Racist and Racist
The night had fallen over the Fairy Forest.
Amid the ominous cries of animals and the chirping of insects echoing from somewhere, my clear refusal rang out.
Aranseol stared at me in silence without answering.
Then, slowly, she parted her lips.
“Alright. I understand.”
She turned away without pressing further.
She intended to head into the forest alone.
Of course, I had no intention of letting that happen.
Send her off to die by herself? Like hell I would.
More than anything, I couldn’t just go back alone like this.
If I did something like that, I had no idea how Soun and Lapiel would look at me.
If we were going back, it had to be the two of us together.
When I grabbed her wrist, Aranseol turned to look at me.
Her gaze was remarkably calm for someone heading off to die.
“Cosmic Jack is prowling that forest. We got lucky this time, but next time you’ll really die.”
Cosmic Jack was lazy, but he was cautious.
That was why there was no way he would just let us go after seeing us come back to life.
“I know.”
Know what, exactly?
“Are you out of your mind?”
“The search party coming here might be slaughtered by Cosmic Jack.”
“You’re risking your life to save people you’ve never even seen?”
“Harua, you were the same.”
I paused at her next words.
“You saved the people on the airship first, too.”
What was she talking about?
“Idiot. I told you at the end. I only helped because there was an escape boat from the start.”
“Even so, you still saved them. And—”
Aranseol looked me straight in the eye.
“You saved me, too.”
Her eyes shone with clarity.
I didn’t know why, but her gaze seemed far brighter than before.
“The day I almost died to Cosmic Jack, you rushed in with nothing and saved me.”
My lips twitched.
No.
I wasn’t the kind of person Aranseol thought I was.
I’d only saved her because I had the safety net of Resurrection magic.
Without it, I never would have done something so reckless.
So there was no reason for me to be praised.
I wasn’t like Aranseol, someone who faced death without fear.
“If you feel guilty about me going alone, you don’t have to.”
She lifted the corner of her mouth slightly.
“We both know it. You and I can never get close.”
Aranseol hated transmigrators.
I despised the natives of this world.
It was something we both knew without saying.
“Even so, you saved me.”
Aranseol slowly pulled her wrist free from my grip.
Then she clenched and unclenched her left hand.
“This incident made me realize I haven’t really wanted to live all this time.”
I didn’t know her past.
I hadn’t been particularly curious, nor had I asked.
But I did know that she hadn’t seemed very lively.
I’d often seen that hollow look in her eyes.
“Even someone like me still had the desire to live somewhere in my heart.”
A life detached from ordinary people.
Even in that life, Aranseol had only now confronted that faint desire to survive.
I want to live.
It was the simplest driving force of life.
Aranseol had only realized that simple force today.
“And it would be the same for others.”
Aranseol looked at me again.
“You would have been the same, Harua.”
Living on.
Just as she said, I had never once wanted to die, either.
I’d charged ahead trusting in the safety net of Resurrection magic, but even that was because I didn’t want to die.
In the end, living creatures survived to live a little longer—that was the rule.
“My parents were killed by a transmigrator.”
Aranseol spoke her past aloud.
“I’ve lived my whole life for revenge, and I still haven’t achieved it. That’s why I can’t see transmigrators in a good light.”
It was only natural.
With her family murdered by a transmigrator, there was no way she could look favorably on them.
She smiled at me for the first time.
That smile shone like the moon rising at night.
“Even now, I still feel uneasy about you, Harua, the one who saved my life. That’s the kind of person I am.”
Her smile carried self-mockery as well.
“So I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.”
Her eyes shone with clarity.
The families of those killed by Cosmic Jack.
The grudges and desire for revenge they would harbor.
Aranseol hoped that cycle of revenge wouldn’t continue.
“I hope they can live a life without hating anyone or burning with vengeance.”
It might have been a defensive reaction born from her own psyche.
Just as she wished her past self hadn’t gone through such things, she wished the same for others.
The fact that Aranseol had tried to save the people on the airship was also unconscious proof of that.
And today, by facing death head-on, Aranseol had finally come to understand who she was.
People who had died and come back to life sometimes changed greatly.
For example, someone who had only ever cared about money suddenly donating all their wealth.
Or someone who had always neglected their family suddenly seeking them out to embrace them.
Before dying, they recalled all the things they hadn’t accomplished and tried to achieve them.
In the end, it might have been because they were finally facing the person they truly were, buried deep inside.
Aranseol had faced her inner self.
That was why she wanted a world that didn’t give birth to revenge.
She came to hope that everyone, including herself, could live in such a world.
Not an endless purpose of life called revenge.
It was the first purpose of life she had set for herself.
It was the conclusion she had reached while resting right after coming back to life.
“I’ll be going.”
Aranseol, having freed her hand, began to walk.
She grew distant through the night forest.
She hadn’t asked me to come with her.
This goal was one she had set for herself, so I had no intention of forcing it on her.
I didn’t move from where I stood.
As I’d said before, I was no saint.
I only had enough morality to not be able to watch an acquaintance die.
Just the level of morality a transmigrator would have.
Even that, I wouldn’t act on if it brought harm to me.
I had no desire to suffer losses by sticking my neck out for others.
I clenched my fists until they hurt.
If I ran into Cosmic Jack this time, I would really die.
Resurrection wouldn’t be a safety net anymore.
The decision I should make here was to turn around and leave the forest.
Yeah. That was what I was going to do.
“Damn it.”
Before I knew it, I had caught up to Aranseol.
Aranseol turned to look at me with surprised eyes.
“Aranseol, I hate the natives of this world. I find them repulsive.”
Backward natives.
The disgust I felt toward them had always followed me.
“When I first transmigrated, I landed in a place full of cultists. They ripped off my limbs without hesitation, just because I was a transmigrator.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that my head had been torn off too.
Resurrection magic was my hidden card, my secret.
There was nothing good about it becoming known.
“So I find the natives repulsive. But I can’t stand the idea of them being morally superior to me.”
As I’d said before, I was no saint. Not even close.
But there was one thing.
The reason I couldn’t just watch Aranseol leave was simple.
Aranseol was a backward native.
Could such a backward native have a superior moral compass to mine?
That was something I absolutely could not accept.
The moral sense of backward natives was on the level of medieval scum!
Being morally inferior to such backward natives was unbearable!
Aranseol stared at me blankly.
Then she laughed as if it were absurd.
Don’t laugh, you sly fox.
I wasn’t going to fall for the schemes of some wicked native.
“What kind of ridiculous reason is that?”
“It’s my honest reason.”
It was a perfectly understandable and excellent reason.
Aranseol’s laughter somehow carried a sense of relief.
“We really can never get along, can we?”
Just as she said, we were complete opposites.
Expecting two racists to get along was impossible.
“Even so, we can still head in the same direction. Isn’t that funny?”
“I don’t see where the joke is.”
“Because even people who hate each other like this are ultimately the same.”
Aranseol’s face looked somewhat relieved.
“Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve ever openly told someone I hate transmigrators.”
In a world where everyone hated transmigrators, that was actually a pretty decent attitude.
“Sorry, but I already said it once in a crappy old party.”
Of course, it had been me yelling at the corpses after they all wiped because they only cared about their own opinions.
“That was my first time. And you’re saying that after taking my first away?”
I turned to look at her with a dumbfounded expression after hearing her next words.
Her face was, of course, filled with mischief.
She was the same person who had been expressionless and short with words the entire time we’d been talking.
But had she always been the type to make jokes like this?
When I gave no reaction, she turned her head away, her ears slightly flushed as if embarrassed by her own words.
“It was a joke.”
“Whatever else, I can tell exactly how much of a fox you act like in front of our master.”
“I’ve never acted like a fox.”
Maybe this was Aranseol’s true personality.
The Aranseol I had seen so far was a racist who hated and felt uncomfortable around transmigrators.
But the Aranseol now didn’t seem like a racist at all.
Aranseol smiled at me.
For some reason, it left me with a strangely blank feeling.
But neither of us knew.
Just how unlucky the two of us really were.
Rustle—
The sound of leaves being stepped on echoed.
Aranseol and I slowly turned our gazes in that direction.
And the two of us froze in place.
Standing where the sound had come from was a man with a flower for a head.
The Great Sinner of Sloth, Cosmic Jack.
The moment he appeared, he slowly turned to look our way.
“Huh?”
A dumbfounded sound escaped his lips.
As if asking how we were still alive.
Anyone could see he was looking at ghosts.
Aranseol’s and my faces turned pale.
The resolve we had made just moments ago felt meaningless as death approached once again.
Life was supposed to be a series of misfortunes, but this—
Even the gods had crossed the line.
After Cosmic Jack, who didn’t understand the situation, paused for a brief moment—
Aranseol and I turned and ran.
We didn’t know if we could escape Cosmic Jack or not.
All we could think was that if we didn’t run now, we would die.
Cosmic Jack stomped the ground.
Whether we were ghosts or not, he was determined to eliminate us.
There would be no next time.
This time, the alarm bells of death rang clearly in my mind.
“Cosmic Jack.”
A voice rang out.
Our gazes turned toward it.
There stood a woman the size of a forearm.
A woman with four wings and strange fluffy tufts of fur flowing from her vanilla-colored hair.
“Liriran!”
The moment she appeared, the killing intent radiating from Cosmic Jack covered the entire forest.
Birds startled and took flight all at once.
It seemed everything he had shown us until now had only been a fraction of his power.
His killing intent was so intense that even I, who had treated death like a dog, felt a chill.
Cosmic Jack leaped explosively.
It was the same leap that had caught up to us in an instant before.
But right after he jumped, the Liriran he had shouted at clasped her hands together.
“Stalker, stop following me around already.”
With those words, the scenery changed in an instant.
Along with a nauseating sensation, I found myself sitting on the ground with a thud.
“Ow.”
As I rubbed my backside, Aranseol had landed gracefully.
Even here, the difference in athletic ability showed.
Soon, the surroundings slowly came into view.
Inside the hollow of an empty tree.
Several tiny houses, like dollhouses, could be seen built here and there.
I immediately knew where we were.
Inside Breathwood—the land of the Fairy Tribe.
And I also knew who the fairy who had teleported both Aranseol and me was.
When I looked up, she was smiling faintly at us.
“Welcome to Aeryeld, the land of the Fairy Tribe.”
The master of space magic.
Liriran Arielde.
She had brought us inside Breathwood.