I Became the Ira Who Lost Her Memories
In Eternal Arcadia, there was a saying that—heroes of the main story aside—the strongest NPCs in the game were the village guards.
Well, of course they were. Someone had to clean up the monsters players dragged back from the hunting grounds on aggro, which meant those guards were built with enough stats to wipe out everything in the area without breaking a sweat. And among them, one stood absurdly far above the rest: the hunter of a tiny beginner village.
There was a reason for that.
Originally, even she hadn't been anything special. She was just the guard character of a starter town, and how strong could the monsters around a beginner village possibly be?
Then one day, a handful of toxic players—whether they meant to give the newbies a taste of how bitter the game could be, or just felt like it—started massacring the village with items that summoned high-level monsters. At first people laughed it off, calling it part of the game. Once it kept happening, they started cursing out the company instead. The forums burned almost every single day, and the number of new users, the so-called newbies, dropped off a cliff.
Fewer players coming in meant cashing out got harder. Cashing out getting harder meant the in-game economy fell apart. Anyway, it was a disaster. A real one.
Even with all that outrage, they apparently couldn't just delete the monster-summoning items. Maybe there were already too many quests tied to them, and the devs decided fixing it properly would be more trouble than it was worth. So the solution the company came up with was simple, and stupid.
They cranked the stats of the hunter—the beginner village's guard—to a completely ridiculous degree. They set her numbers to nearly twice those of a max-level character, enough to handle a whole pile of high-level monsters spawning at once without strain, and tied her to react to the monster-spawn trigger.
The incident got resolved that way. But the story of a beginner-village hunter who, just by existing, ended up with stats that wouldn't look the least bit out of place in a final-boss party became such a fun piece of trivia that even people who didn't play the game heard about it.
So why am I suddenly telling you all this?
Because that same hunter just hauled an idiotically enormous log all the way here by herself. No cart. Just her shoulders. Did this world have every balance patch from the game baked into it, too?
The fortunate part was that she hadn't brought the huge tree to build me a coffin, or to string me up and burn me alive. She'd brought it to fix the door she'd smashed. And while she was at it, she'd recovered nearly all of Unit 1's missing bone fragments...
...Yeah. This woman was definitely a monster.
So of course I dropped to my knees and begged forgiveness the moment I saw her. What else was I supposed to do? She looked oddly flustered by the sight, but anyway—the woman who'd introduced herself as Evelyn was reshaping the timber she'd brought so it would fit the front gate, and I was piecing Unit 1 back together from the bone fragments she'd gathered.
"I'm sorry for coming at you like that out of nowhere. I wasn't in my right mind then. You were trying to save that child, weren't you? I figured it out later, from the traces. But even so, I couldn't just leave a monster skeleton standing there."
"..."
I nodded, and thought, Would've been nice if you'd figured that out before you tried to kill us. Not a word of it made it out of my mouth. How could it? Not in front of someone who could take my head off whenever she felt like it. I was still grumbling to myself when she spoke again, carefully.
"By the way, Ira. That's right, isn't it? Do you remember me?"
"...?"
I looked at her, puzzled. There it was again. Ira. Had they known each other personally, too? I shook my head. Of course I didn't. I didn't even know who Ira Elysia was, and this was the first time I'd gotten a proper look at the face of the woman calling herself Evelyn. In the game, the beginner village was a stretch you blew through in ten minutes, and I'd skipped even that without paying attention. A background NPC like the village guard? I couldn't have told you what she looked like.
Evelyn didn't look particularly shocked by my reaction.
"So you really don't remember..."
"..."
Why are you making the face of some tragic heroine? I had no idea what the actual story was, but I was genuinely not involved. She didn't give up. She set her tools down and came toward me, slowly.
"You really don't remember anything?"
This time she took my hand, as if telling me to look at her properly, and met my eyes. The stare was too much. I turned my head on instinct and squeezed my eyes shut.
...!
I don't know! I don't know, lady! What do I do? I haven't actually talked to a person in so long my voice won't come out...! I needed to make it clear I wasn't who she thought I was. How was I supposed to say that? Eyes shut, I started rummaging through every pattern of conversation I'd ever had with other people.
"How do you kill the mood every time you open your mouth—"
"How about you just don't talk?"
"It would've been better if you'd stayed quiet—"
That wasn't the kind of memory I'd meant to dig up. The things I'd worked so hard to bury came up one by one, jabbing at my skull until it hurt. But I had to say it. If I didn't say it now, the fact that I wasn't Ira would stay unsaid forever. I squeezed out every drop of courage I had, and at last...
"...Yes."
...I just decided to be Ira Elysia, the one who'd lost her memories. What? That took plenty of courage for me, all right?
"It's fine if you don't remember! Just having you back is something to be happy about!"
At that one word from me, the hunter ruffled my hair once and let go. Having my head rubbed out of nowhere threw me for a second, but the touch itself didn't feel bad. When was the last time someone had patted my head...? I couldn't even remember anymore. What was the worst that could happen later?
"Ira. Then... you don't remember what happened in this mansion, either?"
I shook my head at once. Like I said, I'd skipped the entire story of this game. There was no way I'd know. So the hunter began, carefully, to tell me.
"A plague swept through the village. A lot of people died. House Elysia poured a great deal into trying to cure it, but in the end, you..."
"..."
Mm. There'd definitely been some tragic backstory. I still didn't remember a thing. To me, this mansion was nothing but a tutorial zone you had to walk through whether you wanted to or not. Honestly, this conversation was so boring I wanted to yawn and hit skip. I didn't care about any of it.
A moment later, she quietly cut herself off.
"Ah. You might not have wanted to remember. I'm sorry."
"..."
It wasn't that I hadn't wanted to remember. I just hated having to sit through a useless story. It wasn't even pleasant to listen to, and it hadn't happened to me anyway. Still, not having to hear the boring tale of a fallen house wasn't a bad deal.
Silence again. Just as the air was starting to turn awkward, the hunter spoke once more, carefully.
"That skeleton must be pretty important to you."
Was that how I looked, bent over assembling Unit 1 by hand? Honestly, I just hadn't had anything to say, so I'd focused on my hands... But it wasn't as if she wasn't important. Without her, I'd have been wolf food and ended my second life on day one. So I nodded, quietly.
And then I felt Unit 1's gaze on me change... What. What do you want. Don't get emotional over something I just said. If she'd had both arms, she looked ready to throw them around me. Maybe our reactions amused her. Evelyn watched us with a pleased look, then spoke.
"Does that skeleton have a name?"
A name? Well... she had one, but...
"Unit 1..."
"...Unit 1?"
"I'm... not very good at names..."
"...Ah."
"Then is there a Unit 2, too...?"
I said nothing. I just pointed at the Unit 2s rolling around beside me and ducked my head. Damn it. Introducing them to someone else as Unit 1 and Unit 2 was embarrassingly lame. Should I come up with different names, ones that wouldn't sound stupid if an outsider heard them?
Anyway, another stretch of awkward time passed. The front gate, which had been letting the wind whistle through, was neatly repaired, and I'd put Unit 1 back together well enough that she could stand on her own. As Evelyn got ready to leave again, she spoke like she was leaving me with instructions.
"Ira, if you'd like, you can keep living here."
"What?"
For real? I'd gotten the feeling, from the mood of things, that I might not get kicked out, but I could actually just live here?
"But there are a few things I need you to keep in mind."
Things to keep in mind? What could they possibly be? Might as well hear her out.
"I've kept your existence a secret from the villagers for now. So it'd be better if you stayed away from the village for a while. Not everyone feels kindly toward House Elysia. There are still quite a few people in the village who remember your face."
I nodded. I hadn't planned on going down to the village in the first place.
"And second. I understand that Unit 1 is precious to you, but please keep her out of sight as much as you can. If I see a monster wandering around the village, I won't be able to let it go."
I nodded again. Fair enough. I'd have to keep Unit 1 at the mansion from now on.
"And last, the third thing is..."
"..."
Gulp. Dragging it out like that made me nervous for no reason. How hard a thing was she about to ask? While I was thinking that, she spoke, carefully.
"I'll come by around lunch tomorrow, too. Next time... could you let me hear your voice a little louder?"
Ah. This one was actually hard...