Afterglow (7)
Maybe they really were somewhat famous in their own circles.
Normally, when a companion died like this, people tended to flinch back a little. I didn’t.
I didn’t exactly enjoy killing people.
But for some reason, I didn’t want to leave the ones who’d pointed weapons at me alive now.
They’d tried to kill me first, so they had no right to feel wronged.
Honestly, I’d wanted to kill the Pope too.
Why had he gone along so obediently when they told him to head to the academy?
I didn’t know.
He was always getting shoved around by everyone else, anyway.
What was so different from Lihen?
What was I, if not a bastard who only got tossed this way and that by Arin in front of me, by his family, by all the useless crap people said?
Thankfully, the space was narrow.
The doorway was a perfectly ordinary width—just wide enough for a single armored body to squeeze through.
I didn’t need to go farther into the room. I could handle them one at a time, more or less.
I yanked the handle still embedded in the jaw of the dead adventurer toward me.
His face split in half, gaping open like a rag, and when I kicked him over, his skull cracked wide on the floor, spilling the contents out.
Splat.
What spread across the floor soaked the soles of my shoes.
It still didn’t smell yet.
Only then did the others, seeing what had become of their fallen companion, start edging back.
“What kind of mad bastard is this…?”
I grabbed the handle of the chain flail still lodged in the wall and pulled.
The wooden wall splintered apart, and with a rustle it came free.
How weak did you have to be, if something that was only embedded that deeply in a wall wouldn’t come out?
I hurled the flail at the man holding the huge hammer.
He managed, by some fluke, to knock it aside, but the chain whipped around and buried itself in his head.
While his eyes were fixed there, I flung the dagger at the woman who was standing there naked—naked, for that matter, not even wearing a breastplate.
She’d been holding a sword too long to really be called a dagger, but when she saw the blade buried in her chest, she simply toppled over with a twitch.
That was all it took.
Was there any reason to hold back against idiots like this?
Even if I gathered ten of them together, they still looked weaker than a single elf bastard who could actually fight properly.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, I walked slowly into the room.
Stepping over the mess on the floor, I took my sword out from my belt on purpose, slowly.
None of them had the nerve to rush me.
If someone had thrown something in a moment like this, maybe they could have done something. But no.
There was a window in the room, too… but not large enough for a person to pass through.
One fat bastard—the kind who mustered all his courage just to scream as he thrust out a spear with an axe blade mounted on it—met my eyes.
And two more, both holding ordinary swords, went for my side.
The moment I avoided the spearhead, the axe blade hooked toward my throat.
Before it could take my head off, I grabbed the wooden shaft, smashed it with my sword until it broke, then kicked out sideways to knock away the sword blade coming at me and followed with a boot to send him sprawling.
I brought the axe blade down on the chest of the man who’d fallen.
The other one I simply slit across the throat with the sword in my hand.
They were so full of openings I couldn’t even be bothered to criticize them.
Anyway, the important thing was not to cut too deep at first.
There was nothing uglier than someone bleeding out through the neck while staggering around in every direction.
Still, I had to wonder: if all they ever did was hunt beasts, and if at most they only ever dealt with bandits once in a while, what exactly did they think they could do by drawing steel against me?
In the end, I casually knocked the head off the one who had frozen in place holding the broken spear shaft, then took the shaft out of his hands.
The two women who’d been staring at me with weapons in hand just moments ago—faces full of confidence then—had collapsed to the floor, while the rest could only let out hiccuping sobs and clamp their hands over their mouths.
That left only Mister Bruno, the one who’d fulfilled Arin’s dream of going up to the capital and becoming a prostitute.
And the man who seemed to be his right arm.
I picked up the large hammer lying on the floor.
I wasn’t used to using something like this, so it didn’t sit well in my grip… but the more kinds of weapons you got used to, the better.
Then I brought it down on the head of the woman who’d pointed a knife at me.
She was crouched now, but still… she’d aimed a blade at me with the intent to kill, so she had no reason to feel wronged.
And damn, the impact felt better than I expected.
The place I hit was mashed beyond recognition.
The vibration traveling up the handle rang all the way to my forearm.
How to put it? It felt far more honest than a sword. I dealt with the other one the same way.
By then, the room contained nothing but the smell of blood.
Mister Bruno didn’t seem too used to situations like this. With one arm, he was strangling Arin, and with the other he held a knife under her chin.
“D-don’t come any closer. I’ll kill this bitch first.”
“Then kill her. I don’t give a damn either way.”
I wasn’t supposed to get angry about this.
Getting sad and enraged over something like this was the sort of thing Lihen would do.
There was no way these idiots were going to kill me, so there was no reason for that synchronization rate or whatever to rise any further, either.
I’d always been dreaming of Arin, too.
Ever since the days when I’d been flayed alive by that elf bastard, I’d dreamed of her every day.
Of the day we’d meet again.
I hadn’t expected the dream to come true like this, but dreams are usually nothing but empty once you wake from them.
What was there to be “bound” to about some trash whore like this?
Even if she’d become a prostitute, so what? As if that would make things okay.
It was not okay.
Not one fucking bit.
Even if I killed her, the ending would still be the ending.
I’d let Lihen push me around too much.
I’d been repeating it to myself all along.
I’m not some pathetic bastard like that. I’m not some weak-willed shit.
The man standing beside Bruno finally grit his teeth and charged at me with his sword.
I gripped my sword with both hands and swung once from below.
Both wrists flew off at once.
While he stared blankly at the severed stumps, I brought the sword down from above and split him open.
Then I glanced up and to the side, just to make sure the women who’d been pouring drinks wouldn’t come rushing in, but there was no sign of it.
Without hesitation, I walked toward Mister Bruno.
“Y-you… what the hell are you…? W-why are you going this far, you f-fucking…!?”
“.......”
“If it’s the woman, I-I haven’t even really touched her yet, so s-spare her. I don’t want the debt either, just my life—please, just my life…!”
“I just had a thought. Maybe I was worse than someone like you? No, that doesn’t seem likely…”
“What the fuck are you talking about, you lunatic bastard? D-don’t come any closer!”
Since Mister Bruno and the heroine Arin were both here, then Lihen must be here in this place too. If the stage was set, then the actors had to do their part.
He’d shoved Arin out in front of him as a meat shield, but he was so big there was no way it would really hide him.
I thrust my sword straight out. It grazed Arin’s side and pierced Bruno’s abdomen.
Then I smashed the shoulder of the arm holding her, kicked both of them in the chest together, and kept beating Bruno’s head down with the sword over and over.
It didn’t matter if whatever was on my sword splattered all over Arin’s face.
Just as the Lione in my memory had done to me.
What clung to my hand slowly cooled to lukewarm.
For some reason, the sweat that had gathered on my skin made me feel oddly refreshed, so I wiped my brow and let out a breath.
Then I looked at Arin.
She was sobbing, wiping away the things smeared across her face.
She kept rubbing at it with the back of her hand, but there was no way it would come off.
“Why are you smiling…?”
I’d have to kill her, then.
That was what I’d decided, over and over, back on the battlefield.
How many times had this bastard Lihen dragged me around by the nose? How many times had I died because of this fucked-up bastard?
That dogshit bastard who’d killed me from the very first day, hanged me by the neck and left me dead.
“Why am I smiling? Just because. Isn’t it funny? You and me both. And besides… you looked like you were having fun with that man earlier.”
“......There’s no way I was having fun.”
Maybe.
If the other heroines had to be handled by losing a battle or seeing a certain event, then Arin was just a childhood friend with pink hair, so… well, did I really need to say more and wear out my mouth?
“Then just now… were you trying to kill me too?”
Was this the part where I was supposed to gasp in shock?
Where I was supposed to insist I’d never do something like that?
Maybe.
Did I still have any reason to keep putting up with this?
Nothing was going to get better, anyway.
Fuck it. Wasn’t it about time I started doing things my own way?
“Does that matter?”
“I-I tried to kill you too, right? Then you… you shouldn’t….”
“What a stupid thing to say. I’m not some pathetic piece of shit like Lihen.”
I held the knife up to Arin’s throat.
“Honestly, I thought our future might change a little, but after fighting all you want to do is go find some other man?”
“I…! I wasn’t going to… Ah… w-what?”
I slapped Arin across the face.
The sensation left on my palm was strangely vivid.
Arin stared at me blankly, then began crying.
“Honestly, by this point it doesn’t matter. I don’t think there’s anywhere left to crawl out of this cesspit.
All that’s left is to live miserably for the rest of your life and then die. So….”
I kept talking as if it had nothing to do with me.
“So don’t worry if that blow hurt. Your fucking childhood friend won’t be able to lay a hand on you ever again soon.”
Arin was probably crying because she’d sensed her fate.
Her sobs began filling the room.
In a room already reeking of blood, only the sound of crying was still alive.
“I-I might not have been a g-good friend. I, I always… I know I kept making excuses and ended up like this, b-but that doesn’t mean it would have been like this forever! E-even if nothing went right after we met, we still had fun in the past!”
The one who had fun with someone like you was Lihen, wasn’t it?
“I-I’ll behave from now on, I’ll live however you say, do whatever you want me to do, so L-Lihen, p-please….”
“Fuck off, my love.”
“.......”
“How many times am I supposed to let myself be fooled by your words?
It’s all a mess. You say you’re going to come up here and live freely, and what is it really? Everything’s failed, and now I’m watching you live like a filthy whore just to butter up some man.”
“N-no, you won’t do that, right? We’re best friends, aren’t we? Huh? Lihen…? I love you, Lihen. You’re my one and only best friend!”
At that, I kicked Arin away as she tried to cling to me.
Arin, who had fallen, staggered up again, then slipped on the pooled blood and went down once more.
I followed after her and brought the sword down on her back.
Arin kept crawling for a long while across the room, slick with blood.
“N-no… n-no, I said, I… I didn’t live for this, I di-didn’t… hic! Guhk, L-Liheen… ple, ple… ghhk, h-uh, eughk, guh, guh…”
There was only a wall ahead of her.
Still, let’s keep going. Let’s not stop here.
Come to think of it, I’d hacked her up this badly, and there still wasn’t any affection gauge or whatever dropping?
Now I was starting to like it a little.
There had been nothing coming back to me at all… and yet now at least there were scraps of flesh left behind.
What kind of love in this world only gives and never takes?
Only when what you’ve given returns somehow, in some form, can you call it love.
Maybe because Arin wasn’t dead yet, no status window had appeared.
Right before the last cut, my hand had started shaking so violently I looked down at it.
The right hand gripping the sword suddenly came at my head.
I barely managed to stop it by grabbing the blade.
It felt like the light that had always remained inside me, tormenting me and holding me captive, had finally gone out.
I’d tried to finish it by gripping the sword, but blood had soaked through my palm so much it felt sticky and unpleasant.
It would cool soon enough, too.
Just like everything warm eventually does.
I couldn’t keep living like Lihen forever.
Because I was me.
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