Revelation
Revelation
"Alisha! I'm back!"
"Hey, hey you little shit! How dare you crawl back here without so much as a letter!"
Hmm. It was the first time I'd heard that shout in nearly two years, but its resonance was consistently like someone had boiled a train's firebox and eaten it.
The moment I stepped into the shop, Madam Alisha came bursting out of the kitchen, rushed right up to me, and smacked my forearm with her palm so hard it made a sharp whap! sound.
"Augh! You're still in active service, I see."
"The hell I am. You've gone and become a proper blade-swinger, haven't you. Just what in the world happened to you last time? Nobility-type people showed up and it was absolute chaos... Oh my! Asilie, you're here together as well!"
"It's been a while, Alisha. Thankfully, that business got sorted out one way or another."
Madam Alisha, who had been striking me with a fierce face, simply showed Asilie an endlessly gentle smile and chimed in that she was glad. Amid all this commotion, I scanned the faces of the kids poking their heads out to see what was happening, but there were surprisingly no faces I recognized.
"The kids all went independent? I don't see any faces I know?"
"Independent, my foot. They all went to work. There's no room here for layabouts who don't work at this hour!"
"Oh. I heard things were running smoothly, and I guess that was true. By any chance, do you have a room free?"
"Why are you looking for a free room? Go home."
"I've got what you might call companions. They might be fine without, but we do need to secure lodging."
At my answer, Madam Alisha gave me a side-eye as if displeased and said, heading back into the kitchen.
"If it were just you and Asilie, maybe, but we don't have the space. It's not an inn anymore. Plenty of inns have sprung up near the adventurer's guild, so go look there."
"Enough that you'd say 'plenty have sprung up'?"
"Yeah. It used to be a charmless frontier back in the day, but for rookie adventurers who don't want to get tangled up in the war, it's become a decent spot."
Huh? This was a story I hadn't even heard in Asilie's letters. I turned my head to look, and Asilie also had the look of someone who hadn't known about it.
"After Eldi left, it was a bit... I lived pretty leisurely."
"Don't even mention it. Truly, for a while, you seemed so utterly drained, it was hard to watch..."
"Ah, ah, Alisha? I think the stew is burning!"
"Huh? Oh no!"
I regarded Asilie with a sidelong, half-lidded stare for her attitude of blatantly seizing the chance to change the subject, and got my other forearm smacked for my trouble.
"Did you live here too?"
"Huh?"
I lowered my head to see one of the little ones who had crept right up close, staring at me with his eyes sparkling.
"Am I from here? No. I'm the one who made this place, kid."
"What? But Madam Alisha made it with the priests?"
"How can this be! Alisha? Just what kind of history lessons have you been giving these kids?"
To grow up not knowing the grand epic of the prophet Eldmia Ega, who led Madam Alisha's inn's founding members Ragnis and the others. There's a problem with their historical consciousness.
"Quit your bullshit, and if you've got nothing to do, leave and come back in the evening. I'm busy!"
"Fine, fine. If you’re curious, make sure you’re on time for dinner, little ones. You’re all living in such a blessed environment thanks to the trail I blazed..."
My speech was cut short by a dirt-caked scallion root flying through the air aimed at me.
As I dodged the projectile that accurately targeted only me and cleared the building that was now an orphanage, the kids' bright laughter burst out from inside.
"To laugh so joyfully at another's pain. Those rascals have the rotten makings of adventurers."
"Seems like you're happy to see them? The puns just come out on their own, I see."
"Well... not a bad thing."
Because aside from the matter with Ragnis, Alisha's inn was a place with no particularly bad memories. In many ways, it had settled as a place of good memories inside me.
Once we mounted the horse again and I sat Asilie in front, I spoke in a strangely refreshed mood.
"We've said our greetings, so shall we go see the hut?"
"Mm. It's probably a pretty wretched sight. But we have to go eventually."
I'd wondered what she meant, and apparently, when I got caught up in the gate the Demonfolk used, she'd left the hut so hastily that she hadn't even closed the door. Most likely, not only the inside of the house but also the livestock we'd been raising had little chance of still being fine.
Even though the city had changed so much, the path toward the hut didn't seem all that different. The forest, its leaves fallen and branches starting to show bare, began greeting us with a desolate air, and just as the sound of water flowing down from the valley started to become faintly audible, I reached the spot where the village used to be. I stopped the horse for a moment and looked up at the hill.
The grave I had made was clearly visible from here.
"Want to stop by before we go?"
"...No. I'll go before we leave."
I had cried it all out back in those old days of my childhood, and living with Asilie had diluted much of the sorrow, so now, more than emotion, it felt more like a sense of duty as a son. The path toward the hut, leaving the ruins and the grave behind, actually stirred up more feelings.
Maybe because a span of over two years is no trivial amount of time, it made a person sentimental.
"These mere few days feel like several years have passed."
"Right. It was eventful."
In truth, for most ordinary people, the events weren't just eventful but closer to disasters. Even the journey here itself, for that matter.
Come to think of it, when I first left, I'd figured I'd at least take down a Demonfolk commander before returning. It's a bit embarrassing.
"Hmm?"
"What?"
"Someone's at the hut."
That insane... It's only been a few weeks, and some outsider's already found the empty house and occupied it? Even if it's my fault for not locking the door when I left, it's not exactly easy to accept.
"But... the livestock are alive too?"
Asilie cocked her head, ears perked, but I didn't particularly need to question it.
Because thanks to me galloping the horse forward with the intent to split someone's skull open the moment we arrived, the hut had already come into view.
The big guy who had been scattering chicken feed looked up at us at the sudden sound of hoofbeats.
"Jin?"
"Huh? You're back?"
Jin, the foreigner from Radan across the sea who casually addressed me as an older brother, was looking at us with surprised eyes.
"What are you doing here?"
"What do you mean, what am I doing. After Asilie suddenly disappeared with those nobles who showed up last time, I was just looking after the house."
"...You've been here ever since?"
"Hahaha. Not to that extent. I was just making sure these fellows didn't starve."
The guy, who gave an awkward smile as if it was nothing, had apparently even walked all the way here without a word. Moreover, contrary to his claim of just feeding the livestock, the area around the house was so tidy that it wasn't hard to guess he'd even taken care of the cleaning.
"Goodness, thank you. Honestly, I thought they'd have run away or starved to death."
"Considering what I've received, I should at least do this much. More importantly, have you returned for good?"
"No. I haven't even been able to get near the battlefield yet. This time I just came to sort out the house and luggage."
"Sort out... Does that mean you've decided we're going together?"
As I nodded while helping Asilie down from the horse, the guy nodded back with a faint smile.
"That's a relief. I was just thinking, after you left, Asilie was..."
"I should clean the house!"
"Uh... I already did..."
Apparently, Asilie desperately didn't want to reveal the gloom that had followed my departure. I just smiled at her as she frantically cut Jin off, and Jin, understanding the situation, raised both his hands instead of finishing his sentence.
"You seem to have grown stronger."
"You seem to have gotten even bigger yourself? You doing adventurer work or something?"
"Hahaha. You'd be surprised to hear how much I've participated in building Ogwen's walls. Believe it or not, I'm a sought-after worker."
Indeed. It was only racial differences that made people feel threatened at first; once they got used to him, this guy never became a subject of gossip.
Jin went on about it being thanks to me, but in the end, it was his own relentless effort that broke through the prejudices built up by Radan's slavery system and its other customs.
"Anyway, if you're sorting out your luggage, you'll be getting rid of the livestock too, I take it?"
"I should. I'm thinking of taking them to Mr. Bon's place later to have them butchered, then giving the meat to Madam Alisha as a gift."
It's not like I'm short on money anyway. If I bring it to her, she'll like it. It'll be a small help too.
"It's not Mr. Bon's butcher shop anymore. It's Gunter's butcher shop."
"Huh? That bastard inherited the family business? After all that fuss about becoming an adventurer?"
"He actually did become one, for a time. He just gave up and came back in less than a month, that's all. If you go see him later, you'll find it hilarious. He wears an iron adventurer's badge around his neck and carves meat with a solemn look like it's some kind of prized decoration..."
"Good grief, what a mess. The punk couldn't even make Yellow-rank before he ran off?"
The conversation that started with us reminiscing about that blowhard whose weathered face made him look like a battle-hardened veteran went on for quite a while: Alec and Remiri's nerve-racking romance, the brief adventurer craze sparked by the growing number of adventurers, Madam Alisha's knife-wielding fury at adventurers who tried to put the moves on the kids under the guise of creating a romantic mood, and so on.
"A lot happened."
"Isn't it the same for you?"
"Me?"
Only after hearing Jin's question did I look back through my memories.
Truthfully, the first year or so after I went up to the capital was quiet. I was too busy learning. Too busy racking my brains to justly refuse the special treatment the Ogatorf family tried to give me. After registering as an adventurer, I lived packed tight, cooperating with all sorts of lunatics to raise my rank, but... even that was nothing, barely worth mentioning in front of the major incidents that happened recently.
"To be precise, things have been busy these past few months."
Thinking back to all the things that happened—getting stabbed in the stomach, nearly dying to a Demonfolk bastard—made an involuntary hollow laugh escape.
The past is just like magic. The fact that simply being past allows you to be this indifferent—it's mysterious beyond belief.
"Enough to be able to tell a few stories over dinner at Madam Alisha's orphanage tonight."
I wouldn't be able to tell a few stories involving Esmue or the Demonfolk, but there'd still be plenty to talk about.