The Loneliness of Autumn
Just because they called it a festival didn't mean I was expecting anything like a college fair or a music festival.
Given the thoroughly medieval fantasy setting, it was never going to be some massive production. It was closer to a ceremony of gratitude toward nature — a quiet observance of the simple fact of being alive and breathing — and a chance to rest. In an age this harsh and unforgiving, the real purpose of a festival was to bleed off the tension and anxiety people carried every ordinary day.
And after the ancient species' attack not long ago, it was also a prescribed ritual meant to ease the strain and the raw nerves of the people who had endured it.
Preparations took several days, and even that counted as short. Antico already held an autumn event every year, so a good deal of the groundwork had been laid in advance.
I leaned against the window and looked outside. The bustle of Antico gearing up for a festival still felt completely foreign to me.
If I dug through my old memories, I had never properly enjoyed a festival in my life. Of course not — that was popular-kid culture. The noise, the chaos, the deliberate breaking of routine… all of it was hard for me. For me, entertainment had always meant a computer. While the social butterflies went out and played, sitting in front of a monitor was my idea of a good time.
Thinking about it made me abruptly, sharply sad.
"Pina. You're going to see your family, right?"
"Ah, yes. I think so."
I rested my arms on the windowsill and propped my chin in my hands. The weather was genuinely lovely — neither cold nor hot, just right. A cool breeze slipped through my hair as it passed.
The winter ahead would be hard. Holding a festival on a day like this, to gather strength for the season to come, made perfect sense.
But when a day like this actually arrived, what I felt wasn't joy. It was loneliness. They say autumn is a lonely season. I felt the solitude of standing in a crowd. A gloomy mood wrapped itself around my heart. With no family of my own, I had nowhere I could truly let my guard down and rest.
Then Pina spoke, her tone careful.
"Alice… would you like to come look around with us instead?"
"…With your family?"
"Yes."
I turned from the window to look at her.
"Wouldn't that be awkward?"
"Not at all. Everyone would love it, actually."
Pina smiled as she said it.
I found myself quietly torn. Part of me wanted to feel that warm, close family atmosphere I hadn't known since falling into this world. At the same time, the idea of inserting myself into someone else's family outing made me self-conscious.
As if she could read that worry, Pina added,
"I've actually told them all sorts of things about you. That you're an incredible person. And you saved Antico, didn't you? There's no one who would look at you badly."
That Pina had talked about me to her family was something I'd already assumed. But the Alice Pina saw and the Alice her family would see might not be the same person. Pina… overestimated me a little. I was half-afraid of disappointing people who had built up expectations. And I wasn't sure I could hold my own in the middle of them. Getting along with a whole group of people had never been easy for me.
"I'll think about it. Until tomorrow."
"Mm… okay. It was too sudden, wasn't it. I'm sorry."
"No. I'm the one who should be sorry."
I felt worse hearing Pina apologize when she had nothing to apologize for.
The day faded, and a dim night settled over Antico. The bright light that had washed the whole forest city went out, leaving only pale, muted lamps meant not to provoke the monsters — just enough to keep Antico from going dark.
I sat in the chair in the corner of the room, pulled close to the window, sipping the coffee Fiore had left behind and letting the cool autumn wind wash over me.
Tomorrow was the festival itself. Pina had gone to bed early, saying she was looking forward to it.
A festival. Was there anything to look forward to? I lifted the cup, which still carried a faint coffee scent. Sleep was nowhere near me tonight. I lowered my eyes and simply enjoyed the quiet of the night, thinking of nothing at all.
Drip. Drip.
The sound of water falling. I lifted my head and focused on it. It was coming from the bathroom. Had I not shut the faucet all the way after washing up?
I stood, opened the bathroom door, and turned on the light. The sound of water became clear. Droplets fell slowly, one by one, from the tip of the faucet. I twisted it shut hard and let out a breath.
Festival—
"Ah."
A voice. It wasn't particularly loud, and yet somehow it resonated hugely inside my body.
Festivals are fun—. Being with so many people—.
The voice burned inside me, tightening my chest and flooding it with heat. I set a hand on the large water basin in the bathroom and pressed the other against my chest.
What rose in my mind was not my own memory. A lively atmosphere. A white-haired girl laughing, mixed in among the people. After everything had been taken from her, she had become a soul with nowhere left to go.
Just once more—. I want to belong—.
I raised my head and looked into the mirror. I reached toward the pink eyes staring back at me, full of misery. But only the cold surface of the glass met my fingertips. When I pressed my whole palm flat against the mirror, I felt the enormous wall standing between us.
In the dark bathroom, I touched the mirror again and again. No matter how hard I tried, my hand never reached her.
Dawn was just beginning to break. Watching Antico's morning slowly brighten, I finished getting ready to go out. Pina still hadn't woken. I decided I would rouse her once the sun had climbed a little higher.
I hadn't slept a wink — I'd simply stayed up through the night. Staying awake like this felt a little pathetic, like a child too excited for a festival to close their eyes.
I was quietly watching the sunrise when Pina stirred and made a show of waking up.
"Nngh…"
Making a bizarre sound like something dying, Pina flung her arms and legs wide, kicked the blanket off, and sat bolt upright. She stared blankly at the wall with her eyes still half-shut, clearly not fully awake yet.
I spoke to her flatly.
"Pina. It's morning."
"…Oh, Alice. You're up already?"
"Yeah."
No need to mention that I'd pulled an all-nighter. I poured water into a cup and held it out to her. Pina took it in both hands and murmured a soft thank-you.
She gulped the water down, set the cup aside, and looked at me with bleary eyes.
"Alice… you're already all ready?"
"Yeah. The festival — mind if I come along?"
Pina lit up in a cracked, morning voice.
"Ah, really? Koff — ahem. Yes! Of course!"
I smiled a little and cleared away the empty cup. Pina stretched hard and climbed out of bed.
"I'll get ready too, then…"
She staggered into the bathroom on unsteady feet. With nothing else to do, I sat in the chair and waited for her to finish.
"Aaaah, what a pain~"
Pina came out with her wet hair wrapped in a towel, drawing the words out as if the whole process were torture. Calling it a pain while finishing her preparations in no time at all was a contradiction I found oddly charming.
Once her hair was done and dry, she stood in her underclothes, pulled outfits from the wardrobe, and flung them onto the bed. She stared at the scattered clothes for a long time, then finally picked one and held it against her shoulder.
"How's this?"
"Fine."
"Hmm… and this one?"
"Also fine."
"Th-this one?"
"Looks good."
"……"
Pina eyed me with mild suspicion.
"Um, Alice."
"What?"
"You're actually answering properly, right?"
I tilted my head, genuinely confused.
"Yeah. Is there a problem?"
"Ah, no…. I forgot. You're a one-outfit kind of person…"
After that she stopped asking me and agonized on her own for a long while before choosing something. In the end, she put on the first outfit she had shown me. If that was the plan, why show me the others at all? I could not begin to understand how her mind worked.
Pina came over with her clothes fluttering.
"All ready! Sorry for the wait."
"Yeah."
"…Y-you're a little too honest."
"I'm joking."
"That was a joke, right?"
Pina looked at me with a complicated expression.
"Right."
"Y-your face is really stiff, though."
My face was stiff, was it. Come to think of it, that man had said something similar — that I always looked like I was about to cry.
After a moment's thought, I hooked a finger into the corner of my mouth and pulled it up. Then I let go and held the smile in place.
Pina blinked several times, then nodded hard.
"I was wrong. Let's just go!"
So that was how we were settling it. With a faintly bitter feeling, I followed her out.
Other hunters were leaving the lodgings as well. Everyone was looking forward to the festival.
"Your family?"
"Mm, we'll have to go pick them up."
We turned beside the lodging house and slipped into an alley. The street away from the main thoroughfare was quiet and clean, but even here it couldn't fully escape the heated atmosphere of the festival. A pack of children raced up and down the road. Festivals weren't only for adults — they were thrilling for kids too.
Then I noticed one of the running children glance my way. She was tiny next to Pina, a cute little thing, and she came straight over and stared up at me.
"You're a hunter, right!"
I took a half-step back in case she crashed into me. The child beamed as she spoke.
"My dad told me! The white-haired big sister beat the monsters!"
She launched into an excited stream of chatter. Only then did the other children catch on and swarm around me. My look was distinctive enough that they recognized me at once.
Kids were hard. These hands of mine, which slaughtered monsters without a second thought, looked like they could break something so small just by touching it.
"What's your name, big sister?"
"Unnie, I—"
"Hey—"
Questions came from every direction. Completely at a loss, I looked at Pina and sent her the most desperate please-save-me look I could manage. She only watched us with pure, fond delight.
No — don't look at me like that. Just get me out of here.