Chapter 218

Chapter 218: Run Away

It was on the way back from buying winter fabric.

That night, when he had left the house to follow her, who insisted on going out on the road at dangerous night, Adol walked close to Amy to share his body heat with her.

Amy laughed aloud, saying he was like a puppy.

Adol knew she was teasing him, but the outing together after so long was enjoyable, so he did not say anything hateful anymore.

Because he was so happy that he did not have to be left alone at home.

It was a night that almost became perfect.

If not for the one Werewolf that attacked them.

It was a vivid memory.

Amy standing still as if overwhelmed by fear, himself dragging her away, the approaching monster.

Amy began screaming only after the monster’s claws cut her skin.

Only then did she come to her senses, hug Adol, and run.

Fear and fighting instinct mixed together, making a mess of his head, but he could be certain of one thing.

With Amy’s legs, she could not escape from that thing.

Adol slipped out of Amy’s arms and stood in front of the bastard, blocking its path.

He could hear Amy calling his name in a scream, but just this once, he could not listen to her.

Extreme tension, fear, and rage would make Adol into a monster similar to that thing, and then at least one of them could live.

After the agonizing moment when his body twisted, anxiety came as his consciousness blurred.

Amy’s face, looking as if she was about to cry beyond his reddening vision, was the last expression Adol saw on the living Amy.

Because when Adol came to his senses again, Amy was no longer among the living.

Judging by the disgusting smell of blood in his mouth and the monster’s body covered in wounds, it seemed he had lost consciousness while fighting the Werewolf.

In the bastard’s hand was Amy’s blood-soaked body.

Adol tried to charge at the monster immediately, but his body would not move.

-Let go of that......! Let go of Amy!

Even at Adol’s desperate shout, the monster did not return Amy.

Instead, as if showing off, it swallowed Amy.

Adol felt his vision turn white again and lost consciousness.

Had he turned into a monster again?

Considering he had survived alone, it seemed so.

When his consciousness and vision returned enough for him to feel the chill, Amy’s shawl lying on the ground entered his eyes.

At the sight of the cloth torn to shreds and soaked with blood, Adol lost consciousness, then returned to being human, repeating it over and over.

When he returned to being human, he would check whether there was any smell of blood left on his body, then remember Amy, who had taught him such things, and lose consciousness again.

Only after he finally became so exhausted that he could no longer move his body did Adol’s self-harming transformations stop.

When he opened his eyes for the last time, he was inside the house.

It seemed he had returned to the place his body remembered as the most comfortable.

After returning home, Adol lay blankly on the wooden floor, holding only Amy’s clothes left in the house all day.

He looked outside the window, and he swept his fingers over the names carved into the floor with Amy.

And he chewed over the night Amy had disappeared, again and again.

-Adol, it is getting cold soon. Should I make you new outerwear?

I said I didn’t need winter clothes.

That I was a monster anyway, so I didn’t need a thick coat in winter.

When Amy heard those words, she instead seemed to grow stubborn and smiled playfully.

-Then I will buy something thin. It would be funny for you to walk around in spring clothes in winter.

Although she said that, Amy bought the thickest fabric she could afford.

In truth, Adol liked when Amy showed such stubbornness.

He liked how she acted as if him being a monster was only a simple problem that could be brushed off as a prank or a joke.

That was why he had only said worse things.

I should have just spoken honestly.

That I was sorry my body grew too quickly.

That I actually did not need clothes, and that I simply liked walking with her after such a long time.

Thanks to his stupid choice, the greatest happiness of his life shattered in a single night.

All he did while lying there was regret.

Adol came to his senses around the time Amy’s scent soaked into the clothes began to fade.

From the village came a mixture of screams and beasts howling.

It was noise that turned Amy, who had smiled beautifully in his memories of the past, into a bloody corpse.

Adol spent the night hearing faint screams echoing from far away, and when he saw sunlight pouring in through the window, he raised his body.

He felt hunger he had forgotten all this time.

Adol blankly searched inside the house.

He found hard rye bread and salted meat gathered as winter provisions.

Chewing them mechanically, Adol thought about the existence of his father for the first time.

Seeing as his son was a monster, his father too had to be related to Werewolves.

However, the monster that killed Amy did not look like a living creature intelligent enough to possibly converse with a human.

The person Amy had described as his father had clearly been a person with a personality who could hold a conversation.

Then was his father not a monster?

He thought it would be better if that were the case.

Because from now on, the driving force of his life would be killing and exterminating Werewolves.

***

Adol realized this time too that he had fallen for Mona’s move, but he was not resentful.

Other than the thought that he wanted to surrender himself to this sensation of his vision turning white, nothing else came to mind.

As if he had expected both Adol’s rage and change, Mona looked down at Adol without agitation.

“You do not intend to pretend ignorance of the injustice suffered by your mother, who died at Archie’s hands, do you?”

Blood showed from Adol’s palm, where his nails had dug in.

Taking Adol’s struggle into his eyes, Mona continued speaking.

“Revenge was your purpose from the beginning, was it not? For revenge for your mother, who was torn to shreds and killed. I do not think there is any reason to hesitate. Or is this not enough? Shall I tell you another story?”

Adol could not tell whether he wanted to shut that mouth, or whether he wanted to keep hearing the words like deadly poison from that mouth.

Rather than drown and die in painful thoughts, it seemed it might be better to lose his mind like this and push what came after onto the self that became a monster.

Adol forgot even to breathe and surrendered himself to the sensation of his vision turning white.

No, he tried to.

BANG!

He would have, if not for someone entering by flinging open the old door with enough force to break it.

“Mona!! The humans are suddenly coming back!!”

At the familiar voice cutting the taut thread of tension, Adol hurriedly drew in the breath he had stopped.

The consciousness that had briefly grown distant slowly became clear, and his blurred vision returned.

“Th-the wagon stopped outside for a bit, and two humans who got off there are coming toward the village. Something seemed strange, so I came to report to Mona, but......”

Naria’s voice, rambling despite having kicked the door open roughly, traveled through Adol’s muffled ears, and his hearing too regained its function.

“The humans are coming back?”

Reading the unconcealable fluster leaking from Mona’s voice, which had been like deadly poison, Adol blinked.

“Ah, right. They left the wagon behind, and only two of them. But the one standing in front is a bit...... he looks dangerous.”

Naria, who glanced at Adol, whose condition looked unusual, continued reporting, then stepped aside to avoid Mona, who was walking toward the door.

Mona, extremely tense, hid himself against the wall and checked the humans entering the village outside.

The one flustered by his appearance, unable to take his eyes off the outside, was Naria.

Because it was her first time seeing Mona reveal his emotions like this.

For Naria, who had rushed inside blindly to keep her promise that she would stop Mona from approaching the kid, everything was full of things hard to accept.

Why was that kid sprawled on the floor like that? Why was Mona so startled just because two humans were approaching? And since when could Mona’s facial muscles move so freely?

But in the next moment, Naria was able to seize the misfortune of seeing Mona reveal even more intense emotion right before her eyes.

Thanks to the small human kid who shoved past Mona and her and ran outside while she was briefly looking elsewhere.

Shock spread across Mona’s face.

As she watched him, seized by rage, stretch out his hand to grab the kid, Naria hesitated for a moment.

If she left him to be caught by Mona, the human kid would probably not be safe.

Because a frenzied Mona would surely tear the kid apart and kill him.

But blocking Mona was also not a very wise choice.

Because it was obvious that an angry Mona would peel off her hide.

In the end, Naria reasonably mediated the two choices and created a new one.

Naria shoved Mona with all her strength and ran after Adol.

If I bring him back with my own hands, at least Mona won’t kill me.

Judging by the sound of Mona’s curses coming from behind, maybe not.

***

“Hey!! Where are you going!!”

Naria hurriedly chased after Adol.

Strangely, however, the distance to the kid did not narrow.

At first, it was true that she had complacently thought the opponent was Adol, and it was also true that she had loosened the strength in her legs.

But even so, she had not run so leisurely that she would lose one human child.

No, to begin with, was that really just a human kid?

When she had flung the door open to stop Mona, what had been beside Mona was certainly not human.

Thanks to him shoving her and running out in an instant, she had not seen it in detail, but he had been large and covered in fur.

That familiar form was clearly not human, but closer to a Werewolf like herself.

But when she rubbed her eyes and looked at Alec again, he had returned to human form as if it were a lie.

Did I see wrong?

Or was that bastard a Werewolf hiding his identity?

But she had never heard of a young Werewolf, and above all, until he met Mona, the bastard had definitely been human.

“Aaaah!!! I was tricked!!! He told me I only had to bring the kid back safely!!”

Recalling the face of the human bastard who had entrusted the kid to her, Naria burst with anger.

That bastard definitely knew something and left that thing to me.

That was why he smiled so unpleasantly.

Holding half concern toward Adol and half resentment toward Ran in her heart, she ran.

But no matter how she ran, the distance from Adol only grew farther and farther.

Like that, following the back of Adol’s head as he easily shook off the hand she stretched out to grab the back of his neck, Naria eventually arrived in front of the unfamiliar humans.

Naria swallowed dryly as she looked up at the old man and young woman looking down at Adol and herself, both panting roughly.

She swore to herself that if she returned alive, she would not leave that black-haired human bastard alone.

***

While we groped through the darkness and returned along the path we had come, Alec said nothing.

His silence broke around the time the flat ground ended and we began climbing the steep stairs.

“Please treat what happened today as if it never happened.”

After thinking briefly at the small, earnest request coming from behind me, I answered.

“I don’t want to.”

“No, why not?!”

Alec, whose request had been rejected at once, asked in protest.

“It isn’t as if it becomes something that never happened, so why treat it that way? Nothing so great happened that it needs to be erased.”

“How is that not something great? If this were outside, it would not be strange if I were executed. If I were a good person, I would have been unable to endure it and died.”

“Why? Because you could not endure living with monsters?”

“......That is what I think. Because the better the person, the faster they died.”

At my question, perhaps because he did not like how light it was compared to the lives of the people who had died, Alec’s voice sank low.

A good person, is it.

The good person he spoke of was also based on this world’s standards.

In other words, a human with strong faith, a human who could not endure in this world where disbelief soon meant death, probably the universal human who made up most of this world.

“Then you must be a bad human.”

When I spoke to Alec’s shape walking in the dark, I felt him turn back.

“......Do you often hear that you are insensitive and lack consideration?”

“I also hear that I am very unpleasant. Sometimes I am called a bastard too.”

When I confessed honestly, perhaps some of his tension eased, because Alec let out a laugh like air leaking.

It seemed he thought it was a joke.

It was true, though.

“I mean I hear words worse than just bad humans quite often. So, do you think of yourself as a bad human?”

“......I am not that good a person. Among the humans captured here, I am the one who became closest to Naria.”

When I asked again, Alec answered in a much more comfortable voice.

The trivial conversation with Alec did not continue any further.

Thanks to someone’s shout greeting us as soon as we reached the surface.

“Archie! Naria and the young human have disappeared!”