The Meeting (4)
Even a single moment mattered. I needed to reach a deserted place as quickly as possible. The moment the savage crimson flames, shaped like arrows, melted away the iron door I had raised as a shield without leaving so much as a trace, the only thought flickering through my exhausted mind—flashing on and off like a decrepit streetlamp at the end of its life—was that single desperate idea.
I couldn’t possibly unleash that living embodiment of nature, which scattered explosions with every step, onto the village’s main road.
“Winds, come to me—”
Even though I needed every ounce of focus for my legs, I foolishly turned my head to look back. Yet it was unavoidable. My body, which had seen, heard, and experienced so much, was sharply scolding my peace-addled mind, warning that whatever that mysterious melody was binding could not be ignored.
I hastily revoked the promise I had made to myself—that I would never stop, even if my lungs burned to ash—and spun around to face the owner of that voice with grim resolve.
In that instant, a furious gale slapped my cheek, and a tattered old memory from my turbulent journey suddenly flashed through my mind.
The naïve days when I believed the wind could be perceived but never acknowledged. The foolish times when I had dismissed it as something that could exist yet never take form. Those memories spread across my retinas like watercolor bleeding into water.
“Haha…”
A self-mocking laugh slipped out before I could stop it. How embarrassing. How utterly stupid my past had been.
I would correct that mistake right here and now. The wind does have form. It possesses will. And it also bears fangs capable of tearing out someone’s throat.
Bang!
Before I could even find someone to preach this newfound realization to, a tremendous force lifted my body into the air for a brief moment. I tumbled across the ground and slammed into a dead-end alley.
The world itself couldn’t have flipped over, so it must have been my body that had turned upside down. As I stared at my pathetic legs dangling in the upper part of my vision, I couldn’t shake the mortifying feeling of having become a turtle flipped onto its back on flat ground. I tried my best to scatter that emotion with an awkward smile.
“Spirit magic is totally cheating, you know… Apis…”
Crunch.
Right then, a kick heavy with barely restrained fury slammed into the ground right beside where my face was.
“Shut your mouth.”
Yes, ma’am. I’ll shut it. If I opened my mouth now, it was painfully obvious that one or two arrows wouldn’t be the end of it. So I silently answered only in my heart to that harsh voice she had hurled at me.
“Alright, spit it out. Where the hell have you been and what have you been doing all this time?”
“I was on a short journey to find myself…”
“…You wanna die?”
She told me to shut up one second and then refused to allow any silence the next. Apis’ barrage of questions was truly endless. From where I had been, what I had been doing to survive, why I hadn’t contacted anyone, to trivial things like whether I’d been sick—she grilled me on every last detail. It was enough to make me picture a mother visiting her son’s empty apartment.
Actually, the sight wasn’t all that unfamiliar. Thanks to the exceptionally long lifespan granted to the long-lived races, Apis held the position of eldest in the party. Everyone knew she treated all of us, myself included, like younger siblings or nephews. Everyone except Apis herself, who remained completely unaware of that fact.
Apis and Dawna. The two women famous for being like oil and water both inside and outside the party. I believed Apis’s personality played a huge role in why they clashed the moment their eyes met.
Dawna, who spent more than half her day buried in books and seemed to care nothing for her own health, must have looked quite displeasing in the eyes of Apis, who treated her comrades like family.
A child who had just entered puberty and an awkward parent who had no idea how to handle that child’s rebellious phase. Watching the two of them bicker over the smallest things every single day, that was the impression I had gotten.
“So what you’re saying is, while we were breaking our backs struggling inside the dungeon, you were lounging around in a monastery nearby, eating well, living comfortably, and enjoying life without a single worry. Is that it?”
“Yes… that’s correct… I’ve committed a mortal sin and truly don’t know where to put myself…”
“Is that the truth?”
“Pardon?”
“Look me in the eye and say it. Is that really true?”
Her tone was so firm it reminded me of a parent trying to detect their child’s lies. Even though I had spent quite a long time with her, the unfamiliar atmosphere felt so strange that I was left speechless.
“A-Apis?”
“I asked if it’s true. I’m waiting for an answer.”
She had her back against the dead-end wall of the shabby alley, arms stretched out to block both sides of me. She closed the distance until our noses were nearly touching. Having only been worried about getting skewered by an arrow somewhere on my body, I found myself completely helpless before her earnest, almost pleading gaze. The only thing I could do was draw a gentle curve at the corner of my mouth to ease the mood.
“O-of course it is.”
“…I see. Of course it is. It has to be.”
Suddenly, Apis let out a deep sigh heavy with relief, as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. But before I could even question the meaningful nature of her actions—
“Found you at last, you damn male whore!”
A man’s thunderous shout, calling out a truly unpleasant name, echoed loudly through the quiet alleyway.
“Boss! It’s that guy! That bastard! That’s the freezing-to-death male whore who threw me into the wall!”
“Hah! So it’s you, huh!? The ripping-to-death bastard who threw my one and only precious little brother into a wall!”
Just from the rough voices alone, one could easily guess their builds and status. Two voices. One of them was quite familiar, so my gaze naturally shifted toward the direction the sound had come from.
The owner of that familiar voice was the giant I had accidentally hurled into the wall just a short while ago. Standing beside him was a man who looked exactly like him, only with a bushy beard—most likely his older brother. Behind them stood at least twenty menacing thugs in a line. Each of them gripped some kind of bloodstained tool in their hands. They filled the already narrow alley with the thick stench of sweat.
“I was just walking down the street when he suddenly grabbed me! I was in the middle of teaching a lesson to this punk who was spouting nonsense about me being a once-in-a-century male whore material! Then this guy suddenly helped him and ran off with him! Look at that pretty-boy face, just like a gigolo! He’s obviously in cahoots with him!”
“That’s right! So that’s how it is! My one and only little brother suffered such humiliation! If I just stand by and do nothing, I don’t even deserve to call myself your big brother! Ain’t that right, boys?!”
“Yes! You’re right, Boss!”
As he pointed at me repeatedly and vented his rage, the men, using his sorrowful voice as kindling, gathered their will together and began sharpening their fighting spirit with loud battle cries. It seemed the man I had unintentionally slammed into the wall had a reliable backup to repay his humiliation.
Their tear-jerking camaraderie—treating their comrade’s pain as their own—was quite moving, but no tears came to my eyes. Right now, I was already overwhelmed just by clenching my teeth against the unfair false accusation I had somehow earned.
A small good deed had caused a moderate misunderstanding, which had now borne fruit as a massive misfortune right before my eyes. It was only natural that my head was pounding.
“Um… it seems there’s been a small misunderstanding between us…”
“Hah! Misunderstanding my frozen ass! Boys! Right now, skin that bastard alive—”
“Waters, come to me—”
It was exactly then. The very moment I tried to verbally mediate the misunderstanding between us and them. A sharp surge of waves swept across my vision, and by the time my dull senses sluggishly realized that faint screams were mixed within the roar of the waves crashing against my ears—
I noticed far too late that the white foam flickering whenever the suddenly appearing torrent twisted its body was writhing like the fangs of a beast. In a hurry to stop the culprit behind this murderous spray, I cried out in a cracked voice.
“Apis!”
Right after, the waves receded, and the tragedy hidden behind that blue curtain slowly revealed itself.
“C-cough!”
“Guhk!”
“Aaaargh! My arm! My arm!”
It looked exactly like the scene after a tsunami had swept through a residential area. Crumbling walls here and there. A cratered floor. Agonized wails filled with the pain of people bitten all over by the furious waves. But I had no room to pay attention to any of that right now.
“You…! What the hell did he just say…! Male whore… you…!”
Her golden pupils, violently shaking with intense emotion, were sliding dangerously toward my soaked, clinging shirt.