I Want to Escape
"I—I want to withdraw!"
"Denied."
It was the hundredth rejection of a withdrawal request this season.
Yusia Frontline, hero of the age, tore my painstaking five-thousand-five-hundred-character application to shreds and spoke without a trace of mercy.
"Go back to your room, Fren."
"Hiiing."
I had no choice. Ears drooping, I slunk back to my room.
The chamber waiting beyond Yusia's office was blinding in its splendor. Every lace trimming the bed was spun from gold thread, and even the teacup—something that ought to have been plain—was set with diamonds. I collapsed face-down onto a mattress so soft that five minutes lying on it was enough to drag me under.
"Couldn't get out today, either."
Right. I couldn't get out. I am imprisoned by the hero's party.
I map a route, carry the plan through, and get caught. Being dragged before the hero Yusia and thrusting a withdrawal application at her as my last scrap of defiance has become my daily routine. Naturally, every one of the hundred-odd petitions I have submitted has been ripped apart.
"How did it come to this?"
I am nothing but an ordinary cat-beastfolk porter.
"Why can't I be free?"
Why did the hero's party lock me away?
"Five years ago... maybe I never should have..."
Drowsing on a bed plush enough to ruin a person, I sank back into the past.
Yes. All of it began five years ago, back when Yusia's party was still nothing more than a band of beginners, and I joined them.
My name is Fren. I have no family name.
Five years ago, at twelve, I was cursing the world, because every day was a grind. Why would a child of twelve curse the world? Because my mind was not twelve. I was reincarnated. Once, I had been Ha Seung-won, a twenty-three-year-old living in South Korea.
I was born into a house already crushed beneath a mountain of debt, and from high school on I threw myself into whatever work would take me. My father had cancer. My mother had Lou Gehrig's disease and could barely move. With a cruelty that felt deliberate, heaven took them both on the same day. The twenty-three-year-old working the factory floor never even made it to their last moments, and became the chief mourner instead.
If it had ended there, I might at least have renounced the inheritance and gone on living. Slipping out for a moment at dawn, when there were no mourners left to notice, was the mistake. I wanted to scream the grief out of myself and had no way to do it, so I only wanted to run. Tears blinded me, and a truck I never saw hit me. Crash.
And so Ha Seung-won, twenty-three and a man, came to an end.
When I opened my eyes again, I was Fren, a female cat beastfolk of the Asral Continent.
Coming to as a baby, I wondered whether I had been given another chance at life. I had not. My mother died the moment she bore me, and my father, they said, had fled long before I was born. The one who raised me was the devil of a midwife who took me in. The moment I was old enough to speak properly, that damned old hag sent me out to beg.
"If you're going to eat and sleep, go earn the money for it!"
A cat beastfolk's stamina is nothing to scoff at. At three, I could already walk for two hours. A little older, I found work as a porter for the adventurers' guild. The trouble was that I had no talent for it. Other porters hauled vast loads with extradimensional pouches and strength skills. Me? One body and nothing else. No skills, and so little strength that fifteen kilograms was the most I could carry.
Parties would not take me. The few that did, tempted by how cheap I was, abandoned me, and I nearly died. When I came home without coin, the old hag who called herself my stepmother beat me. At twelve, the boy—no, the girl—that I was found the world nothing but accursed.
It was in the middle of days like those that I met the adventurer party called the Sword of Trust.
The swordswoman, Yusia Frontline. The warrior who held the vanguard, Aphron Betroll. The mage, Kailin Arseria. Three novice adventurers held their hands out to me.
"Huh? You've got no talent? That's fine! Neither do we!"
"Talent comes to those who strive. Let us cultivate it together."
"The kitty's cute!"
"Yes, yes. I understand."
Looking back, I think I had simply been waiting for someone to reach for me. That much is clear from the way I took the hand of a party that, at a glance, had no future even if we stayed together.
The Sword of Trust was a failing party of the most ordinary kind. They could not clear so much as a common goblin den, and for two years they had been unable to climb out of D-Rank. An ordinary adventurer party reached C-Rank within a year. By that measure, the Sword of Trust was a complete mess. There was probably some comfort in that. In a party like this, even I might be of use.
I learned I was wrong half a year later.
"Haaah! Fren! Mind carrying that magic stone over there?"
"Y-yes! Nngh—!"
I tried to pry loose a magic stone the size of my own body. It did not so much as shift. Aphron, the warrior, laughed and came to help.
"Strength in the core—firmly! That is how it is done. I shall assist you."
"Th-thank you, Aphron."
"Think nothing of it. We are comrades, are we not?"
"Aaah, once it's out, give it here!"
Kailin swung her staff at the stone Aphron and I—or rather, Aphron alone—had hauled free. In an instant it shrank to the size of a palm and vanished into her subspace pouch.
"You two~ take care of the harvesting for me~."
"Got it."
"Leave it to me!"
Yusia and Aphron threw themselves at the monster's corpse. What they had brought down was nothing less than a wyvern—a beast even a B-Rank party would struggle to hunt. The Sword of Trust, a D-Rank party until a mere half year ago, had felled it with ease. And through all of it, I could not even do a porter's work properly.
They rose as if wings had sprouted from their backs. Had they been hiding their strength until the day they met me?
The first year after I joined the Sword of Trust, they reclaimed thirty percent of the land the Demon King had invaded. The second year, they subjugated Argos, the Shield of Great Calamity, one of the Demon King's Four Heavenly Kings. The third year, they brought down all three of the remaining Heavenly Kings. The fourth year, they took back every territory of humankind the Demon King had seized and toppled the Demon King's Castle.
And now, the fifth year.
For reasons I cannot understand, they have me locked away.
"Why?"
From the moment the Sword of Trust began to make their name, I dreamed the same nightmare every night: the useless me, cast out. But they did not cast me out. On the contrary, when the weight of being a burden grew too much and I said I would leave the party—
"No."
"That is a thing that cannot be."
"Where does our cute Fren think she's going? Come here!"
They would not let me go. Now that the age they won is a peaceful one, they have gone so far as to imprison me outright.
"This isn't the comfortable life I wanted."
Never once in my life had I been of help to anyone. The least I wanted was not to be a burden. And yet here I was, having achieved nothing, smothered under a kindness far too heavy for me. This was wrong. Even now, beyond the window, adventurers far more capable than I were drinking cheap rum, while I—a mere porter—sipped tea from a diamond cup.
It was not right. This was no simple complaint. Even in this moment, I could not breathe.
"I..."
The last thing I wanted was to live as some kept man.
The next day, I drew up another plan of escape.
In truth, it would not be too much to say that every attempt until now had been practice for this one.
"The people I won over will help me."
It was not as if I had never made it past the mansion walls. The place I truly had to escape was the imperial capital, Arseria. Getting out of the city alone would not be enough. I would have to put at least five more cities behind me before I could breathe easy.
"The title's empty, but I used the name to make them mine."
By now, to be a member of the Sword of Trust—the party the world called the hero's party—was the same as carrying power at one's back. Right up until each escape ended in capture, I had searched for people who would help me, and I had gathered fully thirty.
Every one of them was righteous, and kind. Once they heard my circumstances, they said without hesitation that they would help.
The moment to move would come after the hero's party, Yusia among them, left the mansion. They had brought down the Demon King's Castle, and yet, for reasons no one could explain, monsters kept rising all across the empire. Some were powerful enough that only the hero's party could put them down, so now and then the party sortied.
Until now I had failed to escape even when they were gone. The imperial capital is vast. But with helpers, the route was simpler. I could be out of the capital before Yusia's party returned.
Knock, knock.
Someone rapped at the door.
"Fren. It's me."
Yusia.
"Please come in."
The door opened slowly, and the hero appeared in all her grace. Silver hair, golden eyes, a beauty who smiled at me with her eyes alone.
"What were you doing?"
"Just resting."
"Yeah? I'd rather you didn't try to escape today."
Softly, her hand settled on my head and stroked.
"Fren, all you have to do is stay here and live comfortably. You understand?"
"Y-yes."
"Cheer for me? I came to see you before I head out today, too."
"Do your best, Yusia! I'm always cheering for you!"
"Hehe. Thank you. Oh, right—I have a gift."
"A gift?"
"You can look forward to it."
Yusia giving me gifts was nothing rare. If anything, it was ordinary. But she usually pressed one into my hands with a casual little tap and left. Why was she making so much of it today?
I was still tilting my head, full of doubt, when her hand left my hair.
"I'll be back, then."
"Please come back safely!"
"The gift will be revealed in an hour."
Yusia left. A gift revealed in an hour? What could it possibly be?
For the time being I killed the minutes on the bed, waiting until I could be certain the hero's party had truly sortied. An hour at least. After that, I would reach my first helper through the crystal orb I had hidden away.
"Nn—nyaat! I almost fell asleep."
I had nearly surrendered to the bed's ruinous softness. Seventeen years of living as a woman, and I could feel my heart turning female along with the rest of me.
"About five minutes left? I'll call a little early."
I reached for my first helper through the orb. Trrrring. Trrrring.
"Huh? Is it because it isn't time yet?"
For some reason, there was no answer. Right. Better to move exactly on the mark.
I waited five minutes and called again.
Trrrring. Trrrring.
Trrrring. Trrrring.
"W-why?"
My first helper would not pick up. In a rush, I tried the others.
"Wh-why isn't anyone answering? A-again!"
Trrrring. Trrrring-ring.
Trrrring. Trrrring-ring.
"Why? Did they trick me?"
No one answered. All I could hear were the tones of the calls, layered over one another.
Trrrring. Trrrring.
Trrrring. Trrrring...
"Huh?"
Wait. Only now did I understand.
That ringing was not coming from my orb alone. From beyond the window, another tone was sounding in perfect time with it. A cat beastfolk's hearing is too sharp; I simply hadn't realized I was hearing it from far away.
Why was there a ringing tone outside the window?
"D-don't tell me!"
Why hadn't I thought to look outside until now?
What my stupid head finally confirmed, out there, was a small mountain heaped upon the ground.
"Ahaha. Fren. Only just now looking this way?"
Yusia stood before it, waving. And behind her—
"U-uweeegh!"
They were the corpses of the thirty people who had promised to help me.