Nightmare
It was a memory from long ago.
There was a woman whose voice rang out, sharp and clear.
Her shining blonde hair and emerald eyes that seemed to contain emeralds did not match the threadbare leather armor worn by beginners.
A beautiful girl who had not yet fully left her youthful appearance.
“If you’re trying to rescue a party, will you join ours?”
She asked that, and four people joined her.
All of them were rookie adventurers with scrap-iron plate armor around their necks.
Among them was a young man who had run away from home to escape a farmer’s life, a girl who dreamed of fairy tales, someone chasing a windfall of a fortune, and even someone who had become an adventurer by chance.
Five people—many or few, depending on how you looked at it.
Too many for the newcomers to earn a living with their skills, and too few for them to safely complete requests.
Still, compared to what they expected, they had survived.
The party leader who had gathered them all.
The gleaming one who had introduced herself as Er could never have been classified as a scrap-iron nobody.
Thanks to her, they were able to take on requests that were harder than expected.
Five bronze-rank adventurers had cleared out a goblin cave and driven off a pack of kobolds.
Then, just once, they had defeated an old orc.
It had only been the size of a baby’s fist.
Just that one thing had earned them enough for their entire party’s weekly living expenses.
Even if you chased dreams, your stomach was always empty and the wind was always cold.
Novice adventurers who had learned the cold reality of the world were bound to do reckless things when they got blinded by money.
“No!! It’s dangerous!”
In the end, their party leader, unable to bear the others’ insistence, tore down the request notice from the bulletin board.
“If it’s dangerous, we should just run away?”
Gripping her sword and shield, the woman at the front nodded.
And that day, they managed to catch two orcs.
Only one stone came out, but it was bigger than the previous one.
It was impossible to keep the greed from showing in their eyes as they divided the money from selling the stones.
The sloppy success gave them unnecessary confidence.
They thought it would be fine anyway, and with such careless thinking, they crossed the line without hesitation.
It didn’t take long for that trivial thought and complacency to turn into regret and despair.
—Save… me!!
The young man who couldn’t even finish his last word had his head ripped off.
The spine dangling from the head swung like a pendulum before snapping.
No one could do anything to stop it.
— I don’t want to die…! Save me!!
The woman begging like that was split in two by the axe and died.
—Er, Er!!
The young man who had called the party leader’s name was sliced in the order of his legs, arms, and waist before dying,
“Ahhh, aaaaaah!!!”
The woman clutching her half-cut left wrist and screaming had her arm turning black.
Poison? Or some curse?
There was no way to know.
But she had to decide.
Whether to let them die or to save them.
So she had no choice but to bring her sword to her comrade’s arm.
Carrying the fainted comrade on her shoulder, she grew blood-red.
Whether it was her own blood or the orcs’, or if it wasn’t even that, whether it was the blood of her comrades.
She, who had covered herself in unknown blood, swung her sword desperately.
Swinging and swinging and swinging.
Begging, pleading, howling.
She saved only one person—someone who had lost an arm and become crippled.
Three comrades had died.
They couldn’t even find their bodies, and they had died in a pitiful state.
The one survivor had disappeared somewhere.
“Er, why are you still alive?”
Leaving those words, she had disappeared.
That had become her nightmare.
Occasionally, that nightmare would visit her on lonely, cold nights.
A nightmare that grabbed her ankle and pulled her back toward the sky.
What could she do about it?
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
●
Er’s story, told in a trembling voice, had not a single corner where laughter could be found.
Jina, who had been listening quietly, had her mouth tightly shut as if she didn’t know what to say.
Knowing it was content that couldn’t be told lightly, she slowly, gently tried to understand her feelings—
“That’s just bullshit.”
“Hey!”
Of course, there were people who didn’t care about things like that.
“Eventually they died because they couldn’t read the situation and got cocky, right? That kind of accident is pretty common for adventurers.”
“Ahin!!”
Truly, the way Ahin spoke his mind without the slightest consideration made Jina panic and quickly cover his mouth.
“Ahin, say something…”
“Calling idiots idiots is a problem?!”
“Hey!”
“Even if that woman hadn’t had her arm cut off, she would’ve died, right? Shouldn’t she be thanking you for saving her instead? And now she’s trying to extort money?”
Ahin’s words, which seemed to have no thought of caution at all.
With her head bowed, Er finished what she had heard.
“…Ahin is right. It’s not entirely my responsibility. I clearly said no, and I warned them it was dangerous, so I did my part. The fact that I was the only one who survived unharmed… was because my skill was better than theirs, not because I abandoned my comrades.”
Er had already been far stronger than the new recruits who had just picked up swords and were starting to train their bodies from the moment she began adventuring.
The difference was obvious.
“Jina criticizing me… I could understand that. She became disabled in an instant, so she must not have been in her right mind.”
“Yeah, I agree with you. Your fault there─”
“But my heart says otherwise.”
“…What?”
Thud, Er hit her chest.
“Sometimes, though? I have dreams. Dreams of wandering with them. We’re going to hunt orcs, following the road from that day.”
“…?”
“Then we meet the orcs, and I draw my sword…”
Everyone was dead.
Only their heads remained, or even the heads were missing.
Everywhere was filled with blood and intestines.
Their screams echoed, and their pained faces refused to leave her mind.
That had ended up soaking into her chest and becoming one nightmare.
“I’ve done everything I could. I tried sleeping pills, I tired myself out so much I couldn’t even dream, I drank until I passed out… but it still didn’t work, right?”
“…Er.”
“So I gave up. I thought I had to live like this forever. Every day, alone, dreaming that dream…”
She stood alone.
In a hellscape of blood and intestines.
Alone.
Er suddenly squeezed Jina’s hand, which had started trembling again.
“So maybe… if I lend money to Jina, even if it’s an outrageous request, maybe it’ll help a little?”
“Er, that’s just…”
“I know. It’s just self-satisfaction and some lame guilt. But I have no choice, do I? Even now… even now it’s still glittering in front of me…”
It just happened to be an orc extermination request.
How could she hide her true feelings and act normal anymore?
Her true feelings poured out one after another.
The two people who couldn’t say anything to her in such a state.
Er, who had glanced at their faces, stood up and spoke in a weak voice.
“…I’m sorry I got angry. Just… give me a moment alone.”
“Er, wait a second…”
“Ahin, let’s leave it to her for now.”
Ahin who was about to follow Er was stopped by Jina. She opened her mouth to say something to such a Jina, then quickly closed it and watched Ahin’s back as he walked away from Er.
“…It’s not that easy to force someone, you know?”
“…?”
“Ahin, so calm yourself a little…”
“…Okay. Since you said so, let go of my hand.”
Ahin, who had let go of Jina’s hand while saying that, crossed his arms with a dissatisfied expression.
“I know Er was surprised too. Seeing her old comrade suddenly appear out of nowhere is enough to be surprised. But the reason I’m angry is…”
The sound of grinding teeth and Ahin’s low voice echoed.
“I hate the look on that guy’s face, using it as an excuse to try to take advantage of Er. They were comrades—how could he do that?”
“…Ahin, there are all kinds of people in the world. That person probably wasn’t like that at first either.”
“Even if that’s the case, does that give Er a reason to tolerate it?”
“I don’t think I need to either. But…”
With those words, Jina said with a somewhat dark expression.
“Er looked really hurt.”
“…?”
“The expression on her face was like she’d die if she didn’t do something.”
“…Damn it.”
Ahin kicked a pebble on the floor with no particular meaning.
Seeing such Ahin tousle his hair and start walking somewhere, Jina called out.
“Ahin, where are you going?!”
“I’m going to cool my head a bit too.”
“If that’s the case, then let’s go together…”
“You’re the one who has to guard the luggage.”
“…Huh?”
After saying that, Jina muttered while watching Ahin’s back as he disappeared in an instant.
“You’re the one who handles the party’s luggage, after all…”
●
“Hah…”
Er washed her face in the water of the stream beside the village, then sat down where she was and let out a small sigh.
Her appearance was so pathetic that she couldn’t even lift her face.
If this continued, it would affect tomorrow’s battle too.
If she froze up like this again and experienced something like that—
“Ugh…”
Without realizing it, Er covered her mouth and twisted her face.
She felt like vomiting.
After telling everything about that time, she had been squatting for a long time without being able to calm down, and when she bit her lip.
“…[Heal].”
A bright light settled on her shoulder.
It felt familiar. And she knew who could use that kind of ability.
“…Ahin.”
“You didn’t follow me? I just happened to…”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So it’s fine.”
After saying that, Ahin hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and came to sit beside her.
“Er, frontal assault isn’t always the only way.”
“…What do you mean by that?”
“It’s about the request.”
As he said that, Ahin looked at Er’s unusually pale face with a worried expression and said.
“Let’s quit.”
Er had looked anxious since she accepted the request.
She had been pretending to be fine somehow, but after meeting Jina earlier, she had reached the point where she could no longer hide it.
“Even if it’s a promotion-bound request, my own safety comes first. There will be other chances, and even if it’s not now─”
“…Why?”
“Huh?”
Ahin, surprised by the unexpected answer, asked,
“Why are you only saying kind things? If it were me, I’d be scolding you for pretending to be in trouble.”
“…I’m not that much of a bastard.”
“Or is there another reason?”
Er said with those words, her face unusually sad.
“Are you regretting it too?”
“…What?”
“While replaying the past, thinking ‘it would have been better if I had done this,’ aren’t you comparing me to someone else?”
Ahin’s face had become noticeably stiff.
While looking at Ahin’s face, Er felt self-reproach for creating that rigid expression, and said.
“…I’ve experienced it several times. When I was promoted to bronze, how many orcs do you think I’ve killed? At this point, nightmares or anxiety like this aren’t even a threat.”
“Er, you don’t have to solve it alone. Rely on someone else a little more─”
“No, this is a problem I have to solve alone. So you don’t need to worry.”
Er said that and turned her head, standing up.
Without showing her face to Ahin, she turned her back and spoke in a completely casual voice.
“We should focus on the request tomorrow. That’s the most important thing right now.”
“Er, wait…!”
“If I’m anxious and unreliable, you can move separately. If you’re with Jina, you’ll be safe too. I’ll leave it to your choice.”
“Ahin!!”
Even though Ahin called her name, she didn’t turn around.
She didn’t want to show her own face to him.
She herself didn’t even know what expression she was making.
She didn’t turn around as if she hadn’t heard his voice. She simply continued walking forward and didn’t stop.
Ahin, watching Er’s retreating back, clenched his fist in frustration.
The place where she had been, no matter how much of a stream.
Was unusually full of moisture.
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