A gurgle rose from her throat and she coughed. “Wh-Why...you...”
The knife had threaded between the woman’s ribs and settled into her chest, gouging out her heart. In her wide-open, disbelieving eyes, I saw a reflection of myself standing there, cold and emotionless. She reached for me and, unperturbed, I drove the knife farther in, even more forcefully, causing a large volume of blood to pour forth and the light to leave her eyes as she slumped motionless and silent to the ground.
My hand was shaking slightly as it held the knife. Slowly, I pried it off the hilt with my other hand’s just-as-shaky fingers.
I understood now that what had flowed into my mind were fragmented shards of this woman’s knowledge. While I didn’t know what she’d been thinking or why she’d tried to do what she did, I understood that this woman’s decades’ worth of blood and sweat had been poured into something called an “otome game.”
This world was called Ciel. It was a land of swords and magic, at the heart of which lay Claydale, the largest kingdom on the continent of Sars. Geography, history, sorcery, combat techniques—much of what was known to ordinary people throughout this world was too specialized for me to understand at the time, but I’d acquired the minimum knowledge necessary to survive on my own.
I retrieved my charm pouch and the ring that had once been within it from the woman’s ever-colder corpse. The creepy aethercrystal that lay discarded nearby I smashed to bits, careful not to touch it. I tossed what shards remained into a ditch. Next, I rummaged through the woman’s pockets, looting the knife’s sheath and her wallet, then slung her discarded pack over my shoulder.
There was nothing left for me in this place, but...there was still one thing I needed to do.
✦ ✦ ✦
With the pack still slung over my shoulder, I made my way back to the orphanage I’d escaped from, my footsteps ringing differently in my ears. Unseen, I peered inside and saw the old lady yelling at the other orphans, apparently having just realized I was gone. I quietly slipped onto the grounds and concealed myself in a dark corner of the garden, holding my breath like a beast lying in wait.
I was so exhausted that I was quickly beset by sleepiness. I fended it off by slowly nibbling on the hardened brown bread I’d found among the woman’s belongings. Trying not to doze off, I waited until the orphanage had grown silent and the light in the old lady’s bedroom had gone out, then another hour still, before I began to move quietly in the shadows. My eyes, now well adapted to the dark, could spot the old lady even in the faint starlight.
None of the rooms in the old church-turned-orphanage could be locked, and so I quietly pushed the door open and made my way into her room, which smelled strongly of alcohol. Patiently, I waited for the snoring old hag to turn in her sleep. The moment she turned her back to me, I picked up a nearby hand towel, pressed it lightly to her neck, and brought down the knife between her vertebrae, putting all of my body weight into the swing.
A faint groan escaped the old lady’s throat as her body twitched. Keeping pressure on the towel to stem the bleeding, I slowly slid the knife out of her neck, wiping it clean in the process, and released the breath I’d been holding. My fingers’ tight grip on the hilt loosened as I returned the knife to its sheath, then tucked it into my belt.
She would never cause anyone anguish again. If the knowledge I’d acquired from that woman was to be believed, the orphanage where I’d lived was owned by a kindly old priest. Perhaps now he’d take over sooner, and fewer orphans would end up being sold off.
Still...
“How stupid,” I muttered.
The old orphanage, the contemptuous children, the greedy old hag, the townspeople who turned a blind eye to the abuse, the woman’s feelings, the whole idea of an “otome game”—all stupid.
This was what I’d been born for? This bullshit? My mother and father had died for this?!
I rifled through the old lady’s room and the adjacent storeroom, finding leather sandals for my bare feet and proper clothes to replace my bloodied rags. Then I took clean cloths, the woman’s hidden savings, and the quality food and canteens she’d hoarded for herself, among other essentials, and packed everything into a sheet before running into the night, away from this stupid city.
Screw the otome game.
“I’m gonna make it all by my damn self.”