Forgotten Heart: Resonance (1)
Carmen's gaze held a great many emotions.
The look of someone seeing a hypocrite, and the confusion of a woman who could not understand why her life had been spared.
Every inference and interpretation born of that confusion was, in truth, not wrong at all.
She had attacked the moment she laid eyes on me—that was accurate. And her choice to spare me at the very brink of killing me—also accurate.
As I stared at Carmen, standing close enough to touch if I only reached out, I noticed a small wound on her cheek, blood welling from it.
"...Mm?"
When I reached out and wiped the blood from her cheek, a soft moan escaped her lips.
I knew full well I had no right to do this. And yet, somehow, it felt like something I simply had to do.
Her gaze turned toward me, brimming with questions and bewilderment.
Not a trace of anger lingered in her eyes.
Perhaps because she had realized that I was no longer a threat to her.
"Dean... what on earth are you...?"
Her lips moved cautiously, carrying the question to me.
Just as I had no idea how to describe this situation, she seemed no different.
When I moved to withdraw my hand after wiping away the last of the blood, she caught my wrist.
"Tell me. Why did you spare me?"
"..."
"Answer. Or I will break this hand."
"...I don't know."
After that short answer, silence settled between us.
A sharp gaze swept over me, judging whether I spoke the truth—but that was all it did.
"...Hah. You truly are something else."
Having realized that dragging this out was nothing but a waste of time, Carmen released my hand.
It seemed I was becoming, in her mind, a person increasingly impossible to define.
If this had been the past, she would have strangled me on the spot or stomped my skull in without a moment's hesitation.
"...I came here because I have a request for you, Dean."
Closing her eyes and opening them again, she cleared the air and revealed the reason she had come to the Altar of Grief.
"I need your help to save my father."
I had explained the way to the Abyss, where the Fist King was held, without missing a single detail. Had some part of it been wrong?
"...The path to the Forgotten Heart: Resonance is sealed."
Fortunately, I was not murdered for passing along faulty information.
According to her, the road to the Forgotten Heart: Resonance had been blocked from the very beginning.
Apparently it would not open because certain conditions had not been met—but for the life of me, I couldn't recall the exact reason.
Did a specific boss have to die? Or was there an item to be obtained?
At that moment, Carmen came into view before me, and color returned to the white-washed canvas of my mind.
The reason I couldn't remember the condition was simple.
Because the condition itself—was me.
Resonance. A place only those acknowledged by the Forgotten Heart could enter.
But Carmen had never been acknowledged by the Forgotten Heart, and so she could not so much as approach it.
"..."
...Should I help her?
I quickly weighed the practical gains that helping Carmen might bring me.
As the endgame zone, it was crawling with powerful enemies and dangerous—but that danger meant equally powerful equipment to be won.
And more than that, the final zone might hold a hint about how to return to Earth.
When my judgment was done, the gains seemed to outweigh the risks, and I opened my mouth.
"Fine. I'll help you."
Carmen, who had never expected to be accepted this easily, blinked rapidly.
"In exchange. When this is over, never set foot here again."
"...Understood."
Attaching my own condition, I made it clear that what I was doing was no act of charity.
Since the request to never return was hardly a difficult one, she nodded and accepted the terms.
No further conversation followed after that.
I quietly sat down before the altar, and Carmen settled primly onto the stairs, and so the hours passed.
If I had been here alone, I would have swept away the dust by now and given the altar a proper cleaning.
Housekeeping had been postponed thanks to an uninvited guest—but with even a faint hope of returning to Earth now in hand, postponing it forever suited me just fine.
"..."
Carmen, who had been watching me sit there fidgeting with my fingers, rose to her feet.
Then, slowly, she came over and sat down beside me, claiming the spot at my side.
My heart pounded at the inexplicable action, tension spiking—but since she did nothing further worth noting, I let my guard down.
The Altar of Grief, dark despite the light filtering in, brightened as time passed until it could fairly be called well-lit.
Judging by the hour, it was around noon by now.
Having returned to this place without a proper meal or a drop of water, a twisting pain of hunger gripped my stomach.
Through the silence of the altar, the low sound of my growling stomach echoed.
"...?"
Perhaps she had heard the embarrassing sound, because Carmen tilted her head and studied me.
I could feel the ordinary gaze of someone looking at a person who had skipped a meal.
She would never understand—I had no need to eat.
If I starved to death, I would simply die and come back to life again.
Besides, my mind wasn't in a state to spare time on hunting or foraging.
"You... have you been skipping meals on account of your resurrection?"
Perhaps she wanted to meddle, Carmen thrust her face close to mine and broke the silence.
Her pale red hair swayed, carrying the scent of flowers with it.
"That's none of your business."
"...Well."
Her lips fluttering as she earnestly searched for a counterargument, she soon found the flaw in the conversation.
"...We're in the same boat now. So it's not exactly none of my business anymore."
"So?"
"If you collapse like this, our departure will be delayed by that much..."
"I don't care how long things get delayed. The person who needs saving isn't my father, is he?"
"You—!"
As the conversation crossed the line, Carmen clenched her fist.
She looked ready to swing it the moment I crossed the line once more.
"What, so I'll die by your hand like before? Go ahead and try. Then this contract ends too."
Carmen clenched her fist so hard it seemed blood might seep from it—but she did not follow through with the swing.
She desperately needed my help to reach the Forgotten Heart: Resonance and find her father, after all.
"...I will make certain to remember this."
"Do as you like."
The murderous standoff, on the verge of exploding at any moment, ended with Carmen hiding her teeth.
One thing was certain: in that standoff, I was the one who had lost far more.
Whatever small fondness Carmen had built up for me plunged back to rock bottom, and her hostility flared anew.
Once her business with her father was done, we would return to being locked in a cycle of killing and being killed.
...Damn it all.
I knew perfectly well that the exchange we'd just had was the kind of conversation a human being should never, ever have.
This was what happened when I ignored, without thinking, the rage she had been harboring toward me all along.
I tried to salvage my mistake even now, but Carmen treated me as if I didn't exist, offering no further attention.
...In the end, I couldn't sleep that night, crushed under the weight of my guilt until the next day came.
...
By morning, my appearance had grown thoroughly haggard.
"...Dean. I will bring you something to eat right now. Please, have a meal."
Even Carmen, who had deliberately tuned me out after last night's quarrel, could no longer look past it, and she approached me.
In that instant, I raised Fer-de's Fang, which had been resting faithfully at my side—
And drove it straight into my throat.
There was no reason to eat.
I would simply die and come back to life again.
Special Perk 'Defeat Addiction' failed to activate!
— No eligible target found.
Resurrecting at Checkpoint. LOADING...
The moment I opened my eyes, having chosen death over a meal, Carmen was there.
I could feel her gaze—equal parts bewilderment and pity.
"Let's go."
When I rose from my spot and told her so, she started to say something, then gave up and quietly followed behind me.
Silence prevailed as we passed through the forest.
Since we both knew the way, neither of us adjusted to the other's pace—we simply walked at our own speed.
And so Carmen took the lead, and I trailed behind her.
Perhaps worried I might run off, Carmen glanced back to keep watch on me whenever the chance arose, and each time, I met her eyes with an expressionless stare.
Then, all at once, Carmen's outfit caught my attention.
She wore the kind of attire a dancer might—and put kindly, it was beautiful; put bluntly, it was breathtakingly revealing.
What's more, unlike me, who walked around in shoes, she crossed the dirt ground barefoot as if it were nothing.
No matter how far her physical abilities exceeded the bounds of humanity, the fact that she walked around barefoot bothered me.
And besides—right now, Carmen was on her way to meet her father.
"...What is it?"
"Wear these."
I took off the shoes I'd been wearing and held them out to Carmen.
"...Are you pitying me? I'm sorry, but I'm perfectly fine without shoes—"
"—What do you think your father will say, seeing the daughter who came to him barefoot?"
"...!!"
Echoes of empathy.
That was the true nature of the tangled emotions I'd felt toward her.
Me, who lost his father at a young age.
And Carmen, who had lived her whole life with her father missing.
Our stories weren't so very different.
I knew I had no right to feel this way.
I had hurled unspeakable, unforgivable curses at her father, after all.
The cruel words I had spoken to her were nothing less than a dagger I had driven into myself.
Without a word, I brushed the dirt from her bare feet and slipped the shoes onto them.
They didn't fit—but once I pulled the laces tight, I doubted they would slip off while she walked.
"..."
Carmen stared at my inexplicable actions as if in a daze.
The man who had cursed her father in last night's quarrel was now, impossibly, fussing over her reunion with him.
"You are..."
Carmen opened her mouth carefully, but knowing that voicing what she felt right now would earn no belief, she gave up and paid it no mind as I finished tying the laces.