43. Please Forget Me
43. Please Forget Me
Yes... it was hot.
Hot enough to melt the chill the Spirit King's contractor had left behind.
And before she knew it... she could feel something lingering between them.
"Falling for someone...? Me?"
Love.
A desire stronger and more passionate than any other, yet one whose very premise demands self-sacrifice.
"Don't be ridiculous. Who would ever..."
An emotion that could never take root in demons who live only for their own selfish whims.
If they felt anything like it, it was merely lust wearing love's mask.
"Who comes back in this kind of wreck and thinks they've charmed someone? I'm a demon. Just look at the corpses scattered around here—they're in worse shape than you are..."
Demons are a race that uses even reproduction as a means to satisfy desire, or as a way to clone themselves and project what they couldn't achieve.
So how could she possibly declare she now felt longing for another person—when she'd spent her whole life dismissing even that as something that served no purpose?
"I never felt a thing from acts like that before... There's no way I'd feel something like this now..."
And yet, why couldn't she brush off that person's parting words as a pointless joke?
Why couldn't she manage a single fake smile—the kind she always wore—as she looked down at this wounded man?
"...Then why."
-Drip. Drip.
The moment the drops falling from her chin wiped the blood from her face.
Feeling reason buried under emotions she couldn't even name, she finally placed a hand on his cheek and began to whisper what was in her heart.
"Is it possible I'm actually wishing—even if it's just the slimmest chance—that something like that could happen?"
Inside a heart like a sandy beach strewn with weathered memories.
In that empty, barren world, the single gleaming pebble she had discovered was, right now, unbearably dazzling.
The thought that she wanted to clutch it in her hand and press it to her chest was surely born from an emotion called desire...
"...Hyosung."
Love.
A desire stronger and more passionate than any other, yet one whose very premise demands self-sacrifice.
"What was going through your mind... when you rushed toward me?"
Yes.
A demon had fallen in love.
"Are you... feeling the same thing I am?"
Because she had been pushed to death's very doorstep by unrequited loyalty,
a love so fierce she wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice even herself.
***
"...Cough."
The heat covering my body wrenched me upright on reflex.
Along with it, my heavy, sunken consciousness began to stir, but even that struggle wasn't enough to get me up—something was pinning me in place.
A body where every muscle and joint just squirmed, squeezed tight.
Feeling like I was suffocating, I turned my head and caught sight of a man moving through the tent, tending to someone on a bed next to mine.
Someone wrapped head to toe in bandages, being cared for...
A patient, probably in the same miserable shape I was.
"Ah, you're awake?"
The man, who I assumed was a healer, met my eyes and turned his attention to me.
"...Where is this?"
"It's the medical tent in the garrison zone. Take it easy. We used styptic and performed emergency surgery. You lost far too much blood—you came this close to real trouble."
The garrison medical tent...
Looked like the garrison personnel had taken me in and treated me while I was out.
The sheer number of patients was probably due to the Demon Lord Army's fierce assault, but the lack of the kind of urgency I'd expect likely meant the battle had somehow ended by now.
The Demon Lord Army had retreated. We'd survived.
I was piecing that much together from past experience when I suddenly realized I couldn't put any proper strength into my lower body.
"...I can't feel anything below."
"Ah... As it happens, you sustained a very severe injury to your lower body. It seems you were struck in a rather... unfortunate place..."
"What do you mean, an unfortunate place? Unfortunate how?"
"Hah... I'd planned to tell you after you'd fully recovered."
The healer let out a deep sigh with a bitter expression.
A chill shot down my spine, and then he spoke, his face grave.
"Brace yourself. Ah... Sir, from now on, you will not be able to have... children. In other words, you cannot engage in... sexual intercourse."
"W-What did you just say?"
Cannot engage in sexual intercourse?
That's what "struck in an unfortunate place" meant?
So, in other words, I've been turned into... a sexual cripple?
"A eunuch!? No, what the hell kind of bullshit is this!! I'm a eunuch!!!"
"God damn it, a eunuch!!! I'm, I'm a eunuch!! Aghaaack...!"
Even that bastard Oh Deokhun has a girlfriend, but I'm a eunuch!!!
This is insane! Waaaaah!!!
"Well, in any case, a priest will be along soon to heal you, and you'll be completely fine."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, you didn't know? With holy power, even without medicine or surgery, anything—fractures, internal injuries—can be healed."
Oh, right. I keep getting thrown around so much I forgot, but this is a fantasy world, isn't it?
I guess if divine miracles can cure everything except baldness, fixing eunuch-hood is on the menu too.
"You're fortunate. The guild covers treatment for everyone who took part in the garrison defense, so you can receive care free of charge without making a donation to the Order."
"...Then don't make it sound so heavy when you can just heal it."
"Ha ha, isn't a joke like that a good way to see someone snap alert and confirm they're all right?"
I chewed on my irritation, half-worried I'd work myself into a fury and pop every wound open. But only for a moment.
As the tension from that joke faded, a forgotten memory began surfacing.
"...Marilyn."
Yeah, she wasn't here.
The instant I realized that, impatience flooded my chest.
"Where's Marilyn? The— the bard who was with me..."
"If you mean the woman with the short white hair and the memorable smile... She left after bringing you here."
"...Left?"
"Yes. Before she left, she asked me to pass this note to you."
At my question, a single note was smoothly offered to me.
Inside the carefully sealed envelope, I could faintly tell it was quite thick with words.
"Fortunately, the Demon Lord Army has retreated and the restriction on outside movement is lifted, but I tried to dissuade her since there could still be dangers lurking. She said she had something to do and left immediately anyway."
"Something to do... Like what?"
"She said you'd understand when you read the note. Well, as an outsider, I didn't open the letter, so I'll take my leave now. Plenty of people here need treatment before the priests arrive."
With that, the healer checked my condition, handed me only the note, and departed.
Once he was gone, I pulled my gaze back and—ignoring the throbbing pain from my lower half—examined the letter in my hand.
Figuring out the note left by the woman who'd gone from my side mattered more than some wound that'd be healed the moment the priests showed up.
And I felt relief, figuring that if she'd left me a letter, she must be safe too.
To Hyosung.
That relief.
I felt it drain away in an instant the second I read the opening of the letter she'd left.
By the time you read this letter, I will be out of this region.
Not to the Empire you'll soon return to, but to a faraway land that I can call my homeland...
Her homeland. Not the Empire.
Every place in this world outside the Empire is a danger zone. Of course I couldn't help but worry.
You needn't think it strange.
A journey always has an end, and it is only natural that its final destination is my homeland.
True, as she'd told me when we first met, a journey was something familiar to her.
But even so, reading her words now, I couldn't bring myself to feel any relief.
Because the further the writing went, the more the letters before me seemed to warp.
But today, as I write this letter, returning to my homeland feels different from usual.
Just as you treated me as someone special when you tried to save me,
I too find myself drawn to you.
As if to tell me the warmth I felt when I last held her hadn't been an illusion.
Amid the increasingly agitated script, I began to spot traces soaked by something—one or two of them.
Yes, I'm certain that must be it.
Though our meeting lasted only a day, though I am someone meant to be forgotten soon after, I'm sure I will still remember you.
I am certain that meeting someone as special as you is the greatest blessing of my long journey.
And that is precisely why I have no choice but to leave your side.
No matter how intense those brief moments with you were, I cannot undo the time I have lived until now.
"..."
I am the Clown.
I am a lowly being who has dedicated my entire life in loyalty to my lord.
But that insignificant mission has been my foundation, my direction, my everything.
Because that is the path I have walked, no matter how deeply meaningful the single day I spent with you was, I could not give it priority.
Even should I feel my loyalty to my lord cooling because of my encounter with you, if I do not bring our connection to a close, my foundation will sabotage the days I dream of beside you.
So I will keep the comfort I found in you in a corner of my heart, and leave your side to complete my unfulfilled mission.
To inform my lord that I, having discovered a light called you, can no longer swear pure loyalty.
-Crumple.
You likely have a good idea what treatment awaits a vassal who has betrayed their sworn fealty.
But please forgive me.
No matter how deeply I feel your heart, and no matter how fiercely I long to join my heart with yours even at this very moment,
I already have a past I have lived through. What takes priority for me is not a future with you, but my past—where you did not exist...
-Rustle. Drip.
The paper crumpled with a dry rustle in my tightening grip.
Even that traced the cracks already carved into the sheet, and the barely legible letters began to distort again.
And so, I have one request for you who have read all of this letter.
The heart of the woman who, I believe, must have felt the same things I did—before I'd even realized them myself...
So vividly that I could feel it flowing through my hand in this very moment.
Please forget about me.
Whatever it was you felt for me, let it pass now, like a midsummer night's dream.
Burn this letter together with a promise that has no set date. Forget it all, and live as you did when you had never met me.
So that even if we should ever reunite, that reunion begins not with joy, but with a simple, insignificant greeting...
Considering that starting over from such a humble welcome is the full extent of the hope we are permitted.
"..."
Without a word.
I chased the contents of the letter with my eyes, over and over, chewing on its meaning in my head for more than ten minutes.
There, inside the still-bustling medical tent, I finally sorted out my thoughts, set the letter down, and let out a scoffing laugh.
Seriously, it wasn't something I needed to agonize over this much.
A relationship going sideways because you choose work over a person... that's common even back home.
"...Got dumped again."
But how could I blame her for that?
The time we shared was a day, maybe two, at best. And for the sake of that handful of hours, she's leaving to tell the master she devoted her whole life to—that her heart's changed.
For a nobody like me.
Blame her for treasuring our meeting so much she's about to lay her neck on the executioner's block? That'd be greedy beyond reason.
"Dumped big time, seriously."
So what about some mithril-ego weapon, or some obsession?
In the end, I'm just a Foreign Worker who wasn't born with a Hero's power.
No matter how hard someone like me tries, the most I can hold onto in this brutal world is my own life.
The best I can do—when I can't even muster the courage to brave a hostile world to find her—is exactly what the letter says: hope for a meeting with no promised date.
"...Damn it."
I swallowed that self-torment with a bitter smile, and a pathetic sigh slipped from my lips.
"Not even that bastard Oh Deokhun can't get a girlfriend. When the hell am I ever going to get one..."
The same old lament as always.
And I figured if things kept repeating like this, this too would eventually become something I'd just have to get used to...
***
A few days later.
-Kyaaaoooo!!
The cry of a flying monster echoed beneath the red-stained sky.
Letting out a hideous shriek that split into branches, the monster descended to the ground and carefully lowered the person it had carried on its back.
"Thank you for bringing me here."
-Piyuu!
With a whistle from its mouth, the monster soared back into the sky.
Once it left her sphere of influence, it would return to the wild, faithfully playing its role as a predator as it always had.
Whether it grew to surpass being a mere monster and became a behemoth, or got eaten by a bigger predator before that, was of no concern to her.
"Who are you?"
"Why is a human here...?"
She passed through the ruined city and reached the entrance to the ruined fortress, where she faced the two demons standing guard. She soon dispelled the miasma shrouding her body, revealing the appearance they knew.
Disguise was a basic skill for the Clown.
Altering her appearance in an instant was trivial for her...
"Tell the Demon King this."
Thus, having returned to her form as the Clown,
she soon spoke to the gatekeepers in a subdued voice.
"Tell him his foolish clown has returned."
The Four Heavenly Kings—Mephistopheles' Rage.
The Demon King's oldest follower had come, at last, to end that bond.