I'll Let You Meet Him, Hero Kyle
“I’ll let you meet him. Hero Kyle.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
Alice screamed, clutching her head in both hands.
Perhaps it was from suddenly recalling every last memory at once. Her reaction was far more violent than I had expected.
“Drugs!! Yaaaaaah!!”
She jerked her head up and swept the room with bloodshot eyes.
But no matter how desperately she searched, there were no drugs in this house.
Rummaging through her own pockets produced the same result. Nothing came out no matter how she tore at them.
She could only stare down at her empty hands with a face gone deathly pale.
“Ah, aaa, aaaaaaah!!”
Ear-splitting screams tore through the house.
Deprived of her drugs, her behavior looked more wretched and desperate than ever before.
Who could possibly guess, looking at her now, that the woman standing before me was the Saintess who had received the respect and love of all?
Even the Pope himself would never recognize her in this state.
I simply looked down at her in silence.
“P-please, please, I’m begging you……”
She stretched a trembling hand toward me.
“Please, please just give me some drugs. I-I can’t go on without them. I’ll pay any amount of money. Hic, s-so please……”
The way she reached for me looked as if she were begging me to save her life.
Was she simply addicted to the drugs, or was this a desperate struggle to forget the Hero’s death?
Either way, it made no difference.
“There are no drugs in this house, Alice.”
“N-no. That can’t be. There must be some! I-if I just look……”
“……Why did you do it?”
“Drugs! My drugs have to be somewhere……”
But she wasn’t listening to me—or perhaps she simply couldn’t hear.
Even so, I had to ask.
Why?
If it was going to hurt this much. If it was going to torment you this badly, then why the hell did you do it?
If the actions and emotions you’re showing me now are genuine and not just a facade.
“Why did Kyle have to die?”
“Ah—”
Her voice, still hunting for drugs, cut off as if it were her dying breath.
The moment she heard my words, she froze in place.
As if she alone in the entire world had stopped.
Only her head lifted to look at me, and despair lay bare in her eyes.
Like someone who had overheard a secret they should never have known.
She glared at me with resentment for having spoken that secret.
“A-aa, drugs, please, just the drugs……”
“……”
“Stop with the nonsense and just give me the damn drugs!!”
Had the Saintess ever shown such aggressive behavior before?
She staggered toward me, shouting, and threw herself at me.
Clinging to me, she wailed.
“H-hurry up and give them! Give them to me right now!! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah—”
-Thud.
“Agh!?”
In the end I struck her across the neck and knocked her out cold.
She wasn’t in any state for conversation, and if the neighbors came running because of the screaming it would be a problem.
More than anything, I couldn’t listen any longer.
To a junkie’s pathetic tantrum.
I laid her limp body on the sofa.
“I never thought she wouldn’t even recognize my voice.”
Was she that deep in the drugs? Or was it that she couldn’t even imagine I might still be alive?
Leaving her asleep, I stepped out onto the second-floor terrace.
The cityscape with its lights extinguished, and the dawn breeze beginning to blow.
Coming out here always made me feel free, and it lifted my mood.
“……Tsk. Mood’s ruined.”
But not today. Instead of liberation, a stifling pressure closed around my throat.
I had chosen suicide to sever every connection from my days as Hero Kyle. I thought that way I would never have to meet them again.
But I was wrong.
The only necromancer who knew my identity, and now the junkie Saintess who had betrayed me.
In just three months I had run into two of them.
How many more times would this coincidence happen?
Would I have to go through this every single time?
Me, who had done nothing wrong, forced to hide my identity, forced to dredge up the past every time we met, forced to get hurt all over again.
If this was how it was going to be, why the hell did Hero Kyle die and why did I come all the way here?
I had finally started to settle my heart and put down roots. Were they going to stop even that?
I bit down hard on my lip.
“Haa, fuck……”
My breath escaped like a sigh.
I looked up at the sea of stars to ease the tightness in my chest, but the stars had all sunk away, leaving only pitch-black silence settling down.
Staring at it, I felt as if I too would drown.
In that black sea. As if I were sinking into the water.
Along with the blood trickling from my lip, the emotions with which I gazed at the sky gradually turned black as well.
“……Yeah. When I think about it, you bastards started everything first.”
Writing that petition.
Framing me and betraying me.
Driving me to suicide.
And now coming to find me like this—all of it.
I hadn’t started a single thing. Not one.
Even so, I never thought of revenge. I never even tried to clear my name of the false charges.
I simply wanted to live a life without you by making the extreme choice of suicide.
But look at the result now.
They were still trampling into my world. Stepping in with their filthy muddy feet, trying to dirty even my new life into muddy water once more.
If I couldn’t escape this ill fate disguised as coincidence anyway.
“Then maybe it’s only right that I let you feel this pain too.”
Not as Hero Kyle, but as Elin.
And as the dead Kyle.
“……”
I wiped the blood from my lip with my hand and looked up at the sky.
The sky was still pitch black without a single star, but the stifling feeling from earlier was gone.
When I woke, it was early morning.
Before leaving the house, I cast Sleep on the unconscious Alice on the sofa.
It would be troublesome if she woke while I was out and started doing whatever she pleased.
Of course, after the week-long journey to get here she was exhausted, so it probably wouldn’t happen.
Leaving her behind, I left the house and headed straight for the guild to buy the things I needed.
When I arrived at the guild entrance, Clara was standing there, swaying unsteadily.
“Clara, good morning.”
“Ugh, S-Senior. Good morning…?”
Why are you asking me that?
Clara’s face as she waved was pale as a slime.
Apparently she had gone home after we parted and had another drink.
“S-Senior. You can use holy power, right? Could you cast Cure on me?”
“Holy power isn’t meant to be used for hangovers……”
“Uuugh, please. I’m begging you.”
Clara clung to my arm, pleading. If I left her alone she looked ready to throw up right there, so I finally cast it.
Then she smiled brightly as if nothing had happened.
“Heheh, thank you! Senior.”
Clara bowed at a perfect ninety degrees in thanks.
But nothing in this world is free.
When I held out my hand, she placed hers on top of it and tilted her head.
“Hmm? What’s this hand for?”
“Hangover cure fee.”
“Huk!? Y-you’re kidding, right?”
“Ten silver, customer.”
Clara blinked with a stiff face.
Then she hurriedly searched her pockets, but from her expression it was clear she didn’t have ten silver.
Well, I figured as much. I demanded something else from the girl making a tearful face.
“Then do you have any smoke bombs?”
“Huh? I do have those right now… Hah, Senior, are you going on a request today?”
The subtle implication of “Can I come along too?” hung in the air.
I shook my head.
“Just need them for something. I’m staying home and resting all day today.”
“Aww, really?”
Clara looked openly disappointed.
Then she handed me two smoke bombs from her bag.
…This should be enough.
As I was about to leave first, she caught me with sparkling eyes.
“Ah! Then can I come over to your place to hang out today?”
“Nope.”
“Why? Why not today either!?”
Because there’s an uninvited guest at home.
I couldn’t say that, so I patted her head and smirked.
“Because noobs aren’t allowed in my house.”
“D-don’t tell me… the triple noob……”
Noob. Noob. And noob.
Clara, who had achieved the triple crown, saw me off with an incredulous look.
After parting with Clara and buying everything else I needed, a full two hours had passed.
When I stepped out of the last shop, a cool breeze was blowing under a clear sky.
It was perfect weather for a stroll, but I headed straight home.
If I stayed out any longer, there was no telling when Alice might wake.
Click.
The moment I entered I locked the door, then checked on Alice still sleeping on the sofa.
“Still out cold.”
Her face, breathing softly and evenly, came into view.
I set the things I had bought outside in the room.
How I would end up using them would depend on her from here on.
Once the preparations were finished, I shook the still-sleeping Alice by the shoulder.
“Wake up, Alice.”
“……Ugh.”
Alice stirred, groaning in discomfort.
She must have been exhausted from the journey, but my house was not an inn.
She rubbed eyes that were still half-asleep and forced herself upright with difficulty.
“Sleep well?”
“Huh? W-who……”
Alice tilted her head the moment she saw my face.
But the eyes looking at me grew wider and wider until, all at once, recognition flooded her expression.
“Ah, drugs!”
Just as expected, the second she came to her senses she started hunting for drugs.
With a face that looked ready to burst into tears at any moment, she clung to me and began to beg.
“Drugs! Where are the drugs!?”
“……”
But I had anticipated this as well.
No—I had been waiting for it.
That was why I had gone out in the first place.
I calmly covered the mouth of the woman about to scream.
“Give me the drugs! Please—”
“Don’t you want to meet him? Hero Kyle.”
At my words her scream cut off cold.
“……Huh?”
Alice wore the expression of someone who could not believe what she had just heard.
She had already forgotten her craving for drugs and simply blinked at me, asking in a trembling voice,
“W-what did you just s-say……”
She could barely finish the sentence.
As if she had heard some cruel joke, or as if she had been told the world would end tomorrow.
With eyes full of doubt, yet still clinging to a fragile hope.
Looking up at her, I spoke quietly.
“If that’s what you want, I’ll let you meet him.”
Hero Kyle.