Something to Overcome Someday - 2
That day had been just like today. And even now, the same pitch-black sky from that day seemed to be mocking me. Luise must have felt the same way.
When hardship strikes and the rain comes with it, the misery doubles—and it carves itself deep into the mind. It had been raining then, with exactly the same feeling. So every time the rain fell, the memory rose unbidden.
Did I sell something in my past life?
My country, or whatever it was—I must have sold something that earned me someone’s profound hatred. Otherwise I would never have been thrown into another world out of nowhere, or dragged onto a battlefield a mere year after transmigrating. Whether the one who hated me was Enen or some other being, I had no idea.
Up to that point, I could still understand. In other stories, transmigration always struck without warning, and crises and trials always followed. But once you overcame those trials, you were supposed to reach a happy ending. Why hadn’t mine been a happy ending?
Whoever the bastard was who kept toying with my fate, I wanted to grab him by the collar and demand answers. Did it really make you feel better to do it that way? How dare you dump that idiotic plotline onto my life?
If you didn’t like me, you should have taken me. Why did you take someone else instead?
I should have been the one to die.
There had never been a more absurd stretch of misfortune. Calamity after calamity had come crashing down in an instant—so thoroughly that it felt as if the world itself had decided to take Hecate away.
The squad leaders who had become like family in the North died. Yet because I remained, Hecate could still hold on.
She was gravely wounded in the campaign to subjugate Kagan. Yet because there were people she still had to care for, Hecate could still hold on.
Those people she had to care for died as well. After that, Hecate could hold on no longer. With that final reason gone, she simply collapsed.
“I’m sorry, Karl.”
Hecate left on a long journey from the orphanage where she had grown up. In that orphanage on the Empire’s northern frontier, in a place she had been certain would be empty of people, among the corpses of those she had believed were still alive.
Of course, Hecate had not simply abandoned the northern orphanage while war raged in the North. As fourth division chief at the time, she had begged the minister to get the people of the orphanage to safety, and the minister had reported it to the Audit Department Chief of the day.
That bastard had said he understood. After that, Hecate faithfully sent money to the Audit Department month after month, asking them to use it for the orphanage residents’ living expenses. He took it and said he understood. Back then Hecate wasn’t the only one sending money—I and the other squad leaders had sent some as well.
And the result had been catastrophic.
“Hecate. I also…”
“No. I’ll do it alone. Mm, this is my job.”
I had never met them, but because they were precious to Hecate I had quietly thought of them as family. I had told her that once she became a countess I would hire every last one of them as servants, so she needn’t worry.
And I watched with my own eyes as Hecate silently buried those people in the earth. I watched her inter them according to heretical rites because she could not bear to cremate the bodies of people who had burned to death.
At least she had not needed to dig for long. The rain had left the ground soft, and most of those who needed burying had been small.
And the next day, Hecate set out on a road from which she would never return, to go meet those people again.
If only I had known sooner.
If Hecate had heard the news during the war, it would never have reached that point. Even if she had been shocked, she would not have broken. There had been so many people around to support her then.
But five of the people who had supported her had already left first, and Hecate herself was still unstable from her serious wounds. In that state, while returning to the Imperial Capital, she received news like that—how could anyone endure it?
“How could this have happened?! We were certain the matter had been properly resolved!”
After that I truly thought I would go mad, my vision going red. So a mere squad leader barged into the chief’s office and raised his voice.
The chief bastard claimed that by the time the report reached him it was already too late, that he had kept it hidden because informing us might have interfered with the mission—spouting that kind of nonsense. Bullshit. If it had truly been too late, he should at least have recovered the bodies.
It had been so fucking awful. I wanted to kill that son of a bitch. The minister must have felt the same; the two of us ground our teeth so hard I still don’t know how they didn’t break.
So we killed him. The Crown Prince’s gaze had just turned toward us as he sought to seize control of the Ministry of Finance and the Audit Department, and we were able to carry out a perfectly legal fragging.
I never expected him to hand us the rest afterward, though.
I had assumed he would assign the takeover of the Ministry of Finance to someone else.
After that, learning that Hecate’s wounds would leave her crippled with time left me dazed for a while—but time flowed on, and we arrived at the present.
“Oppa, I’m getting dizzy…”
“Ah, sorry.”
I must have put too much strength into my hand while my thoughts wandered. What should have been a light ruffling of her hair had left Luise’s head shaking from side to side. Sorry—I meant to be gentle.
You’re worse off than I am.
When I withdrew my hand, I watched Luise carefully straighten her hair. At least I had been an adult when I lost Hecate. And Hecate had apologized to me until the very end.
Luise, on the other hand, had gone through something like that at only eight years old. And the last thing she heard had not been an apology or a farewell, but her sister’s resentment. That was a pain worse than mine.
As expected of an original protagonist—her trials were protagonist-grade too. If that was the case, it would have been better not to be the protagonist at all.
“Thank you for telling me.”
This time I patted Luise’s shoulder a few times as I spoke. Yes, thank you for telling me. Ideally she would have told the club members—Erich, for example, or Erich, or Erich—but still, it made me happy to feel trusted as their advisor.
Luise’s eyes went wide. She had clearly braced herself for a scolding for suddenly bringing up such an unpleasant topic, and instead she was being thanked; she looked flustered.
“You have to tell someone if you want any comfort at all, right?”
“I… do?”
Watching Luise fidget and lower her gaze only made the pity swell larger in my chest.
Nothing is resolved by keeping it locked inside alone. You have to face what you’re carrying, or share it with someone else, before it can be resolved.
“Like I said earlier—it wasn’t your fault.”
It was not Luise’s fault. Strictly speaking, it was no one’s fault. If you had to assign blame, it would fall on Luise’s parents for failing to pay enough attention to her older sister—but it was only natural for their eyes to turn more often toward a youngest child who was ill.
It was simply a tragedy born of immaturity. Holding parents responsible for a daughter’s death to that degree would be far too cruel.
“Of course you never wished for her to die.”
Luise had never wanted her sister dead. She had wanted them to become close sisters.
I was the same. I had wanted Hecate and me to become a couple no one would envy.
“And you didn’t turn away from it either.”
Luise believed she bore responsibility for her sister’s death. She had not dismissed it as mere coincidence; she had taken it upon herself.
I was the same. I had never cast aside the responsibility of failing to be a stronger support for Hecate; I carried it still.
“And you haven’t forgotten.”
Luise still had not forgotten what happened with her sister. That was why she could like everyone and yet love no one.
I was the same. Unable to forget Hecate, I could not bring myself to stay by anyone else’s side.
“No one is going to say it was your fault.”
She had not wished for it, had not turned away, and had not forgotten. Who would shout that someone like that was at fault?
Well… probably no one. There shouldn’t be anyone. There must not be.
“So for things like this, don’t say you’re sorry.”
I took the shoulders of the dazed Luise staring up at me and turned her around.
“It’s starting to get cold. Go inside first.”
“O-Oppa?”
“Go on.”
When she hesitated, I gave her back a light push, and she shuffled slowly inside. She glanced back several times as she went, but when I only gestured without a word, she finally entered.
What I had said just now was probably enough. Luise herself seemed to have spoken impulsively; if I kept her too long for some kind of counseling session it would only leave us both awkward and uncomfortable.
I simply chose the words I thought she wanted to hear, the words that would do her good. That much had been easy.
Because those were the words I wanted to hear myself.
Luise, who had gone through something similar, must have wanted to hear them too. It wouldn’t have mattered who said them—anyone at all.
I hoped the knot inside her had loosened a little from what I said just now. Part of it was a pure wish that Luise would overcome her trauma—but also, if Luise could overcome it, then maybe I could too.
A child who had suffered worse than me managed it, so what excuse did I have? I wanted that kind of consolation.
Pathetic.
Even I could see how pathetic it was. An adult who couldn’t stand on his own, leaning on a child younger than himself. Completely, thoroughly pathetic. Not something you could ever admit out loud.
Still, I had offered Luise comfort, so it wasn’t pure, undiluted patheticness, right? That counted as something of a contribution.
“It stopped.”
I looked up at the sky and the words slipped out unbidden. At some point the rain had ceased, and the dark clouds were fewer than before.
It might start again, or the sky might clear completely. The weather these days was so unpredictable it was hard to say.
Someday it will clear.
It might rain for a few days, but it wouldn’t stay gloomy forever. Someday it would clear.
“Oppa!”
“Why did you come back out?”
I had been quietly watching the sky when Luise’s voice came from behind me. I had finally gotten her to go inside, and now she was out again. My authority lasted only a fleeting moment.
When I turned, Luise was holding out a towel.
“You’re soaked too, Oppa.”
At her soft smile, I smiled back.