How to Overcome Childhood (1)
“…Did we… get away with it?”
The red-haired girl asked me, her voice trembling. Rain fell in a steady drizzle, and with nowhere to take shelter they were both soaked through to the skin. Afraid someone might still notice, he pulled the coin pouch he had carefully hidden in his inner pocket and held it out for her to see.
“…Th-thank goodness. Re-really…”
It meant they had succeeded. In the slums, where fists spoke louder than law, they had fleeced a kind stranger without getting caught. Rhea, the childhood friend he had lived with since the day he first opened his eyes, let out a long, heavy sigh.
Clink.
Several silvers rattled inside the swaying pouch. In the slums, a few silvers were enough for two nine-year-olds to scrape by for several days.
Thank goodness.
He truly thought so. Once, when they had been caught pickpocketing, the beating had nearly killed Rhea as well.
The relief of knowing they could survive another day—or several—lasted only a moment. The moment the bigger boys or the local thugs learned they had money, they would come to take it.
They were young, so they were robbed. They were orphans of the slums, so no one helped them. They had only each other to lean on, and because no one else ever came, this was simply how they lived.
They stole. Sometimes they robbed. And little by little, they felt guilt.
Surviving in a place where fists outranked the law was never easy. Ordinary commoners, even criminals, at least drew an investigation if they died without paying taxes to the territory or the city. But no one would ever come looking for them. If they were beaten until they wheezed their last breath, not a single soul would grieve or search.
So guilt, for them, was nothing more than a brief reminder that they were still “normal,” the way desperate people prayed. Still, when they had money, they could breathe a little. Having earned some, the guilt faded.
“Rhea, let’s eat real food today.”
He took her hand and led her out of the slum alley. Their bodies still shivered under the cold rain, so they walked pressed tightly together. There was no one else to lean on but each other.
…
They had thought they had struck it rich. Silver was silver, gold was gold. One gold equaled a hundred silvers, and one silver equaled a hundred copper coins. With several silvers, they were sure they could finally rest.
“You stupid little brats, trying to die together…!”
Every general store in the slums refused the silvers they offered. What they held was not silver, the shopkeepers said. No one explained what it actually was.
The older boys who had tried to snatch their money only glanced at the round silver coins and told them it was something people used when they wanted to buy a certain kind of pleasure. Because it could not be sold to just anyone, they had made a special token. The boys casually added that the two of them had simply stolen it.
“Let’s try somewhere else.”
Still, they were starving to the point of death. If they could sell it anywhere, even for a pittance, they would. So they started walking again.
People in the slums had always looked at the children like insects, but this time it felt different. Hunger gnawed at them, and Rhea was so thin she could barely walk. If they wanted to pickpocket again, they needed to eat first. Without food they could not even run, and then they might truly be crushed under someone’s boot like bugs.
“…Let’s give it back.”
“…Huh?”
“They won’t even remember us. We covered our faces. If we return it, maybe they’ll give us something. We can’t use it as money anyway.”
It was a reckless idea, but he truly believed it. Perhaps they were simply too uneducated to know better. Rhea said she was scared, that it was dangerous, yet he held her hand tightly and wandered the slums. Then he saw a hollow-eyed man kneeling and begging before another man.
“Mister, is this what you’re looking for?”
Without any sense of caution he walked up and thrust the coin pouch forward. The man shed a few tears, then his face flushed scarlet and he roared.
“You little fucking brats…!”
Everything went white. When he came to, he had been kicked and sent tumbling until he lay sprawled in front of Rhea. He heard her crying, throwing herself between him and the man, screaming for the man to hit her instead because it was her fault.
Whoosh—
Raindrops struck him, yet they did not feel cold. What terrified him was the thought that Rhea might be beaten the same way. He tried to rise, but his body would not obey.
Crack!
A sickening sound reached his ears. Rhea collapsed limply across him. Somehow, as if superhuman strength had flooded him at the thought that she might die, he forced himself up and wrapped his body around hers so the blows would not reach her.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He had imagined something like this might happen, yet the knowledge that two parentless orphans born in the slums would die this way filled him with sorrow. The thought that he might never see Rhea again hurt. Dying like this felt unfair.
“I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry—!”
No one helped them. They only watched. Through the sparse crowd he thought he even glimpsed the person he had pickpocketed.
So this is how we die.
When a boot came down on his head, the world spun and the arms holding Rhea went slack. He saw the tips of the man’s shoes. Even after beating them half to death the man still seemed unsatisfied. Not wanting that to be the last thing he saw, he looked at Rhea instead and closed his eyes in fear.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud!
The stomping continued, yet it no longer hurt. When he lifted his head he saw a silver-haired woman standing over them, the sun at her back, shielding them with her body. A halo seemed to float above her head; she looked sacred, and for some reason she was crying.
The smell of blood filled the air.
“You fucking… trying to scam me?!”
The man shouted, but the silver-haired woman took the beating in their place and somehow still managed to smile.
“It’s all right, my child. I’ll protect you.”
In the slums, looking out for strangers simply did not happen—except between people like Rhea and him, who had only each other. At first he had sneered at the idea. That lasted only a moment. Even as blood ran down her head, she kept shielding them until the man finally tired and left.
“…Call me Flora, my child.”
Flora, she said. She was a nun known as the daughter of a heretic. Even though she had been hurt for their sake, she showed no resentment and simply gathered them into her arms.
The church was half-collapsed, yet she told them it would become their home from now on. Outside might be cold, she said, but here it would be warm.
“So don’t worry too much, my child.”
She reassured them that everything would be all right.
Sister Flora cared for them. Not as the “insects” they had always been treated as, but like a mother, even though she was still young. She was warm. She was kind.
She asked Rhea what her dream was, then asked him the same. Because they had grown up in the slums they doubted her again and again, shouted at her, and ran away. Yet she kept taking them back, waiting for them, and holding them gently.
They had passed their eighth year and turned nine when they finally understood that she loved them. Only then did the shame of how rudely they had behaved overwhelm them. Wanting to help the nun who starved herself to care for them while people called her “heretic” and “witch’s daughter,” he offered his first prayer to the heavens. A warm sensation brushed across his forehead.
“…Ah?”
“…Riel, what’s wrong?”
“N-nothing, Rhea.”
Just as Sister Flora had said, when he prayed it felt as though a miracle had occurred. From that day he gained a tiny measure of courage. Perhaps it was only imagination, but if past lives existed… he had become faintly aware of one.
I was a knight, I think…
Scattered memories of a life lived, emotions once felt, flickered through him. Even the remaining fragments had nowhere to be used and held little meaning, yet they still gave him a little courage—the courage to move for the sake of Sister Flora, who had taken in two slum orphans and loved them.
That day he told them he wanted to look at bugs and left the church alone. Somehow he found the village. Instead of harming others for money in the slums, he earned a tiny wage cleaning and doing odd jobs—honestly, without shame, for the first time.
He placed the money he earned into the always-empty donation box. Sister Flora, moved that even someone called the daughter of a heretic and a witch now had people willing to help her, wept with gratitude.
…
Two years had passed since they began living with the nun. On the day they turned ten, two more children arrived at the church. The wolf-beastkin girl was Claudia; the pretty child who resembled the nun was Ceria.
Just as Sister Flora had done for them, they sat beside the frightened children and talked. Little by little they teased one another, and because Rhea refused to play house they played hide-and-seek and tag instead. Even when the new children disliked it, they kept including them, knowing that moving together made things better.
Warmth gradually filled the eyes of the children who had first been so gloomy about becoming orphans. Claudia often asked the nun and him to comb her tail. Ceria began acting cute, saying she wanted to become a wonderful nun just like Sister Flora and insisting they pray together. Rhea grinned and giggled that when she grew up she would become a magician and make everyone happy, so they should look forward to it.
Two years since leaving the slums. Two years living with the nun.
He felt happiness, and he learned how happy “ordinary” could be. In the memories of that imagined past life, a knight swore an oath to protect someone for life.
“I’ll protect all of you forever!”
Perhaps that had looked cool to him. He declared it proudly in front of everyone—that he would protect them all.
…
One more year passed. It was their third year together.
In only three years they had become a family who cared for one another more than anyone else. Ceria, Claudia, and Rhea all relied on him, and he relied on them. Today was his modest eleventh birthday party.
“Cough—cough—”
Unlike usual, the bread still had its crust and tasted delicious. Rhea choked, startled by how sweet it was. He handed her a cup of water while the other children laughed at her.
Sister Flora seemed in high spirits. When he asked why, she said the Orthodox Church was coming.
She had sent a letter asking them to prove she was not the daughter of a heretic, not the daughter of a witch. The Orthodox Church was coming to their village in person to investigate.
If the false charge of heresy was lifted, money would come in besides the donations he always earned outside and placed in the box. She said they would be able to chase their dreams, live more happily, and pray for others. Of course the children, eyes fixed on the bread, heard none of it.
“…Riel, aren’t you going to eat?”
When Sister Flora asked, he vaguely claimed his stomach felt off and carefully wrapped his portion in paper. After the simple meal she would wash the dishes and go out to solicit donations. That was when he divided the bread among Rhea, Ceria, and Claudia.
Because meeting the nun had allowed him to keep even the faintest fragments of a past life, he wanted the people he wished to protect to be a little fuller than himself.
Most days at the orphanage went like that.
Putting money into the donation box had long since become his daily routine.
When Rhea asked, thinking of him, whether he would share again today, he shared, handed her a cup of water, then told them he was going to look at bugs and followed Sister Flora’s footsteps toward the village. Being only eleven, he could not do proper work, so he used his small frame to crawl into drainage ditches and clean them. Because he could not go without food entirely, he caught and ate rats; when there were no rats he finished work and, while washing in the river, caught frogs or birds.
Even so, he was happy. He refined the dream of protecting everyone a little further.
He decided to become an adventurer.
“About four years left now.”
Someday, when he reached fifteen and could work as an adventurer, he would hunt not mere rats but small monsters, sell them, earn money, and take care of the children. He would also repay the nun who had always cared for them. Rhea would achieve her dream, and so would Ceria. Claudia might meet a kind husband and build the family she so desperately wanted.
While he daydreamed, the work ended. Today they paid him quite a lot—several days’ wages all at once, they said.
Three silvers clinked in his hand. Three whole silvers. To others it might be little, but to them it was a fortune. Enough for at least three days of the bread the children loved so much, or real stew instead of thin gruel.
“…Hehe.”
A soft laugh slipped out. He needed to hurry back and put the silvers in the donation box before Sister Flora returned, yet he did not run.
The sun was sinking low, the sky darkening until tiny white grains of stars appeared, but he stripped and washed himself in the river. Afraid of losing the silvers, he kept them clenched in his fist even while bathing.
If he smelled bad the children would dislike it, so he dunked his head in the cold water, shook it, and scrubbed himself clean several times. Then he roughly put on only his pants and walked toward the orphanage. When the wind had dried him he put on the rest of his clothes. The sun had set darkly, yet light still spilled from the orphanage they had patched together from the abandoned church.
Had he come back too late? Sister Flora was waiting for him in front of the church.
“…Riel!”
With eyes full of worry she beckoned him closer, then scooped him up the moment he reached her and hurried him inside.
He wondered what was wrong, but it was nothing serious. On the table sat a bowl of stew with bits of meat visible here and there.
“You went to look at animals again, didn’t you, Riel? I told you—starting next week the people from the Orthodox Church will be here!”
She must have received a favorable reply to her letter. Sister Flora smiled, then suddenly drooped and pulled him into another embrace.
“…I knew. All this time you’ve been giving the children your own share.”
When she said it his eyes went round of their own accord. His heart pounded, and a strange feeling rose as though a secret that must never be known had been discovered.
“…You don’t have to do that anymore. The people from the Orthodox Church will help us. I’m sorry for pretending not to notice. I’m sorry for making a child take care of the others like a fool. Eat up, all right?”
She told him the other children had already eaten their fill, then seated him at the table and spooned stew into his mouth, telling him not to hold back. After a few bites a foolish rumbling sound came from her own stomach—she had not saved any for herself.
“…You eat too, Sister.”
“Ah? Oh, no, I’ve already eaten plenty…”
“Then I won’t eat either.”
In the end Sister Flora shared the bowl of stew that had been heaped in front of him. Later, while they all lay down to sleep, she read them old stories and fairy tales. She did not mention the reply from the Orthodox Church, not wanting to fill the children’s heads with empty hopes. But in an orphanage like this there were no real secrets. When the children grew excited she wiped her tears and spoke briefly.
“…People will definitely help us. God told us to live that way. Mother always said so. Everyone said they were great people. We… we’ll get better too.”
Even for a nun who always smiled so steadfastly and beautifully, caring for them while being called a witch must have been hard. When she cried a little, the children cried with her.
If the Orthodox Church came and cleared up the misunderstanding, if Sister Flora could truly become a proper nun… there was no other church that cared for children, so they would surely help.
They fell asleep buoyed by hope. Realizing it had been only hope did not take very long at all.