Half Welcome, Half Worry
Comments welcoming Ression, the protagonist of Part One who had reappeared after only three chapters, made up roughly half. The other half were worry comments fretting that this same Ression might harm Saya, the protagonist of Part Two. That was more or less how they could be sorted.
“The atmosphere isn’t bad……”
Part One had been a fantasy crime drama in which an evil-aligned protagonist tore down an even greater evil for the sake of revenge. In other words, the overall mood had been cold and bleak.
By comparison, Part Two gained a lively bounce the moment the protagonist changed. The new lead alone, with her clear sense of justice and thoroughly good-aligned nature, said it all.
“I was worried they’d call her a sweet potato and start flaming her.”
Their alignments sat at opposite poles, so he had feared criticism of Saya would become the mainstream. Fortunately, no such signs had appeared yet.
“Hmm. Still, I should put more care into the direction of the next episode……”
If one were to summarize the plot of Part One, it went like this.
The family of the protagonist Ression was branded with the false charge of treason and ruined overnight. Ression himself was sold off somewhere and even subjected to human experimentation. Thus he vowed revenge upon the one who had framed his house… The problem was that the object of his grudge had used the trampling of that family as a springboard to climb all the way to the rank of the empire’s greatest duke.
In the end, Ression joined hands with the revolutionary army in order to achieve his revenge—that is, to drag the duke who was his enemy down from power. Yet because he had joined an existing revolutionary force, he could not stop at empty words of revolution; he had to provide real help… and the schemes he offered ultimately brought the empire itself to ruin by the finale.
“Just because it was done for a greater cause does not mean sacrifice ceases to be sacrifice… and just because the ending is good does not mean evil deeds cease to be evil……”
Most of his revolutionary comrades had pursued justice, yet there had been moments they were forced to look the other way for the sake of the revolution’s success. Ression himself, serving as the strategist, was not the sort of character to be shaken by such things, and that made the sacrifices all the more harrowing.
Moreover, Saya, who had taken the role of protagonist in Part Two, was a child born amid those very sacrifices. In short, she was a victim swept up in Ression’s revenge.
“I did my best even during the serialization of Part One to keep Ression from being glorified… but I’ll have to make it even clearer in this arc.”
After completing his revenge, Ression lost the driving force of his life, retired, and lived in seclusion while sponsoring the poor… yet that did nothing to erase the weight of his sins. Through Saya, he intended to show that fact all the more clearly.
“Still, Saya is a character who wants a better world more than she wants revenge……”
If Ression was the character who remade the world for the sake of revenge, then Saya was the character who abandoned revenge in order to remake the world.
In a different sense from Ression, she did not waver. He had to show that with absolute certainty as well. Only then would Ression’s being moved by Saya’s ideals gain proper plausibility.
“…I miss Saya.”
Thinking that far, the person who had served as Saya’s real-life motif rose in his mind. He recalled the voice that used to call out “Adventurer!” and let out a small snort of laughter.
“Do you miss me too?”
He always did. Every time the octagonal chain bracelet swayed on his wrist, every time the sun rose and set, every time he saw something red or blue, the longing returned.
“I hope you’re doing well.”
At the same time, he did not worry. The girl he knew might stumble and fall now and then, yet she was the sort who could always rise again and keep walking steadily forward.
Meow.
“Yeah. My hair’s all dry now, so let’s go to sleep soon.”
In other words.
We would be fine. We would become fine.
“Good night, Mandu.”
Yeop.
The trust we had built still connected us even when we could not see each other.