Chapter 11 Goodness, Justice, and the Smile of Fate (5)
If someone had been observing the events from the sidelines, they would have seen how the face of the strange girl, who showed no fear of the surrounding bandits, contorted into a bright yet noticeably unsettling smile after a short phrase.
Moments later, the brunette disappeared, only to reappear slightly to the side of the table. In one hand, she held a naked blade, and in the other, a clean cloth. Ignoring the noise of the bodies settling and the wheezing of the red-haired bandit, the girl wiped the already impeccably shiny metal.
"I like the way you wheeze, too." she said playfully, looking into the teary eyes of the red-haired bandit. The lover of young girls, now lying on his back, clutched his chest, unable to scream loudly due to a punctured lung. Blood bubbled from his lips, and whistling, hoarse moans escaped from his mouth.
"Do you see how it goes? You were looking forward to having fun with me, and now I'm having fun with you. Hee-hee, isn't it amusing? It's almost a shame that I have dinner plans soon; otherwise, we could have had a good time together. How do you like the game of hamster and vivisectionist, Redhead?" Something horrifying flashed in her gray eyes momentarily, causing the dying man to snap out of his shock from the penetrating wound. Pushing away from the bench with his feet, he attempted to crawl away. "Where are you going, buddy? You wanted to have some fun, remember?"
With a mocking gaze at the bandit scraping his feet, the girl placed the katana's blade on her shoulder. Stepping towards one of the corpses, she drew a long knife from its sheath and hurled it into the leg of the man futilely trying to crawl away. The knife embedded itself up to the hilt in the ankle joint, pinning the man's leg to the trampled earth. The scarred man on the forehead emitted a half-groan, half-shriek and lost consciousness.
"Is that all? Gave up, huh?" Disappointment flashed in the killer's eyes. Even a weak-willed warrior could have fought with such injuries. "So tender! You should be ashamed, buddy," she disapprovingly shook her head, "you couldn't even last a minute. A quick shooter, hee-hee," she chuckled at her own joke. With a playful demeanor, she approached the dying man and snapped his neck with a precise kick.
Returning the blade to its sheath, she turned with a semi-smile, intending to inspect the table for something tasty. However, when her eyes met the lifeless body of the blond boy, whose face was forever frozen in astonishment, the young killer froze as well. Her expression turned somber and somewhat bewildered.
***
"What am I doing?" The realization of what I had done hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water, as soon as I looked into those wide-open childlike eyes.
"What's wrong with it? I cleaned up a gang of robbers, rapists, and murderers. Isn't it good that there's a little less human scum in the Empire? And I had a bit of fun," I thought.
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"But I killed a child!" My otherworldly conscience cried out silently.
"It's the first time, or what?" I retorted to myself in bewilderment. "At least, there was a good reason for this, and not an order for one of the actions of intimidation of citizens allegedly supporting revolutionaries. The kid was a sadist and an accomplice to the bandits. Should I have let the little brat go and carried the weight of all his future victims on my conscience?" Inside me, anger flared up at the inconvenient remnants of hypocritical morality and upbringing from my past life. It was infuriating to develop a split personality over dealing with a bunch of discarded scum. I tried to silence the nagging voice with sheer willpower. Had I been such a whiner in my past life?
"But how am I any better than these bandits?" The imaginary voice grew a bit quieter, but it continued to nag and create internal dissonance in the recesses of my consciousness.
"Nothing's changed! I've already sent more people to the afterlife than these six rats could have killed in their entire lives, and if necessary, I'll kill hundreds of times more! Or have you already changed your mind about changing the fate of the country, weakling?!"
"..." My inner voice, seemingly unable to find an answer, fell silent but continued to transmit disapproval. In reality, this didn't seem like a conflict between two personalities; rather, it was a conflict of perspectives, perhaps. The part of me that had inherited the memories also understood that eliminating the gang was the simplest and right course of action. However, several killings, including that of a child, had profoundly shocked the earthling unaccustomed to such brutality. The dissonance between shock and cheerful indifference was deeply unpleasant and frankly infuriated me as Kurome.
"If you want to stay 'pure,' the only way is to slit your throat right now. Don't want to? Scared of ending up in the Abyss again?! Then suggest a better way—or shut up!" In response, a mixture of understanding, shame, resignation, and sadness came through. At that moment, I didn't even understand which part of me was angry at the "weakling" and which was accepting defeat and the futility of my position.
Once my mind found equilibrium, the opposing emotions ceased tearing at me, and I felt a loss. It was as if a small piece of me had dissolved into nothingness. I somewhat regretted those fragments of tenderness I had acquired from my past life and had to consciously suppress.
Let this sentimentality be unnecessary, even potentially deadly, in my current situation. Let it be!
Yet, it remained a part of me.
I knew I had done the right thing. After all, I hadn't killed innocent citizens who Natal could reproach me for. Instead, I had taken the lives of the same shadowy inhabitants as myself, only considerably less significant. In the end, if one evil eliminated another, wasn't that a form of good? Well, alright, not directly kind... There's no such thing as good killing. But it was right and beneficial, wasn't it? Absolutely!
Despite successfully convincing myself, the heavy aftertaste didn't disappear.
"Do good to all the world,
Do good for others' sake,
Not for the pretty thank-yous
From those who hear you near," I sang a verse from the song of my toothless namesake the son of the Prime Minister.
When I tried to imagine the amusing freak Shuru in place of the degenerate Syura, a smirk crept onto my face again. Kei was right; life was easier with humor.
"Got carried away, huh? Like a schoolgirl after a melodrama, not a killer!" Mentally berating myself for my weakness and pushing away the blues, I glanced at the money lying on the table. As expected, there was no gold in the gamblers' stash, unless you counted a few paper notes as a fortune in one go. Granted, given that the exchange rate for paper money to metal was steadily declining, the real value of such a note was only a few silver coins at best. In total, excluding the pile of copper, which I couldn't be bothered to count, the loot amounted to around thirty silver argos or just over half a gold aureus.
"Ragamuffins," I grumbled to myself, unimpressed with my meager spoils. The rebels definitely looked more prosperous, and they fought better too. Sliding a plate of snacks toward me, I found some neatly sliced cheese.
In the world of the Ancient Scrolls, I should have been frightened by the attention of a single divine lunatic. Fortunately, this wasn't Nirn, and the Lord of Madness had no power here.
At least, I hoped so.
"Not bad," I evaluated the taste, reaching for another slice. Grabbing the jug by the neck, I took a small sip of the beer inside. Finding the taste of the cool drink satisfactory, I poured out the remnants of the leader from the glass, rinsed it with another serving of the beverage, and filled it for myself.
Before taking a sip, I grinned and saluted the sky, bidding farewell to a fragment of myself—the naive humanist.
"Fly to those who need you. A simple killer doesn't have the strength to show mercy to enemies and criminals."