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Chapter 4 – Even If the World Turned into Your Enemy
Part 1
Monday, a new week began.
And so did the three-day exam period.
During this period, all club activities were suspended as everyone was fully concentrated on the exam. Well, that was what supposed to happen. In reality, thanks to the suspension of club activities, everyone got more time to play around instead.
“Phew…”
I let out a sigh. I didn’t feel so good for some reason.
There was this indescribable hazy feeling in my chest.
Shinji, who was walking beside me, noticed this and asked,
“What’s wrong, Godou? You failed the exam?”
“You, out of all people, asking me that?”
“Haha, what are you talking about? I’ll pass no problem, of course!”
“Now, that’s a surprising answer…”
Yuuka would be astonished if she were to hear that.
He shrugged his shoulders before continuing.
“Well, other than math, that is. I’m sure that I’ll get red. Hell, it won’t even be close to the passing mark.”
“I feel you. In my case, my physics seems to be horrid too…”
The exam subjects for the first day were math, physics and modern japanese.
Honestly, I doubt that I’d get a red mark for any of those subjects even though I barely studied, but it was exactly for that reason that I doubt that I’d get any higher than the average score.
“So, why were you sighing?”
Shinji stopped walking and turned to face me.
“Let me guess. Is it because of Shiina Mai?”
“…”
“Bulls-eye.”
Actually, I wasn’t even sure if I was feeling troubled because of her.
Yeah, maybe I was worried about her a little, but, who knows…
‘…What are you on about? Of course my body is breaking down. Is it not obvious?’
I suddenly remembered the witch’s words.
The fact that her body was breaking down.
But, I didn’t think that was the cause of this indescribable feeling.
I mean, I had no reason to worry about the witch anymore. I was no longer a hero and I had no obligation to care about anyone who wasn’t my friend, not to mention the witch who was my nemesis.
So, logically speaking, the witch had nothing to do with this indescribable feeling I was having.
While I was trying to convince myself of that, Shinji muttered,
“Well, in any case, neither Yuuka nor I could do something about her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She seems to be suffering from something. She seems close to killing herself, you know? It’s just my feelings though. I don’t know why she would do that.”
After hearing those words.
My head went blank.
“I’m not the only one who noticed it, by the way.”
He continued,
“That was the reason why Yuuka held that study group in the first place. At first, we thought that she was like that because of some troubles at her previous school, but it seemed like our guess was wrong.”
“Shinji…”
“You know the cause, don’t you?”
Then, he continued his words with a dismissive tone.
“There’s only so much that strangers like us can do to her, you know? We can’t get her to open up her heart to us.”
After that, he stopped saying anything.
Before I knew it, we had arrived at the parking lot.
The roof of the parking lot blocked the sunlight, so the area was relatively cooler but, for some reason, that didn’t stop my sweat from running through my cheeks.
“Um… Shiraishi… Kun?”
There was a familiar voice calling me from behind.
I turned around to see the witch standing there. She probably called me ‘Shiraishi-kun’ because Shinji was with me.
Come to think of it, today was the day for her treatment.
“Alright, see you tomorrow then. Don’t slack off and study properly, okay?”
“…Yeah, see you.”
Reading the subtle atmosphere between me and the witch, Shinji quickly bid his farewell, rode on his bike and left.
A warm breeze caressed my cheeks.
I turned to see the witch staring at me.
“…”
Silence enveloped us. Thanks to the fight we had yesterday, there was an awkward atmosphere between us
I could keep my silence but, if we kept dilly-dallying here, we wouldn’t get any job done for today.
“…Let’s go.”
When I urged her, she nodded and walked behind me.
“?”
But, there was something strange about the way she walked.
She was staggering.
Even if it wasn’t me who was looking at her, if the person was attentive enough, they would notice it.
No matter how I tried to look at her, she looked unwell. It was obvious that she was trying so hard to endure the pain.
Just the other day, her condition wasn’t even close to her current state. I wouldn’t be able to tell that she was unwell unless I tried to observe her a little closely. And yet, she became like this overnight. What happened to her?
“…Oi, what’s wrong?”
I lent her a shoulder, then I realized something.
What if she didn’t become like this overnight? What if her condition was originally this bad and she had just been hiding it so well that I failed to notice it?
That would explain it.
“What do you mean?”
She asked me back. She knew what I was talking about, yet she acted like this anyway.
“Stop playing dumb! No matter how–”
“What do you care? It has nothing to do with you.”
When she said that, I couldn’t find any words to rebuke her.
After all, we were just cooperating because we had the same goal. It wasn’t like we were friends or anything.
I had no reason to care about her personal affairs.
Yes. I had no reason at all.
“…No, it does have something to do with me. If your condition is caused by the curse, then I have the right to know. It’s concerning your treatment, after all.”
After some hesitation, I managed to come up with that.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I could convince her with that or not, but I decided to roll with it anyway.
“…I guess your words make sense. But still, it has nothing to do with the treatment. I told you the other day that my body is breaking down, didn’t I? That’s it.”
After that, she didn’t say anything else.
We walked all the way to her house without saying anything to each other.
I couldn’t say anything to her.
Only the question, ‘is this really okay?’, kept echoing in my head.
*   *   *
Cerys’ PoV
I think…
That person was always like that. He always acted like a hero.
To other people, that person, Grey Handlet, was always a hero and nothing more.
He kept telling me that he wouldn’t help me yet, here he was, helping me without making any fuss.
Even back then, his decision to not help me was actually his way of helping me.
He didn’t seem to realize that, though.
But that action became the justification for the church to execute him.
That action caused the whole world to judge him as a sinner who aided the witch.
“…Seriously, what a foolish hero.”
Trying to help the enemy of the world was clearly a foolish thing to do.
He was too immersed in his role and ended up paying the price for it with his life.
I could say that he deserved it. If only he didn’t force himself to help me, none of this would’ve happened. Besides, I’ve never wanted his help to begin with. That was why, there was no reason for me to mourn his death.
There was no reason at all.
Instead of mourning him, I should condemn him for his foolishness.
And yet, I found myself crying.
I didn’t even know why I was crying.
I was being chased by the elites of the church and I learned of Grey’s death through them. And I knew that they weren’t lying.
After all, they were his comrades, the exorcists created by the ‘Hero Creation Project’. To them, Grey was the person they placed their hopes in, their hero.
That was the reason why I knew they weren’t lying.
Even though I had no reason to care, the revelation made me flustered.
And they used that chance to give me a mortal wound. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to survive it back then.
And so, with my last ounce of strength, I reincarnated both me and the hero to another world.
I crushed the headless corpse of the hero and turned it into a pool of blood before dying next to it.
It felt terrible.
Even though this man was the person who kept annoying me until the very end.
Until his dying breath, he kept ignoring my wish and did whatever he wanted.
But, I didn’t want this fool to end like this.
So I prayed that he wouldn’t be burdened as a hero anymore in his next life and could live happily until the day he died again.
Of course, one of the reasons why I chose to reincarnate in another world was to prevent my curse from going haywire in the other world. But, the main reason why I did it was because I couldn’t let him die like this.
And yet, when we finally met again, that fool was still acting as if he was a hero. Even in a world that didn’t need a hero’s existence, he still tried his hardest to reach out to those people in need.
Even when he couldn’t find anyone to reach out to, he would try his hardest to look for them.
“…If this keeps up, you won’t be able to find your own happiness, you know?”
He was still a foolish man, instead of looking for happiness, he kept making himself unhappy for some reason.
That was why I made an oath. This time for sure, I’ll make him happy.
However, I couldn’t live in this world without his help.
To cover up that fact, I made an excuse to him. I pressured him to help me because he didn’t kill me back in the other world. Because of his actions, I became like this. Since it was technically the truth, the excuse worked perfectly.
Though, I didn’t expect anything more than that from him. The matter of my body breaking down was out of the scope of our cooperation.
It didn’t really have anything to do with the curse. I had expected it to happen since the very beginning because this body was different from my previous one. My previous body had an unnaturally high resistance to curse, meanwhile this body had nothing.
Back then, even though I casted that terrible curse upon the world, I couldn’t feel any pain from the curse’s side effects.
This pain was something that I should’ve felt to begin with. It was the punishment I deserved.
.
The pain I had to endure… I couldn’t even begin to describe it with words. Since I was a child, back when the memories of my previous life hadn’t awakened, I had to deal with this pain. My consciousness was always hazy. I kept getting hospitalized for unknown causes to the point that my parents always worried about me. Living in constant pain, even before I knew what pain was, became my new daily life.
Then, I dreamt of my previous life. Gradually, I recalled everything about my previous life.
At first, I thought that those memories were nightmares.
Who would have thought that I was the ‘main character’ of the dream.
But, as I got older, I was forced to believe it. When the memories of the magic and witchcraft I had learned came back to me, I casted them to my body to ease my pain a little.
Then, in the third year of my middle school, I finally remembered everything about my previous life and more importantly, about the hero. So, I used my magic to look for him.
…At that time, I was impatient.
Because of my resistance in the previous life, I underestimated the curse’s strength.
I realized that if I stood by doing nothing, the curse would eventually crush my heart. While that itself wasn’t really a big deal because it was what I deserved, the world would have to pay for it if it were to actually happen. That was why I decided to look for him so he could completely get rid of the curse in my soul.
And so, I moved into his school.
I had to take such a drastic measure because I was close to my limit.
Gradually, by each passing year, the curse started to erode more part of my soul.
As the erosion worsened, the pain became harder to bear.
It was to the point that it was hard to hide it. Even Grey had noticed my condition at some point.
Nevertheless, as long as I could receive his treatment once in a while, it would alleviate the pain a little.
I could rely on it to survive for the time being.
Honestly, I was at my limit, but I didn’t really care if anyone were to find out about my condition. I’d die soon anyway, it didn’t really matter in the end. As long as Grey could live happily in this world, I didn’t care about anything else.
I was the witch of Calamity, someone who plunged the world to disaster.
It was a witch’s fate to be unhappy, that was all there to it.
Compared to me…
Grey was the hero who saved the world.
It was his fate to be happy.
For someone who worked the hardest to save the world to go unrewarded, I couldn’t let that happen.
So, I’d definitely make him happy.
If the hero role made him unhappy, then I’d free him of that role.
I swore to make him happy.
That was why.
I couldn’t let him help me.
*   *   *
“It hurts…”
I muttered those words involuntarily.
Was it allowed for me to complain when I was alone like this?
Even now, the pain tormented my soul. It was hard for me to get up from my bed. Luckily, this was my own room and no one else was there. I didn’t need to pretend. I could lay down all day if I wanted to.
“It’s painful…”
I remembered his face when I scolded him harshly the other day.
Honestly, I had no right whatsoever to scold him like that. He could just shove me away and slap me in the face if he wanted to and I wouldn’t complain. But, he listened to me properly. Even though no one would blame him if he were to ignore me, he listened to my story anyway.
Everyone else in the previous world called my story nonsense. I could understand that, as it was the right thing to do. I didn’t want anyone’s sympathy anyway. To me, words were just another form of weapon to take my opponents down, there wasn’t anything more to it.
But, thanks to that man, I discovered the joy of talking to other people.
He was the only person who would listen to me earnestly.
“It’s sad…”
In this world, he was the only one who knew about my identity as the witch.
That was why there were people who’d come forward and talk to me. That made me happy. But, at the same time, it made me feel guilty. After all, I was someone who plunged the world into a disaster. I had no right to talk to those kind people. I wasn’t a being who should be alive to begin with.
I realized that I was afraid of being hated.
What if they were to find out about my true identity?
As a being who should be hated.
“It hurts…”
I knew that I deserved it, living in this kind of pain.
After all, I was someone who should be hated, the witch.
That was why.
I couldn’t ask for help, even if I desperately wanted to.