WeTried Translations
Translator: Goku
Editor: Sty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The War Hero in the NTR Game Wants to Die ◈
Chapter 032
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Void (6)
Riding a horse was certainly much faster than walking.
The distance that would have taken four full days of walking was covered in just a day and a half on horseback.
The knights, with their ridiculous name, whether they were the Punisher Order or whatever, kept following me.
Without any conversation or sound between them, when I stayed at an inn, they even rotated shifts to guard me.
I was grateful, but since they seemed like friends who had gone mad in a slightly different way, I didn't particularly want to talk to them.
If I talked to them, a reply would come, and if a reply came, it would turn into a conversation.
Then, even if just a little, we would become close.
Before I knew it, I arrived at the village near the mansion, that is, Arin's village.
Anyway, slowly driving the horse, I entered the village.
Nothing had changed much.
The stone wall was still low, the road still narrow, and even a cat lying on the roof was the same.
The people living here will always live their whole lives in the same place, thinking the same thoughts, doing the same work.
When passing the bakery, I briefly pulled the reins, then just moved on again.
The smell of freshly baked bread came carried on the wind.
I shouldn't go to her.
Unless I go and confess what happened, and what I did.
The heart isn't so strong, so it cannot accept that it was wrong.
Passing the village entrance and entering the low stone-walled path, the sound of a stream was heard.
I know this sound.
The sound of water flowing through the stones.
The stream that was cold in summer and whose very edges would freeze a little in winter.
Once again, I am trapped in memory.
The memory of when other children wouldn't let me join their games, saying I looked noble and that rolling around alone was pathetic, and I squatted by the water's edge with their taunting voices at my back.
The memory of Arin approaching me as I sat blankly, reflecting my swollen face, bruised from being beaten by the Family Head, in the water.
The memory of her seeing the wounds on my face, then, as if it were nothing, taking out chocolate and saying her mom told her to take care of poor kids if she saw any.
I might have hated to hear the word pitiful, but I don't think I was hurt by it.
Because it must have been enough just to have someone approach a gloomy child who was always covered in bruises all over their body.
Because the face of the child sitting next to me must have been warmer than my own face reflected in the water.
When it was hot, we sometimes played in the water, and when the water's edge was cold, we played picking flowers by the forest edge.
I knew flower names better.
It was because after my mother passed away, I had memorized by heart from books the flowers she liked.
Yet when she was alive, I probably only knew the basic flower names.
Because when I saw the sky, the color she liked would come to mind, and when I saw flowers, the garden she sometimes tended herself would come to mind, and so on.
There is nothing one yearns for more greatly than what is lost.
After my mother passed away, Arin didn't think it was strange that I was a child who collected her lingering images as if gathering them.
Simply sitting beside me, listening intently no matter what story I strung out, weaving flower stems, she just kept me company.
Until the sun set, she picked flowers, placed them on that child's head, and smiled as she sent the finished ones floating on the water.
All of them aren't my memories, you see.
Nevertheless, those memories and experiences tend to define me.
If the saying that experience defines a human is true, then I… would become a person who is neither one nor the other, you see.
After killing Arin, one side of my chest feels completely empty.
I don't even know if it hurts is the right expression.
Just a feeling that something has appeared, like wind blowing into an empty space, something that can neither be filled nor blocked.
I'm not feeling desolate, nor depressed, nor sad, nor angry, but I definitely know that something is empty.
I killed that girl, the girl who went to the capital to become someone suitable for me, or perhaps to become a better person.
Thrusting the sword, slashing, cutting off, I swung my sword just enough to cause a suitable wound on her back as she struggled to crawl, trying somehow to live.
As if trying to extract information from a completely subdued pointy-ear.
The movement of her crawling fingers, even though there was nowhere else to go in front of the wall, still remains with me.
The voice sobbing and calling my name, saying she didn't live for this, still lingers in my ears.
My image, not putting down the sword even while watching the child slip and fall on the bloody floor, is reflected through the window.
I must have been steeped in Riehen's heart to some extent.
That is, my heart, I mean.
Because of the warm memories that flowed in every time I died.
Not because of painful memories, but because of warm memories.
I said I would dig them out and discard them, didn't I?
And indeed, I dug them out well.
After digging them out, all that's left is a hole.
And yet, while trying to dig out more, what more should I say?
I spurred on the slowly moving horse.
I felt like I shouldn't be here any longer.
Because if I stay too long, the things I thought I had dug out would slowly grow back and seem to occupy my heart again.
As I left the village, the Gryan family mansion was visible.
A stone building standing on a hill.
The gatekeepers were still standing in the same spot.
Only this time, they recognized me.
As they glanced at the knights who followed, I told them not to worry, saying they were knights under my command, and to just open the gate.
The gatekeeper said he welcomed my return, then sent someone towards the mansion and slowly opened the gate.
Did I return, well.
To say I returned, there is no sense of it being my home, and to say I came to visit, there is no one I want to see here either.
I did come, however, to see what is buried with my own eyes.
I rode the horse into the garden.
Without necessarily following the path, I let the flowers be trampled under the horse's hooves.
I rode across the neatly manicured flowerbeds.
I stopped the horse in front of the mansion. I didn't go inside. I spoke to the butler who came out of the mansion.
"Give the guests rooms to stay. They are under my command, so treat them with utmost care."
As I turned the horse's head, the knights tried to follow, but with a glance, I made them stop.
Having traveled together for several days, they understood even with just that.
The knight nodded, then dismounted.
Seeing the Family Head's face is for later.
Passing by the side of the building, I entered a narrow path leading to the back hill.
Slowly dismounting from the horse, I took steps.
Seeing the path overgrown with grass, it seemed no one frequently passed by.
Although the path was maintained, people passing by didn't seem very numerous.
This is how dead people are forgotten.
Moving away from the footsteps of the living, grass grows, the path disappears.
But the tombstone was clean.
Even recently, it shined as if someone had come and wiped it clean, and flowers were placed in front of it.
The flowers of her hometown, which she liked so much.
Seeing the dew on the petals, it might have been placed this morning.
I briefly picked up a flower, then calmly put it down.
I gently caress the tombstone with my fingertips.
The surface of the stone is much colder than I expected.
Is it because it's a place where sunlight doesn't reach, or are things of dead people originally supposed to be cold?
She would have preferred a sunny spot more, you see.
Or not, rather, since she liked to be indoors with the curtains drawn, would she like this more?
No particular emotion arose.
Just, I'm blank.
To say the person I had seen so much while dying is buried here, what should I say?
The warm hand that brushed by every time I died, the owner of the fingertips that swept my forehead, is beneath this stone.
Just extremely ambiguous emotions well up fully.
To say I'm sad, she's not my mother, and to say I feel nothing, memories are constricting my body.
With my hand placed on the tombstone, I blankly looked down at what was written there.
My mother's name.
And below it, in extremely small letters, it elegantly read: "The one who brought happiness to Gryan. She closed her eyes in peace."
Happiness, huh. Was she truly happy? In this family.
In a family that only looked to the sword, beside a husband who abused his son after losing his wife, was this person truly happy?
The words that she closed her eyes in peace are also hard to believe.
Because I have never seen such a thing as a peaceful death, not even once.
Even though I have seen so many deaths.
Taking out alcohol from my pocket, I slowly poured it onto the tombstone.
The transparent liquid flowed down over the engraved letters.
Soaking the word happiness, soaking the word peace.
And I too, lifting the bottle, took a sip.
The alcohol going down my throat spreads warmly in my stomach.
I know this kind of warmth doesn't last long.
Still, for now, this much warmth was enough.
In fact, even just this much warmth was always enough.
"Bringing a whole bunch of Church people and coming to the Gryan family mansion, yet... what kind of bullshit are you pulling on the tombstone right now?"
A voice was heard from behind my back.
"Who do you think this place is, how dare you......"
Crunch.
"Family Head."
"......Family Head?"
"You, your mouth is the problem. To someone Her Holiness personally sent, what kind of manners are those......"
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