Why Did I Try So Hard to Live Like an Adult?
An Italian restaurant recommended by a local Italian.
Honestly, it would be a lie to say I wasn't curious.
I'd always only ever stayed briefly at the Vatican and never once come down into the city proper of Rome. Back then, I barely even had the urge to eat anything good in the first place. I just ate whatever was put in front of me—ate to stay alive, nothing more.
Discharge hadn't changed that either. I told myself I'd stick to what I knew and tore open the combat rations I'd stockpiled. Unfortunately, combat rations in 2050 weren't all that different from the ones in the 2020s. I still have no idea how I managed to choke down that revolting combat-issue vegetable bibimbap. I just ate it without thinking about anything at all. At the height of my burnout, I'd decided I didn't deserve anything delicious and treated myself with brutal hardness.
So when Clara said she'd take me somewhere she went often, a little spark of expectation was only natural. Italy was famous for its food, and nobody knows local spots better than a local.
"Oh..."
Which is why it was a little unexpected when Clara led me into a familiar fast-food joint with those two yellow arches painted on it. She was a Saintess, after all. If she wanted fine dining, she could have it whenever she liked—and yet the place she'd deliberately chosen was somewhere you could find on any corner of the world.
Not that I was trying to criticize her. I was simply, purely curious. I'd offered to treat her, so why come somewhere like this?
"Ah, this kind of food just suits my taste better."
Clara's answer was simple.
"As you know, Unnie, I used to be an ordinary girl from a remote village on the edge of Siberia."
Fancy food still didn't agree with her, she said. Well—she was still only nineteen. That made sense. When you're young, the bold and greasy stuff always tastes best. That applied to me, too. Counting both lives, my mental age was well past forty... but it had been reset once around the age of thirteen. Honestly, I still didn't know how to define my current state of mind.
So, what's the conclusion?
"Looks like it suits your taste too, Unnie?"
"Hah. Yeah, it does."
The first fast food I'd had in the twenty years since my reincarnation was disgustingly delicious. If it hadn't been right in front of Clara—if it hadn't been in front of that still-growing, adorable little sister I only ever wanted to look cool in front of—I probably would have inhaled the whole tray without a shred of dignity.
"I guess I'm still just a kid."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah."
Hearing my answer, Clara paused. Both hands still full of hamburger, she thought something over carefully, then asked in a cautious voice,
"Then... Unnie, why did you try so hard to act like an adult?"
"Like an adult?"
"Yes."
Why had I tried so hard to live like one?
Well—because even if my body was like this, my mental age was still... still?
"..."
Only then could I look at my own condition clearly.
The self that had been whittled down by experiments that bordered on torture had, after those experiments, shattered completely. What remained in the broken place was the memory of a man in his twenties, the body of a fourteen-year-old girl, and the single desire to protect the family I still had left.
The thought that if I broke here, the people I loved would have to pay the price. The obsession with family that had carried over from my previous life. Those were the things that set me apart from all the other test subjects who had already fallen apart.
That desire to protect had stitched together something made of a twenty-something man's memories and a fourteen-year-old girl's body. And that stitched-together self had been thrown onto a battlefield before it could even heal—onto the worst battlefield in human history, the kind that broke even the intact. The people I'd tried to lean on in my confusion vanished one by one, and the heart I'd worked so hard to sew back together tore further and further apart. Whittled down and worn away until what was left was a child who no longer knew how to live.
And on top of that, I'd tried to act like a forty-year-old adult spanning two lifetimes. Of course I'd fallen apart.
If I was a child, I could have lived a little easier. Lived with a little less guilt. Lived a little happier. And... let other people protect me, too.
"Yeah..."
The battlefield was one thing, but the place I had to live from now on was a peaceful world. I was no longer the invincible undefeated Sword Saint. There was no one left in front of me who needed saving, no battlefield where I had to stake my life to fight.
And yet—
"Why did I try so hard to live like an adult?"
Maybe because I'd never had the chance. Forty years of memory across two lives, and a self that had been rebuilt after a total reset and was barely a little over seven years old. There had never been anyone on a life-or-death battlefield who could accurately put a finger on that subtle misalignment between the two.
In Siberia, where everyone died with equal fairness. In an airborne unit whose survival rate didn't even hit the double digits. Being broken enough to get discharged was already a massive blessing. At least you weren't dead, right? That alone put you in the top ten percent. And if someone like me—limbs still attached—tried whining to anyone, there was simply no one left who would listen.
"Still, I'm glad, Unnie."
What shook me out of that hazy train of thought was Clara's soft voice.
"Now there's someone who will listen, right?"
"...Yeah."
My precious viewers came to mind. Those kind people who had accepted my ugly insides as if it were nothing. Maria came to mind—that kind woman who had stayed by my side and done everything she could to treat someone as negative and devoid of the will to live as me. And Clara. This girl who clung to me insisting she would make me happy no matter what...
"So you can lean on me a little and act spoiled, you know—eek!?"
Tap. I flicked her forehead lightly, at a speed ordinary eyes couldn't even register. It shouldn't have hurt much, but the way she startled and trembled was adorable.
"Pfft. You're still a kid yourself."
"Ugh... I'll be an adult starting next year, you know?"
Even the way she protested was cute. Maybe it was that pure belief that turning twenty would make her a grown-up. Even once she actually turned twenty, she probably wouldn't properly feel like a real adult.
"Clara, do you think turning twenty will actually make you a real adult?"
"Legally, I will be an adult."
"Not that. I mean in your heart."
Tap. I lightly tapped the area near her left collarbone, and the reaction I'd expected came out exactly as planned. I quietly enjoyed the sight of the girl whose cheeks had gone red, then popped the last of the fries into my mouth and propped my chin on my hand.
"I... never really got it."
Gaining one more year didn't magically turn a teenager into an adult. Your body didn't change in any dramatic way, and neither did your mind grow all at once. Even at twenty, adults still looked like adults. Life didn't transform in any big way—just one digit of the number in front of you flipped over.
"So I'll put off acting spoiled with you until next time."
She was a girl who'd been exhausted since a young age, bearing the world's attention as a Saintess. I didn't want to pile my own heart on top of that, too. That was also why I'd never been able to unload my worries on the people around me. As a Saintess, Clara carried the expectations of a billion believers on her whole body, and Maria had almost certainly watched even more comrades leave than I had. Complaining to someone who had it harder than you only drove the relationship cold.
"So, Clara—you make sure you come back as a really cool adult too, okay?"
"...Yes!"
It felt like we'd said most of what we needed to say, so I slurped the last of my cola and leaned back in the chair. By this point, it seemed like we'd both gotten through everything we'd wanted to talk about.
"Still—thank you so much for today, Clara."
"Hehe..."
Wounds of the heart don't heal from a single conversation. There's no visible progress, and you never know when they'll flare up again. There will still be plenty of times my heart will hurt, and each time I'll have to work through it until I'm okay. It might feel like stubbornly walking in place. Enough that the old me would have despaired.
But... after talking with people through today's stream, and after talking with Clara, somehow a quiet confidence had settled in me. It couldn't be walking in place. Not when there were people who cherished me and liked me this much. There was no way I wouldn't get better. That was what I thought.
"I think I've found some strength because of you."
I smiled and stood up. I gave Clara's head a single stroke as she stared blankly up at me, then sank into thought. How could I repay the viewers who took such good care of me? That was the question I was turning over.
Fortunately, I didn't need to worry for long.
"Euh?! W-wait a second!"
Because out here in a distant foreign land called Italy, I heard a familiar voice speaking a familiar language. When I turned my head toward the sound, there was a head of brown hair. A selfie stick held out as if to prove the owner's profession as a streamer, and a phone attached to the end of it. Frantic hands patting down pockets. A quick silhouette darting sha-sha-shak through the crowd. Figuring out what had happened wasn't hard at all.
"...Unnie. You're thinking about another girl, aren't you?"
"Ahaha. Clara really is sharp."
I gave a sheepish smile to Clara's sharp glare, then gathered wind beneath my feet and kicked off the ground.
It had been a very long time since my steps felt this light.