Because My Hometown Is Still Warm
Even so, because my hometown was still warm, Arun didn’t violate me. He simply carried me away in silence, my body caked in dirt, love juices, and urine.
As the chill seeped into me and a sliver of reason returned, the shame and self-loathing hit like a wave. In front of my childhood friend I had done something not even the lowliest whore who had rolled through the gutters would stoop to—clumsy, pathetic seduction. My face burned crimson with humiliation as he carried me on his back.
My frame was thin as a reed, little more than skin stretched over delicate bones, yet the weight of the spellbooks hanging inside my robe and the adventurer’s gear I had greedily stuffed into my pack made me no light burden. Yet he offered no complaint about the weight, no judgment for the disgrace I had shown him moments earlier. From behind me, his voice came gentle.
“Kaira, everyone was worried. Everyone in the market who knows you.”
I wanted to die of embarrassment, but I somehow forced my throat to work.
“Uh… yeah. S-sorry…”
“Where have you been? And what happened to your parents?”
“I… I was in the south. Near the Light Denomination’s direct territory… Do you know Baldenheim? I ran a magic-tool shop there…”
My mind was a haze, but I knew enough not to mention Mittenburg. The tool shop in Baldenheim would serve well enough as a cover.
“I don’t know about my parents… Contact suddenly stopped, so I came back worried, but the shop was gone… I didn’t know what to do, so…”
“Let’s stop there,” Arun cut me off.
“You were exhausted. Yes… it must have been incredibly hard.”
My childhood friend—his back now broad—glanced back at me with a smile he had clearly forced into place.
“An inn doesn’t feel right. I’ll take you to my house. It’s a little cramped, but I’m on night patrol with the vigilantes until dawn, so you’ll be able to rest quietly and comfortably by yourself.”
I had no strength left to refuse.
“Yeah… th-thank you…”
After a brief silence I added one more shameless request.
“Um… could you… not tell anyone you saw me?”
His steps faltered for a moment.
“All right. I won’t.”
Arun added one more thing.
“You still smell good, Kaira. Like your house. It’s a nostalgic scent.”
My face flushed scarlet. I stammered an answer.
“B-because… I’m the daughter… of a bakery…”
Arun set me down at his house and left without another word. His face held nothing but pity—anyone could see he had no intention of laying a hand on me.
I was left alone in a narrow room that could barely fit one adult, thick with the unpleasant odor of half-tanned raw leather and crafting chemicals. There wasn’t even a window.
“Haa…”
I stripped off every piece of clothing, folded them on the floor, and threw myself onto Arun’s bed. It was nothing more than rough cloth laid over hard wood, but I couldn’t soil the modest bed with the mossy, mold-covered mud from the alley… or with the filth of my own secretions.
Meeting my childhood friend had slowly restored my sanity. The filthy desires and the craving for ruin cooled. Just as Arun had said, I was tired in every way. I fell asleep without realizing it—into a dreamless, quiet slumber. Naturally, I never had the chance to manifest my secret diary.
“Ra…”
“Mmm…”
A voice like sunlight tickled my ear.
“Ira…?”
“S-sorry… Dad, just a little… more…”
“Kaira, are you all right?”
It wasn’t my father’s voice. I jolted awake, the memories of the previous night crashing over me all at once.
“It’s dangerous to sleep without clothes like that. Our house isn’t tight enough to keep the wind out, and we don’t have anything like a cotton quilt.”
Only then did I look down at myself. My vision was still blurry with sleep, but I could see my scrawny naked body. The mud from last night had dried into a sticky crust along with my fluids. I hadn’t noticed while deeply asleep, but the wind must have crept in; my whole body shivered down to the marrow.
Arun tossed me his outer garment.
“How about it? Want to wash up?”
We went together to the public well. I wore the spare clothes he had given me, far too loose on my frame. The moment I saw the well in the distance, the memory returned—the day I had washed flour from my face with a tearful expression while reeling from the memories of my previous life.
Without a word I drew up the icy water that carried the chill of the earth and splashed it on my face. The reflection staring back from the bucket was almost unchanged from that day: transparent rose-red eyes, light brown hair, a face that still held the features of my childhood.
I stared blankly into the still water for a long time, then slipped the pants Arun had given me down just enough to wash the filth from between my legs. I also did my best to rinse the soiled robe and skirt. The entire time I lived in terror that someone would recognize my face, but fortunately no one did.
Arun told me to rest at the house, but I insisted on following him to the leather workshop. I wore the leather cape he gave me over my still-damp robe, using it to hide my face.
Arun ran the workshop alone. He had once worked with his father, but the harsh chemicals used for tanning and hardening had taken the man’s life before he could pass on all his skills. It happened long ago—around the time I was attending the magic academy.
Somehow, using what he had learned, he had kept the doors open, but his technique was still lacking compared to his father’s. Earnings were nowhere near what they once were. And because he was a poor leatherworker, he had never found a wife. That was probably why he lived alone in such a shabby room.
Well. It wasn’t only me who suffered. Everyone carried worries different from those of their childhood.
The journey as a hero, the countless tragedies that came with power I should never have possessed—perhaps those things were enormous only to me. The world is a place where everyone bears their own burdens.
Even while lost in such heavy thoughts, I wandered the workshop like a child, touching everything. Raw hides, the pungent chemicals for tanning, the way finished leather seemed to weave itself like magic beneath Arun’s hands—everything was new to me.
Arun tried several times to send me home. Leatherworking was hard on the body, he said. His father hadn’t lived long because of it, and he himself wouldn’t either. There was nothing good about staying in a place like this. I refused, telling him it was “only for a day.”
In truth, I simply wanted to remain a little longer beside someone who still remembered me fondly and welcomed me with warmth.
Customers didn’t come often, but not so rarely that I had to worry about starving. Still, it seemed beyond his means to expand the workshop or move to a better house.
All day I drank in the warm sight of ordinary life: Arun greeting customers, receiving orders, handing over finished leather goods. I watched until purple dusk settled over the quiet evening streets and the lock clicked shut on the workshop door.
“Arun… um…”
That night I tried to seduce him again.
He was my childhood friend, yet I held no special affection for him. Only a broken corner of my ethics—shattered beyond repair—commanded that I must do this.
It was gratitude for pulling me from the mud and giving me a place to rest both body and heart. The only things I had to repay him with were preserved rations and spellbooks; the only thing left to offer was my body.
“Would you… like to share the bed with me?”
This time I tried not to look like a clumsy prostitute. I did my best to wear the shy blush of a maiden.
“I know it’s hard to believe… but I’m… still a virgin…”
It was a crude lie, yet not entirely false. I had returned my body to its original state. There was no chance of being caught; Arun could not possibly know I possessed such power.
“I’m sorry, Kaira.”
He looked at me with pity and stroked my hair twice.
“I understand you feel indebted, but I can’t accept that kind of repayment. The fact that you’re still alive, that you showed me your face—that alone is more than enough. Don’t think strange thoughts. Just rest. You can stay as long as you like.”
“…All right.”
I hung my head. Half from shame, half from the strange disappointment that he would not take me.
“Um, Arun. Could I… stay here just a little longer? Is that okay?”
If I left now, I didn’t know when I could return. I wasn’t even sure when I would next have a roof over my head to shelter me from wind and rain. The warm hospitality I had received from my childhood friend had softened the heart that was preparing to walk a path with no return.
“Sure. I don’t know where you’re going or why, but… you have reasons you need to hide, right? Stay until you feel ready to leave.”
Arun pulled me into a tight embrace, then lay down on the floor with only a single poorly made scrap of cloth beneath him. I don’t know whether he could sleep in such discomfort. I had already fallen asleep first—before the small, flickering light that barely illuminated the narrow room had gone out.
And two days later, in the most miserable way imaginable, I was raped by Arun.