The World After the Ending
My thoughts had grown far too many.
At some point I must have drifted off to sleep — the movement against my chest had stilled, and only the soft snuffling of breath tickled my heart by the time I found myself running through every possible line of thinking. I'd started with the question of why it had to be me, of all people, and somewhere along the way I caught myself trying to deduce the title of this novel I'd supposedly fallen into.
Of course, the only web novel I'd read in my entire life was a couple of lines of dialogue I'd snatched from that bespectacled otaku pig and read aloud, so there was no way I could have guessed it.
"Ah."
Then I remembered something — that same bespectacled otaku pig had once spouted TMI I couldn't have cared less about.
The genre of possessing a character inside a novel is called a possession story, and in possession stories, once you reach the ending, you can usually return to reality...
Finally, I had a thread to pull.
If this really was a novel, then there had to be a protagonist, and around that protagonist there had to be a main storyline.
Which meant if I stuck with that protagonist, someday I'd reach the ending and be able to go home.
First, I find that protagonist.
They don't call someone a protagonist for nothing. Bubbly personality, world-renowned achievements — that's what makes a protagonist, right?
So finding them shouldn't be all that hard.
With that guess — no, with that hope — I set my immediate goal.
"Waaah! Aah! Wuuuaaah!"
"Damn it, you were quiet for a while there..."
Had baby cries always been this loud? It genuinely sounded like some little demon shrieking its head off.
Just as my irritation began to boil over, I noticed the sucking on my finger had gotten noticeably stronger. I knew it by instinct before my brain caught up.
This baby was hungry.
The problem was, I had nothing to feed this little burden — I didn't even have anything to eat myself.
"...Ah."
There it was.
It was only after I lowered my head and found the monstrously oversized chest filling half my vision that it finally dawned on me.
There was exactly one thing I could feed her.
I let out a long, heavy sigh and slumped down where I sat.
"I really might die like this, huh..."
Even walking alone, I wasn't sure I'd make it to the next village alive. If I started draining nutrients out of my own body like this, wouldn't I collapse before getting very far?
She must have been terribly hungry, because she was sucking away at my fingertip with total abandon, and as I looked down at her my feelings grew complicated. And then, just as the thought crossed my mind that maybe collapsing and dying right here wouldn't be such a bad thing—
Far off along the ridge, a carriage came into view.
Apparently it wasn't my time to die yet.
"Status window. Inventory. Profile. Logout."
"What's wrong with that woman now?"
You otaku piece of garbage, go to hell.
You said there'd be perks for possessing a character. You said some of them even start with "Hello, I am God," and kindly explain everything.
So why do I have nothing?
"Pffffhahahaha. This is insane, seriously."
This one day had been long — far too long.
The town I'd reached by hitchhiking on a passing carriage was much larger than my village — closer to a proper city, honestly.
Even before I climbed down from the carriage, the driver demanded a fare. He apparently already knew I had no money, because without a word he just snickered — heh heh — and tried to shove me into the cargo hold. I was so frightened by that lecherous gleam in his eyes that I ended up kicking him in the face and running.
When he'd picked me up, he'd said he didn't want anything in return. Bastard.
As I wandered the streets with no destination, I felt people's gazes sliding toward me and realized I needed to change my clothes. I was still wearing what I'd had on during the birth, and the whole front of my skirt was soaked red.
Where to go first was obvious.
I needed to find a church.
Thankfully, it didn't take long to spot one — not some tiny chapel run by a lowly apprentice priest, but a proper church, towering over the street in all its grandeur.
"Oh dear. It looks like you need help. First, let's get you cleaned up."
"Ah... ugh. Uh, uhh..."
The moment I faced that nun and her gentle smile, the words wouldn't come.
It felt like the first time in a week that anyone had shown me pure, human kindness.
The hands that led me to the bath without asking a single question about my circumstances were so, so warm.
"Leave your clothes here. I'll fetch the priest, so take your time."
"..."
If they were this kind to a complete stranger, what would happen if I revealed I was a Saintess?
I figured I'd receive fairly lavish treatment. Granted, life at a church wouldn't exactly be free and easy, but a place to sleep and food to eat were nothing to sneeze at.
I should just settle in here.
So I thought, scrubbing the blood crust from my entire body until the small bath had turned a deep crimson all over.
The baby in her swaddling was starting to smell, so I gave her a careful wash in the water, which had by then gone lukewarm.
"Oh — it's a girl."
I hadn't had the time to look closely before, so I hadn't known. This was a girl.
All my attention had been fixed on the horn on her head; checking her sex had never even crossed my mind.
The moment the water touched her she woke up and started whimpering again, which meant I had to offer her my chest yet again.
A long while later, I changed into the loose, airy clothes the nun had left for me and stepped outside — to find a tall, bespectacled priest waiting for me along with the nun from before. At his gesture toward a seat, I hugged the baby to my chest and slowly, awkwardly lowered myself into the empty chair.
"It seems you've been through quite an ordeal. If you don't mind my asking, might you tell me how you came to arrive here in such a state?"
"Well, that's... um..."
"I won't press you. If it's too painful, you needn't say a word. We won't turn you out for keeping silent, so please don't worry. Until you find peace and rest for your heart, we will help you in every way we can."
"U... hnn..."
Drip. Drip.
Tears began falling onto the swaddling cloth. Before I knew it, I was sobbing uncontrollably, pouring out all the misery of the past days.
These people would be all right. I could trust them.
That very sense of safety made it that much harder to hold back the tears.
"Will you hand me the baby? There we go. I'll hold her, so you can rest easy."
"Hnnngh... I never... hck... I never dreamed anyone would help me without wanting something in returnnn... uwwwahhh."
"Take all the time you need. Speak when your tears have stopped."
"No — I'll tell you everything right now. *sniff*. Hahh. The truth is, I'm actually a Sai—"
"Oh? Oh my. What is this?"
At that moment, the nun's face, as she held the baby and peeled back the swaddling cloth, began to drain of color. The priest, turning his head to look at the infant's head, went grim in an instant.
What. What is it.
You said you'd help no matter what. You said you'd listen to everything that happened to me.
"Eeek! A demon's spawn!"
"Th-that thing...!"
"Get out! Take that disgusting creature and get out!"
"Ugh! How could anyone carry something like that! You revolting woman."
"Ah."
That's not a demon's spawn, it's a dragon's child, is what I tried to say — but the words wouldn't leave my lips, and I simply closed my mouth.
In the end, I was thrown out then and there.
It was a blessing I hadn't revealed I was a Saintess. They seemed to have taken me for some loose woman gone mad with lust and fooling around with a dragon.
If they'd learned a Saintess had done such a thing, wouldn't they have handed me over to the Inquisition? The mere thought made me dizzy.
"If only you'd never existed..."
This monster squirming in my arms disgusted me so much that even holding it made my skin crawl.
I had to find some way to get rid of it. Then I could live as a Saintess.
And yet I couldn't bring myself to simply toss it down some random well on the street and run. That was not something a human being did.
I blindly tried orphanages, hoping to leave it in their care, but the moment the horn on its head came into view, I was turned away at the door. Orphanages were tied to the church, so that was entirely predictable.
No one would take in a filthy half-breed born of a dragon and a human.
And I lacked the courage to kill it myself.
After a full day of walking the whole city until my feet ached, I had failed, in the end, to rid myself of this monster.
"Ha. Haha..."
"Hey. Do you happen to have any money?"
"Don't worry. I may look like this, but I'm of sound mind. I can afford at least one glass of beer."
And that was how I ended up at this tavern. The smell of alcohol drifting out was simply impossible to walk past.
For the record, the beer money came from a coin I picked up off the ground.
I'd been walking with my eyes glued to the pavement, terrified of people's stares, when a coin glinting between the flagstones caught my eye.
Lucky me. If Yulia had stats, I suspected her Luck would be pretty high.
"You don't exactly look sane to me — in your nightclothes, barefoot and covered in blood, clutching a newborn."
"If you're not going to buy me a drink, mind your own business."
"I could buy you a drink. If you came to work at my establishment."
"...Ha."
A hollow laugh burst out of me.
He was telling me to sell my smiles there — like those women in lewd outfits perched on men's laps, fawning all over them.
Not a chance. Do I look like some harlot to you, you son of a bitch?
"You've got a decent face on you, so you'd do well enough, I'd think."
"Heheheh. Tough luck, boss. There's someone I have to find. I can't spend my days working here."
"Who? A man?"
"Mmm. Probably a man, yeah."
If it was a protagonist, it'd almost certainly be a man. But I had no idea what this protagonist was even like, so I was at a complete loss as to how to find him.
In a fantasy world like this, it'd have to be someone like the Hero, wouldn't it?
"Hah. Someone like that only turns up when disaster strikes."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, nothing. It's just obvious something big's about to blow up around here! And whoever shows up looking like a hero when it does — that's the person I'm looking for. Hiccup."
"You don't mean the Hero?"
"What? The Hero? Oh! Yes, that's him! Probably!"
The Hero.
So this world does have a Hero. The Hero, as in the Hero-versus-Demon King business.
Suddenly, my path forward flung wide open. I shot up from my seat in excitement, and the jolt must have woken her, because I felt her squirming against my chest.
"Where is he right now? I mean — where is he, sir?"
"How would I know? The Hero's party disbanded fifty years ago."
"Excuse me? Why did they disband?"
"Because the big disaster you just mentioned got solved. Come to think of it, it's been almost fifty years since the Demon King died and peace came. About as long as I've been alive — that's how long ago it was..."
"..."
The Hero's party disbanded?
The Demon King died? Peace came?
Fifty years ago?
Unable to fully absorb the chain of revelations, I simply froze in place, staring blankly into nothing.
Something had gone wrong.
And it hadn't gone just a little wrong — it had gone catastrophically wrong.