I woke up early the next morning. Way too early, some would argue, as I actually woke up before my parents, and that’s saying something, because my father works as a butcher, so he has to get the shop set up, and my mom needs to pick up yesterday’s milk order. It’s a peaceful life for them, but I can’t help but call it monotonous and boring.
As I said previously, I will be departing on my grand journey today, so I needed to get up super early and sneak out of the house in order to begin this trek across the world. I took out the rope I had tucked away in my closet and tossed it to the green grass below me after making sure I tied it tightly around the windowsill. After that, it was as simple as a hop and a skip!
Walking around this tiny little village of mine one last time, I expected to at least feel a bit sad, but I genuinely couldn’t care less. It’s just too boring!
“Dad’s shop is over there, right next to it is the bakery, which runs adjacent to the village well… Argh, I’ve seen it all thousands of times before! When is anything ever gonna change around here?! The least they could do is make a library or something to get these goddamned village idiots educated! But noooo, they’d rather I wait for months before I can accompany dad on a business trip to the nearest town in order to buy myself some new reading material…”
Whilst I was busy making rude comments on all the annoying neighbors that have wronged me in the past, I had heard a peppy, boyish voice show itself behind me.
“Good morning, Grim.” A blonde-haired boy with bright green eyes the same shade as mine greeted me, “Heh, I guess it’s still not morning, given the Sun still isn’t out at this time.”
“Morning, Ed! Don’t worry about it, morning isn’t gonna come for a while, so it’s best you don’t worry yourself too much over what the proper greeting for this time is.”
This person here is without a doubt the most interesting person in the whole village of Whitehood. His name is Edward Saint, a timid boy with an almost unheard of naivety to him. He’s around my age, if a year younger, but we’ve gotten along since we were around five. But don’t underestimate him just because of his weak aura, because what he lacks in social charisma he almost certainly makes up for in looks. It’s no secret that he’s the more handsome between us, to the point where even I can’t deny it.
“Did you get everything ready on your side?” I asked.
“Yeah, I brought the wooden sword you made me, and the food’s safely tucked away in the hideout.”
“That’s perfect! Now that we have everything ready, we’ll be just like Schnell as we begin this grand journey! Now, to adventur-!”
“STOP!!!”
Oh, come on! What is it now? I was just about to begin our journey on a high note whilst striking a cool pose!
“I-I just think that we haven’t prepared enough.” Ed tried to explain, “I-I mean, Schnell was alone when he started his journey, and while some food and a wooden sword may have been good enough for his time, you have to understand that that was almost a millennia ago. Surely we can wait a bit longer before heading off? Ha-ha…”
His nervous chuckles had all but given away his true intentions. He didn’t at all think what he said was the truth. Both he and I know that the necessities required for living haven’t changed at all this whole time, so his entire excuse was rendered invalid the moment the words left his lips. Apart from that, we’ve been delaying this day for a year now. Any more and we might as well just give up on the entire idea entirely!
“Alright, what’s got you so nervous?” I asked with a ticked off tone.
“C-Could you give me a rundown of the plan once again? I seem to have forgotten, heh…”
Geez, this guy really doesn’t know when to stop with his endless excuses, does he? I mean, I get being a bit anxious about leaving your home, but a bird has to leave its mother’s nest eventually! Come on, don’t get cold feet now of all times!
“Sigh, how can you forget such an easy to follow plan? It goes like this: ”
* Step 1: Acquire Food, Water, Weapons
* Step 2: Go out and Adventure!
“Simple right?”
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“Yeah, now I remember. The whole Two Step plan thing you’ve got going on. Thanks for reminding me, but…”
Looks like I was right on the money when it came to figuring out the source of Ed’s worries. He’s definitely not the forgetful type, so obviously this was nothing more than an excuse on his part. Even still, I can’t figure out what it is that’s troubling him to this degree that he doesn’t wanna talk about it with me. I’ll just ask and hope he’s reasonable.
“Tell me the real reason you stopped me just now, Ed. Don’t hold back, you know I’m not one to judge.” I shook him up a bit to try and get him to open up. This was my way of livening people up when they were feeling a bit on-edge.
“Wah, stop shaking me! Well, i-it’s just, what will my family think of their only son leaving without even leaving them a letter or something? Isn’t that kind of sad?”
“Ed, I know how you feel, but we can’t give them any info on our location, otherwise they’ll track us down in an instant. Trivis Numerica is a pretty small country when it comes down to searching for someone, because there’s effectively only like 10 places that are inhabited. Everything else is just crops and farms as far as the eye could see.”
“Right…” He said as his eyes began to tear up.
Ugh, he’s gonna start crying again, isn’t he? Oh God of Meditation, Prylos, bestow upon this crybaby the charming and endearing nature befitting of a proud member of the Saint family! Do not let him be naïve to the ways of this cruel world, for it will only eat him up the moment he leaves the comfort of his home! There, I even made a prayer for him. I’m such a good friend!
But how do I find the right words to convince him fully? Hmm, I need to act brave and strong, but also show him that we’re in the same boat by putting myself in his shoes. That’s what Schnell would do!
“Listen Ed, I too have a family like you do. Even still, I think that it’s alright for me to follow in Schnell’s footsteps and leave this accursed place to find a better one. It’s as simple as that – you’re not betraying anyone by doing something that you think will make you happy.”
“Sniffle, mhm.” He nodded as he wiped away the tears from his face, “You’re right, this is something we both wanted to do for over a year now. No turning back.”
As he spoke these resolute words, the pupils of his Eyes shone a bright Green. Indeed, this was the most obvious proof of his willingness to accompany me on this trip. In this world, a person’s Eye Color defines their life philosophy. To put it another way, it’s a direct indicator of how they perceive the world around them.
Green Eyes signify the Thrill of Adventure, to find something new. It is usually found within people who do not know about a certain subject, but are more than willing to take as much time as possible to learn it. This is also why everyone is born with a Green Eye Color, or Green Iro as it is called. After having satiated their thirst for learning or otherwise seeing something new, a child will usually convert to another colored Iro, depending on where their newly acquired knowledge of the world leads them.
An interesting fact about both Ed and I is that neither of us have converted from our Green Iros, despite being well over the general age range of Iro Conversion, which is around six or seven. It’s a very rare case to get even one kid like that, but to have two kids born with this condition in such close proximity to each other is pretty amazing. That’s also why we kind of got bullied by the neighborhood kids, for being “Too childish to convert”…
Yeah, we didn’t have a lot of friends at this village. What of it? As you can imagine, not converting basically means you’re “still not done with this first phase of life”, which has a bit of a negative connotation attached to it. Thus, a lot of the neighborhood kids would throw rocks at us and call us names. I didn’t hesitate to send those very rocks flying back at incredible speeds, but Ed would always be the one to put his head down first when the adults were called in. He’s way too much of a pushover, but I guess the fact that we both shared this little Green quirk made us closer, so I guess there’s always something good that’ll come out of a normally pretty bad situation.
“Hey, Lune?” Ed asked after looking up at the horizon.
“Yeah?”
“Check it. The Sun’s rising. It’s finally dawn, but the stars can still be seen.”
“Whoa, you’re right. I wonder how that works. Wait, now that I think about, what even are stars?”
“Dunno, probably something to do with the Gods, if I had to guess.” Ed noted, “But I don’t like chalking up the unknown as ‘Something to do with the Gods’ anymore. It’s a stupid tradition that encourages ignorance.”
“So what do you propose we do about it?” I asked, “It’s not like we can go up there and pick one up to dissect it, right?”
“Yeah, but what if… We made it our goal to one day learn the secrets of the stars during our travels? That’d be like a fun side project to keep us occupied while we’re going from country to country.”
Whoa! Isn’t that like, kind of a lot to take in? We’re already squaring up against a pretty big task of documenting each and every country, not to mention even attaining the funds to visit them all in the first place. Will it be alright if we did that? Then again, checking his face, I knew for a fact that he was serious about his proposition. It’s at these times when I can’t show any uncertainty!
“I rather like that idea, Ed! Then before anything, let’s make a pinkie promise to never forget this new task we had added on our first day of our journey.”
As I said that, I had raised my left pinkie and awaited his answer. It wasn’t at all surprising that he agreed to it, so we quickly locked fingers and swung them from side to side before raising them high up into the sky. With the visage of the sunrise in front of us, it made for a pretty epic sight, now that I think about it. With nothing more to prepare, and no more regrets to mull over, we had set off on a journey spanning a lifetime.