One of the Forty-Nine
One of the forty-nine heroes. Forty-nine. One of the forty-nine heroes. The phantom voices still echo in my ears, refusing to fade. My old friends—my family—screaming my name in despair as they fell. Those cries cling to my back, dragging me down into this abyss. Trash like you belongs there.
Thud———
“····”
For a moment, I lay sprawled on the floor deep inside the empty brothel, drunk out of my mind. Then I opened my eyes, pushed myself up, and stared at my tingling palm. I flexed my fingers a few times before turning to the mirror propped on the chair, studying the reflection staring back at me.
“····”
Half my face was swallowed by shadow, making me look like some kind of monster. Ah. Right. This was me. The one carrying that dark side in the shadows of my heart. The one who could never protect them. The one whose only possession was an endless well of guilt.
“Haa····”
Trash. The leftover scraps of a burned-out hero. How the hell did something like me ever become a hero? Even now, I’d become a patrol officer chasing justice as penance, but… why? I survived hell, clawed my way through madmen, clinging to that last thread of hope that someday a bright day would come. I became a patrol officer to follow his will and pursue justice, even if only like that. I’ve been trying to find those old friends I failed to protect when I was younger, but… why can’t I solve things as easily as that man could?
“····”
Everything in my life feels twisted. One of my old comrades I finally tracked down after returning from hell had become a prostitute in the red-light district. I wanted to pull her out of there. Every single day I went to see her, tried to talk to her, but… why couldn’t I be like that man? Why couldn’t I change someone’s heart as easily as he did?
Everything had broken. Everyone’s hearts. Their bodies and minds. Barely. After barely opening my eyes in this world again, I finally found one of my old friends—one of the family I loved most in this world. All I could do was steal every moment of her time, force her to spend it all on me. After she became a prostitute, guilt ate at me every day. I bought all her time, tried to protect her however I could, but even that was getting difficult. I didn’t have enough money left for lodging, and a patrol officer’s salary in this era certainly wasn’t enough to keep her with me every day. And more than anything, she hadn’t gone there for the money. Like me, she just wanted to forget those agonizing memories that refused to fade, wanted to get drunk, wanted to bury all the pain under pleasure. That’s why she chose that path.
So… that must be why I can’t drag her back into the light. Because deep down, I’m the same as her. I never held onto a bright ideal like that man did. I was just another man drifting outside this harsh cage.
Even so… right now…
“···”
Enough. That’s enough. Stop it, already. I have to do something now. I have to do something, anything. To buy her time—Felt’s time—and protect her. To stop my precious person from breaking any further. I have to move again. As a patrol officer of Caspia. As a broken hero. After that, I’ll think about what else I can do. Still, someday a bright day will come. Just like the day they found me.
Tap———
It happened right then. Just as I dragged my liquor-soaked body off the floor and stepped outside, trying to shake off the drunkenness, I felt an inexplicable sinister aura at the entrance to the red-light district. I moved cautiously—and whether by good luck or bad, I came across a girl surrounded by three men, about to be assaulted.
Perfect timing. My mood was already foul, and these bastards looked like ideal punching bags. I walked up to them with a calm expression, restrained myself just enough, and proceeded to beat the living hell out of them in the most satisfying way possible. The girl I rescued happened to be extremely beautiful, too. Really, truly beautiful. When a pretty girl like that is watching, you can’t help but show off a little.
After casually arresting the fallen men for attempted sexual assault, I helped her up with a completely nonchalant face. But then—
Thud———
“···· Damn. This is bad···”
Where the hell did this girl come from? Her body carried that painfully familiar scent of hell, while her clothes smelled like a laboratory—completely out of place. She was wearing what looked like an experimental subject’s uniform, but even stranger than all that was—
“····”
When I looked at her face up close… why did she resemble someone I knew so much?
“··· Belberman.”
It was barely a whisper, but I found myself murmuring the name without thinking. But no. He was dead. We all knew that. It had already been publicly announced.
“····”
So I shook my head. What kind of hallucination was I seeing in this little girl? How much did I miss him? How much did I miss all of them? Really, truly…
“·······”
Today, too, the demons were hateful. If it weren’t for them. If it weren’t for that war, we would surely still be… we would be… Still, right now, this frail girl came first. I took her to a nearby restaurant, sat her down, and treated her to a feast as she slowly regained consciousness at the smell of food. Even though a patrol officer’s salary was tight…
“····”
I still had a reliable backer who could help with funding. I didn’t want to rely on them anymore, but until next payday, well… I had no choice. Besides, the one who helped me find the woman in the brothel in the first place was that backer, moving on their own to start the search. Strictly speaking, I was also someone that backer had to find. So in a way, it was only right that I needed her help sometimes.
“Tasty?”
“Mmmph, mmmph······!”
By the way, how many days had this girl gone without eating? She was devouring the fried rice like it was the best thing in the world, even tearing up. The more I watched, the more she resembled that person who used to love fried rice so much it was suspicious. It was uncanny.
So. So delicious. Truly, genuinely. It tasted just like the fried rice from my hometown world—the flavor I had missed so desperately. I was so grateful to the woman who had treated me to this meal that I couldn’t hold back my tears.
“Ulp, ugh, mmmph·····!”
I must have been moving my spoon like a madwoman. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d eaten a proper meal. Normally I would have already been full, but in that moment I didn’t want to leave a single grain behind. The meal she gave me tasted better than any dish I’d ever had in the Demon King’s castle. Sorry, Jemma. Really. It was so good that tears kept flowing without stopping. She said something during the meal, but I was too absorbed to hear it. Really, truly. In that moment, even if the world ended, everything would have been fine.
So—
“Hic, sniff, ugh·····!”
Tears started flowing little by little for some reason. Drop by drop, they began to fall.
“It’s okay.”
The woman who had treated me to such a grateful meal gently patted my back, worried I might choke, and looked at me with a soft yet somehow wistful expression.
“····”
Why? The way she looked at me so warmly, the color of her eyes—they resembled that man I knew so much that, little by little, swallowing every last bit of food left in my mouth, I tried to say his name. Even though the person in front of me was clearly her, I still wanted to call out his name. But—
“···”
Maybe it was because I’d felt true comfort for the first time in so long. As my stomach filled pleasantly, an irresistible drowsiness wrapped around me, making my eyelids unbearably heavy before I could even speak. Eventually, without saying a word, I swayed and—
Slump———
—fell into her arms again, eyes closing.
“She passed out again···”
The voice I heard as I fell asleep sounded quite flustered. But soon, she carefully lifted my collapsed body and, ever so slowly, cradled me against her chest, gently stroking my feverish head. In her touch, in her fingertips, I felt—
“···”
—a longing for someone. A desire to meet someone. And an intense craving and thirst to reclaim all the things that had been lost. It was a touch filled with empathy, as if she sensed the same emotions from me. Once again, I lost consciousness. With a strange sense of certainty.
“···· Belberman.”
Yeah. Really, when the Demon King reconstructed my body, that sensory error that occurred while I was asleep was like a stroke of genius. Last time, whatever happened had stopped the error once, but now I could clearly hear that voice. Thanks to this touch I could feel because of it, I could tell who she was. Thanks to that small mutter I could hear, I could tell what kind of person she was—what kind of existence she had been. That clumsy hand trying to embrace another, the fact that it hadn’t changed even after decades, was both laughable and deeply missed. I was grateful she was alive. Relieved. And a little embarrassed that our reunion had to be like this, but also sorry. Sorry that the righteousness I had forced upon everyone had led to this outcome. Grateful that she was alive, grateful that I could apologize to her. So I’m sorry. Now, I could finally say it. Now, I would say it. I’m glad that the person I met by chance upon returning to my hometown was you. The moment I wake up, I want to shake your hand again, just like that day. Clinging to the sensation lingering at her fingertips, I thought: If my guess is right, the person who helped me is definitely one of the fifteen heroes—the survivor of the final battle against the Demon King, Chris. But the last time I saw him, he was a man. What happened that turned Chris into this, just like me? So when I open my eyes, let’s have a proper conversation. I don’t know if he—now her—will accept my identity. But if I were in his position, even if my old comrade had become a demon, even if they had become an existence from beyond the stars, if it was my family, if it was Chris, I could accept anything. In truth, I still couldn’t definitively prove she was Chris. Even the miraculous situation of meeting her by chance in this vast world and her being Chris was hard to believe. But still, if she really was Chris… she would accept me. My new ideal.