No Tears for the Dead
That evening, my self-imposed suspension from monster hunting finally came to an end.
As proof that we'd caught the poachers, I brought their belongings instead. Hauling body parts around would have felt too grim.
Of course, even without the luggage there were plenty of ways to verify what had happened. The blood on my sword and hands spoke for me.
"As expected of a Hunter! I never imagined you'd handle things this quickly."
The attendant said it with a bright, beaming smile.
Being welcomed with a grin after coming back from killing people left me a little unsettled. But then, as someone from the Hunter Association, the attendant probably had not a shred of mercy for poachers.
I tried to look after Pina's state of mind by buying her dinner, but it didn't seem to help much.
On the way home after the meal, Pina suddenly gagged and threw up everything she'd eaten.
"Guh…"
"…"
I patted her on the back. Beneath Antico's night sky, Pina was dripping with sweat even though it wasn't hot.
The bile trailing from her mouth finally stopped. After breathing hard for a long while, Pina gathered her saliva and spat it out all at once.
"…You bought that for me, Alice-nim— what a waste."
"…It's fine."
Pina looked up at me with hollow eyes.
Her lips glistened with saliva. Her reddened rims were damp, whether from the retching or something else.
"I killed my father."
At those words, my mouth simply wouldn't open.
I didn't know what comfort to offer. Nothing I said seemed like it would help. I felt like an idiot.
"The sad part is… I thought I'd cry if a family member died. But the tears just won't come."
So I held her without a word.
Even death couldn't speak for Pina's father. He was a man who hadn't even left her with memories. That, I think, was what hurt her all the more.
We'd caught the poachers, but we couldn't go straight back to hunting monsters.
The next day, and the day after that, Pina wore a complicated expression the whole time. Her face just wouldn't clear.
One night she bolted upright in anguish, as if from a nightmare. She had no appetite either—no drive for meals at all.
Her father was a vicious man who tormented her to the very end.
I decided I couldn't just keep watching.
Special measures were needed.
"Go see your family."
"…Is it really all right for me to?"
"Go. Sort out your thoughts."
You need to figure out through your family what you've done—whether it was right or wrong.
Hunting could wait. What was urgent was Pina's condition. Day by day, her complexion was getting worse.
I urged her along. After hesitating, Pina followed my words and left to see her family.
Alone in the lodging, I lay on the bed and did nothing.
I had my own worries, after all.
Pina's form, shaken before death, and my own still-calm demeanor stood in stark contrast.
Killing the poachers hadn't troubled me at all. The occasional queasiness when the thought crossed my mind was the extent of it. Unlike Pina, I was getting by just fine.
In short, I wasn't feeling much guilt over the murders.
"…What the hell am I thinking?"
I asked myself.
But no answer came back.
I wasn't expecting a reply, but I thought maybe if I talked to myself like this, she might listen someday.
But she remained silent as ever.
I wanted to meet her just once and talk—maybe I needed to use Berserk for that.
I had no idea how, and it left me at a loss.
Those dreams of that woman I'd been having more and more lately.
Through the dreams, she showed me every beautiful detail of the future and every trace of her path.
In the process, she was unilaterally conveying her will to me.
Give me back the future, already—that was the message.
But in my view, while the future she lived in mattered, I felt that this present time was precious too.
I couldn't just choose one over the other.
Pina's world, even after killing the father who had always tormented her, wasn't getting better—it was collapsing. When all was said and done, killing her father had been a deep wound for her.
So then, what would happen to this world if I killed Miteraos?
…Killing Miteraos was clearly the best way to resolve everything. But what came after?
Miteraos was also part of this world. If I killed him, wouldn't that have a huge impact on this world too?
This was a lonely worry. The kind of anguish I couldn't share with anyone.
Nothing remained after that. I didn't dare predict a thing.
I was just a gamer who'd gotten caught up in this situation, after all.
Pina only returned after the weekend had passed.
The expression on her face when she came back was much lighter, as if she'd completely thrown off the shackles that had been tormenting her all this time.
"You feeling better?"
"…Yes. We won't go hungry anymore. Me, or my family. And I can live doing what I want now, too…"
Pina talked about this and that.
"There's nowhere for the money to drain away to anymore. No one gambling, no one clinging to the household. Everyone in the family felt sorry, but deep down they were all glad. On the first day we all ate dinner together. I cooked with Mom at home for the first time in ages. When the family gathered and shared everything that had happened, the past seventeen years just seemed so ridiculous. Our whole family had been crushed under someone like that. At the end, Mom said I'd really been through a lot. Hearing that… I felt so incredibly… recognized."
"Sounds like you had a good time."
"I did."
Pina smiled.
"Also, Mom asked if maybe I could quit being a Hunter now. Um, honestly, I'm not sure. Being a Hunter was really scary and hard, but… meeting you, Alice-nim, changed a lot of how I think."
"What do you want to do?"
"Hmm, Alice-nim, you're going to keep being a Hunter, right?"
Pina spoke lightly, but looked at me with a rather serious expression.
"Yeah."
"Then I think I'll keep doing this work too."
"Really?"
"Of course."
That's a relief.
If Pina left, I'd be stuck. Finding a new supporter would be another hassle. And I'd already gotten pretty used to her.
"What did you originally want to do?"
"It was so long ago that they were all ridiculous things. An actress in a theater troupe, an idol in the royal capital…"
"You could do it, Pina. You're cute."
I'll be your number one fan…
"D-Don't tease me!"
Pina got a little huffy, her cheeks flushing red.
I found it so cute I laughed softly.
Time flowed quickly, and the sun sank past the horizon.
The window glass briefly flushed red with the sunset, then reflected the black sky. The poachers were caught, and Pina had naturally overcome her trauma.
Pina and I lay on the bed and talked all night.
Mostly we brought up the times we'd spent together.
Looking back from when we first met to now, I'd shown her some pretty unseemly sides of myself more often than I'd like.
Especially when it came to monster hunting.
"Alice-nim, you really hate monsters, don't you? Because of your family… I mean, you never say a single word about your family."
"Huh…?"
There was a very small, trivial misunderstanding between Pina and me.
To Pina, I was someone who hated monsters so much I wanted to kill them all.
Is this because of the Berserk thing…
I just found family talk awkward to address. If someone asked where my family lived, I couldn't exactly say my parents were in another world.
And I had no feelings toward monsters at all. I just got excited as a man seeing the things I'd hunted in games come to life and move.
Huge, magnificent monsters, and humans pouring everything they have into fighting them!
Crying out the infinite potential that humans possess!
To me, a world where you wouldn't go crazy for monster hunting was the strange one. Wasn't this a place full of romance?
But if I thought about it carefully, it was hard to call it a pure misunderstanding either.
Not me, but the original owner of this body hated the monsters that had destroyed her entire world.
"Uh, w-well, is that it?"
"What kind of answer is that? So halfhearted."
"Hmm, maybe it is."
"…Still, you're not hiding it anymore."
"What?"
"Ah, never mind—"
There had been a brief incident, but through all the twists and turns we'd returned to our daily lives.
Back to that time of cheerfully hunting monsters.
…Yeah, Doomsday—monster-killing time—had come around again.
Just in case, I thought about taking my time hunting monsters slowly so I wouldn't hit the count limit.
Catching the poachers hadn't raised my rank.
My rank was still 40, and I was a long way from receiving an invitation for Anomaly exploration.
But despite my rank, I'd quietly built up quite a reputation.
A path completely different from all the new Lights of the past. My peculiarity was taking down every monster alone with only a single supporter at my side.
And that wasn't all.
I'd also diligently taken civilian commissions, leaving a good impression on people.
Hunting wasn't everything for a Hunter. What Hunters valued above all was honor. They took just as much interest in the honorable deeds others accomplished.
It was only natural that stories about me spread here and there.
So, what I want to talk about is…
"Hunter? Hunter Alice?"
"Yeah?"
"There's a named commission—will you accept it? No, I think you absolutely must. It's a rather important matter."
"…From who?"
"The Princess. It's a named commission from the Princess. You'll need to go to the capital."
The Princess—literally the king's daughter—had sent me a named commission.
Why on earth?