The Grave
I didn’t want to ride in a carriage, so I walked.
There was nothing in the capital I wanted to carry with me.
Once I passed through the city gates and joined the road, the smell of the wind changed a little.
The air, once soaked through with human sweat, the reek of liquor, and the stench of foul water, had begun to carry the scent of earth and grass.
It was only that much, and yet even that made my breathing feel a little lighter.
Maybe it was all in my head.
Behind me, the outline of the city grew smaller and smaller.
I kept turning back to look at it before finally slipping a hand into my pocket.
All I had brought with me was one sword.
And, really, mother—
The word clung to my ear like an insect that had crawled inside and refused to leave.
The one Arin had spit out as I pressed the blade toward her kept circling through my head, still alive somehow in the sound of the road-wind.
The dying always seemed to say the same sorts of things.
They called for the people they loved, the people who loved them back.
So what would I look for when I died?
There was no one who loved me, and no one I loved either.
Even after thinking for a long time about the name I might whisper before a death that was real, not the fake kind that only dragged me back again, nothing came to mind.
I didn’t know whether that was lucky or unfortunate.
But still—mother.
She wasn’t my mother.
The mother I remembered wasn’t truly mine, only an echo left behind in memory.
And yet, if I could see her, I thought I’d like to at least once.
After all, it was a face and a voice I’d seen a few hundred times before, at the moment of death.
Every time consciousness dimmed, just before it went out, fragments of memory would drift through me: a warm hand, a low voice.
The touch of fingers brushing my forehead. The heat of hands drawing the blanket tighter before sleep.
But in truth, I’d never once seen her.
So…since I had nothing else to do and no idea where I was supposed to go, maybe visiting a gravestone once wouldn’t be so bad.
A single marker stood alone on the hillside behind the Grian Family Estate, set a little apart from the family graveyard.
Even in my blurred memories, it remained strangely vivid.
And if I went there and still hated it, I could always dig the grave up too.
Since I’d killed Arin as well.
I should dig out everything I hated from inside my own heart.
Just like I’d dug Lihen out, I’d dig it all out.
Pull it up by the roots, and if it grew back, pull it up again. Keep doing it until nothing was left at all.
If there was nothing left, would I feel a little better too?
I wouldn’t become a better person, at least not that much was obvious, but…maybe I’d feel a little freer.
Though I couldn’t even tell how that was different from the way I felt now.
Still, I kept walking toward the Grian Family Estate.
What was I going there for?
And why, the moment I left the battlefield, had I headed for the Grian Family Estate?
As those questions kept circling in me, the reason became surprisingly clear only now, after I’d killed Arin.
I think I wanted to kill my father.
More precisely, the lord of the Grian Family.
Lihen had always been busy hiding thoughts and feelings like that away, but now that I’d erased that friend from my mind, I’d finally understood.
Why had I gone toward the place where the father I hated and Lione were waiting?
I wanted to erase it somehow.
Since I could no longer die and vanish myself, I would erase the other person from the world instead.
If I thought about who had driven Lihen so far that I was forced awake in this world, that man’s share in it was probably pretty damn large.
As for Lione, if I gave her the benefit of the doubt and blamed it on some orphan girl who’d never been taught at home how people were supposed to live together in the world, then maybe she’d simply crossed the line because she didn’t know any better. But the lord of the Grian Family was just a piece of trash who’d dumped the grief of losing his wife onto his son.
He’d made his son that way with his own hands, then turned around and cursed him for being born so pathetic. If I erased one deranged bastard like that from the world, was that really such a terrible thing?
It would certainly be far more moral and righteous than brutally murdering some girl who had come up from the country full of dreams and was working hard in the capital just to survive.
First I’d see the lord’s face.
I felt like I wouldn’t know anything until I saw it for myself.
Even now, I knew very well that my head was full of thoughts and I was moving on impulse.
Killing Arin, killing that student, even now being carried along by impulse without really meaning to do any of this.
There was no grand cause, no purpose, no righteous or just thing in any of it.
After drawing my sword the way someone being swept away might do, I’d simply forgotten how to stop.
So I should just go see them one by one.
Look at the people around Lihen, one at a time, and decide whether to think about them, cut them off, or leave them be.
Maybe even if I saw the lord’s face, I wouldn’t feel much at all.
I might not be angry. I might not be sad. I might just let it pass, as blankly as staring at a stain on an old wall.
If that was possible, it would be better.
Honestly, if I were just some deranged lunatic taking out my frustrations on the world, I wouldn’t even have a proper excuse, but…since there was no one to tell me what I should do and what I shouldn’t, maybe that meant I was free to move however I wanted.
Though even if there had been someone, I probably wouldn’t have listened.
Even if I wandered this world aimlessly until one day I suddenly escaped it—like the day I had suddenly woken here—and even if I somehow returned to reality, I didn’t think I’d be very happy in this state.
With memories and feelings like these, happiness and freedom would never find me.
Memory would always bind me.
Even if I left this place, the things that had burrowed into my head would still be living on, perfectly calmly, somewhere out there.
The word revenge felt too grand.
I was just going to untie what had gotten tangled.
By cutting it apart.
However it happened, the problem would be solved.
If you don’t know how to undo a knot, you cut it.
Even if the cord is ruined, even if it can never be used again, the tangle will be gone in the end.
I didn’t ride a carriage or a horse. I walked slowly, letting my feet take me where they would.
The road changed little by little.
The orderly farmland around the capital disappeared, replaced by low hills and tiny villages.
Whenever a village came into view, I stayed at an inn.
I ate, tried to sleep, and when the sun came up, I started walking again.
When I lay down on an inn bed, I could see the grain in the wood overhead.
Instead of the torn canvas I used to stare at in the tents on the front, there was only the grain of the wood, but the act of lying there and staring blankly upward was the same.
In the end, waking with my eyes open in the morning wasn’t any different from those days.
I still felt like I was at the front.
Nothing had ended yet.
Even if the demi-humans bowed their heads, it didn’t really stir anything in me.
They were people who shouldn’t be left alive.
Still, it did seem better than the time I’d let Lihen’s feelings drag me around.
My tobacco had run out, so I stopped at a general store in a country village.
They didn’t have the kind I smoked in the capital, only cheap stuff that left bitterness on the tip of my tongue.
But once I got used to smoking it, it became familiar enough.
Was there anything in this world that didn’t eventually become familiar?
Killing people, the taste of cheap tobacco, the empty days passing without a sound.
With time, everything became nothing.
The feelings I’d had when I first killed Arin, and when I cut down the student who might or might not have been a heretic, were slowly growing dim too.
Even the things that shouldn’t have faded.
There was no one by my side.
Not beside me, not ahead of me. Those were all things I had driven away, chased off, or cut down myself, so I had no right to complain.
That was all there was to it.
A person only realizes he cannot endure being alone after he has struggled hard enough to become one.
It was on the third or fourth day of walking like that when I noticed it.
By then I’d already had the sense that someone might be following me…so when I left it alone out of annoyance, it seemed they’d finally decided to show themselves.
Five knights in white breastplates came galloping up the road and blocked my way. The church’s crest, gaudy and old-fashioned-looking, was set right in the center of their chests.
“Commander Grian. His Holiness is summoning you.”
I didn’t answer and tried to pass them on the side.
One of the knights turned his horse and blocked the road.
He didn’t draw his weapon, but he didn’t seem inclined to move either.
“His Holiness?”
“Yes. There were voices within the Church saying the matter was handled far too brutally, but His Holiness said you dealt with it well and wishes to see you, Commander.”
“And on top of that, the Commander was suddenly up to some other—”
I dropped the tobacco I’d been holding in my mouth to the ground and crushed it underfoot.
The ash mixed into the dirt.
For some reason, the sight looked a lot like me.
“In any case, we’ve prepared a horse for you at a nearby village.”
“Lead the way.”
The village wasn’t far.
I followed behind the knights at an unhurried pace.
The horse they had prepared for me was a docile black one.
I took the reins and looked into its eyes for a moment.
“Tell His Holiness this: I have business with my family first. If he has something to say, he can come to me himself.”
The knight’s face went troubled. His lips moved as if he wanted to stop me, but in the end he only lowered his head.
“...Understood.”
“You agree rather obediently.”
“His Holiness said that if you did not wish to come, your wishes should be respected.”
I didn’t exactly feel grateful hearing that from the man who had split my head open twice, but I suppose good was good.
Anyway, I climbed onto the horse and started forward slowly, but the knights kept following behind me.
“Why are you following me?”
“His Holiness ordered us to follow you, Commander, however things may proceed.”
“He didn’t order you to bring me back?”
“If you go anywhere, leading the order with you is enough. You showed no fear of what would come after, even when facing that disgusting headmaster pretending to be human, and you were firm to the end. You have more than enough qualification to lead us.”
“.......”