Chapter 64
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 64
Chapter Title: It's Not Your Fault
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The garden of House Page was so resplendent in gold, it was dazzling.
The roses were golden, and so it was named the Golden Garden.
Birds, having fled the southern summer, descended upon the garden’s fragrance, chirping for a while before taking flight once more.
It was the last bastion of peace.
House Page had stepped aside from the vortex of religious reform, dedicating its conserved strength to providing relief for the people.
Drawn by this neutrality and good governance, refugees flocked to the city, packing it to the suburbs.
Though now, following Tarsiyo and Setsunen, the lord and his forces had all gone to join the war for imperial unification.
This city, Goldenrose, was a gift from the Black Sun, Karenden.
A gift from one of "The Ones Who Came" to the founder of the house, the first Great Sage, Emitsa Page.
The two had shared a master-disciple relationship.
When he parted with Karenden, Emitsa promised to love everything in this land.
Were his descendants now honoring that promise, or were they not?
If so, was it right for me, a descendant of the Dragon Sage Rain Ludwig, to be here like this, or was it not?
-Love transcends all.
The Dragon Sage was said to have left those words for his descendants before embarking on his final journey with the Three Spirit Dragons, where he was laid to rest.
“Here.”
Kaisen lifted his head.
Sunlight poured down upon the garden, and steam rose from food even warmer than the sun’s rays.
“I borrowed the kitchen and made a little something. I haven’t cooked while we were on the road, but it should still be edible.”
Ratel glanced at the handmaidens and shrugged.
Kaisen was deeply impressed.
Having grown up on simple meals, he had always found the lavish banquets provided for the FakeWarrior to be burdensome.
“Anything Ratel makes is delicious,” Bors said.
His brother-in-law, Bors, was an ordinary man with no remarkable features, but he possessed an exceptionally gentle smile.
Kaisen wondered if he had charmed his sister with that gentle smile, one that seemed to perceive the pain of others.
Even after their marriage, Bors spoke to Ratel with deference and respect, and it was a pleasant sight to behold.
He was told Bors was a young man who had wholeheartedly supported his refugee sister, both materially and emotionally.
“Looks yummy!”
And in his arms was his nephew.
His nephew was three years old.
His name was Radin.
He was named, she said, after the first part of their mother’s name and the last part of their father’s.
A child’s rosy blush bloomed on his face.
When they first met, Radin had looked at Kaisen with shy yet curious eyes.
-You need to greet your uncle.
When Ratel had said that, Radin placed both hands on his belly and bowed a full ninety degrees.
-Hewwo.
At that sight, Kaisen was startled, as if seeing an image of his younger self superimposed over the boy.
His mother had always taught him that greetings were the foundation of a person’s character.
And then, when the village ladies would say things like,
-Your son has such good manners.
-Oh my, the child speaks so well already.
Hearing such compliments, she would become even happier than him and couldn't contain her smile.
And now, his sister wore the exact same smile as their mother.
*Back then, was this how Mother felt when she saw me bowing…?*
When Radin finished his greeting and lifted his clear, large eyes again, Kaisen was inexplicably moved to tears by this newfound understanding of his mother's heart.
“Yummy, it’s so yummy!”
“Mm, it really is delicious.”
His sister was looking at him.
The meal was simple: grilled egg, crisp bacon, and a little lettuce between two slices of bread.
But it tasted of a home he could no longer even picture.
It tasted of the days when his mother and father were both alive, when they all laughed and chattered on that hill overlooking the sea.
That hill had been covered in azaleas. He could even smell the fragrance of those azaleas.
It was a simple dish.
More akin to a common meal one could find anywhere than a gourmet delicacy.
How could such a simple taste bring back the sentiment and scent of memory?
Was it because the faces of his sister’s family kept overlapping with the everyday life he could never return to, could never reclaim?
-Kai, try this too.
-I don’t want to. It’s gross.
-Oh, look at this boy. You don’t know anything. There’s nothing Mom makes that isn’t delicious. This stir-fried eggplant is one of my signature dishes, you know.
-I said it’s gross! Dad, Mom’s being unreasonable again!
-Now, now, just give it a try.
He choked, tears and food erupting at once.
The food he had been silently chewing and swallowing came rushing back up as vomit, and he couldn't breathe.
His sister cried out urgently, calling for people, while his brother-in-law patted his back, yelling at him to breathe.
Just then, Radin was looking at him, his face smeared with grease and food.
Was he worried?
The boy’s eyes, staring straight at him, were restless and brimming with tears.
-Kai, could you come over here?
The image of his mother’s shoulder, a large, long gash opened by an axe blade as she died, flashed before his eyes.
Valkaro’s axe had dug all the way to her heart before being pulled out, causing a fountain of crimson blood to erupt in its path.
Were the eyes of his younger self, who had watched his mother die, just like those?
-I don’t have much time.
He couldn't… he couldn't breathe.
Did his body, his heart, wish for nothing more than to die again in that moment?
As his consciousness faded in the gaps where breath could not pass, he tumbled once more into a dark abyss.
‘…’
Akirea of Crimson Flame, who had been watching the situation from afar with her dragon eyes, closed them sorrowfully.
‘Face the pain. You must face the pain you were forced to turn away from that day.’
That pain is you.
To turn away from that pain is to turn away from yourself.
Before your soul completely rots in that avoidance, you must properly accept the pain of your childhood.
‘One who cannot even face their own pain cannot see the pain of others.’
If you cannot see it.
You cannot know their pain, cannot embrace them and help them stand, cannot push them forward.
To care for another’s pain with the strength that has overcome your own—that is love.
Without that love.
If there is no love in that heart.
No matter if you possess the power of an angel to cleave the heavens or a god to part the seas, you can never become a hero.
‘Therefore, this is the first step for you to be reborn as a true hero. Pull out that wedge, son of Raminea.’
The Fate of a Time Limit,
The Path of a Hero, The Heart of a Hero (3)
A presence stirred him from sleep.
It was dawn, the full moon was setting, and even the night birds had ceased their calls as the world entered a state of silence.
He felt moisture on his forehead.
He could feel the weight of a towel, its cold water stealing his body heat.
His sister was slumped over at his bedside, arms folded as a pillow, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Beside her sat a bucket of cold water.
This scene of everyday life, so perfectly ‘natural,’ made him wonder if he was dreaming.
Bors, who was draping a fallen blanket back over his sister's shoulders, bowed his head in apology.
‘Sorry for waking you.’
Kaisen shook his head.
As if determined to be by his mother's side, Radin was dozing next to her in the exact same position.
A scene of an ordinary life he could never reclaim, seemingly reborn in the forms of his sister and nephew, suddenly overwhelmed him.
“Uungh…”
He poked his nephew’s cheek with a finger. It was a prank his sister used to play on him.
“Uncle, you’re awake.”
The nephew mumbled after rubbing his eyes open, then fell back asleep. He was just like Kaisen as a child.
Once his brother-in-law left, the bedroom returned to a world of silence, where only the sound of the wind drifted through. The pattern of that silence seeped into his heart.
Since their reunion, his sister had not asked about their mother’s death, and Kaisen had not spoken of it.
She hadn’t asked about anything that had happened from the day of that death until now.
Why hadn't she asked?
Was it because the lines of sorrow etched on his face were so deep that she could read them?
Just as their mother could read their emotions from a mere flicker of their eyes.
“I met some friends in the Red Mountains. They’re FakeWarriors like me. Their names are Isla and Seira…”
Because she didn't ask.
Because she didn't ask, but he wanted to tell her.
Because if he didn't let it out, he felt it would swell up inside him and burst, he began to push the patterns of sorrow out of his body with his tongue.
“I was assigned to the Iron Cross Knights… They were a good unit. All respectable people. And that hero party—Roveris, Tval, Mern, and Alidona—they were truly incredible heroes.”
“…”
“Before that, I was in Master Camilla’s White Skull Brigade. Did you know? The master was Mother’s disciple. She said she looked up to Mother like her own, but their personalities were complete opposites…”
*She’s dead now, too…*
He couldn't finish the sentence with those words.
Was there still a part of him that wanted to deny the reality of death?
“People say I’m possessed. That I kill the enemy as if possessed. First, I was the Uruk Slayer, then I became the Demon Slayer. I don’t know what they call me now. King Slayer, maybe?”
The words he spat into the silence were pulling something closer. They were trying to draw in something he had pushed far away.
“I was never possessed. There was never a single moment I enjoyed swinging a sword. Not with the Iron Cross, not with the White Skull. Every single moment was just painful.”
The light of the full moon filled the garden beyond the window, making the Golden Garden appear silver.
The garden swayed in the wind, carrying the scent of roses.
Something sharper and older than the thorns of those roses was revealing itself in the words that retraced his memories.
“I endured with the single-minded determination to kill the Uruks, to wipe out every last one of the bastards who made Mother die like that. That’s what I thought.”
All his life, his heart had been scratched by that thorn, bleeding.
All his life, the wound from that thorn never healed, and the blood formed a river in his heart.
All his life, that blood rose to his chin, suffocating him, and every moment of his life felt like floundering.
“It was only after this recent incident that I realized that wasn’t it.”
No.
He had known all along.
“You knew the answer too, didn’t you, Sis? That’s why you didn’t say anything. Because you thought it would be like you were blaming me.”
That day…
No…
The moment Mother died with a smile, he had known it better than anyone…
“Sis… Why… Why don’t you ask? Why don’t you curse me…? Why don’t you hit my back and scold me like you used to…!”
In the silence of the dawn, the darkly hidden thorn was clearly revealed.
“You know the truth…!”
That thorn.
It was trying to burst out, tearing through his chest.
He clutched his chest in agony, gasping for breath.
“Back then, that day, Mother… her death… it wasn’t because of the Uruks…”
The blood of his heart, risen to his chin.
It was about to finally pour from his lips, and he couldn't breathe.
“You know the truth…!”
*I knew. I knew the truth.*
But he was too afraid to face it, too weighed down to accept it.
“The ones who killed Mother that day weren’t the Uruks…!”
He didn't have the courage to hate himself.
He didn't have the courage to kill himself.
So he just searched for a substitute to hate, a substitute to kill. That’s why he could never bring himself to cut down the young ‘me’ inside.
“It was the one who made it so Mother couldn't leave—!”
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to let out a wail.
But a lump of sorrow had formed and was choking him, cutting off the path of his words on his tongue, when—
“—It wasn’t your fault.”
His mother, who had smiled as she died that day.
His sister, who had the same face as their mother, met his gaze and spoke.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
With the same face as their mother.
With the same wisdom as their mother.
His sister, who, like their mother, had taken a partner and borne a child.
“If it hadn’t been you, I would have run out. Do you understand? How is that your fault? It’s not your fault at all, not even a little.”
*Mother, on the day you died, why did you smile?*
*Was it to say this?*
*Is that why you smiled for your son, even in your final moments?*
“No one ever thought that. Not Dad, not me, and I’m sure Mom didn’t either.”
That question, which he thought he would never find an answer to in his lifetime.
The answer to that question.
Was being spoken right before his eyes.
“That’s why I’m not scolding you. That’s why. So don’t cry. There’s no need to cry. Because it’s not your fault. Understand?”
Ratel stretched out her arms and hugged her younger brother.
Her body, which had been asleep just moments before, was warm. In it, he felt the same warmth as his mother’s body, who had died leaning on her child’s shoulder.
He remembered the stars cackling in the sky on the dawn of his mother’s death, and himself, wailing as he held her.
“You’re impossible, why were you thinking such a foolish thing…?”
A sob broke at the end of his sister’s words.
She wept, her whole body shaking.
-Kai.
Through his sister, who spoke with their mother’s face and their mother’s voice.
The words their mother couldn't say were seeping into the memories of his childhood.
The words she could only convey with a smile that day, when there wasn't even time for a few sentences.
-It’s not your fault.
His vision blurred and shattered.
A cry burst from his trembling throat. Just like the day he had cried when his mother died.
Because he realized that Mother had smiled back then to say this.
-Do you understand?
He couldn't forgive himself.
He couldn't possibly cut himself down, but he felt he had to cut something to survive in this world.
His soul, which had spent a lifetime searching for someone to cut down, as if venting its anger.
-So don’t cry.
And so, the world of the sword.
His soul, which had been slowly drowning in that sea of blood.
-My most precious treasure in the world.
Through his sister.
On the day he met his mother again.
Perhaps, in that very moment, he was saved.