So Even Someone Like Me Can Be Trusted, and Loved
So even someone like me can be trusted... and loved.
'Hand over everything you've got, and I'll let you go without any pain.'
Words I'd heard less than five minutes ago. It was hardly a new experience, coming to this world and watching someone speak of ending a life so casually. This place valued the pecking order above all else, and it was every bit as cruel as that implied. It was a game designed around that premise, after all — a place where the weak were picked off and left to die in the streets.
And yet, even here, humanity endured. The final line was always real. There had always existed, in every age, a Maginot line that anyone wearing human skin was expected never to cross.
"Keep looking at me with that face, and I'm gonna get my feelings hurt."
But this woman — what on earth was wrong with her?
Crunch. Crack. Squelch. The sound of something being crushed rang out exactly six times. Counting the screams from before, that made seven in total — the number of lives she had cut short.
Not a trace of guilt, hesitation, or wavering. She never even properly looked at the ends of the lives she severed with her own hands. Her gaze was fixed solely on me.
"Ah, it splashed on my clothes. Zeo, use your Purification magic for me, would you?"
She was simply grinning, devoid of any feeling at all. To be fair, even in my old world there were people who had no aversion to murder, and Shatrira was, by definition, a criminal organization — a place where nothing but the filthiest of people gathered, they said. And yet even in a place like that, she was uniquely, singularly exceptional.
"......Why. Why do you do this?"
"Hm? What's wrong? You'll hurt my feelings."
At the very least, people who killed in situations that offered them no personal gain — like right now — were exceedingly rare.
But she was coming closer. Hands drenched in blood, moving with a sticky, clinging gait. Mercilessly, and yet without a single gap left uncovered — drenched in red.
The moment they touched me, my body froze solid. The horrifying sensation of that crimson — flowing beneath someone's skin mere moments ago — brushing against my cheek was disgusting enough to make me retch. Yet stranger still, what I felt most of all was her eyes, glowing violet. They pulled me in, deep, deeper, until I couldn't look away.
As if she were searching for something.
"This is for your own good...... my own way of looking out for you."
Bloodstained fingers quietly caressed my cheek. A red touch that had, moments ago, ended someone's life. Paradoxically, it couldn't have been more tender toward me. Clingy and rancid, but unmistakably soft. I wanted none of it.
"......What part of this is for my good, exactly?"
"Well, that face of yours is awfully striking, isn't it? The kind of face no one could ever forget after seeing it just once."
Her index finger glided softly across my scar. A wound the original Zeo never had — an achievement I'd manufactured back when I was still clumsy at surviving this place. It happened just two months ago. The monster that carved it into me had been terrifying, but it was buried in the ground now. And that, too, was one of Robin's accomplishments.
"Starting with this scar of yours, for instance."
I couldn't understand it. This audacity — a word far too feeble to describe the spectacle of her — left me reeling with a dizzy, stunned horror.
By this point, I genuinely began to wonder if I was the one standing upside down. How could she — how could any of them — go through life thinking this way?
"I never wanted it in the first place. In what universe is this consideration?"
"Then you should be all the more grateful. I corrected a mistake you didn't even know you'd made, free of charge."
"......."
My answer was silence. It wasn't that I had nothing to say — it was that I'd realized no words I chose could possibly make her understand, and my lips sealed themselves shut.
Though I suspect the lion's share of it belonged to the wrongness of it all, gaping its jaws wide and swallowing me whole.
"Look at that. Now you're all dirty too, huh? Come on, hurry up and use your Purification magic."
My expression twisted as I slipped my hand into my sleeve and drew out the wand once more. Naturally, I kept my mouth closed. I had no desire to trade another word with her.
Perhaps fear would have been the more accurate word. My back was already soaked through, though I did my best not to let it show.
"......Purification."
Tap. Once more, I lightly struck the floor with the tip of the wand. Amber light enveloped us both, and every trace of red washed away.
Robin kept her eyes closed, savoring it. The smile curving her lips still shone. In black.
"It amazes me every time. Weren't you saying just a few months ago that you couldn't cast magic anywhere near this level?"
"......I grew."
That "few months ago" presumably referred to the real Zeo, from before I arrived in this world — so I fobbed her off with an appropriate excuse. There was no reason to tell her the truth, and nothing good would come of it anyway.
"Well then, good. Let's get going."
Completely indifferent to the seven corpses she'd just created, her innocent voice filled the alley. I tried to look back, but Robin's hand was faster, covering my eyes.
"There's nothing worth seeing."
Was this her idea of mercy? Or did she simply not want to show me the carnage she had wrought? It was entirely her heart's business, so I had no way of knowing — but one thing was certain.
Whatever it was, I could neither understand it nor accept it.
We never stopped walking, wrapped in a silence twice as heavy as the one before the carnage. Robin seemed to be enjoying even that — but I most certainly was not.
By now the silence had turned outright unpleasant. With nothing left for my mouth to do, my idle brain took it upon itself to replay what had just happened. Crunch. Crack. The sound of skulls being crushed. The sole mercy was that all of them had been unconscious — at least I never had to hear the screaming.
To break that horrific echo on loop, I forced my mouth open and set my thoughts circulating.
"......But it's just a simple delivery job, isn't it? Why would they give us something like that?"
"Means the cargo's precious. Or dangerous. Think about it too hard and you'll only give yourself a headache — just forget about it."
The answer that came back was so perfectly ordinary that it flustered me instead. Or perhaps, as always, cunning would have been the more precise word.
"Besides, in this organization, the roles we've been handed are just two cogs among thousands. No need to spin fast. You just turn at whatever pace the cogs around you turn, that's all."
Robin then traced a circle in the air with her index finger, round and round. She apparently meant to depict something in motion, but it didn't look like anything of the sort. What caught my eye instead was a pessimism so unlike her. It unsettled me for a moment — until her next words made the reason perfectly clear.
"You know how it is. You and me both, trapped here in this place."
"......Robin."
"Oh — that's the first time you've called my name today. What is it?"
For all the gravity in my voice, her reaction was supremely cheerful. Her voice, her footsteps, her breathing — all of it, in fact, seemed faintly giddy.
Thrown off, I turned my head to look at Robin's face. That murky, unreadable black smile still lingered at the corner of her mouth.
"What's the matter? Worried someone might overhear?"
Robin's smile deepened, and I met it head-on. Caught between frustration and unease, some ill-defined emotion left my fingertips faintly numb — but I didn't let it show.
By this point, I was practically used to it. It had become something close to routine.
"It's fine. It's just you and me here."
Just as Robin said, there was no one around. It would have been fair to say there had been people, and she'd cleaned them away — but either way, the result was the same: no problem. I obediently spread my hand over my face, and at last, the long-held tension began to bleed out of me.
"And besides, we talk plenty as it is. It's not like it's a secret."
Tap tap. Her long, straight fingers drummed lightly against her own temple. The intent was so nakedly obvious that this time, a sigh escaped me.
"Besides, you're hardly the type to grab someone's weakness and shake them down with it. If you're curious, I could tell you — all my secrets."
"We're both prisoners here anyway. What weaknesses could either of us possibly have?"
"Don't bare your fangs at me. That was a compliment, just wearing a disguise."
Poke. She prodded my cheek lightly. Apparently one jab wasn't enough, because she kept moving her finger, visibly delighted.
"Still, seems like you've loosened up a bit. Good."
I could never read what was inside her — but she could peer so deeply into me that she read even my emotions before I voiced them. Unreasonable, yet in moments like this, strangely convenient. Spitting the tension out through words had eased me, if only a little.
And with that knot of pressure loosened, it struck me that this was the perfect moment for the question I'd been holding back. Just as I'd noted, there was no one around us now.
"......Hey, Robin. Since the organization came up earlier — can I ask you something?"
"Hm? What is it? Go ahead."
The timing was fitting, too — it was a question directly about the organization. And Robin's reaction wasn't bad at all, which helped.
"......It's just — I mean, strictly a 'what if.'"
Even so, hesitation still littered my path and slowed my steps — but it didn't freeze me in place. With one short, deep breath, I spoke, letting my voice mingle with hers.
"......Have you never thought about leaving the organization?"
"Hm?"
"......Just what it sounds like. You and I are both chained to this place by our weaknesses, aren't we? Without a shred of loyalty to Shatrira keeping us here."
Once the knot came undone, everything I'd hidden inside spilled out into the open. It had been brief, but all the more forceful for it — I could say exactly what I was thinking, straight.
Leaving the organization. That was the first goal I had to accomplish after arriving in this world, and the first step toward my ultimate purpose of finding my way home. I had a rough plan in mind, but alone it was flatly impossible. It was a scheme that demanded, at minimum, one ally.
And so — someone whose weakness was also held against her, someone capable, and above all someone demonstrably well-disposed toward me. There was no one for that role but Robin.
"Not yet, anyway."
And then an answer came back that was that firm.
"......What exactly does 'not yet' mean?"
"Just what it sounds like. No hidden meaning at all. Nope."
Deflated, I spread my palm across my forehead. Not that I'd ever expected an unconditional yes.
But I had worked up the courage to ask, and being shot down that decisively stung more than a little.
"Then again — is it really okay, saying that kind of thing to me so freely? What if I reported you?"
A jab with not a single word wasted. That was precisely why I'd never voiced these thoughts to anyone else. If anyone were to inform on me, I could be purged on the spot. Or subjected to something far worse than purging — some unspeakable torture.
And yet, despite all that, there was exactly one reason I'd said it to her.
"......Because even so, you're the only person I can trust."
She terrified me, and there were plenty of times I quietly resented her — and yet, in a twist so ironic it hurt, the people I could lean on numbered exactly two, and she was one of them.
"Is that so?"
At my answer, Robin slowly raised her left hand and stared at it. She clenched it into a fist, then opened it again — repeating the meaningless motion as if she'd forgotten to stop.
Then she began glancing back and forth between her own hand and me, never breaking the gesture. I couldn't read her intent at all.
"......So Zeo would trust me, and care for me... even like this."
She didn't deny it. Robin smiled. Not her usual murky, syrupy thing — the one that brought snakes to mind — but the plain, ordinary smile of an ordinary girl. Clear and bright, soft as starlight.
"I like you like that, you know."
And once again, I found I couldn't simply resent her. Couldn't simply hate her.