Chapter 38
Was it the tickling sensation of fingers running through her scalp? Pina woke up with a smile.
The memories should have been horrific, yet oddly, she couldn't stop smiling.
Feeling someone's warmth on her scalp and an odd sensation at the back of her head, Pina stared straight ahead with bleary eyes.
"Ah... you're awake?"
The face that met her gaze belonged to the outsider who had suddenly appeared and stirred up Pina's emotions.
This outsider who'd shown up with armed knights, yet was strangely gentle and somehow reminded her of her mother.
Seeing Elang Meister's awkward expression, Pina kept smiling, unsure of what face to make.
It seemed she had fainted.
Elang was carefully laying Pina down, supporting her head with one hand.
Baron David stood nearby.
Ignoring him completely, Pina recalled her first encounter with Elang.
Initially, he had been frightening.
Arriving with armed knights, he looked like the leader of the Holy Knights she'd only heard about in stories.
When she saw the knights, she secretly hoped:
That these ruthless invaders would slaughter the tribe, ending her duties and responsibilities that would last until her death...
At the very least, she thought they might relieve her of the burden of sacrifices, but that hope was beautifully betrayed.
Though he hadn't done anything particularly good, she strangely didn't dislike him.
Elang was the only person in Pina's world who had the guts to say he'd kill the Mountain God.
She envied his courage to call out what was wrong.
In truth, she wanted to shout at the top of her lungs to the tribe, just like Elang, that things like sacrifices were wrong.
Though she didn't show it, in Pina's heart, Elang was an object of admiration even more than her mother.
The tribal nature of respecting strong hunters was something Pina shared.
So when Elang dragged back four carcasses of the giant monsters everyone feared, he became almost godlike in Pina's eyes.
He didn't hoard the meat for himself but shared it generously, even with the elves who had briefly been hostile.
And now he was offering them a precious bow as a gift. It's easy to imagine what Elang had become to Pina in this short time.
I couldn't tell him...
She couldn't bring herself to tell Elang about buying prisoners from the outside world to use as sacrifices. Such horrible words couldn't pass her lips.
She feared that if she said such things, she'd never be able to speak to him again, that he'd look at her with disgust. So she kept silent.
She wanted to at least watch him from afar, but the conclusion her childish admiration reached was a denial of her entire life up to now.
"...Sir Elang."
"Yes, Pina?"
Pina stared intently at the real Elang, not the one in her memories.
Then, in a voice devoid of hesitation, she said to him:
"Would you please kill me?"
"......"
"It's too hard... I just want to see my mother, my mama now."
It was all just a misunderstanding born from ignorance.
If it were someone's malice, there'd be someone to blame, but in this case, the only thing to blame was her own weakness for not having the courage.
Pina and her clan had killed 20 people every year under the pretext of protecting the villagers.
But if all that bloodshed was for nothing, then what were all those who died?
Pina couldn't bear to think about why she had killed her mother, what those who died that day were for.
"Mother...! Mama just wanted to protect the tribe. She shouldered all the responsibility so that everyone wouldn't hate each other, and wouldn't blame others."
"......"
"We didn't do anything bad. We didn't even have bad intentions. Why did it turn out like this?! Is... is lacking courage such a terrible thing?"
"Pina..."
"You're kind, so you'll probably say no one's to blame. I know. I know there are no bad people. But I...!!"
She couldn't forgive herself.
She couldn't face this guilt without dying.
So, please...
"...Kill me."
She closed her eyes, praying for her head to fall off the next moment.
The warm hand cradling her head gradually moved down, laying Pina's body on the ground.
She waited for her neck to be severed, but no matter how long she waited, that moment never came.
When she gently opened her eyes, there was Elang, his expression unnaturally stern, unlike his usual self.
Pina flinched involuntarily at the unsettling feeling, as if a different person with the same face stood before her.
"...You want to die?"
Pina nodded silently at the voice, both fierce and majestic, that seemed ready to slit her throat if she nodded.
Then Elang continued in a much lighter tone:
"Then just throw it all away."
"...What?"
"Responsibility, duty, these aren't things a child like you should bear. It's wrong for a young one like you to shoulder such burdens."
So throw it away.
Without any sense of responsibility or anything else, if you dump this heavy burden on anyone, at least you'll be free.
Pina's heart wavered for a moment at this sweet temptation she'd thought of countless times but never dared to act on.
At the same time, a selfish yet natural desire not to die began to sprout in her heart.
In truth, she wanted to throw it all away.
She wanted to dump this heavy duty on someone else and live like a normal child with her mother.
But to whom...
Just as she was about to ask who she could pass this painful duty to:
"If you want to pass it on, I'll take it."
As if he had known what Pina was going to say, Elang cut in first.
"If you can't bear the guilt, if you feel like you're going to die crushed under this duty, you can pass it all to me. But in exchange..."
Everything you are becomes mine.
The pitch and expression didn't change at all, but that last phrase sounded as sweet as if a demon were speaking.
Perhaps the person before her was a demon wearing a human disguise.
A demon testing faith in the Mountain God, trapping devout believers.
But whether that was true or not, Pina was too exhausted, too young to handle such issues.
As if trying to make up for the affection she couldn't show her mother, Pina stretched out her arms towards Elang, like a child seeking comfort.
Not rejecting her gesture, Elang embraced her fully, and Pina felt an ecstatic sense of liberation from all causality in his arms.
Yes, this is enough.
With this warmth, she needed neither the Mountain God nor the priestess's duties, nothing else.
Along with the human warmth she hadn't felt in so long, Pina's consciousness began to sink into the depths of unconsciousness.
*****
"She's fallen asleep... It seems the burden was too heavy for a child."
I carefully laid Pina, whose eyes had closed in my arms, on the ground, supporting her head with my knee.
Seeing a child say they want to die is something I can never get used to, no matter how many times I witness it.
Just imagining it makes my chest feel tight, as if my windpipe were clogged with mud, making it hard to breathe. It makes me want to die along with them.
The priestess's duty was far too heavy and horrific for a child to bear.
Not just a child—any adult forced to do such things would go mad within a year.
"...If I had come here just one year earlier, Pina wouldn't have had to sacrifice her own mother."
"What use is there in regretting the past? It's better to look forward than to look back with regret. But, Your Excellency..."
"Yes?"
"That... What was that you said earlier? 'Everything you are becomes mine'... that..."
"It's a line from a play I saw in the Demon Realm long ago."
One thing I learned while negotiating with demons in the Demon Realm is that terms that are too good often arouse suspicion.
It's natural to be suspicious when the other party makes a one-sided beneficial offer, wondering if there's some hidden agenda.
That's why when negotiating in the Demon Realm, I mainly used a method of openly stating what I would gain to reassure the other party.
"...I thought only a life could be equal in value to a life. And if she becomes mine, she won't think of dying on a whim, right?"
"...It did seem like she might commit suicide if we didn't do something. But do you have a plan?"
"For now, I do."
It was an idea that flashed in my mind when I heard about passing on the burden, but I wondered if it might be okay to do this in a different sense than before.
"We'll lie. A lie that gives both the spirit and the elves an excuse."
"...But it seems you still have some hesitation, Your Excellency."
"What?"
There was hesitation, but probably in a different direction than what the Baron was thinking.
If my previous hesitation was about whether it was okay to deceive them, my current hesitation was about whether I could live with myself after doing this.
Before I could correct the misunderstanding, the Baron sighed softly and approached me.
Then, taking my hand, he placed it against a gap in his armor.
"Baron, what are you—!"
What I felt was a soft sensation that shouldn't exist on a man's body.
Large enough not to fit in one hand, and warm—I felt my heart drop for a moment.
"...I assume you understand the reason without me explaining."
Unless one has exceptional skills that everyone acknowledges, women are often looked down upon on the battlefield.
To avoid being disrespected by the knights on the battlefield, she must have discarded her femininity and pretended to be a man.
"Do the knights know?"
"Yes, they're all knights who have served our family for generations. Actually, it was their idea."
She said that even among the knights who joined later, those deemed trustworthy knew this fact.
But when I asked why she hadn't revealed this to me before, and why she was revealing it now...
"You're kind, Your Excellency. I thought if you knew I was a woman, you'd tell me not to go to the front lines."
"That's..."
While that would never happen, given my actions so far, it wasn't unreasonable for her to think that way.
"But you're not that kind of person, are you? So I wanted to reveal it... but it was hard to find the right timing."
"And you think now is the appropriate time?"
"Isn't it appropriate to give courage to someone considering whether to lie?"
She's not wrong.
If we ignore the fact that I wasn't actually having such concerns.
Calmly, I corrected the misunderstanding that led to this situation, trying not to excite her.
The Baron's face gradually turned red as she gritted her teeth and said to me:
"...Please give me back my breast."
"Isn't it right there?"