There Are No Excuses in My Life (1)
"This female character. Don't you think she's just too pitiful?"
The remark came from one of the women on the planning team, in the middle of a meeting.
But to people who were satisfied so long as a thing was fun and would sell, empathy was hardly a virtue, and more than a few of them turned the question straight back on her.
"What's so pitiful about her?"
"She's so uniquely miserable it'll probably land even harder. Players eat this kind of thing up."
"Fair. These days a character needs a story, too."
"I want to see the original author's face just once. Seriously, though. Nice writing."
The developers were perfectly content so long as the character had a narrative, and the woman wore a look of pure disgust. She had asked because she wanted someone to feel it with her, and this was the answer she got.
Muttering that this was why they would never get married only earned her the male planners' resentment, and even that amounted to very little.
In the midst of it, he was the only one who agreed with her.
He did not, of course, commit the folly of letting it show. Then as now, he was withdrawn. Talking to other people had never come easily to him. So all he did was skim the brief note written into one female character's setting.
Married at nineteen. Sold off in all but name, she draws the disregard and contempt of the ducal house's attendants, and is tormented by them.
The bullying begins around her personal maid. Note: the personal maid is one of the duke's hidden lovers.
She spends each day in misery and pain, and wants a divorce at once. Her father, Reynol Folt, however, fails at one venture after another and keeps coming to the ducal house to borrow money. Because of this she is treated even worse, and the bullying grows more severe.
The duke does not mend his womanizing after the marriage. From the retainers' point of view, he has done nothing but throw money away, and they condone the bullying.
The second year of the marriage. The duke's retainers urge her to bear a child quickly, and so, for the first time in two years, a wedding night is arranged. But the maid who is the duke's lover, blinded by jealousy, hands him a cup of poisoned tea. It seems she meant to kill him if she could not have him herself. The duke does not die. He only hovers at the edge of death.
Levi Folt, who shared the room, is named the culprit.
Dragged to prison, she is tortured until both mind and body are ruined. Fortunately, not long after, the duke wakes and the true culprit comes to light. It is presumed he survived because he had learned the Fighting Art.
The maid is executed. Everyone under suspicion of complicity is executed as well.
By then Levi Folt is already broken in mind and body. To conceal the fact that they accused an innocent woman, the ducal retainers recommend she be sent to a convent. She is transferred there without any real compensation for what was done to her.
Not long after she arrives at the convent and begins to be treated, her entire family dies. The setting is that Reynol Folt had made so many enemies that he is set upon by brigands.
· · ·
She becomes an orphan with no one left in the world.
Part I was, for the most part, a record of despair and ordeal. Looked at one way, it was the sort of fierce story any hero character might be expected to carry.
Eight years later. The Revolutionary War breaks out.
Soldiers set fire to the convent. While saving the nuns, Levi Folt is swallowed by the flames and falls into a coma.
She endures a month with burns covering her whole body. Her heart stops, and she is pronounced dead.
She awakens Holy Power and revives. Proving she was chosen by God, she becomes the hope of the convent's priests. The burns are not healed. Her vocal cords are half melted, and her hair has turned white.
She takes an old Monk as her master and trains. Before long, however, the Inquisitors attack. The setting is that they refuse to recognize a new Saint.
By the sacrifice of her master and the nuns, she makes a miraculous escape.
Resolving on revenge, she enters a mercenary company and distinguishes herself.
Five years later, she becomes the supreme commander of the united mercenary host.
Part II came closer to completing the masterpiece: a hero who had already overcome her trials was sent still greater hardship, and thereby finished. Players would lose themselves in her, and they would want to know what she did next.
She brings judgment down upon the corrupt temple, nobles included.
She joins the army of the North, the greatest of the revolutionary forces, and allies with the Grand Duke of the North.
Through seven years of battle, they begin at last to seize the upper hand.
· · ·
The common people betray Levi Folt. They fall for the temple's instigation. In the course of it, she loses the comrades and friends she trusted most.
Holy Power manifests out of her grief. It is revealed that she had the makings of a Saint.
· · ·
The witch trial begins.
· · ·
To the very end she saves a young child, and dies. Thereafter she is upheld as a great figure.
Part III set its weight less on a hero than on the birth of a great person. It was the completion of a hero character, and saving a character like that would take the players' tearful, desperate effort. Hunting down the Easter egg alone would probably cost them dozens of hours.
A character by the name of Levi Jeanne d'Arc would surely win a great deal of the players' interest and affection. She was a sunfish of a character, fragile enough to die if you so much as looked at her wrong: maddening, and yet, if they could only keep her alive, it would count as an achievement on their side. So yes, this hero character was genuinely well made. Let some streamer play the game with real flair, which was to say advertise it, and let the algorithm catch just right, and she was the sort of character who would be an enormous hit. From the company's point of view, there was no character better.
That was certainly true.
"...She's pitiful. She's wretched."
Alive, she lived nothing but an ill-fated life crammed with trials, and only after she was dead did anyone acknowledge her. Search even modern history and cases like hers were common enough to stir recognition, and to weigh on the heart. So he let out a sigh and shook his head.
Game companies, honestly.
"They have an uncanny knack for finding ways to make money."
Which was probably why he drew a salary at all. He gave a bitter smile along with the mutter.
"Th-this is as far as what I know goes. I feel as if there was more detailed material, but I never dug into it that deeply...."
"......"
"Haa. I am sorry. When it comes to an actual solution, I know nothing at all."
Derek had told him a great deal, but that did not mean he had a single idea worth offering as a remedy. If anything, it seemed the sort of account that would leave a listener nothing but displeasure, and a sigh.
Ah. I should have learned it in more detail.
Now that he was actually standing in the situation, the regret was killing him. He had taken part only in the planning stage. The rest of the setting, and the Easter eggs, had never been his to handle, and so he knew neither a hint that might save the girl nor any more precise information. To Derek, he himself was the frustrating one: the man who, every time it truly mattered, failed to be of any help.
He was still in the middle of the apology when the other man thanked him out of nowhere.
"No. That's enough."
"Y-yes...?"
"Thanks. Because of you, I think the decision just got a lot easier."
"......?"
Somewhere in his face there was relief, and he even smiled, as if a question had finally been answered.
Answered where?
Derek blinked at him. Instead of clearing up that curiosity, the man said something else.
"Guess I'll get going."
"...Where are you going?"
"Hm?"
Derek could not help asking as he watched the man roll his shoulders with that refreshed look on his face. Somehow it felt as if he had to ask now, or not at all.
And sure enough—
"Nothing much. I'm going to pick a fight."
"P-pardon?"
"Just remember that. And sorry, but take my resignation to the Dean for me. The one I'm about to pick a fight with isn't going to be settled by a letter of resignation."
"...Ah."
Realizing too late what the words meant, Derek's eyes flew wide.
Surely not—
"I-Instru— ...sir?"
By the time Derek called after him, there was only a rush of air.
The man was already walking far off, as if the word hesitation had never once entered his head.
He turned aside instead of going home. His destination was set, and the hesitation was gone. He could not even spare the time to stop by the house.
And yet he faltered.
"...?"
"Ah, Sir Knight...!"
A maid who had been nodding off against a tree near the path he meant to take greeted him with a bright, clear face, as if she had known he would come this way. She rose, rubbing at her tired eyes.
"Hehe. Thank goodness. We didn't miss each other."
"Why are you here?"
"Don't worry about Lady Levi. I sang her a lullaby, and she went straight to sleep."
"That isn't the— more importantly, that lullaby wasn't a headbutt, was it?"
"Huuuh?"
"......That was nonsense. More importantly, how did you know I would be—"
"Here!"
"...?"
Had she known he would come to this place? He was just about to ask when Layla cut him off and held out his arms.
A faint hum rose from them. The gleam said they had only just been tended: armor, a sword, a one-handed shield, a hand axe, and the rest of it. The equipment he used most.
Lee Han did not even think to take what she offered. He only stood there a moment, and in that pause Layla put on a solemn face, as if she were imitating someone.
"The Crown Princess said so!"
"......"
"And she said to pass this along as well!"
"......Damn it. What is she, a stalker...."
Had she seen through all of it? He had only just made a mess today, and she had already looked this far ahead. That sister of his, honestly. Now and then she seemed a cut above even an Aura User.
Does she read the secrets of heaven? What is she, some fantasy prophet?
Even a true Prophet, he thought, would not go this far, and he scratched hard at the back of his head. He had meant to leave without telling a soul. Now that the whole thing was exposed, he felt foolishly self-conscious. Embarrassed, and somehow empty besides.
Even so.
"Thank you, miss. I'll put them to good use."
"Hehe. Come back safely."
"...All right."
There was no helping it. The simple fact that someone was waiting was enough to steady his chest. So he made a promise.
"It won't take long."
"All right!"
He would come back quickly, so she would not have to wait too long. And Lee Han had never once broken a promise to her.
He had no intention of breaking one from this day on, either.