Trust
Chiiirrr. Chiiirrr.
Chirp chirp.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sounds of nature drifting in from all around were oddly pleasant to the ear.
I sat before the fire, watching the flames leap high, and sank into thought.
This is starting to look the part.
Over the past few days, I had actually managed to get quite a lot done.
I cleaned out the dust-choked office, sorted through the supplies sent from the Imperial Palace, and prepared a place where Rudine could at least live in some semblance of comfort.
And that wasn’t all.
I’d also made a suicide-prevention sign using knowledge from my old world.
Just in case, I’d planted them carefully at every place where someone might reasonably think of dying.
Mm. Not bad at all.
Thanks to that, the office had gone from looking like a haunted ruin to somewhere an actual person might live.
The problem is what comes next.
I muttered under my breath, just loud enough for myself to hear.
The place I was staying now was on the northeastern edge of Blackmore, right beside Calbaron, the so-called Cliff of Death.
It was a fair distance from the western districts, where all the fantasy beasts, anomalies, and labyrinths swarmed thickest.
Blackmore was enormous, and each district came with its own level of danger, but the western districts were notorious for being the worst of the worst.
That was why, in common parlance, the western districts were called Blackmore’s deepest reaches.
“So the farther in you go, the more dangerous it gets?”
Rudine asked while slowly savoring a piece of well-roasted meat.
The salt had soaked in nicely; apparently it suited her taste.
“Yeah. It gets dangerous.”
I answered her question offhandedly.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Then—
“Are we going?”
The question came bluntly, with no hesitation at all.
At that, I fell into thought.
Am I going?
Honestly, I didn’t want to.
But I had to.
Because the exploration zones assigned to me by the Imperial Palace included the forbidden lands in the west.
If I wanted to write the monthly report for the palace, scouting them was unavoidable.
More than that, most of the original story’s hidden chances and fortuitous encounters were buried in those areas.
I let out a sigh without meaning to.
Rudine, reading that sigh for what it was, gave a small nod as if she understood, then lifted the corners of her mouth.
“Can I come too?”
Her ashen-gray eyes drifted slowly toward me.
When our eyes met, she smiled brightly.
It was a smile packed with anticipation.
For a moment, I hesitated.
It was true that having her along would be safer in more ways than one than moving alone.
And Red Eye has already awakened, too.
Red Eye divided the world into living things and things that were not alive.
It pierced straight through the essence of life itself, and among the Three Eyes that only those born with a vicious nature could awaken, it was the ability most perfectly suited to killing.
I still remembered it clearly.
She had split a demon beast black wolf clean in half with a single dagger stroke.
It had been a feat that utterly defied common sense.
So—
“Then follow along.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I allowed her to come with me, pretending to be resigned.
Of course, Rudine had no way of knowing what I was thinking, so she only broke into a delighted grin and beamed.
But before that, there was one thing I needed to make clear.
“There’s one condition.”
“Hm?”
I laid out my terms to her.
To her, of all people, someone who might bolt in any direction at any time.
“No sudden moves.”
“Why?”
“Because when you make sudden moves, I end up in trouble.”
“…”
For a moment, Rudine’s eyes cooled sharply.
Her expression was like someone had just touched a raw nerve.
She still showed no hostility, no murderous intent, but it was obvious the conversation had rubbed her the wrong way.
At the very least, the look and the way she held herself clearly came from irritation.
But this is necessary.
She was a time bomb.
A time bomb that could go off whenever it pleased.
That was why I needed a safety mechanism.
Something to keep her blade from turning on me, and to keep her from butchering people outside my intentions.
With that in mind, I opened my mouth.
I recalled the line the protagonist in the original story had used to reform her.
“Madness.”
“!!!”
One word.
Just one word, and it drove a wooden stake straight into her mind.
An icy silence fell.
After a moment, she whispered in a trembling voice, “How did you know…?”
“I saw it before. Someone who suffered from the exact same madness as you.”
It was a lie.
But Rudine had no way of knowing whether it was true or not.
“…”
There it was.
She was reacting.
I went on in an even voice.
“You don’t need to blame yourself.”
“…”
“A nature you’re born with isn’t something you can just fix because you want to.”
That much was true.
The fate the world had forged for her wasn’t something that could be changed just because someone wanted it changed.
That was why I could say it with confidence.
“It’s your destiny.”
She was a villain.
“She was born that way, and so she lives that way.”
Hungry for blood, driven by slaughter.
Unwanted by anyone, cursed from birth and deserving of nothing but condemnation.
That was the villain of a novel.
A creature ruled by desire all her life, until at last she became a seed of ruin and brought about the end.
So—
“The fact that you’ve survived this long is a miracle in itself.”
It was a rather pointed thing to say, but I didn’t even blink.
Because the lines I was throwing at her were already proven lines from the original protagonist.
“……”
Sure enough, Rudine’s startled eyes shook violently.
She was probably thinking about a great many things.
She had spent her whole life loathing the very nature she’d been born with, while at the same time unable to deny it.
Silence followed.
So far, things were still unfolding exactly as they had in the original.
And then.
The line the original protagonist used to break that silence and toss at her was—
“I want you to live.”
Yes.
That was exactly what he said.
It was a fairly memorable scene, so I hadn’t forgotten it.
“Why?”
After a moment, she slowly lifted her head.
Her ashen-gray eyes caught the light and fractured it softly.
“Why do you want me to live?”
I stared at her face.
She didn’t avoid my gaze either.
“Because I need you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. But if you go off and die doing whatever you want, that’ll be a problem, won’t it?”
Rudine blinked, seemingly bewildered by my answer.
She had grown up feeding on the contempt and hatred of others her entire life.
And now someone was telling her he needed her.
That he wanted her to stay alive.
It was an astonishingly rude thing to say.
After all, who would take kindly to being told out of nowhere that they were needed and should stop running wild?
But Rudine was different.
“…I see.”
The Rudine who had been silent all this time finally spoke in a tiny voice.
Her tone sounded as though something deeply locked away inside her had just shifted.
“You want me to live.”
She had always wanted to be acknowledged.
She had wanted someone to need her.
But everyone who faced her nature did nothing but turn away.
And then, at last, she had met someone.
Someone who needed her.
Not the version of herself she had fabricated, but herself as she truly was.
So—
“Okay.”
“Good.”
“I’ll listen too.”
“…Right.”
At last, she opened her heart.
She let out a bright, almost foolishly pleased laugh, like a dog praised after doing a trick.
“As I said, you can’t fix your nature just because you want to.”
“Mm.”
“But mechanical killing without purpose will eventually invite disaster.”
“I understand.”
She really does understand, right?
I hid my uneasy feelings and kept going.
“Even if you kill the same person, the weight changes depending on who it was.”
Human history is just the repetition of killing.
So does that make all of humanity evil?
No, it doesn’t.
The reason is that they killed only those who “could be killed.”
“You only need to kill what deserves to be killed.”
“What deserves to be killed?”
If you kill bandits, you’re treated like a hero.
If you kill an ordinary person, you’re treated like a murderer.
If you kill an animal for food, that’s livestock management.
If you kill an animal for fun, that’s abuse.
It was just simple camp logic.
If you kill your ally, you’re scum. If you kill the enemy, it’s self-defense.
If there’s no justification, you’re scum. If there is one, it’s self-defense.
That, in the end, was what good and evil came down to.
“You understand, right?”
“Yep!”
Her answer was bright and cheerful.
Now came the important part.
“Then whose side am I on?”
Gulp.
It was a childish question, but there was no helping it.
She blinked.
A moment later, she answered—
“My side.”
That’s right!
Exactly!
“Then what can’t you kill?”
“You.”
“And?”
“……Ordinary innocent people, and—”
Rudine, still speaking, looked me straight in the eye.
“—people killing would only make things complicated.”
I grinned.
Just as planned.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The next day.
“I’m hungry.”
“…It’s only been thirty minutes since you last ate.”
Rudine and I left the office the moment dawn broke.
We were heading west to explore the survey zone.
This road is a goddamn nightmare.
Had it rained last night? Every time I stepped forward, the mud sucked at my boots and clung to my ankles.
The more we walked, the thicker and gloomier the air became, until a sigh threatened to escape me of its own accord.
That was when—
“Luke?”
Rudine came to a sudden stop.
So I had no choice but to stop with her.
“Look over there.”
“What?”
I tilted my head in the direction she pointed.
Narrowing my eyes, I made out a dark, human-shaped figure in the distance.
“…?”
The figure was walking toward us.
The strange thing was that its steps were rather rough, almost like someone in a foul temper.
And then—
“There’s something weird in its right hand.”
It was holding something in its right hand.
And that something was none other than—
“…A sign?”
It was a sign.
More precisely, a horribly smashed sign.
The words written on it were:
[Can you swim well?]
“!!!”
Huh.
That was mine, wasn’t it?