Chapter 37
Part 1
Until the Rain
Gets Worse
Translator : PolterGlast
I asked them to stay
at my place until the rain got worse.
--I hope they say yes.
Thinking that, I
looked at El and Lotus-san. I felt embarrassed when I realized it was almost
like a prayer.
I could hear the crackling
of the fire in the hearth. El and Lotus-san exchanged glances. I instinctively
felt they would refuse. After all, Lotus-san was so strong. Monsters wouldn't
be a problem for him, so there was no need for them to stay at my house and be
held up. But, without them noticing, I clenched my small fist. I wanted to talk
to someone. I wanted them to stay with me. It wasn't often that I had a proper
conversation with people.
El looked at
Lotus-san, and then looked at me. No, she was looking at me, but also at
something a little above me. "Uun." I thought she was considering,
and then she said, "Well then, I think I'll take you up on that." I
was so happy that the feeling of wondering why she had said that vanished
somewhere.
"Lotus, you're
okay with that too, right?"
"...I don't
particularly enjoy killing. If monsters won't attack while it's raining, then
that's better than nothing."
"Y-yeah!
Yeah!"
I nodded many times,
happy. El seemed to be smiling wryly. "Um, then, sorry for this, but...
Amayadori (Rain shelter), is it not? El said another word I didn't recognize.
Could it be?
"You mean a
shelter to wait out the rain?"
"That's it."
I was so happy with
her words, "Please take care of us until the rain gets worse," that I
made a lot of different preparations. I had thought I would be able to see him
today. But I couldn't. Instead, I met El and the others. I was so happy, so
incredibly happy.
After asking them to
stay at my house, I quickly put on my raincoat. We had enough food at home, but
they were my first guests. I wanted to make something a little more luxurious.
I carried a bag full of the rainproof cloth I had painstakingly made every day
and went to a store. Splashing through puddles in my boots, my cheeks and heart
flushed.
The shopkeeper disliked
me, but since I delivered goods regularly every month, they paid me without
haggling. Even though my bag was flat, it felt as if it had become full. I
tapped it lightly, skipped, and went to buy food. I wanted to serve something
delicious. I wouldn't be eating alone. We would all eat together.
Perhaps it was because
I was smiling so much. "Creepy," a muttered voice reached me clearly
through the rain, even though it was much further away than I was. The sound of
raindrops echoed. Rain was cold, I thought, stating the obvious. Looking up, I
felt like even my heart was hardening.
"Elma, welcome
back!"
A girl a little
shorter than me, with shimmering hair, came to greet me with light footsteps.
Taken aback, I gripped the strap of my shoulder bag. "Ahhh, your hair is
wet. Sorry, I should have gone with you." El frowned, looking troubled at
the drops dripping from my shoulder, and took my hand, saying, "Where's
the towel!? Let's go inside quickly, you'll catch a cold!"
When I opened the
sliding door, an overwhelming brilliance assaulted me.
"Eh... um, is
this, my, house...?"
"S-sorry...
sorry, I didn't touch anything...! I swear! Sorry...!?"
It was a house that I
couldn't say I kept very clean since no one ever came. Certainly, nothing had
changed. Yet, the light overflowing from inside almost blinded me. There wasn't
a speck of dust in the room, and not only the floor, but also the walls and
ceiling were sparkling. "A-ah, S-San, don't...!" "Eh?"
Turning around at El's voice, even more brilliance assaulted me from the
entrance I had just come through. It was clearly different from before. It was
as if someone had cleaned up after me.
Looking at El, her
gaze was wandering in the wrong direction. Then, she put her hands together
again and said, "Sorry!" "I just did it without asking,
really...!" "N-no, it's totally fine, but how... in just a
moment...?" "I-it's a special skill, a special skill!"
"Huh...?"
Lotus-san quickly made
a lot of firewood for me. He helped me with some repairs on the house that I
couldn't manage on my own and had been struggling with. When I thought he had a
scary face, he gave me a cute smile when I thanked him, which surprised me. And
every time I looked away, I felt like something new had become sparkling clean.
I cooked with El. She
cut the ingredients, and she paid meticulous attention to the seasoning, which
I usually just did haphazardly, thinking, this should be about right.
"This is kind of fun. I've never cooked with someone my age before,"
she muttered a name I didn't recognize, "I should have learned more from
Sutra-san." I was having fun too.
"...You
see,"
So, maybe it was just
a combination of small triggers that made me mutter to her. I hadn't been able
to talk to anyone for a long time, I was lonely, and I had been in a cold
house. I remembered how happy it made me to hear the words "welcome
back." We talked together and got into the same futon. Lotus-san was in
the next room. El's small body and I snuggled close together, whispering
secretly.
"My older
brother, he's a demon."
Everyone in the
village knew. One day, my brother became a demon. It took a little courage to
say this. Everyone was afraid just because he was a demon. I screamed when I
saw my brother's eyes turn bright red. I was scared. I could talk to El about
this because she was a traveler. Even if she hated me, she would go somewhere
else. But if possible, I didn't want her to hate me. I wanted her to hold my
hand in the futon and not go anywhere. I prayed desperately. She just said,
"I see," and nothing changed. I was relieved.
"My brother
became a demon, and he was immediately imprisoned. The rain was too heavy that
we couldn't go far enough to drop him off the cliff. But my brother was very
smart, so he escaped from prison. Because of that, the villagers think I let
him escape, so everyone hates me."
In the morning, the
villagers desperately searched for my brother, who had suddenly disappeared
from the prison. And they accused me.
I wasn't a demon, and
I was still human, so nothing was done to me. I had taken over my deceased
parents' work, and I had a role to play, so I had a place to belong, but it was
just to survive. I was lonely, terribly lonely. I knew that telling El this
would trouble her, but the words just spilled out on their own. El listened
quietly. It was pitch black, and I couldn't see her face, but the hand that
occasionally squeezed mine told me she was listening.
"I see."
It was enough that she
just listened. It was enough if she didn't hate me. "Then, your brother is
safe, isn't he?" El asked me softly, and I nodded vigorously. "You
know," she squeezed my hand gently.
"Is it okay if I
say... I'm glad your brother is safe?"
El said it very
cautiously. Of course. That a demon was safe, something like that.
I held my breath.
My voice was hoarse,
and I couldn't convey it well. I nodded. I nodded many times. Lotus-san in the
next room might have been listening, but the tears that spilled out wouldn't
stop.
The next day, I turned
my face away from El, embarrassed to show her my swollen eyelids, but she
smiled just a little. Lotus-san didn't say anything. He pretended not to
notice. The rain just drizzled and drizzled, never becoming a downpour. Even
though I thought it would take a few more days, I realized that the weather was
unpredictable.
For some reason,
Lotus-san sometimes had a strange expression, as if he were glaring at
something far away.
Just when I thought it
would rain heavily, it stopped. And just when it stopped, a thunderstorm would
rage in the sky as if someone had overturned buckets of water that had
accumulated. It was hardly ideal weather for traveling, and their departure
date kept getting pushed back. During that time, when I went shopping with El,
I heard a voice say, "Ooi." Of course, it wasn't calling out to me,
but to someone else. It was a village elder, a traveling merchant. He kept
repeating, "This is terrible, terrible."
Recently, the weather
had been too dangerous to go outside, so he had been looking around the
village. The village was surrounded by a small river. That river kept the
monsters away. But one of those rivers had dried up. Due to the recent rough
weather, the river flow had changed, and the water had gone somewhere else.
It wasn't raining now.
Monsters might come. A chill ran down my spine, and the villagers acted
quickly. They would make a river themselves. They had done it many times
before. They put the water they had stored in buckets and carried it many
times. Lotus-san and El also helped. Hurry, rain, fall. It was like a prayer.
While my whole body was covered in mud, it gradually started to rain.
"T-thanks
goodness...!"
"Yeah!"
I laughed with El.
Lotus-san was strong, and even though he was not from the village, he worked
harder than anyone else.
"You're amazing,
Lotus-san. You're strong and reliable."
Since we didn't have
much strength, we walked around distributing rice balls so that at least
everyone's stomachs would be full. Usually, I was too scared to talk and just
stayed at the edge, but today, because El was there, I was able to do my best.
Many people hesitated to receive things from me, but when I offered, they
replied with "thank you." There were definitely people who disliked
me. But maybe it wasn't everyone. Maybe I was the one who had run away alone
and pretended not to see. I had been afraid of being blamed.
"By the way,
Lotus-san isn't El's older brother, is he...?"
"Eh? Yeah. No, he
isn't."
At first, I couldn't
bring myself to ask, but now it's alright. Sometimes, I could hear the two of
them talking happily. It was more like El would talk, and Lotus-san would
quietly interject, but it didn't look like a sibling relationship or a
friendship, so I was a little puzzled by that.
"Then,
why..."
I was about to ask why
they were traveling together. But then loud footsteps sounded.
While everyone in the
village was working together to repair the river, I was carrying a lot of rice
balls, looking for anyone who might have missed lunch. When I came to a place
that was the opposite of the dried-up river, thinking that no one would come to
such a place, I noticed that a large tree had fallen and was blocking the river
flow. It had started to rain. But with this light rain, the approaching
monsters wouldn't stay away.
Scrape, scrape, a
monster monster approached. Even though it was a slow-moving quadruped, its
claws gleamed sharply. "Ah..." One of the rice balls slipped from my
hand and fell. Help me, someone. I tried to turn around. But I couldn't. The
terror from a few days ago resurfaced. Lotus-san was there before. But not
right now. El was younger than me. I had to protect her. My trembling hands
slowly opened. My legs shook and wouldn't support me. But I absolutely couldn't
turn my back in this place.
"Elma."
El spoke to me from
behind. "Eh, El, it's okay, don't worry. It'll rain more soon. Then, that
thing will go somewhere else. I'll definitely stop it." Maybe the reason
Lotus-san saved me back then was for this moment. It was my fault that they
stayed in this village, so it's also my responsibility that things turned out
like this.
"I-it'll
definitely be okay...!"
No matter what, I
would definitely get this child to safety. I gritted my teeth and stood up
straight. "Thank you," El's voice was very small. Of course. She must
have been terrified. "I found my courage. I'll do my best with the
desperate power of someone in a fire." Saying that, she slipped out from
between my arms.
At the same moment,
the bear-like monster roared and charged towards us. Something collided
violently with the monster. Just like when I first met Lotus-san, invisible
masses struck it from the right and left. But it only lost its balance. When I
realized it, El was standing in front of me, holding a small knife. El was a
traveler too. It was natural for her to have a weapon like Lotus-san, but what
could she do with something so small? El's old raincoat of mine billowed in the
wind.
"Stop, run!"
El had her back to me,
so I couldn't see her expression. Yet, why? I felt like she had grinned.
"Here I go!" She held the knife straight out.
"---Skill.
Copycat!"
She gracefully flew
into the air. No. She thrust the knife at the charging monster and used it as a
pivot to spin around. "...Hnyaa!" She straddled the monster and
thrust the knife straight down into its head with both hands.
It was nothing
compared to Lotus-san's movements when he saved me back then, but for some
reason, it reminded me of him. It was a strange action, like a distorted
imitation of his movements as he effortlessly and quickly split a large amount
of firewood with an axe.
"Gyaau!" the
monster shrieked. "El!!" But that was it. It wasn't a fatal wound.
"Eh, ah, ah, uwaah." Desperately clinging to the thrashing monster,
she gripped the knife she had stabbed into it with both hands, her face turning
pale. When she screamed, "What do I do?" a straight arrow pierced
through the monster's body.
"Hieh!"
El thrashed around on
top of the monster. With a thud, the monster, completely still, collapsed. El
rolled off her small body. "Waaah!" I slid forward and caught her.
But I wasn't that big either, so we both ended up collapsing. The sky was now a
complete downpour. People who had heard the commotion came running, and screams
arose. What in the world had happened? I looked around at the villagers, their
faces covered in mud, asking in confusion. The arrow that had been stuck in the
monster was gone before I knew it.
With this much rain,
monsters wouldn't approach. But we couldn't afford to take it easy either.
"It had collapsed this far...?" the village chief muttered in
astonishment, and immediately sent messengers to reconfirm the surroundings.
Amidst the overflowing commotion, I just shrank down.
"Elma, that
monster, was it her...?"
Lotus-san, who had
somehow appeared, had El by the scruff of her neck, and she was grinning
sheepishly while he was ruffling her hair roughly. Watching this, the village
chief confirmed with me. "Yes, it was that child." It was a very
strange movement. She had said "skill," but of course, I didn't
mention that.
The villagers probably
knew that Lotus-san and El were staying in the village, but since they were my
guests, everyone kept their distance. The village chief, wearing his
water-repellent hood deeply, thanked El and the others. "That's not right,
Elma is the one who did her best. So, if you're going to thank someone, please
thank Elma too." I was surprised by El's words and denied it, saying it
wasn't true. I had just been useless, standing there with my hands spread out.
But the village chief nodded at her words.
There was a strange
distance between the village chief and me. The other villagers who had been
listening to the story were the same. This was a small trigger. There was a
hesitant distance, but little by little, we began to talk more. El gave me a
small, secret "v" sign with two fingers that only I could see.
***
-----
Thank you for my Patrons !!
[Platinum]
Swagaraga
[Gold]
B random
DavidA
Nepheos
[Silver]
Creris
Fred A.
Frédéric Bertrand-Hudon
Matthew Fraser
Anton Lim
Ctdela
Curious Panda
Read Advanced Chapters only on my Patreon
-----
