally attended the meeting only on orders from his father and master, listening in from the shadows.
Kiritsugu Emiya showing up openly instead of operating in secret must have been a response to pressure from Shiomi. That much, Kirei could deduce.
With every other Master present, the threat of an alliance to eliminate Saber's faction would've been difficult to ignore.
But what shocked Kirei more than the revelation that the Greater Grail was tainted was Kiritsugu's reaction to it.
The corruption of the Grail meant it could no longer grant wishes or lead anyone to the Root.
Faced with that reality, everyone present had no choice but to accept it. Yet Kiritsugu's reaction had been disproportionately intense.
Even though he dismissed Shiomi and Berserker's claims as an insult to the Einzbern family and rejected their motives, Kirei could tell—Emiya was deeply shaken.
That man must be holding on to something that could only be entrusted to the Holy Grail. Which was why, no matter what, he couldn't accept the truth.
Just realizing that much, even without truly understanding who Kiritsugu Emiya was, stirred in Kirei a strange and inexplicable excitement.
Because of that, even the wine he once considered dull—kept only as part of a collection—suddenly tasted rich and full.
And so, Kirei found himself needing to drink... just to calm the storm inside.
"...Just thinking about Kiritsugu Emiya's loss of composure at the meeting changes the taste of the wine entirely," Kirei muttered, brow furrowed. He knew his own feelings were immoral, yet he couldn't suppress them.
Or maybe, it was just a way to mask his disappointment in everything.
"To chase a dream beyond one's reach, only to realize even the means to achieve it were nothing but an illusion..." Gilgamesh let out a mocking laugh as he offered his take. "The sound of shattered dreams—now that's music even I find pleasant. Kirei, your reaction is only natural. From that perspective, Saber and her Master really are the same kind of fools."
"But what's the point of all this..." Kirei remained deeply troubled.
He wanted to reject this twisted joy he felt from witnessing others' suffering—it contradicted the moral code he had built up all his life.
"Meaning?" Gilgamesh finished his wine in a single motion. He seemed about to explain, but suddenly changed his mind. "If you want to find meaning, go and see for yourself. And if even that doesn't help... maybe try asking the tainted Grail."
Kirei's eyes widened as he looked at the King of Heroes in confusion.
"If you don't want to spend the rest of your life stuck in this torment," Gilgamesh said with relish, "then get moving. Otherwise, the man you're so fixated on—and the corrupted Greater Grail—will both be out of reach."
At that moment, the priest understood what the golden king was hinting at.
"You mean... it's very likely Shiomi will make a move on Saber's camp tonight?" Kirei didn't doubt Shiomi's efficiency for a second.
He had a decent grasp of the situation—Shiomi had only joined the Holy Grail War out of necessity, so it was no surprise he'd want to settle things quickly before they got more complicated.
"Perhaps," Gilgamesh said with a vague shrug. "At least to me, neither Saber nor her Master stands a chance against that man—especially with that kind of fairy at his side."
Kirei set down his wine glass.
He didn't know what exactly he was going there to do—or what he even could do.
But if he could witness Tenkei Shiomi kill Kiritsugu Emiya... if he could see the look of desperate resistance on Emiya's face in his final moments...
Then maybe it was worth slipping into the night and heading straight for the Einzbern forest.
...
(40 Chapters Ahead)
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