What Is a Hero (4)
“You asked me why I keep telling you to rest, didn’t you?”
“Y-yes… yes…”
“Eve, ever since the Holy Sword chose you and you became the Hero, have you ever truly rested?”
“W-well… th-that… I-I’ve rested a whole lot recently. And when we camped… i-if I had first or last watch, I slept soundly. A-and also… after we defeated the Demon King and came back, I slept for a whole week… a-and when we sealed the Spirit King, my arms and legs were all broken, so I j-just lay there. And… when we drove off the Demon Dragon, my body couldn’t handle the Holy Sword’s power, so I closed my eyes and when I opened them three days had passed… ehehe, looking at it like this, I’ve rested quite a bit, haven’t I?”
Eve answered my question by carefully folding her fingers one by one, listing every moment she believed she had rested.
When camping, if her watch was first or last, she slept deeply.
After toppling the Demon King, she spent a week doing nothing but sleep in a hospital bed.
While sealing the Spirit King, every limb broken, she could only lie still.
After repelling the Demon Dragon, she had pushed the Holy Sword’s power past her limits, closed her eyes, and opened them three days later.
And the “whole lot recently” was clearly the time she had shut herself in her room after the crushing defeat in the Abyss of Despair, her spirit broken.
Those were the moments Eve considered rest after becoming the Hero.
I already knew, but hearing it from her own lips made my head spin.
“Haa… Eve, would you bring a chair over here? Beside me.”
I sighed and beckoned her closer.
“……Huh? O-oh, y-yes.”
Startled by the sudden summons, Eve froze for a second. Then she nodded, fetched the chair that had recently appeared in the office for her, rounded the desk, and sat at my side.
The whole sequence looked exactly like a golden retriever fetching a ball its master had thrown.
“Turn the chair so you’re facing me.”
“Y-yes.”
I spun my own desk chair toward her; she followed suit, turning hers until we faced each other.
Our knees nearly touched. At that close distance we looked straight into each other’s eyes.
“……Ah.”
Meeting my gaze so near made Eve hunch her shoulders and dip her head.
I had no intention of letting her look away.
“Eve, look me straight in the eye. What I’m about to say needs to be said face-to-face.”
“A-auuh… y-yes.”
At my firm tone she fidgeted, then forced her head up and met my eyes.
Her golden irises trembled; the direct stare was clearly hard for her. Even so, she refused to look away, as if she believed she had to hear me out.
Holding her gaze, I spoke the words she needed to hear.
“First, let’s get one thing straight. Everything you just listed wasn’t rest.”
“W-what? B-but… I slept and woke up. That means I rested…”
“If someone knocks you out with a slingshot to the head and you come to, is that rest? The world doesn’t call collapsing from total physical and mental exhaustion ‘sleeping.’”
None of the “rests” Eve had offered me deserved the name. She had simply blacked out and barely woken up again.
“Eve, how long has it been since you became the Hero?”
“Eight years… now.”
“Then for eight years you have run without a single proper day of rest.”
Hero Eve had never rested.
From the moment she opened her eyes to the moment she closed them, every second had been lived as the Hero.
If someone needed help, she helped. If someone needed her, she ran. A life of absolute selflessness.
After becoming the Hero, Eve had spent every moment living for others instead of herself.
Because of that life, people praised her as the most Hero-like Hero in history.
I felt not the slightest urge to praise her for it.
“Truly, the most foolish life imaginable.”
A life spent looking after everyone else while never looking after herself even a little.
How could anyone praise such an idiot?
“Ugh… I-I’m the Hero. A Hero has a d-duty to help people.”
“Looking after yourself before you look after others is common sense. Since you don’t even know something that basic, Eve, you are the biggest fool under heaven.”
“A-auh?!”
My blunt words hit her like a physical blow; her face crumpled as if she had heard a cartoonish thud.
Fair enough. The eight years she had lived as the Hero had just been reduced to “the biggest fool under heaven” by a single sentence of mine.
“H-how can you say something so cruel… y-you’re terrible, Baron Offen…!”
Eve’s face crumpled into a tearful pout, as if she had never imagined I would say anything so harsh.
“I-I’m… I’m the Hero. Heroes are just… just like that. We’re supposed to be people’s help, their necessity, their hope. That’s what a Hero is…! W-why would you say something so mean!”
She glared straight at me, tears welling at the corners of her eyes, voice rising in anger.
“I… I thought Baron Offen would understand how hard I’ve tried…”
Betrayal dripped from her watery voice.
Having her entire life denied by me seemed to wound her deeply.
I had no intention of comforting her.
“I know exactly how hard you’ve worked to fulfill a Hero’s duty. I know better than anyone—that’s why I’m saying this.”
As a veteran of Crack Kingdom, I understood Hero Eve’s efforts better than she herself did.
“……What? W-what do you mean?”
“People need rest. Rest is what lets us keep living. Rest is something you must take for the sake of tomorrow’s self. Yet you… for the past eight years you have not taken even the smallest rest.”
“I-I’m the Hero, so it’s fine. Ever since I took up the Holy Sword… unless I’m badly hurt… my body doesn’t need rest anymore.”
“Yes, as the Holy Sword’s master your body is fine. But a person is a creature that can only live fully when body, heart, and mind are all healthy. Eve—are your mind and heart healthy right now?”
“Ugh…”
My words sealed her lips. She could not answer.
Of course she couldn’t.
Right now Eve was so broken she could not even draw the Holy Sword properly.
Her mind and heart were both at their absolute limit, one step from shattering—yet she still prattled on about a Hero’s duty. It made me furious.
“Rest isn’t only for the body. An exhausted mind and heart need rest too.”
“B-but I’m… I’m the Hero… a Hero has to be people’s help…”
“Ha. Eve. Isn’t a Hero a person? Before you are the Hero, you are the human being Eve. Why do you keep calling yourself nothing but the Hero?”
“……Eh?”
“Give me your hand.”
“O-oh, y-yes.”
“Both hands.”
“A-auuh…”
Hesitantly, Eve held out both hands.
I reached out and took them.
Her hands were far smaller than mine, yet far rougher, harder, stronger.
Hands tempered to the extreme by endless sword swings.
They were not like this because she was the Hero.
They were like this because she was Eve—because only Eve could have trained them this way.
“A-auh… i-if you grab them so suddenly…”
“Your hands are rough. Rougher even than a man’s—mine.”
“Eh… th-then let go. They’re ugly hands…”
“I refuse. They’re magnificent. Hands like these aren’t earned in a day or two. As someone who only ever turned pages at a desk, I can only feel pure admiration.”
I let my gaze travel from her hands down her legs, up her shoulders, over her entire body.
The oversized T-shirt hid her outline, yet I could still tell.
Eve’s body was perfectly tempered as well.
Not by the Hero’s power, but by Eve herself—forged through sheer will and effort so she could help people.
“You’ve tempered your body to perfection too. I can’t even imagine how hard you worked to gain a body like this. Truly impressive.”
I met her eyes again.
“A-auh, uwaa…”
Her golden irises trembled; her once-pale face had flushed bright red.
“Eve. You are not great because you are the Hero. You are great because you are Eve.”
Still holding her hands tightly, I finally spoke the words I had wanted to say for so long.
“The Holy Sword merely found you. How you wielded it was entirely up to you.”
Eve had not become the Hero by her own will.
A Holy Sword that fell from the sky had chosen her, and so she became the Hero.
The Holy Sword was nothing more than a crystallization of power—a tool.
“The anti-evil power the Holy Sword holds is not its true essence. Its true essence is resonance—the way its nature changes according to the kind of person you are. That is the Holy Sword’s real power. If you had been a wicked person, it would have been called a Demon Sword instead of a Holy Sword.”
Whether a heaven-sent blade became holy or demonic depended on the hand that held it.
In Crack Kingdom, if every companion in the Hero’s party died, Eve had a fifty-percent chance of falling. When she did, the platinum Holy Sword in her grip would turn black and its name would change to Demon Sword.
Whether the blade took on a holy or demonic nature was decided solely by the wielder’s will.
“Yet you chose to live as the most Hero-like Hero of all. You never turned away from responsibility. For a full eight years.”
And Eve’s Holy Sword had never once ceased to be holy.
In every moment she chose goodness, and she used every power the Holy Sword granted her for the sake of others.
Through countless hardships and adversities, Eve never abandoned the fact that she was the Hero.
“The way you have walked the Hero’s path without a single misstep—quietly, steadfastly—ever since you took up the Holy Sword is something that deserves true respect. Taking a sudden, enormous power and using it for others instead of yourself is not something just anyone can do.”
“……”
“That is exactly why I cannot praise you.”
The road Eve had walked was not a road just anyone could walk.
Hero Eve’s life had been an ascetic ordeal.
A life of walking without rest until collapse, living solely for everyone else.
And in that “everyone” she protected, she herself was never included.
“The person who has more right to rest than anyone, the person who needs rest more than anyone, has not rested at all. How am I supposed to praise such a foolish person?”
“……”
“You need to rest now. Even if you refuse, I will force you to rest. Because before you are the Hero, you are Eve. Because simply by existing, you are this world’s hope.”
I held her hands firmly and looked straight into those two golden eyes as I spoke from the heart.
“If you will look after everyone except yourself, then I will look after only you. Eve, set aside a Hero’s duties and responsibilities for a while and rest easy. I’ll fill the empty space you leave.”
Until now, no one in this world had been able to fill the Hero’s absence.
Who could replace the strongest human who had defeated the Demon King, the Spirit King, and the Demon Dragon?
But that had only been true before I set foot in this world.
I could fill her place more than well enough.
“From now on, I will save the world. Hero.”
Because I was a veteran of Crack Kingdom—
“I’ll blow every last one of those Great Rifts to hell.”
—and the master of the Red Button.
At my declaration, Eve slowly opened the lips she had kept tightly shut and answered.
“……Y-yes… eheh…”
It was an utterly limp, powerless reply.