There was no doubt in my mind—he had to be there.
I carefully made my way up the slope, paying extra attention to my feet and the loose, mossy stones. Once I reached the top, I circled around the partially collapsed stone wall, and my field of vision widened.
“Ah.”
As I looked down from the hill, I saw the city built from stone below me. The countless houses along the streets spreading outward from the river had aged, crumbled, and been taken over by forest, and now stood only as a reminder of the city’s former prosperity. The color of the sunset, changing every moment, gently illuminated them all.
“Hey, Will.”
There he was, sitting with one knee up, against the base of an evergreen tree that had spread its roots between the stones of the broken watchtower. A sorrowful look in his jade eyes, his fair skin was lit by the sunset, and his slightly pointed ears peeked out from his flowing, silver hair. The fairies’ phosphorescence occasionally danced around him.
“Menel.”
Even when he was feeling down, he was picture-perfect. Attractive people have it good, I randomly thought.
“Can I sit here?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I sat down beside him. “This is a nice view.”
“Yeah, from the outside.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“That ruin’s a den of undead. It’s devoured countless adventurers. No one’s ever come back from there alive.”
Is that so. “Then I’d better go in there later and return them all to the cycle of rebirth.”
“What? Were you even listening?”
“Yeah, you said it’s a dangerous place. So I have to do something about it.”
Menel shook his head and put his hand to his forehead as if he were trying to cope with a headache. “Of course you’d say that. I forgot who I was dealing with.” He let out a massive sigh. “Being with you throws me off my groove. I thought I was, y’know, more cool and collected than this.”
“Cool?”
“Yes, cool! Fig!”
“Hahaah...” I treated him to a deliberately mocking laugh. He growled in frustration.
I was surprised at how much fun it was to tease him, or more, to watch his reactions.
I was having quite a lot of... discoveries, I guess, talking with Menel. I first thought he was a pretty nice guy; then he tried to kill me without any hesitation at all. That had been something. Then I thought he was stubborn and difficult, but he was actually genuine, with a funny side as well.
This probably wasn’t limited to Menel. Humans in general are pretty multifaceted. They have harsh, inconsiderate sides, and they have charming sides that put a smile on your face. There’s a lot to see, as long as you’re willing to look for it. Maybe confronting these kinds of things was what building a relationship with another person was all about.
As these thoughts went through my head, Menel and I teased each other. The last time I’d had this kind of fun with someone my age might have been when I was a kid in my previous life.
After we’d gone at that for a while, I asked him, “So, what kind of person was Marple?”
Menel shrugged his shoulders. “She was a weird old lady. You could probably tell.”
The sun was beginning to dip down below the horizon. The world turned from red to purple, and on to the color of night.
“I was born in Grassland to the north, in the Great Forest of Erin where the elves live.
My mother... She had a very curious personality when she was young, and ran away from the forest. Then, after a few years, she came back pregnant with some guy’s kid. She died an early death, apparently. As for me, I was growing faster than everyone else around me, and I couldn’t get along with them, anyway. The whole deal with my mother was still dragging on... They were calling me a stain on their home... In the end, I thought I’d just run away from the forest, and... yeah. That’s how it goes with mongrel halfs like me.”
Pretty heavy, and he’d only just gotten started.
“Of course, the world of people wasn’t a paradise either. It wasn’t until after I left that I found out that for all its problems, I’d had it easy in the Forest of Erin. Fortunately, I knew how to handle a bow and a knife, and most importantly, I could see fairies.” A fairy stopped on the tip of Menel’s extended finger, frolicked there, and then left again. “I was strong enough to kill the hell out of whatever or whoever came to prey on me. If not for that, I’d be in some back alley whoring myself out right about now.”
“You do have a pretty face...”
“Don’t agree, goddammit.”
“I just thought you’d have been pretty popular with guys who are into that.”
“Feck off.”
What did he want me to do? Lie? That said, I didn’t have a sexual inclination towards those of my gender, so my thoughts didn’t go any further than “he’s got a pretty face.”
“Anyway, the point is, for a bunch of reasons, I became an ‘adventurer.’ Southmark still had a lot of ruins, so I made use of the Fertile Kingdom’s open policy and crossed over here.” Menel had a distant look in his eyes. “Then, one of the people I’d banded together with betrayed us and poisoned us. I was this close to getting killed.”
I had no words. How vicious...
“It was greed that did it, I bet. The spoils from the ruins were too good. Luckily, I barely touched the poisoned food, so it didn’t get me that bad. I somehow managed to kill the fecker, but still...”
So this was the standard in this region of the world. It was so savage, and the difference in the way things went here compared with my past life was staggering. I could imagine Blood and those like him having a riot out here, though.
“All the other guys I knew back then were dead on the ground, foam around their mouths, and the poison and my wounds were making my head all fuzzy. I have no idea how I bumbled my way to the village in that state, but I did, and that was where I went down, just outside there. And Marple took me in. If it wasn’t for that old lady... Of course, back then she wasn’t quite so old.”
Menel continued to speak, that faraway look still in his eyes. “She really was a strange old woman. She took me in, some sketchy and surly guy lying half-dead on the ground, and she gave me food to eat and a place to sleep; she even lectured me on living a proper life. There were a ton of people like that, different circumstances but similar stories—they’d all ended up settling in that village after being picked up by her.”
“Who was she?”
“Beats me.” Menel shook his head. “She said she was an ‘uneducated country bumpkin’ or some crap. Please. Anyway, she’s dead now, and the truth’s gone with her. Happens a lot on this continent.”
I remembered a saying from my previous world: “Everyone has a story.” And unfortunately, a single human being cannot pore through them all.
“So, she took me in, and she may have been a preachy old bat, but I owed her one. I couldn’t stomach settling down in the village and playing the part of a farmer, but... I did go around to the nearby villages, doing my best impression of a hunter. ’Cause hunting dangerous animals was something I could do.”
Menel talked nostalgically, as if he were cherishing a broken treasure. “Beast Woods has a ton of nasty creatures in it. People were finding me pretty useful. I’d found a place where I belonged.”
And then—
“Without any warning, it was gone.”
The village, attacked by demons; the nice old woman, Marple; the children in the barn—all of that was gone.