If I Could Leave (6)
“Truly pathetic. If it hadn’t been for the outsider, the rebellion might have succeeded.”
“You lunatic! How can you say something like that out loud…!”
“There are only kids around. It’s fine, it’s fine.”
“Don’t you know the quietest forest is the most dangerous?”
“I said it’s fine.”
It was a night when sleep refused to come, no matter how strangely exhausted she felt. Akata chewed her lip raw at the chatter of the guards.
She was furious, and she was heartbroken. On a night when everyone should have been asleep and the world hushed, her ears still rang with the screams of her family, executed only hours before.
“Come to think of it, that outsider’s staying at Taposhaka’s house, isn’t he? Ha—giving up the second-most powerful estate in the village right after the chief’s, just like that. The chief must dote on the outsider something fierce.”
“…Warrior or not, that white-furred ball of fluff is a priest, right? Every priest in the village sided with the rebellion, so of course. And Katina’s almost here, too.”
“You don’t think he’s planning to take the foreigner to Katina?”
“No way…”
Taposhaka had been her father’s name. That detestable outsider had not only gotten her entire family killed; he had stolen their home as well.
“I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill him.”
The girl bit down hard and swore her revenge.
The outsiders who had shoved their way into tribal affairs and caused her family’s deaths, and Atart who had beaten Sister Samar half to death yet still climbed into the chief’s seat—every last one of them.
“…Still, I’m glad the chief brought the outsider. Whether he’s really taking him to Katina or not.”
“What?”
“You know. Taranba… he lost his son today. If the outsider hadn’t been there…”
“Ah…”
“What do you think would happen if a guy who takes kids hostage the moment things get urgent actually won a rebellion and became chief?”
“That was a surprise, yeah. Never thought Taposhaka of all people would—”
“Even some of Taposhaka’s supporters turned on him after that. Those kids almost died.”
The guards suddenly started spouting nonsense—claiming her father had taken children hostage.
“Bullshit…!”
Her proud father would never have done such a thing. Never something so vile.
Yes! The whole “rebellion” story was a lie from the start! Why would the man who loved Bigabol more than anyone raise a rebellion? It had to be a frame-up cooked up by that loathsome Atart to secure his own power!
Akata dismissed every word the guards spoke as slander and comforted herself that way. It was the desperate thrashing of a child who could not bear to look at the bottom of her parents’ choices.
“In that sense, the outsider warrior’s… kind of growing on me. Hard to talk to, and only two hands—feels weird—but I’ve never met a bad person who’s kind to kids.”
“That so?”
“Didn’t you see Tubba’s youngest daughter playing with that ball? The outsider warrior gave it to her so she’d stop crying. The other kids who got dragged off this time each got little things too; they’ve been playing with them.”
“But if the outsider brought it, isn’t it foreign junk? Kind of creepy…”
“I thought so at first, but watching the kids play, it’s nothing. Just pretty little ornaments. Some of them are actually neat. Maybe that’s the fashion out there?”
For the same reason she refused to hear any praise of the outsider. All of it was just sweet talk from people who had already gone over to Atart.
Thump.
After grinding her teeth sleeplessly for who knew how long, a faint presence reached her from the other side of the cell wall. So soft she would never have noticed it if she hadn’t been leaning against the stone.
“Shh. Just wait a little.”
The unknown someone silenced her and began scraping at the floor.
By the time the moon had climbed past the peak of the sky, the ground right beside the girl shifted and lifted.
“Do the rest yourself.”
Someone had dug her an escape hole. She would still have to dig a little more to squeeze through, but the bulk of the work was done.
“Who are you?”
It might be a trap. Akata whispered the question, suspicion thick in her voice. No answer came; the other party had already gone.
Stay put? No. She hated that idea.
Watching the guards carefully, Akata clawed at the dirt with bare hands. Nails cracked and skin split, but the damage stayed minor.
Because most of the tunnel had already been opened for her, it did not take long.
She slipped free of the cell. The children sharing her room? She did not wake them. Any noise risked alerting the guards.
Besides, if this was a trap, better she alone fall into it. The children with her were only five years old—far too young.
“What now?”
Once outside, though, she had no idea what to do next. She stood frozen, then swung her head left and right.
Escaping alive was already impossible. The Great Forest at night would never let her go easily.
If she was going to die anyway, she at least wanted to take her revenge first.
What do you think would happen if a guy who takes kids hostage the moment things get urgent actually won a rebellion and became chief?
…She had to avenge her family.
Akata hurried away.
“White-neck spider!”
Along the way she found an effective weapon. Fearless, she snatched the spider and tore its body apart. The venom of a white-neck spider was a highly effective paralytic.
“Bastards…”
Kill Atart, or kill the outsider? After a moment’s thought she chose the latter. The former was far too heavily guarded.
If she measured pure hatred, Atart’s share was larger, but she had only one chance—one chance that would cost her head whether it succeeded or failed.
In that case she would rather land at least one successful strike of revenge.
Akata’s small feet slipped through the night toward her old home.
Ssss.
“Is there a problem…?”
At that exact moment someone stepped outside. A black coat that looked ready to melt into the night, hair of an impossible color, and—most decisive—only one pair of arms.
She had never seen him up close, yet identifying him was easy. The outsider warrior.
“Ugh, in our village only the chief can speak the outsider tongue.”
“I-is he going for a walk? Should I follow?”
The outsider warrior moved away from the building as if headed somewhere. One of the warriors standing guard started after him, but the outsider waved him off.
“Damn it, I’ll go report.”
The guard who could neither follow nor stay left his post. Perfect for the girl.
A priest would be easier to kill than a warrior, after all.
“Ah, right—mustn’t step over.”
Her dream shattered the instant she noticed the twig the forest had dropped. From the way the soldier made a fuss just because someone had taken a single step inside, magic must be laid around the building.
“Damn.”
Every priest had been rounded up for treason, so this magic had to be the outsider priest’s work.
Killing the priest was now next to impossible. The moment she crossed that line the guards would notice and rush her; the priest would wake whether sleeping or not and prepare.
Then her true target was…
Akata’s eyes followed the figure walking away. The odds were vanishingly small, yet at the same time high—because, outsider that he was, he was heading straight into the night forest.
Into a forest crawling with venomous insects and every kind of predator.
“…I can do this.”
She did not even hope for a proper ambush. She only needed the beasts to find the warrior.
Akata clenched her teeth and trailed after him. Soft, soft—tiny sounds of crushed grass rose in the silence.
Skrrrk.
Something scraped a tree. Her body dropped low on pure reflex.
Skrrrk.
The sound came at regular intervals. Akata’s eyes narrowed; she reached out and felt the spot. Knife marks.
Why leave marks? The suspicion of a trap rose again.
Yet the outsider warrior’s stride was far too free for someone luring her. Even now, the brief hesitation had cost her nearly ten paces.
She hurried so she would not lose him.
Little by little the village fell behind.
“Chief. We confirmed Akata following the guest.”
“Is that so?”
At the very hour Akata left the village, Atart narrowed his eyes at his aide’s report.
“Yes. Luckily the warrior among the guests happened to step out for a night stroll…”
“Fortunate, then.”
Yes. Truly fortunate. He had told himself success or failure hardly mattered, yet it would have been a shame if the sentries had prevented the child from moving as she wished.
Her escape alone already gave him ample grounds for punishment, but using that as an excuse for execution still ran up against the outsider’s threats.
He had hoped for a cleaner pretext…
“Even a clever head is still a child’s head.”
“…Indeed.”
“To swallow the bait without a shred of suspicion.”
The moment she aimed at a guest, the justification overflowed. Still, Atart wanted more.
His eight eyes narrowed.
“Best of all if she dies by the guest’s own hand.”
The offer to spare the children had been nothing more than a hook to reel the guest in gently. Prestige and a few useful side benefits mattered, of course, but the real goal had been to learn how far the guest would go for a child.
If the man would freely extend a hand to children doomed by collective punishment, he could be used for so much more.
Know your place.
Yet look at the current mess.
“…Damn it.”
Atart rubbed his throat at the mere memory of that chilling voice.
How dare he. How dare he threaten him—the supreme authority of this place.
The only reason any of you are still breathing is that you offered me the proposal I wanted first.
Even so, for all the seething disgust, he dared not act. Every word the guest had spoken had been pure truth.
I simply preferred not to dirty my blade with unnecessary blood.
Yes. As the man reputed the tribe’s strongest warrior, Atart knew with absolute certainty: if that outsider ever decided to treat them as enemies, he himself possessed not a single means of resistance.
Seedling to tree, torch to sun, pebble to mountain—the gulf between them was that vast. Resistance was simply impossible.
Bang.
“Samar! Where’s Samar—ah, dead already. Useless bastard.”
So he could only hope the escaped child would drive that man’s mood into the dirt.
He did not expect the child to kill the outsider. He had never released her with that intent.
“Nothing for it, then.”
He merely wished her to deliver a little unpleasantness. That a man who claimed to care for children would have to stain his own hands with a child’s blood—and feel even a fraction of disgust.
Against an opponent one could not defy, that was the only revenge left.
“You can take the hits in his place.”
There was no need to carry leftover resentment around either.
If the true target was too strong to vent on, one simply chose a weaker substitute.
“Grit your teeth.”
He seized the aide who had been sweating coldly for some time by the hair. As if the expected moment had finally arrived, the aide squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his jaw.
Thud, thud, thud!
“…He’s at it again.”
“Quiet. Unless you want the same.”
“…Atart is a fine leader, but at times like this… I almost understand why Samar made that choice.”
The sounds of the beating lasted a long while. Yet only accomplices to whom indifference had become habit remained there, so the night flowed on without the slightest disturbance.
“We’ve gone too far…”
Meanwhile Akata found herself in a mild predicament. She had grown up in this forest, yet she was still nowhere near skilled enough to navigate the night woods with ease.
If she backtracked along the marks the outsider warrior had left, she could still find the path…
She glanced behind her. The dense canopy blocked nearly all moonlight and starlight; the darkness was absolute.
Akata’s throat bobbed.
“Damn it, how far is he going…?”
As the forest deepened, even the warrior’s silhouette became hard to see.
She had long since lost the sound of his footsteps; without the trail marks, following would have been impossible.
She ground her teeth with anxiety.
Shhhhhh.
Then, briefly, the roar of a waterfall reached her. The map inside her head sprang to life. She knew this place.
“That way?”
How had the outsider known about the waterfall? Wondering, she put more strength into her steps.
The trees thinned a little and the warrior’s figure finally reappeared. He sat on a rock near the falls.
Predators thronged the water’s edge. Akata flexed her fists open and shut in unease, yet crept toward the outsider with the softest possible steps.
Shhhh.
The waterfall’s voice grew louder.
Hic…
Faintly, a sobbing sound mixed into the residual echoes of the falls.
“…?”
When only a few meters remained between them, Akata saw a sight she had never imagined.
“I want to go home.”
He was crying—the outsider.
“Please, please send me home…”
Under the pouring moonlight he wept so wretchedly that the wet tracks on his face stood out with merciless clarity.
“I can’t keep looking away anymore…”
She was the one who truly wanted to cry.
“Don’t leave me stranded in this kind of world…”
Silver tears streamed endlessly down the pale face. Even the gloved hand he had removed kept wiping and rubbing them away with the back of his hand, yet they would not stop.
“It’s too hard, Mom. I… I’m really at my limit…”
He simply wailed as though the world itself were ending. Exactly as she had howled after losing her parents, the outsider sobbed like a man who had lost everything.
“I don’t want to survive by killing people…”
The words she could not understand sounded desperately earnest.
“No matter how I look at it this is real, so how am I supposed to… to people…”
She had not wanted it, yet seeing the bottom of her enemy’s heart produced a strangely complicated feeling.
The sorrow that reached her so vividly crossed with the rage of What right do you have to cry? and an involuntary pity that rose against her will.
Even so.
That outsider was her enemy. The man who had caused her parents’ deaths.
Taranba… he lost his son today. If the outsider hadn’t been there…
The man who had killed her parents.
Even some of Taposhaka’s supporters turned on him after that. Those kids almost died.
Her parents…
No. All of it was lies.
She steeled the heart that had begun to soften and gripped the stone knives she had prepared on the way. Two of the five blades were coated with white-neck spider venom; if she struck well she could kill the outsider.
Ssss.
But focusing too hard on her target proved the problem. By the time she sensed the presence it was already too late.
Grrrraaagh!
“Aaah!”
A leopard slammed into her. She barely avoided having her throat torn out, yet its fangs sank into the middle of her forearm. It felt as if the arm would be ripped clean off.
“Let go, let go!”
She thrashed every arm and every stone knife she held in pure reflex. It did nothing. The leopard’s eyes blazed as it clamped her arm; the teeth piercing flesh and the claws raking while its weight crushed her hurt beyond measure.
So this is what death feels like, she thought.
Slash!
In that instant a fierce wind rose and the leopard that had been shaking her body simply stopped moving. More than stopped—it toppled sideways.
Hot blood sprayed across her entire face, warming her.
“Where are you hurt…!”
It hurt, it hurt so much. For the first time in her life Akata wailed. Then words she could not understand began to soothe her. Yes—they were words of comfort.
“Hang on just a little. I’ll take you back to the village.”
Clumsy, gentle, kind.
“You’re bleeding too much… I’m going to bind your arm, so stay still. Don’t move.”
Detestable.
Akata felt her body being lifted. She also felt a chill that had already gone cold press against half her body.
It was pure humiliation. She had come here to kill this man, yet she had failed and was now receiving his help.
And the arms holding her felt sickeningly like her father’s.
“Just a little longer.”
Worse still, the soft words whispered against her ear actually soothed her. She was taking comfort from her enemy’s kindness and shedding the fear of death.
Just as she had when her father held her.
“I don’t want this…”
She hated it. Even as the one being saved she hated it. No matter how much he helped her, no matter how gently he treated her, in the end he was the man who had killed her parents and her siblings.
“……!”
Akata swung every arm she could still move. The outsider had only two arms; she thought she might land at least one blow.
Yet one merely grazed his cheek, another his shoulder, and she was flung away in a single motion. Her body rolled across the ground.
Ah. Against real warriors even a surprise attack like this was useless. Strong warriors could deal with ambushes even with fewer arms.
More than the pain of hitting the ground, the crushing sense of failure that even this had not worked tormented her. Powerlessness and injustice flooded her entire body.
At the same time she refused to end it here. In place of the knives she had dropped when thrown, she snatched up stones and broken twigs.
“Ah!”
She would at least vent her rage by throwing them.
“Dangerous!”
Yet the one who had just been struck strangely came toward her first. Not only that—though he must have known she had attacked him, he pulled her into his arms again.
Why?
No—the reason did not matter.
Akata instinctively knew this would be her last chance. A mind soaked in rage cared only for satisfying itself rather than reading the opponent or the surroundings.
“Die, die!”
The first knife sank somewhere between chest and shoulder.
“Dieee!!”
The second and third blades drove down near the heart. A knife made by splitting stone could never cut cleanly, yet she forced it through the hide.
BOOM!
In that instant an enormous roar and a violent gust slammed against her ears.
“…?”
Her head turned on reflex.
“Ghk.”
And there—
“Khak.”
the creature that must have intended to swallow her whole—
“Any… injuries…?”
a truly massive anaconda—
“N-none…?”
lay dead with a huge hole punched through its neck.
“Cough.”
The blood the man holding her coughed up soaked her shoulder.
In that sense, the outsider warrior’s… kind of growing on me. Hard to talk to, and only two hands—feels weird—but I’ve never met a bad person who’s kind to kids.
Ah, Dad.
They always said repay grudges double and kindness tenfold. What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?
“Cough.”
Wow. This kid’s got a hell of an aim.
I walked on, thinking useless thoughts. After I saved her from one more beast attack, the child who had attacked me stopped resisting completely.
That made moving a lot easier.
“Ghk.”
The problem was the blood that kept flowing and the way the world spun.
I cursed myself for wandering so far out yet still forced my legs forward.
The places the knives had stabbed kept oozing blood with a dull ache, but I had no confidence I could treat them properly. Compression and clotting were already being handled by the bandages stuffed inside… and there were no potions or anything else out here.
Not that I possessed medical knowledge capable of treating stab wounds in the first place.
“Why… why…”
In the meantime the child in my arms kept muttering. Must have been shocked.
Probably stunned that the person she attacked was still saving her and carrying her back.
Yeah. Honestly I feel like a bit of a sucker myself.
But what am I supposed to do? How do I abandon a kid who’s only about middle-school age?
“It’s… okay.”
I had no idea what had driven the child to attack me. Yet the fact that she stopped the ambushes after I saved her… well, maybe this was enough.
Something must have made her so furious she simply could not hold back. She must have known it was wrong and still been unable to stop herself.
Kids that age have a hard time stopping until they’ve actually done the thing. Especially when no guardian is around to rein them in.
So…
“It’s okay.”
Even if you made an emotional mistake, you’re a child who can realize it was wrong and stop.
I forgive you.
Just as the adults who once forgave me when I set the house on fire while cooking, or cracked someone’s skull with a baseball, showed me tolerance and consideration that let me grow up—
I, for the simple reason that I am an adult, and for the single reason that you can still cry from guilt, will forgive you.
So it’s okay. Really okay.
I don’t resent you.
“So don’t cry.”
“Why… why…”
“Don’t cry, little one…”
I walked while soothing the child in my arms. My vision grew worse, yet I could still put one foot in front of the other.
“Ah, the village…”
Then, faintly, a reddish glow appeared that even my blurred sight could not miss. Torches, most likely.
Which meant we had reached the village? Thank goodness. Tracking the trail had been so hard I had half left it to luck.
Somehow it worked out.
“Just a little… just a little farther…”
But… I can’t walk anymore. I’ve already used the one-time death-nullification skill…
“N-no! We’re almost… almost there!”
Ah. My last step—my last step simply will not stretch forward.
In the end I crumpled, dropping to my knees.
“I-I’m sorry. I was wrong, so…”
Hmm. Am I going to die like this? Is this the first time I’ll have to retry?
Ha. I’d really rather not retry…
“P-please save him!”
Ah.
At least the kid is unharmed. That’s a relief.
“Someone’s hurt!! Over here, a person, a person!!”
Really, what a relief…
“Please!!”
In that instant my vision dropped straight down.
Faintly I thought I saw a white ceiling and the faces of my family.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Damn it. Happened last time and now again. The seal’s come loose.
“I’m truly sorry…”
Because of the sealing tool, everything just got a lot more annoying.