First Meeting (2)
When I opened my eyes, an unfamiliar ceiling greeted me.
After months of growing used to a crimson sky, the sight of ordinary wooden planks felt strangely alien.
Warmth soon wrapped around my back—soft, comforting. Yet even that comfort could not mask the pain that blanketed my entire body. A dull, throbbing ache pressed down on every limb.
I managed to lift my head and saw myself swathed in bandages.
Someone treated me?
Lying in a bed meant I was no longer inside the Forbidden Zone. There were no beds like this there.
So… had I made it outside?
Just then, someone opened the door and stepped in.
A young girl with long white hair. Her hair looked soft as pure silk, a shade brighter than my own.
The moment she noticed I was awake, her eyes went round.
“@!@#@#!@#!!@”
…What?
I thought I had misheard at first, turning the sounds over in my mind—until I realized it was no language I knew.
She was speaking something completely different.
I almost thanked her, then stopped, thoughts racing.
…Don’t tell me I never made it back to the kingdom?
One possibility flickered through my head.
The people the king had spoken of—his kin who lived beyond the Red Barrier.
Had I run into them?
I had never heard of any kin within the kingdom who spoke another tongue.
In the haze of half-consciousness, the memory of driving my fist into the crimson wall hovered just out of reach.
I was confused, but gratitude came first.
I slowly swung my legs out from under the covers and tried to sit up.
The instant I braced my hand against the bed’s surface and put weight on it—
Crack—
The bed collapsed. More precisely, the spot where my hand had pressed splintered into pieces and gave way.
Wounds that had not fully healed flared, a sharp ache racing all the way to the top of my skull.
I had no time to cry out. Pain like this was already familiar.
I glanced at the bed’s owner.
“#$#@@!”
Was she angry?
She flailed both arms, face startled, saying something I could not understand at all.
Why is this bed so fragile, anyway?
Even stone would have held up better.
I looked down at the wreckage. Shattered wood lay scattered across the floor—cheap timber of the sort you might find around my hometown, the Abandoned Village. Even there, no one used wood this weak.
And the people here made furniture out of it? Was their culture simply different?
…Or were they so poor they had no choice?
Questions piled up, but apology came first. I hurriedly pushed myself up from the debris.
“I’m sorry!”
“….”
The girl only tilted her head, clearly not understanding a word.
Then another figure appeared through the open doorway.
She also had pure white hair, though her face looked a little younger than the first girl’s.
A younger sister?
The newcomer started chattering the moment she entered—again, not a single word I could catch.
The long-haired girl quietly explained something, and the one who seemed to be the little sister nodded several times.
Then she turned to me and tried desperately to get a message across with hands and feet.
She flung both arms high, mimed hoisting someone onto her back, took a few steps in place, stuck out her tongue, and panted. She even wiped imaginary sweat from her brow.
…She went through hell carrying me here?
I roughly grasped the meaning and pressed my hands together, face apologetic.
She waved it off—no big deal.
But then she planted both hands on her hips, puffed out her cheeks, and huffed.
What did that mean?
Her gaze flicked past me…
Ah. She’s mad about the broken bed.
I apologized again.
The girl closed her eyes, smiled deeply, and gave a little nod.
Apparently she was accepting the apology.
A generous kid.
…Somehow, without a single shared word, we had managed to communicate.
At that moment the long-haired girl stepped closer and spoke.
“#$#@@!”
“….”
I could only stare blankly. The little sister beside her waved her arms in frustration and scolded her older sister.
The older one looked a little flustered, then offered me an apologetic expression.
No need to apologize.
Then the younger sister came over and tugged on my arm.
…She was trying to pull me, right?
She strained and yanked, but honestly I barely felt it.
After a moment’s hesitation I awkwardly let her lead me, pretending to be dragged along.
She kept gesturing the whole way to the door—pointing at the bed, stacking imaginary things on top of it. Looks like the bed needed fixing.
I glanced back. The woman who seemed to be the older sister was kneeling on the floor, gathering the broken pieces one by one.
I don’t know what the plan is, but I should help with that first.
To stop the little sister I reached out with my free hand and caught the nearby doorframe.
Crack—
And the door snapped.
“….”
Silence fell.
I slowly turned my head.
The little sister was glaring at me, cheeks puffed out in a full pout.
…The list of things to repair had just grown.
Six months passed.
Even with recovery far beyond an ordinary human’s, the wounds I had taken in those final moments inside the Forbidden Zone refused to close easily. My right fist in particular had been completely ruined and took a long time to mend.
I was lucky, though. At my side were two sisters whose kindness bordered on overwhelming.
With their help I could focus entirely on healing.
I still could not control my strength properly and broke nearly everything I touched, yet the sisters never once tried to throw me out.
Instead they taught me.
I learned their language. Complex words and full context still eluded me, but simple conversation had become possible.
They kept marveling at how unnaturally fast I picked it up—especially the older sister, who said I was learning quicker than when she had taught her little sister to read.
I learned their names as well.
The older was Arnen. The younger, Elia.
Only the two of them lived in the house, and they were often away.
At first I had no idea why they left and returned. Only after the language barrier thinned did I learn they went out to hunt beasts and stockpile food.
Compared to the people I had known, they were unusually weak, yet the way they hunted and stored meat made their way of life feel familiar enough.
Once the weather turned cold, their trips outside grew fewer.
Around the same time my body finally finished recovering.
Before long the days warmed again, and when they said they were heading out to hunt I asked to come along.
I could not keep freeloading forever.
The way their faces brightened washed away a little of the guilt.
Hunting beasts was my specialty.
I had broken the village record at my coming-of-age ceremony, and inside the Forbidden Zone fighting beasts had been daily life—though those creatures had been a bit different from ordinary ones.
Still, the thought of hunting again after so long made my body itch. I had no idea how many household items I had destroyed while trying to rein in my strength.
Especially the tableware—every time I picked something up I had to focus every nerve just to handle it carefully. Luckily I was confident in controlling force, and I adapted quickly enough that major accidents stopped after that.
Either way, it was finally time to earn my keep.
“Are you gonna carry me on your shoulders during the hunt too?”
While we were getting ready, Elia looked up at me with a mischievous grin.
I had grown closer to Elia faster than to Arnen. She was a natural tomboy who approached me without any reserve, so opening up to her had been easy.
Elia had a gift for putting people at ease.
Arnen did too, of course, but she was calmer and quieter than her sister.
“I told you not to play around during a hunt.”
“…I can just ride on the way there.”
Arnen gave Elia her usual warning as she slung a bow across her back.
Elia stuck out her lip but never actually defied her sister.
A quiet laugh slipped out of me at the sight; I kept it to myself.
Once we were ready we left the house with Arnen in the lead.
The sisters’ home sat alone deep in the mountains. Their only neighbors were the occasional deer that wandered past.
I never learned why two young sisters lived alone in such a remote place. After I had learned enough of the language I had asked once, carefully, but they clearly did not want to talk about it.
I never asked again.
That was probably why they never asked me where I had come from either.
My origins were not some grand secret. I would have liked to open up and ask them everything I was curious about, but their attitude made me hold back.
The clothes I’m wearing are definitely men’s clothes, but…
In any case I owed them, and I was living under their roof. There was no need to push against their boundaries.
By keeping that mutual line, a quiet understanding formed: neither side dug too deep.
From the mountainside where the sisters lived, climbing to the summit revealed the vast Red Barrier stretching out ahead. That was almost certainly the Forbidden Zone where I had suffered for months.
They lived remarkably close to it.
On good hunting days they found beasts in the nearby mountains; on bad days they had to cross several peaks and approach the Red Barrier itself.
Especially once the cold set in, beasts grew scarce.
Today was not particularly chilly, yet luck was against us—we found no traces nearby.
We had no choice but to cross several mountains. Bored, I checked Arnen’s expression out of the corner of my eye, then pretended not to notice and hoisted Elia onto my shoulders.
“Kyaa!”
Elia, delighted, grabbed fistfuls of my hair and shook them this way and that. I had tied my long hair—reaching to my waist—into a ponytail, and she treated it like a toy.
Arnen caught us. Fortunately she did not scold us too harshly.
“…We may have to cross a few more mountains. Are you all right on stamina?”
“Yeah.”
A few mountains of this height would never drain me. If I used real strength I could reach a summit in a handful of steps.
It was not even a special ability.
Back in the Abandoned Village, even young girls could race up mountains like these in minutes.
…Come to think of it, are these two even more of a mutation than I was?
There had been young girls in the kingdom I came from too.
These sisters were clearly weaker than them. Wearing light leather armor, bows on their shoulders, carefully climbing the slopes—they showed traces of trained technique, yet they were still far too slow.
I did not let it show.
…I know better than anyone what it feels like to be born weak.
I myself had once been pointed at and called a mutant.
I had no desire to swagger just because I had grown strong.
Then Arnen, carefully parting the undergrowth at the front, raised a hand.
The signal to stop.
“There’s something ahead. …From the presence, it’s a wolf. Most likely a Blue-Mane Wolf that lives in these parts, so we need to be careful. It won’t be easy to handle with a bow. Let’s go around.”
Arnen assessed the situation quickly, face calm.
She had found the beast before it even registered on my senses.
So she had her own specialized talent after all.
Good thing I had not dismissed them as mere mutants.
