Chapter 9
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: Naia Rain
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I'm pretty sure I got on a carriage heading east.
I stuck my head out the window of the carriage.
And quietly asked the coachman.
"Coachman, this is the carriage to the east, right...?"
"We're heading west, though..."
Why on earth is the carriage going west?
Did I pick the wrong merchant guild?
"Th-the Fleta Merchant Guild... right?"
"Bro, didn't you know when you got on? In this empire, who else hangs a squirrel tail as their guild flag besides us Fleta?"
I asked the coachman about the guild again.
No, I picked the right guild. Then why?
"Weren't we originally supposed to go east...?"
"You really didn't know? A few days ago, the guild master changed it to westbound. But how did you know it was supposed to be east? You just got on today, didn't you?"
The coachman looked shocked, as if wondering how I didn't know.
They changed the destination itself a few days ago? Does that even make sense?
I pulled my head back in from the window and sat down again.
And sank back into thought.
I can't get off the carriage right now.
Something's gone wrong again.
Why is it that nothing ever goes right for me, while protagonists in other novels have everything go according to plan?
'Why did this happen?'
Heading west, and on the same carriage as the Hero, no less...
Everything I wanted to avoid.
I calmly tried to think about the cause.
What I've done since coming here...
Nothing except Selena?
Nothing's changed from the game except for Selena.
The [Hand of Abstinence], maybe... but that didn't seem like the cause.
I rushed to escape from Selena...
And now the situation's even more tangled.
'Okay... stay calm. At least the west is the route I played the most in the game.'
Fortunately, the west was the route I'd cleared the most times in the game.
The problem is that this is reality.
The west, where one mistake leads straight to death.
Not even the front lines—it's the frontmost front, with shells and magic raining down nonstop.
How much time had passed?
"Are you okay?"
"...Y-yeah."
As my mental state crumbled and my hands started shaking, a clear voice reached me.
Cold like ice, but not sharp.
It was the Hero's voice.
Right now, the reason for heading west isn't what I need to focus on.
The monster named Selena right in front of me.
The odds of dying to the Hero's sword right in front of me were higher than some village getting raided by monsters.
I'm a slave.
A slave who boarded the carriage alone without an owner.
On top of that, sharing a carriage with a psychopathic war maniac...
The suffocating situation made it hard to breathe.
To clear my head, I slightly pulled back the carriage's curtain.
'The moonlight's especially bright tonight.'
A full moon bloomed in the sky.
Thanks to it, the carriage interior was plenty bright even at night without a single lantern.
Then a voice came from across from me.
"What... what do you do for a living?"
"......W-what?"
The Hero asked about my job.
Caught off guard by the sudden question, I stammered.
Stay calm. The Hero knows nothing about me.
I need to make up a job that fits my appearance.
One wrong word could arouse suspicion.
"I do massages, something like that."
"Massages... Then why are you heading west?"
I roughly claimed to be a masseur.
It had to be as close as possible to what I was doing now.
Naia narrowed her eyes slightly and started scanning my body from top to bottom.
Probably analyzing my build and attire.
Her analytical skills were on a whole different level from ordinary people.
That's why I couldn't pass as a mercenary or soldier.
If Selena had to touch to know, this woman knew just by looking.
Build, movements, hand shape, calluses—she analyzed it all.
You could call it one of the Hero's lower-tier abilities.
"I got the destination wrong. I thought it was east. Are you a soldier, Miss Rain?"
"I was just assigned to the western front."
I answered honestly.
In front of this woman, I couldn't bluff like I did with Selena.
I had to deploy all my knowledge and stay humble.
Hide the fact that I'm a slave as much as possible, mix lies between truths.
Whether I bluff or not, I need to get one more Life Point first before worrying.
"You must be working hard for the empire."
"No, it's just what I have to do."
I decided to go with the strategy of agreeing as much as possible.
Praise makes even whales dance.
The Hero seemed pleased by the compliment, her eyes curving into a smile.
"But don't you ever take off those gloves?"
"Oh, these."
The Hero smiled with her eyes and pointed at the glove on my finger with her index.
I was in the middle of putting on the gloves I'd bought earlier.
Right before boarding the carriage, I'd bought the highest-quality pair with Kyle's money, as planned.
Top-grade lambskin, specifically full-grain leather from the best part.
I'm going to pay it back anyway, so I went for the expensive one.
The simple reason I kept wearing the gloves was to break them in and get used to them since they were new.
I needed to move as naturally as possible during inspections.
"I just got these new, so I've been wearing them."
"Ah~ I was wondering why you'd wear something uncomfortable."
Well, it wasn't wrong—I'd borrowed the money Kyle worked hard for.
Hearing my answer, the Hero kept smiling with her eyes.
What is this? Was the Hero always this personality?
In the game, she was an emotionless psychopath.
Her fox-like eye smile was surprisingly alluring.
For a moment, I almost fell for it.
"You said you do massages earlier, right?"
"Yes."
The Hero pointed at my hands and asked.
"My shoulders have been stiff lately... Could you maybe loosen them up just once?"
"......Here?"
"Yes!"
The Hero rotated her shoulders, showing me how knotted they were.
But... asking for a massage on a bumpy carriage...
Why?
Her awkward behavior left me flustered.
It was the complete opposite of the game.
To begin with, the Hero shouldn't even be here.
And even if it was just her shoulders, she never allowed anyone to touch her body like that.
She cherished her body more than anything.
I had all sorts of doubts, but in the end, massaging the Hero's shoulders was my only option.
Fine, I'll do whatever you ask. Just spare me, please.
"Oh, but I don't like showing my back to others. Could you do it facing me like this?"
The Hero made an absurd demand.
She wanted a shoulder massage while facing her directly.
She lifted her hips and sat right in front of me.
Her hands demurely on her knees, eyes locked with mine.
She's dead serious.
The Hero definitely had a purpose right now.
At least, the Hero I knew.
But I had no way to read her intentions now.
Best to just do as she says for now.
"...Could you maybe close your eyes, just a bit?"
"Then what's the point of doing it face-to-face?"
The Hero answered my question with a question and smiled brightly.
This is burdensome.
The constant eye smiles, and now staring right through me like this.
I feel like I've entered a different game.
I placed my gloved hands on her shoulders.
"You do it with gloves on instead of bare hands?"
"Yes, it's just... better this way."
That was when it happened.
-Rumble.
"We've arrived."
The coachman announced our arrival at the westbound destination.
Already? Time flew that fast?
The Hero lost her balance from her seat and toppled toward me.
Her frame was slightly smaller than mine, so she fit perfectly into my arms as I caught her.
A soft, marshmallowy sensation pressed against my chest that I'd never felt before.
"Oh my."
The Hero seemed to not have expected this either; a slight blush colored her cheeks.
"Didn't see that coming."
The Hero slowly pushed off my chest with her hands and stood up.
The weight on my chest lightened.
"...S-sorry."
I apologized first thing.
I didn't know why, but it felt like I should.
"No, it was my fault for losing balance. But the mood's gotten a bit awkward for drinking now."
The Hero cooled her slightly flushed face with the back of her hand and spoke to me.
"But, And... Anderson?"
"......Yes?"
The Hero called my name with a beaming smile.
Huh?
Did I ever tell her my name?
"You carry some interesting documents."
In the Hero's right hand was a familiar document.
My heart sank.
I hurriedly searched around my chest where I'd hidden the document.
Gone.
Kyle's letter of recommendation was gone.
"Wow~ A letter of recommendation? Recommending a successor for gatekeeper."
The Hero had already unfolded the document wide and was reading the contents.
Her expression looked happier than ever.
My fingertips started trembling.
"Seal of the Empire's 5th Sword... Sir Kyle? Military successor... Anderson. You're a soldier?"
"......"
The Hero kept reading the document aloud.
Should I run?
Can I outrun her with my physical abilities?
I glanced toward the carriage exit.
-Shing!
A cold blade blocked the path between me and the exit.
The Hero's rapier.
"Don't even think about running. You think I can't catch you?"
The Hero's face was that of a completely different person from moments ago.
Infinite cold, endless emptiness... close to nothingness.
It was the Hero's face as I originally knew her.
"There was a report."
-Step.
The Hero slowly walked toward the rapier stabbed next to me.
"Some village had a state-owned slave vanish, and suddenly a soldier appeared."
And she drew the rapier.
"But that's weird, right? No sign of the slave anywhere. They even sent disguised soldiers, but no one found anything."
Those suspicious guys I saw in the village... not Selena's subordinates, but soldiers...
"And then... I happened to overhear recently. About a gatekeeper in some village with amazing hand skills."
The Hero aimed her rapier at my throat.
"So I stopped by the gate casually to check. But there was a soldier with a completely different look from the rumors."
Probably Florian.
"They said his face alone could make a living."
The Hero lifted my chin with her other hand.
And looked at me with eyes appraising merchandise.
"I didn't think so. Actually, pretty meh."
The Hero lifted my hand slightly with the rapier.
"But then, by chance, I saw a handsome guy from another merchant guild."
The Hero's face drew closer to mine.
"A handsome guy in military uniform, matching the report's description."
The Hero touched my glove with her other hand.
"And he handed some suspicious document to the guild master. I followed. And wonder of wonders... I asked that guild master if I could join too. Westbound, it matched my original destination perfectly."
It was wrong from the start. The Fleta Merchant Guild was supposed to go east.
"So I waited... and the person matching the description I was looking for boarded my carriage. Didn't expect the same one, but funny how that works."
I was already caught. No matter what I did, the result would've been the same.
"I'm curious how you sweet-talked Sir Kyle. How a slave got a letter of recommendation. But... it won't work on me. Anderson... no, slave."
The Hero pointed to her own eyes with her index finger.
As if saying her eyes couldn't be fooled.
"So, I'll give you a choice."
The Hero stabbed the rapier into the ground.
"I won't stab you. So, turn around and take a look."
I slowly turned my rigid body around.
"See that mountain of corpses over there?"
In front of me was a pile of human bodies, not a single one with intact limbs. Utterly gruesome.
"Want to be friends with them, or friends with me?"
Ah... fuck.
I'm screwed.