12. Why Am I Not a Hero?
12. Why Am I Not a Hero?
"......Ah."
That was the only sound of admiration that barely broke the silence.
The building was.
As if it had never been there to begin with, the massive structure had vanished without a trace, leaving nothing but its foundation behind.
"Aaaaaaagh!"
And into that void, a scream burst forth.
I realized it belatedly, once I finally came to my senses.
That only one person—someone who'd just come up from the basement and had been outside the range of the incomprehensible phenomenon she'd caused—had barely survived with his life.
"Wh-what! What in the world happened! Wh-where are the other guys...? Keurgh!"
But before he could fully grasp the situation, she had already closed the distance and was looming over him.
"A per-person."
A survivor.
Facing the sole survivor left after the criminal organization had been completely erased, she smiled down at him.
"Hehe, r-right. For now, I still need someone to ask questions."
"Wh-what are you. D-don't come any closer... Eh?"
A spray of blood erupted from his flailing hand.
His eyes fluttered rapidly at the empty space, and a dazed breath leaked from his mouth.
"M-my hand, where... where did it go?"
He felt no pain despite his hand having vanished.
He just stared at the empty spot with a stupid expression.
"Hey, so."
But she gave him no time to process any of it.
Still breathing hard, her emotions clearly not yet in check, she aimed her finger elsewhere.
"My research. You guys took it, didn't you? My research. Where is it?"
"What, what do you... Aagh!"
"My research, my research...!"
Each time the word 'research' left her lips, another one of his limbs vanished. Then his side, his shoulder...
"Where is my research?"
And finally, the moment that finger aimed at his head.
"Aaaagh! S-stop it! Stop!! The, the stuff we stole is, is in the basement, underground! S-so just stop, just stop already!"
The survivor screamed in a shape reduced to just his chest and head.
No—could you even call him 'alive' anymore?
He was just a mouth that moved. Soon, he'd be no different from the corpses now soaking into those puddles.
"Oh, it's in the... underground, you said?"
Looking down at the man in that horrendous state, she drew a fishy smile at the corner of her lips and withdrew her interest right then and there.
"Then I just have to go down there, so you're no longer of any use to me, right?"
"Wh-What?"
-Pop!
His head vanished the instant she flicked her finger.
Once the remaining torso finally slumped over, only silence lingered in that place.
That was the end of it.
The Blood River's main base, and all of its members...!
Just as the name implied, without ever forming a river of blood, their traces were completely erased from this world.
"...Woo."
And so, the only one left in that utterly empty scene was her.
"It was Woo Hyosung, right? That was the housekeeper's name."
My name spilled from her lips, but I couldn't feel any meaningful reality in this place.
Even though my heart was beating this very moment, even though I could vividly feel the rain soaking my body from the sky.
"S-Sorry. I'm not good at remembering people's names... Even the ones here, they all just looked like bugs to me."
Bugs...!
Compared to the woman before me, I was nothing but a bug.
The only difference between me and the corpses whose squirming hadn't yet stopped: whether or not she remembered me.
"Heh, hehe. This is... strange. That a housekeeper's name would be so... memorable to me."
That single, sole difference.
The fact that it decided life or death in a massacre committed so casually—that felt far too surreal.
"Okay. It's all over now, so let's just grab what I need and head back."
I couldn't even immediately accept the word 'back'...
Right—go back? Did I even have a place like that to begin with?
When countless people far stronger than me had died to an unknowable phenomenon, was it really fine for me, and me alone, to survive here?
"Why are you shaking so much?"
Something indescribable.
The fact that an emotion—one likely defined as 'fear'—was dominating me: I became aware of it at last through the voice now entering my ears.
I came to my senses not long after.
"H-Huh?"
"Your body... it's trembling, isn't it?"
"Ah, that's... well."
At the spot where her finger was pointed.
I grabbed that hand with the other one and confirmed my hand was still there.
Right. It hadn't vanished yet. Not yet.
But it could, any moment now.
If I offended her mood.
"I-it's just that the weather is... a little cold. Ha, haha. And the rain is falling too, so, that's why."
So I forced myself to stay composed, putting on the same act as before.
Because I had to, to survive.
For a mere human like me to survive before a woman who caused phenomena even so-called heroes might not be able to handle—I had no choice but to humor her every whim.
"S-so. F-for now, we should go back. Yes. Perhaps over some hot tea, to wa-warm ourselves up..."
"You're scared of me, aren't you?"
She whispered low, directly at me as I fumbled for words.
As if digging into the true feelings I'd barely managed to hide.
"Because you can't understand me."
With her eyes slightly, drowsily narrowed, and a faint smile on her lips,
She spoke, her mouth shaping the exact feelings I held toward her in this moment.
"You can't understand me, so you're scared of me. Right?"
-Patter, patter.
The rain poured down vehemently.
Though the cold and the pain might have loosened my jaw, my lips, frozen stiff, showed no sign of parting.
Because, just as she said, I couldn't understand.
This woman who erased a person's head just by pointing a finger, who blew away an entire district with a flick of her finger...!
For a mere human like me to understand a woman who caused absurd phenomena you couldn't even call magic—that was simply impossible.
"Housekeeper. Do you know about Witches?"
And then, to me, silently trembling away, she soon began to introduce herself.
"They say Witches were a race from long ago that did extremely bad things."
It was a story I didn't know.
What a Witch was, what kind of things they'd been doing.
"So in the old days, they were all hunted down and killed, but the people of the Mage Tower told me I'm the only one left who inherited that blood."
But I had just now understood the danger they posed.
Perhaps, being an even greater threat to humanity than demons or vampires, they'd had no choice but to wipe them all out when the chance came...!
"None of that really matters though. I just... want to see my Mom again... So I'm lending them my power for now, but see, there are always interruptions coming from somewhere, you know?"
Trickle... trickle.
The moment the blood flowing from the corpses, their squirming now completely stopped, was washed away by the rain, its traces fading.
Perhaps annoyed by the puddle that remained, she pointed a finger at it and voiced a question.
"Is it because I'm trying to achieve a goal I shouldn't be allowed to?"
Flick!
What little wreckage remained vanished along with the flick of her finger.
In the end, nothing was left but an empty lot.
"Or is it simply because I'm a monster who shouldn't be welcomed?"
That was the end of it.
With such a trivially meaningless result: that those who touched her vanished from this world without a trace.
"......Though, I guess. There's no way the Housekeeper would have an answer for me."
A pfft of laughter escaped her. She smoothly stretched her hand into the air.
Her fingers moved as if opening a zipper, and she snatched what fell through the opened rift.
"Here, take it."
Afterward, what plopped down in front of me was a leather pouch.
The gold coins inside it equaled what I would earn in two years.
No, perhaps even more than that... Even in a decaying world like this, it was a sum that could sway a person's entire life.
"Your pay. I gave you a bit extra. Because this was the first time someone helped me out this much... you being the first, Housekeeper."
But to her, such a thing was probably trivial.
She felt no regret, and expected no gratitude for giving extra.
"But... I suppose continuing to work together, that would be too much now, wouldn't it?"
What was drawn on that face was disappointment, regret...
A bittersweet emotion born of the feeling that I, knowing her true nature now, would no longer be able to stay by her side.
"Yeah. What you've done so far is more than enough, so it'd be best to end things here."
With those feelings, she turned her back and made to leave.
A goodbye.
As if leaving only that farewell—one that might last forever—she intended to end her connection with me.
"W-wait!"
My mouth opened before she could speak it.
"Just a moment. Please wait a moment, Miss Vivian."
Even though that alone might offend her and blow my head clean off, I wanted to say something to her.
Without even picking up the pouch of money that had fallen on the ground, without simply running away from that spot.
"N-next time...!"
If I didn't say it now, it was a sentiment I'd never be able to convey. That's what I wanted to tell her.
To a walking calamity a mere ordinary human couldn't even begin to understand... if,
If by some one-in-a-million chance I were given the opportunity to meet her again.
"Next time, if you get the chance... c-could I c-clean your room again...?"
If a day truly came, when a worthless person like me was given the chance to stay by her side.
"...Okay. If the chance comes."
Upon my words, Vivian, without looking back at me, smoothly moved her hand in the air.
With a voice gone cold and indifferent in the still-falling rain.
"If the chance comes later... let's meet again."
With a promise that held no proper terms, at the end of it all, she vanished from my sight, erasing her presence.
That was the end of it.
I had survived once more.
From a calamity called a witch, more fearsome than any monster I had faced until now.
"...A calamity?"
As such a thought filled my head, the cold reason that followed had me gripping my face and shaking my head.
"No. She's not a calamity. She's just...!"
Before I knew her true nature, she was someone I'd even felt a desire to stay with.
Afterward, I felt joy at the fact that I had become an object of reliance for her—someone who needed support.
So much so that even after she left, I cared about what happened to my life just enough to momentarily halt her steps...!
"She's just a person."
Because she was one of the very few people who remembered me and showed me kindness.
That yearning to stay by the side of such a person—even now, knowing her true nature, it remained in a corner of my heart.
"But, I'm...!"
All I felt was bitter resentment.
Because I felt it deep in my bones, through this very moment, just how truly, utterly powerless I, a mere human, was.
"Why am I...!"
Simply because I had no luck.
Simply because I felt disgust at this miserable state where all I could feel was relief at the mere fact of surviving.
"Why am I not a hero?"
A world where, if you lack power, you can't even summon the courage to speak to a woman you like.
Isn't that truly the absolute worst?
****
The Mage Tower.
A place where all knowledge achieved by the humanity existing in this world was recorded, and the crystallized results of inquiry built upon it were piled high.
Entering that place was the fervent wish of all mages and scholars, and that perception had now spread even to the outside world, in this era when a crisis of humanity's very survival loomed.
Right. They believed they were the hope of humanity itself. And so, to become that hope, they could do anything.
Those who harbored such thoughts even held the extremist view that anyone who interfered with them—Emperor of the Empire or not—deserved to disappear.
"Ah... Aah...!"
But there was one existence that even the leader who guided such people could never dare defy.
That was the woman who, just three minutes ago, had breached this Mage Tower, destroyed all defense systems, and erased the heads of every guard she encountered from the world.
Literally erased them.
Not severed, not burned to ash, but permanently quarantined from this world.
"Lord Tower Master."
If he had not ordered all defensive forces to retreat in advance and stepped forward before her himself, the casualties would not have ended at only a small number.
As he realized this, looking out at the corpses strewn across the tower's plaza, his gaze found the woman standing at the center of the twitching bodies.
The woman who looked up at him, standing on the steps with her pointed hat raised—as if embodying a witch from a fairy tale.
"I was told... the culprit who gave the order to steal my research is here."
But what spilled from her mouth was anything but kind.
Like a poisoned fruit, its beginning not even a deceptively sweet enticement... As if teaching that a real witch is not some half-baked creature from the fairy tales.
"...Tell me. Right now."
Vivian Platonis.
The bloodline of the sole survivor of the witch hunts carried out back when humanity was still vigorous. And now, with humanity's collapse imminent, the savior invited by the Mage Tower—its so-called 'last hope.'
"If you don't tell me, until I find it, I'll just erase everything I meet from now on."
If they did not grant her demands, humanity would be annihilated.
By the hand of a living calamity called a witch.
Or by humanity itself, using its own hands to prevent the salvation that would come from hers.