A Bitter Dream
A bad dream… a really bad dream. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a bad memory. Still, the fact that he was watching his own memories from a third-person perspective made it clear this was a dream once again. Either label would do.
“Hurry up and go!”
“……Mom.”
A woman’s sharp command and a black-haired child sobbing from a distance.
“I said go!”
The woman snapped at the child, her voice laced with irritation. She turned her back to leave, only to stop when the child instinctively took a few steps after her.
“Mom, I did everything you told me to.”
“……”
“You said it would be fine if I did that…… You said everything would be okay……”
The child, unaware of any wrongdoing, approached his mother only to collapse onto the ground. The woman unconsciously took a few steps toward him. Seeing that small hope, the child crawled forward on all fours and clutched at the hem of her clothes.
“I was wrong.”
“Mom, I was wrong……”
“I want to stay with you. I’ll listen from now on. I’ll do better, just like you said.”
The child, not even knowing what he had done wrong, could only apologize through tears. The woman stared down at him, then, hearing the growing commotion in the distance, scooped the child into her arms and ran into the forest.
……The scene changed.
Perhaps because the time spent being carried by the woman had been erased from memory, the young Evan and the woman were suddenly standing at the edge of a cliff.
“Evan, you fell from here and died.”
“Mom……”
“Go! Do you want me to actually push you off?!”
The woman’s voice was filled with genuine anguish, yet her tone remained cold.
“Don’t ever come back.”
As she turned away, the young Evan followed.
“I…… I want to stay with Mom—”
Crack!
The world turned red. Evan unconsciously touched his forehead. The stone hadn’t struck his current self, but the version of him from over ten years ago.
“I told you not to come! Go away, Evan!”
“Ugh…… ugh…… M-Mom……”
“Don’t you dare cry!”
Thud—!
Another stone landed at his feet. The child, terrified, could only stand there and weep, unable to approach any further.
“Why…… why……?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Evan.”
The Evan of the past didn’t understand, but the Evan of the present did.
“It’s not that I’ve come to hate you.”
“Th-then why……?”
“But Evan, if you stay with us, we’ll all die. We’ll all be dragged away as heretics and executed.”
The reason she was driving him away was because of the unsettling talent he had possessed since birth. A talent for necromancy that could never be hidden.
“So don’t ever come looking for me again.”
“Even if you meet someone in white robes, never say that I let you go.”
“I…… pushed you off that cliff. Do you understand?”
At her slightly gentler tone, the oblivious child nodded earnestly.
“Go now.”
“Go far, far away.”
Driven by those words, the child stumbled toward the opposite side of the forest.
……It really was a disgusting dream.
……
Evan sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, wiping away a few drops of liquid—whether sweat or tears, he couldn’t tell.
Worst feeling ever.
Whenever he dreamed of the past, it was always like this, but today felt especially foul. The reason he’d had a dream he hadn’t seen in quite some time was obvious. Yesterday, he had asked Rowena to find her.
“Tch.”
He understood now. He knew why she had no choice but to do what she did back then. He understood that it had been the only way for everyone, including himself, to survive. But did that mean he could forgive her?
……No.
No matter how many times he thought about it, the answer never changed.
Evan’s father—whose face he could no longer recall—had used Evan as a means to make money. Instead of hiding his talent for seeing, hearing, and touching ghosts, he exploited that eerie ability to buy and resell cursed items. He would purchase haunted objects cheaply, have Evan remove the spirits, and sell them again at a profit.
Evan’s mother had known about it too, but she had turned a blind eye. Because it made money. But as the saying went, a long tail gets stepped on. When they tried to disguise Evan’s ability as purification and exorcism, the matter eventually reached a priest’s ears. The priest expressed a desire to meet Evan, and the couple moved to cover it up. The father had likely considered actually killing Evan, while the mother might have been the slightly better of the two. But to Evan, they were the same. Both had profited from using their child as a tool for profit, only to discard him when the time came to take responsibility. The only difference was that she hadn’t tried to kill him directly.
But could that really be called not killing him?
If she hadn’t thought about what would happen to a child left alone in that forest with nothing to eat, then she was a fool.
To him, his mother was simply “a woman who wanted Evan to die on his own because she didn’t want to dirty her own hands.” That was the extent of her place in his heart.
“……Hah.”
Evan let out a small, bitter laugh.
—What do you plan to do once you find this person?
The question resurfaced in his mind, making it feel as though he couldn’t breathe. He opened the window. Perhaps the cursed wind of Abaddon could clear away this chain of unpleasant thoughts.
[Krrrr……!]
But the moment he opened the window, a groaning sound reached his ears, and Evan tilted his head.
“Yongyong! Lift your head!”
[This crazy human female…… Does she never get tired even after an entire night……?!]
“Hurry up!”
[Krrgh……]
Eventually, Iris appeared at eye level, standing between the two horns on the zombie dragon’s head with a bright smile.
“You’re awake! Evan-Evan!”
“……Iris. What are you doing up there?”
“I’m playing with Yongyong! I couldn’t sleep last night!”
[My name is not Yongyong……]
The zombie dragon sounded exhausted, as though he had been tormented for more than just an hour or two.
“Do you want a ride too, Evan-Evan? Yongyong’s fast!”
[Kid……! Do something about this crazy female……! I’ve already been used as some kind of amusement ride for hours……!! And my name isn’t Yongyong, it’s Ruin de Tarakus……]
“Just rename yourself Yongyong.”
[Kuhack! A dragon’s dignity……!]
Iris patted the head of the zombie dragon, who had been renamed from Ruin-something to Yongyong in an instant, and spoke.
“There are two dragons, so your dignity is doubled!”
[You crazy human female……! Double your own name while you’re at it!]
“Iris-Iris is too long!”
Listening to their pointless conversation, Evan found himself chuckling without realizing it.
“You…… You’re not calling me that on purpose too, are you?”
“Huh? It’s Evan-Evan, isn’t it?”
“……Forget it. You’ve helped me out by calling me that, so I’ll let it slide.”
Just hearing that nickname in her voice was enough to tell whether it was the “Saintess” side or the “Iris” side speaking.
“Come on! You ride too, Evan-Evan!”
Evan took her outstretched hand as if entranced.
“Up we go!”
With a strong pull, he was drawn into Iris’s embrace.
“Sit, sit!”
She patted the spot right in front of her, offering up the fairly wide space between the dragon’s eyes. Then she clung to Evan’s back.
“Hehe.”
Was this on purpose?
The way she was tightly hugging his back and rubbing her face against it made it seem that way. …There was no real reason to push her away. If they fell from this height, picking them up would be more troublesome anyway.
“Yongyong! Fly!”
[Damn it……! Not one human, but two……]
Spreading his wings wide, Yongyong soared into the sky. The view from atop the dragon’s head was a first for Evan, and it felt quite refreshing.
[Damn it! Crazy human female! Don’t purify it! And don’t bring the sunlight either!]
“But it feels so nice like this!”
[How many times do I have to tell you that I feel like I’m flying through poison gas before you understand—?!]
And because Iris was scattering her divine power from behind, purifying the cursed energy of Abaddon, the air felt incredibly fresh.
[Kid, you tell her to stop—]
“Just bear with it. You were a dragon once, after all.”
[Shrrreeeeeeek—!!!]
The dragon repeated steep dives and ascents, desperately trying to instill some sense of fear or negativity into the situation, but it was all in vain.
“Kyaa—! Yongyong’s the best!”
……If anything, it had the opposite effect.
“Get used to it, Yongyong. You’ll probably have to carry us like this a few more times in the future.”
[Do you think I’m some kind of cart or carriage?! Damn it, kid!]
“I think slightly higher of you than that. It’s free, after all.”
[Kuaaah—!! You two, I swear I’ll drop you both—!!]
Yongyong performed 360-degree spins and even upside-down flight, thrashing about in every way he could, but neither Evan nor Iris were the type to fall from something like that.
“Fly more spectacularly, Yongyong. It’s embarrassing to carry the name of a dragon twice and only manage this much.”
[These two lunatics—!]
“Then fly faster.”
……
How long had they been flying? Evan realized that the gloomy feeling from earlier had completely vanished, replaced by a refreshing one.
“Fun, right!”
“……Yeah.”
“I knew you’d like it, Evan-Evan! Yongyong! One more time!”
[Hah…… hah……]
“Yongyong, are you tired?”
[Do you really think I can’t shake off just two humans……?!]
Even as his eyes flickered on and off from the divine power, the dragon continued to cling to his pride. Evan was starting to feel sorry for him.
They didn’t call pride a dragon’s weakness for nothing.
“Let’s head back. We’ve come too far.”
They had flown so excitedly that they had slightly crossed the border of Abaddon.
“If we’re mistaken for a show of force, it’ll be troublesome, so let’s—”
Mid-sentence, Iris grabbed tightly onto Evan’s clothes.
Did she suddenly get scared?
Or was she asking to play a little longer? When he turned to look, Iris was staring down below. Following her gaze, Evan’s expression hardened.
There was a child running toward the border of Abaddon. The problem was the people chasing after the child. Though the distance made it hard to see clearly, they wore white robes. …The kind widely worn as a symbol of the Holy Kingdom.
“……Natasha.”
“What?”
“I’m getting off!”
Before Iris could stop her, she jumped. Evan clicked his tongue and gave an order.
“Go back and bring the hero immediately. No one else—just the hero.”
[Now you’re telling me to carry another human—!!]
“Shut up and do it. That’s an order.”
Evan finished speaking and jumped right after her.
I didn’t bring anything worth using as payment. This is going to be annoying.
In the end, he offered up all the remaining mana in his body as payment, converting it entirely into physical enhancement spells, and landed amidst a cloud of dust.
Thud—!
A tingling shock ran from his feet upward. As the knights watched Evan land as if to block their path to Iris, who had wrapped her arms around Natasha, they slowly reached for their swords. Evan, too, was preparing spells, thinking he might need to brace himself for at least three fingers’ worth of damage, when—
“It seems there may be some misunderstanding.”
An old man with a white beard that reached his waist stepped forward from among the knights, leaning on a staff. The divine power he radiated was of a higher rank than even Rowena’s.
“We have merely come to escort you.”
Iris flinched at those words, but the old man looked at Evan and spoke.
“We shall escort you safely to the Holy Kingdom, Lord Evan.”