The One Who Fears Humans
Gray ash fell like snow.
A faint, hazy smell brushed past the tip of my nose.
I could only trudge forward, step after step.
...Was that really forward? Where was I even moving my legs toward? And were these legs even mine?
Questions battered at my mind.
My consciousness grew distant, and the memories and sensations I had built up until now flashed before me like a dying film reel.
When had it started? When had these thoughts begun? When had I started feeling this cold?
I had stopped thinking entirely and was only walking where my body led me, one foot after another.
Before I knew it, while I was still moving on pure instinct, something that looked like me came into view.
Human.
Reflexively, I squeezed my eyes shut.
Was it because I never wanted those things digging around inside me again?
I stopped moving forward.
Why?
My head felt heavy.
My vision tilted.
The slanting world pointed downward toward the ground.
It was cold.
I hated it.
...I want warmth.
Haha...
What kind of contradiction was that?
Rejecting humans, and yet yearning for the warmth of what I had rejected.
I just...
wanted to live a life that was warm and soft and—
“...th...”
- Thud.
My body felt so heavy...
There was a pounding in my head that would not stop, and a crushing pressure bearing down on my whole body...
Everything hurt, and I couldn’t even breathe properly.
I couldn’t tell whether this was real thought or some hallucination.
“Cough... cough...”
“Wh-where...”
“Huh? Ah! The patient’s awake!”
Where I had arrived was the inside of some kind of facility.
My whole body was covered in cuts, and I could barely hear out of my left ear.
I had IVs sticking out all over me, and mana incense burners had been placed around the room.
A warm, gentle space.
And yet my mind was filled with only two things.
I’m scared and I can’t remember anything.
I had no idea why I was in a place like this, or for what reason I was now here in this facility.
That part of my brain had been wiped clean, like someone had carefully erased it with an eraser and left not even a trace behind.
And yet.
Being treated and temporarily brought here had somehow filled this place with fear.
Reasonless dread came over me, and that fear quickly turned into a physical reaction.
“So, do you understand, patient?”
“...”
“Patient?”
“...U-uh...”
No more words came out of my mouth.
My whole body was trembling so violently it was obvious even from a distance.
My already small frame shrank in on itself even further.
My mind was screaming at me to get away from humans right now.
The sound of my own heart beating echoed through my skull.
I wanted to run away immediately.
But the only people who knew my situation were the ones standing in front of me.
Forcing down my shaking body, I managed a frantic nod.
“Y-yes, yes. Please, just speak comfortably.”
The person in front of me seemed to realize I was doing my best, and continued in the gentlest voice they could manage.
Then came the long explanation.
Even while listening to that long story, I had several panic attacks.
Still, I held on as best I could and listened in silence.
To sum it up:
There had been a sudden, intense Dungeon Break somewhere.
And I had stumbled out from there, then collapsed with a thud.
I had lost most of my memories of myself, but...
basic knowledge of this world and a blurry memory of what had happened remained.
Gray snow, scorching air, and the sharp chill mixed into it.
I tried to piece the memories together however I could, but nothing more came back.
It was as if only the parts about me had been erased on purpose.
But the continent’s geography, language, history—those things still remained inside me.
The continent of Velospia.
Three hundred years ago, a meteor made of dense mana stone slammed into Earth in a catastrophic impact.
As a result of that meteor’s collision, Earth’s ecology was completely transformed.
Mana began to flow through the bodies of humankind.
The mana stone brought forth magic power, and mana in turn summoned beings from another world: monsters.
Monsters invaded Earth through portals that connected one world to another.
And people arose who used the magic power within their bodies to protect humanity from those monsters.
Mankind called them “hunters.”
Thanks to the efforts of those brave souls, the half-destroyed Earth was restored and reshaped by the aftermath of mana...
...into the present continent of Velospia.
That was the extent of my knowledge of this world’s history.
I didn’t know who I had been in the past, but the fact that I remembered all this suggested I must have been quite interested in history.
As I traced those memories, my surroundings gradually came into focus.
Blue crystal flowers decorated with mana stone, incense burners giving off mana, and an orderly, immaculate atmosphere.
The clean, fresh air felt as though it was taking root all through my body.
“That’s everything I needed to tell you. Please get some rest, all right? Ah, just in case, I’ll leave this mana bracelet here. If communicating is difficult, use it to get help.”
With that, the person who seemed to be a nurse quietly set something down and left the room.
As soon as the door closed, the trembling in my body subsided as if nothing had happened.
Even my racing heart slowly returned to normal.
Just looking at a person made my head ring and my body curl in on itself.
I even had the instinctive urge to hide under the blanket.
Even the “me” from before I fainted, in the blurred fragments of memory I still had, had seen a human, gotten light-headed, and passed out.
It seemed my past self had some deeply rooted, very bad impression of humans.
Separate from my will, my body was rejecting humans on instinct.
The problem was...
consciously, I wasn’t actually afraid of humans.
I was only rejecting them unconsciously.
I wanted to run away from here right now.
The instant I tried to rise from the bed, the wounds that had only barely been stitched together with mana burst open.
Pain like the skin tearing into raw flesh surged through me, making my skin flush red, and my body collapsed helplessly.
Clenching my hands tight, I dropped back onto the bed.
Now that I looked, my entire body was wrapped in bandages.
Beneath them, the wounds were visible.
For me to think I could simply walk out of this place in a body like this...
Of course the injuries would reopen.
Realizing that now, I bitterly regretted what I’d just done and leaned back against the bed again.
Thanks to the mana devices around me, my body stabilized again before long.
Right... what was I thinking, escape?
With that thought, all the fatigue I had been holding off came crashing down at once.
An unfamiliar ceiling, a blurred memory, a fear of humans.
My body was covered in wounds.
And yet I had endured, forcing myself to talk and to search through my memories from inside all that pain.
I felt, strangely enough, proud of myself.
A warm blanket covered me now, not a spine-chilling cold one.
My eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
Was this what it felt like to grow drowsy?
I lay down slowly and closed my eyes.
And so... I drifted into sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, it was the next morning.
The wounds had not completely healed, but thanks to the mana they were recovering without leaving even a single scar.
My left ear, which had barely been working, seemed to have regained its function as well.
Was this what happened when a body got damaged? Did it just recover this quickly?
Not long after I woke, the equipment manager arrived.
I wondered what I should do, given my unconscious fear of people, but...
maybe the situation from yesterday had already been passed along, because this time a voice came through a speaker instead.
They informed me that there was no personal information on file for me at all, and then began with a basic physical examination.
Simple health checks and confirmation of basic information.
Height, weight, eyesight, and so on.
Some of the tests had to be handled directly by a person, which caused a few delays, but...
nothing major happened, and all the examinations ended safely.
I was left alone in my private room, waiting for the results.
A little later, a voice came through the speaker.
“Ahem. Can you hear me?”
“Ah... yes, I can hear you.”
“You said you had no memory, correct, patient?”
“Yes.”
“Then do you remember anything like your name? I mean, your name.”
Name, huh...
It was the most difficult question for someone like me, who had lost my memories.
Come to think of it, the very fact that this facility was caring for someone like me, who didn’t even have a name right now, suddenly seemed amazing.
“Ah... my name...”
I thought and thought, and then remembered it.
It felt like forcing my way through a tangled mess of threads.
Ugh...
And then, buried tightly within all that, I finally recalled one word.
“Paran...”
“Pardon?”
“...Lim Paran.”
“Ah, yes. Patient Lim Paran. We’ll let you know the results shortly. Please rest easy.”
Paran...
It was a name I had found by digging deeper and deeper into my mind.
As for the surname, I didn’t know what to do with that, so I just used the first thing that came to me.
A short while later, there was a knock from beyond the door.
I hadn’t heard it very well this morning, but now the knocking sounded much clearer than before.
“Is Lim Paran here?”
“A-ah... y-yes.”
The directly heard voice, unfiltered by any machine, made my heart jolt again.
“The results are in. Please have this chip implanted into your bracelet.”
The nurse handed me a thin, translucent chip made of mana.
I took it at once and inserted it into the bracelet.
Implanting...
Stabilizing...
Implanted.
Name: Lim Paran
Age: 19
Sex: Male
Height: 160.2 cm
Weight: 50.1 kg
Unique Ability: None
...
My bracelet spilled out a torrent of information about me.
160... centimeters?
For some reason, that felt a little disappointing.
So it wasn’t just my imagination that I was small.
The forgotten name, the forgotten age, the forgotten body information—all of it now lay before my eyes.
“Oh, and also, Lim Paran...”
“Y-yes? Yes, I mean—”
Another voice came from beyond the door.
“Th-there’s a guest who came to see the patient.”
A guest?
For me?
Who?
Filled with a sudden, deep sense of doubt, I answered.
“Um... please... let them in...”
I opened my throat as much as I could.
From what I’d seen, I didn’t think someone bad would come to a heavily guarded facility like this.
A moment later, the door opened and one figure stepped inside.
“Good morning, Lim Paran. I’ll be direct. Please come to Sielm Academy.”
...? What?