Only Then Did I Feel Relieved
Only Then Did I Feel Relieved
No one raised their hand.
Instead, the warehouse erupted into screams and panic.
"Waaaaah the boss is dead!"
"Aaaaaaah!"
"Mommyyyyy!"
"What kind of bastard cries for his mommy in front of an orphan who lost his parents, fuck?! Is that the confidence of someone who still has parents?! You dare rub that in my face?!"
The moment I snapped, silence fell over the warehouse that had been a cauldron of chaos.
"From now on, any little shits searching for their parents will get a taste of a parentless child's fury. Who was the bastard who just hollered for his mommy."
In an instant, everyone's fingers pointed at one bastard. The bastard who'd been trembling in fear and calling for his parents suddenly went pale and began shaking even worse.
"You've got enough wits about you to look for your mommy and you still pulled this shit here, you little fuck? Get the hell over here, now."
As I strode down the steps, the punks parted and fled en masse toward the warehouse door I had blocked. Some even shoved the bastard toward me as if offering up a sacrifice, and the bastard, without even the presence of mind to think of running, just approached me trembling uncontrollably.
The kid's filthy blond mop hung so far over his face it looked hard to see through. The moment he came within reach, I gave him a hard knuckle to the head and grabbed him by the hair.
"Uwaaack!"
"Uwaaack my ass, you think you've got any right to yelp in pain, you little fuck! Are you a war orphan?"
"N-no! I'm not!"
"Then what's your deal?"
"...Uh, well..."
His body, which couldn't have been well-fed, was still less emaciated than the others. He stood at least 5 centimeters taller than me. His skin and face were haggard, but his hair was in relatively good condition. His clothes were ragged, yet they had clearly been decent enough to start with. As I absorbed every piece of evidence, a haloed Good Eldmia seemed to whisper in my ear.
-This son of a bitch is a runaway kid! Kill him!
Huh? Maybe that wasn't Good Eldmia after all, despite the halo. Then a horned Eldmia started whispering into my other ear. Clearly, judging people by appearances was a bad habit.
-That's right, that's right! Make him regret not being grateful his parents are alive and his home is intact in this dogshit world!
What the hell. Where's Good Eldmia.
"I-I left home to b-become an adventurer..."
"What, you little shit? Adventurer? Your adventures consist of sewer exploration for back-alley punks? I guess what you're going through right now is a life-or-death adventure, so is this what you wanted? You wanna end up just like him?"
"Hic, hic, please spare me. I'm sorry. I was wrong."
"I'm asking if you want to end up like that bastard, why the hell won't you answer me, you little fuck!!!"
Is giving non-answers just a punk trait, or did this one deliberately decide to piss me off even more?
"No!! I don't want to end up like him!! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry for talking nonsense!!"
"So you think I'm easy to push around because I'm an orphan who couldn't even protect his own parents, right? My parents are dead and yours are alive, so you think I'm an easy mark? Is that why you're ignoring my questions and answering something else?"
"No! Absolutely not! I didn't know! I'm sor--! Hic! Heueung! Please spare me. Please spare me."
As I grabbed him by the hair and shook him side to side, he finally burst into tears again, pressing his palms together and begging.
Fascinating. They do the prayer hands and rub them together when confessing sins and begging for forgiveness here too? This was a surprisingly dimension-transcending gesture.
"How long ago did you leave home?"
"Tw-two months."
"You class-changed into an Ogwen street punk in just two months? How old are you?"
"Fi-fifteen..."
At fifteen, a boy could go anywhere and beg for some work to earn a day's wages doing odd jobs. Especially in Ogwen, where work had been increasing lately, even kids from well-off homes helped neighboring merchants for pocket money.
But this little fuck didn't even do that. He just lazed around here like a good-for-nothing and went around looting other people's belongings.
"Motherfucking fifteen? Fifteeeeen? You made it to that age and instead of dreaming of becoming an adventurer by working an honest job and saving up, you're in here pulling this shit like some gangster bastard?!"
"Hic. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm a gangster bastard!"
"Go over there, get into push-up position, and hold it!"
I needed to check the rest of them, so I let go of his scalp and started to turn my head toward what (had been) the boss's chair, but then the boy's eyes went wide.
"Eh?"
"Eh? Did you just throw a question mark at me?"
I put force into my glare, wondering if he was actually resisting because he didn't want corporal punishment when he should've been grateful just to be kept alive, but fortunately he was not entirely devoid of common sense.
"S-sorry! I don't know what you mean by holding that push-up position!"
"Ah. Right, of course you wouldn't. Fair enough. Lie down over there."
He couldn't do something he didn't know. My rising fury having instantly subsided, I kindly corrected his posture.
"Yeah, like that. Now push your upper body up with your arms... good. That's the position. Keep your back straight. If your body touches the floor, I'll bury you in it, so hold it."
I turned from the runaway kid, whose whole body had gone rigid at my last warning, and looked at the rest. Every street kid and thug in the warehouse was frozen like they were playing Red Light, Green Light.
"So... are you brats orphans or runaways?"
Eldmia Ega's Chick Sorting Center was now open.
Asilie's prediction was almost dead on. Out of the seventeen people, only one girl was an orphan.
Among those, only that one girl and two boys had run away for what you could call proper runaway reasons. The remaining thirteen were merely puberty-stricken brats suffering from adventurer fever.
Puberty in this other world was truly eventful beyond measure.
So I watched thirteen of them hold push-up position, three kneel with their hands raised, and one simply kneel, and I couldn't help but sigh.
"I, who became a war orphan because I was the victim and sole survivor of the first Demon King's Army attack, am trying to live an honest life, and you lot are really crossing the line."
Come to think of it, that was truly a ridiculously tragic title. If it hadn't been for Asilie, I would've had to find some religious facility just to survive. Hell, I didn't even know Ogwen's location back then, so I can't say for sure whether I could've even properly found a village.
Why the hell do you run away from perfectly fine homes when you have no skills whatsoever.
"My home is really far away, but I don't have carriage fare, so I have no choice but to stay here. If that describes you, raise one hand without leaving push-up position."
No one broke their posture.
"Even if I die here, I will never go home. That place isn't a home; it's hell. I'd rather you kill me. If that's what you think, raise one hand without leaving push-up position."
Again, no one broke their posture. Which meant they weren't even prepared for death. Ultimately, the reason they couldn't go back home was nothing more than pride, or perhaps they liked this lifestyle—whatever other factors were involved.
The kids in push-up position averaged fourteen years old, and even the one who'd been away from home the longest had only been gone three months. He was an outlier; everyone else had been gone less than two.
"Who am I?"
"Eldmia Ega!!"
"Eldmia Ega is?"
"Someone!! You must!! Never!! Mess with!!"
The brainwashing was complete.
Nobody knew the punk boss's name.
There'd never been any need or reason to call him by name, so everyone had simply called him 'Boss.'
The whole reason they'd tried to steal my practice longsword traced back to that boss. Maybe some sudden swordsman's spirit had possessed him, because one day he'd sent the kids out to steal a sword and they happened to run into me. None of them had ever even seen a proper sword, so they couldn't tell a practice weapon from the real thing. They simply saw an easy-looking target carrying one and tried to take it. Typical thugs.
Even worse, Zikmel was the worst kind of sycophantic prick and was just there helping search for me, while all the other bastards I'd beaten up that day had already fled. When I heard that there were no other people out searching and that these were the only ones present, I actually felt a bit deflated.
Still, that was less depressing than discovering just how pathetic adolescence in this world could be. With a sigh, I left them there, straightened the practice longsword that was barring the warehouse door, and opened it.
"All of you holding push-up position, get the hell out and go home. I've got a good memory. If I see your faces in Ogwen again, I'll break both your legs like I did Zikmel's. If you're confident you'll still survive after that, then you don't have to go home. Otherwise, go back even if your parents beat you black and blue with a stick."
I didn't need to look back at the guys who sprinted out of the warehouse without a word. Instead, my attention naturally shifted to one who hadn't run and was still holding the push-up position.
It was the bastard with the longest runaway history: three months. When I approached him, he shook visibly but still didn't get up.
"What's this? Why aren't you leaving?"
"I-I can't go home!"
"You didn't raise your hand earlier."
"I didn't raise it because I-I don't want to die! I'm sorry!"
I had only meant it as in 'you're that desperate?' but seeing a corpse lying on the floor probably made the fear too overwhelming. Still, the fact that he remained without trying to lie meant he had his own circumstances, I supposed.
"Stay kneeling with the others."
He sprang up, dropped to his knees, and even raised his hands without being told. I looked from him to the others who remained, then stepped in front of them.
"Do you want a chance to live an honest life, or do you want to crawl out of here as half a cripple?"
The moment of choice had come.