DAY 120
Is it really a homecoming if I live in the woods?
OMUI CITY
THE CITY WAS ALIVE. The streets bustled with activity; the air thrummed with excitement.
It had all started when the youngest orphans woke up this morning in a flurry of anticipation. Their energy was contagious. The older kids caught it next, and then the whole fidgety assembly donned their favorite beastfolk-themed pajamas and trooped out into the streets to throng at the city gates. It was catching; it was enthralling. Now the adults were under its spell, and the whole town was astir.
No one dared to voice it, but the same thought lodged in every head: “Is today the day? Are they coming home?”
Excitement dogged every footstep all morning long. Once I finished cleaning the inn’s common areas, I started on their rooms in the fancy annex. The dining hall was quiet and deserted for the first time in its lengthy use. Once, it had been filled with smiles and laughter. Now, only a long, lonely silence walked this hall.
A similar transformation had stolen over the rest of town. Ours was a town of unthinkable prosperity, unbelievable happiness, and just a hint of sadness—just an empty space in the happiness, right in the center of town, where something should have been.
There was a smile for every face, but no eye could avoid straying long. Our gaze drifted to the inn annex, the Adventurers’ Guild, the general store, the blacksmith’s, the clothes workshops, the main streets…and the gate. Always with the same thought—when are they coming home?
“Phew! That’s the last of the cleaning.”
Just outside the window, puffed merchants were peddling their wares. Children ran in and among their stalls, shouting to be heard over the hawkers’ hubbub. Housewives and adventurers bustled from shop to shop. Past the city gates, knights and soldiers from all over the Kingdom poured into the frontier to fight our dungeons, quell our monster forests, and spread peace. It felt like something out of a dream—but then again, so did every day here on the frontier.
But for all that, we longed for more. Here in the empty dining hall, out in front of the Guilds’ bulletin board, at the front desk of the general store, sadness dwelt in every eye. Our town rang with laughter…but laughter wasn’t enough. We weren’t satisfied with joy and contentment and wild, rapturous glee. Our bustle lacked its usual cacophony, its angry shouts, its shrieks of horror.
That chaos was our happiness, you see. That disorder was synonymous with the frontier’s peace. We all knew that. Everyone knew that. That’s why the lack of it broke our hearts. We missed the shouted lectures, the screams of “Catch him! He’s getting away!” and the inevitable outbursts of riotous laughter that had become commonplace. We missed our beloved pandemonium.
It was worth sighing over. So that’s just what I did.
Every time I heard a raised voice, a mysterious crash, my eyes would light up for the briefest of moments before the disappointment settled in. Every time I looked out over our busy, bustling town, I missed that extra special something that gave our days their dreamlike quality.
The name of that lack was admiration—admiration for the older girls in their resplendent armor. Oh, but it wasn’t just the armor that I adored. It was their beauty. Their strength. Their welcoming hearts. Their smiles, the most glorious smiles the frontier had ever seen.
And then there were the older boys—the outgoing, funny, endlessly kind “nerds” and “jocks.” For all their laughter and levity, we slept soundly in our beds at night knowing the boys would keep us safe through thick and thin.
My new friend Stalker Girl was gone, too. She’d gone off to war with the rest of them. That was Stalker Girl for you—heading off into danger to make sure every town and village around us stayed safe. Yes, that was my dear best friend in a nutshell.
The day my loved ones left, I’d watched them don their armor, take up their spears and swords, and march off to war. I’d watched all those kind, funny, always smiling souls leave us to walk into the jaws of battle. All those boys and girls—all those kids, those ordinary people just like you and me. Ordinary people who’d made themselves fight monsters, made themselves go to war, to protect the likes of you and me.
We’d smiled when peace and prosperity had come to stay in this backwater, once danger-threatened town. But we still felt a keen missingness in our breasts, the missingness of our most important people. Outsiders looked upon our inn, our general store, our duke’s palace, and called those the symbols of Omui, but everyone in Omui knew better. Our symbols were gone. The most important pieces of Omui were gone. A hole was open in the center of Omui where our symbols should have been.
The rumors traveled from mouth to restless mouth. “Is today the day? Are they coming home?”
None of the orphans could sit still. Excitement shone in every eye. Men, women, and children dropped by the annex time and time again for no particular purpose, just to see if they were home.
Long, long before I was born, when my own parents had been no more than children and my grandparents had been no older than my parents were now, a monster attack decimated the town of Omui. The townsfolk fled—all save a single soul who fought back against the monster hordes. The hero—the White Loser, as the legends would come to name them—fell alongside the monsters they’d felled. I waited now with the same emotions I reserved for those tales when I was a child. Envy, gratitude—all sorts of emotions I couldn’t begin to name, all bundled up into a simple desire to have met the hero. To live in their presence. To be together.
“There! Spick-and-span.”
We all felt this way—that there was something missing, something that shouldn’t ever be missing. And it hurt. It really, really hurt. There was nothing we could do about it, and how vexing was that? We couldn’t follow them on the path they tread, and how helpless did that make us? Yet still, life went on. And still, little by little, we remade ourselves. We found courage to change, to grow, to keep all those we loved safe.
The orphans were the key to our change. They were good, hardworking kids. They were courageous, endeavoring souls. They worked day in and day out to bring in money for the orphanage. They were model children—everyone thought so. But really, deep down, they were more heartsick than the rest of us.
In the past, they couldn’t afford to eat no matter how hard they’d worked. In the past, they’d grown weaker and sicker until, one by one, they would lie down and never rise again. Those tragedies haunted them. We all wished the children could lead happy, carefree lives…but again, their hearts had been wounded worse than all the rest of us combined.
“Hoo! Hah! Hii-yah!”
As hard as they worked, they never slacked in their studies. Any scrap of free time they found would be turned to fighting practice. Days off were spent slaying monsters, level grinding, and earning extra cash for their savings. We townsfolk—adults and children alike—couldn’t watch them and sit complacent. We, too, set out to transform ourselves.
“Oooh!”
“Take that!”
At first, the local housewives had thought the orphans were just cute, poor little dears. As time passed, however, the housewives grew to admire the orphans’ tenacity and gained a greater appreciation of the importance of levels. Higher levels meant stronger, heartier bodies. Leveling slowed aging and restored youth to ancient bones. Best of all, leveling meant spellstones, and spellstones were the perfect source of pocket cash. And now the city teemed with beautiful clothes and everyday goods the likes of which we’d never seen.
We now knew well all the gifts high levels could bring us, including the most precious gift of all: safety for our children. High-level children were less likely to succumb to injury and disease. High-level children could, should the need arise, run from monsters and live to laugh another day.
“Yippee! I did it!”
“Do it again! Do it again!”
The housewives had paid the orphans a fee and asked if they could join their battles. Day after day, more and more housewives joined the makeshift militia. Eventually, they’d begun bringing their own children along. These civilian fighting groups had started by quelling the demons skulking outside the city walls, then, gradually, they’d dipped their toes into the forest. Then they’d moved further into the forest, then they’d taken on the top floors of dungeons…and before long, the Merry Wives of Omui Militia had been founded for the safety of all Omui’s children.
“Look at them working hard,” I said to myself.
The menfolk didn’t dare let themselves fall behind, so they took up monster hunting too. None of us really knew why the orphans worked so hard, especially as they never seemed to attach any special meaning to it. Someone had happened to catch them once and asked, casually, what were they striving for…and the answers flew around town on the wings of gossip.