“It must be nice, being so free,” I found myself muttering as I stared at the disappearing line of priests.
“Are you talking about me?” Meg looked taken aback.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I’m not sure I’m all that free, being a woman. For instance, women can have quite a hard time choosing their destiny in marriage, you know. Rather, you seem far freer to me.”
“I only seem free because I have nothing in this world. Given time, I’ll have so many obligations placed on me, I won’t be able to move a muscle anymore.”
“Then you’re the same as me. Enduring nothing but bothersome customs, conventions, and laws. Being a woman makes it hard for me to even gather up a small army.”
She thrust out her lips in a pout.
I replied, “While you find common sense and basic expectations to be bothersome, you’ve never let them tie you down. You do your best to slip around them, or else ignore them entirely.”
“You make me sound like a failure of a human being,” Meg said, taking offense.
She was a failure, in a sense. But I continued, “That’s what they call freedom. Those people who fail to give in to conventional limitations, who won’t accept the standards that are imposed on them.”
Humans couldn’t fly. This seemed an immutable limitation, so long as gravity held them down. Only those who refused to give in to that limitation—be it through magic or machinery—made it into the sky.
“That is one way of looking at it, I suppose. It’s not like I’ve actually been chained down or anything. But if we’re talking about freedom, you yourself could choose to live free, Hero. You don’t even have to wait for it; you could begin right now.”
“You’re right. And yet not.”
What she said was true on a surface level, but people with leadership responsibilities like me and Thret just couldn’t afford to be free in that sense. In fact, the world would be in chaos if each and every person lived free of conventional obligations.
“Y’know, Hero, I was convinced you were the same sort of person as me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What could I mean by that?”
She tilted her head cutely. I sighed.
The line of priests went on and on. The stairway leading down through the tower was rather narrow, after all.
“Come to think of it, you came from a different world, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“What sort of world was it?”
“Civilization was far more developed there than it is here, and I can’t even compare the level of comfort. You could drink safe, clean water anywhere with just a twist of a knob. A house could become warmer or cooler with just the flick of a finger.”
“You must have come from quite a nice place,” she said enviously.
“Yeah, and it was peaceful too.” At least, the country I’d been born into.
“Then it seems my own world is better suited for me.” The notion of peace was enough to make her lose interest. “Do you want to go back?”
I was just about to reply, “Of course.” Instead, I hesitated for a moment. “Yeah, I do.”
“You paused there. I knew it—peace just isn’t enough,” Meg stated happily.
“Quit making me sound like a war addict.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m not.”
“Then I see no other reason for you to want to remain here. You could be living as a hero in a far more comfortable world than this one, right?”
“I’m not a hero in my own world.”
“Really? Even after saving so many other worlds?”
It seemed Meg had completely misunderstood my situation.
“In my original world, no one believes you when you tell them you’ve saved other realms, especially when you don’t have any evidence or witnesses to back up your claims. It isn’t any different here, though. Say someone mysteriously disappeared, then suddenly returned one day to announce, ‘I’m back from another world!’ They’d be seen as a lunatic.”
“Then how did you live there?”
“Dangling off my parents’ legs, without a proper job to my name.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I wasn’t unemployed by choice. I kept getting called to other worlds, so I could never hold a proper job.”
Who in their right mind would hire someone without a degree or prior work history, who was prone to disappearing without a trace? Honestly, though my original world was comfortable, it was not welcoming.
In these other worlds, I could ride dragons. I could pilot golems equipped with ancient armaments. I could wield legendary weapons. Back home, they wouldn’t even let me manage a parking lot. A kid who shined shoes for a living would have it better than me. No, if possible I wanted to stay in these worlds. Of course, it didn’t quite work that way. Once one of these worlds was saved, I would be forced back to my own…and if I tried to remain by refusing to save it, then that world faced total annihilation.
There weren’t any worlds I had a particular attachment to, but it was only human to want to save them anyway. Luckily, I hadn’t failed yet. In the first place, there was no reason for me to remain in a world once—
“You’re quite skilled at martial arts, aren’t you?”
Meg’s question kept my thoughts from straying too far.
“Last I was there, my world was at peace. Being trained to kill people wouldn’t help me find a job. I don’t say professional fighters were unnecessary, even at peacetime, but the governments and companies that retained them wouldn’t want someone who keeps disappearing.”
Respectable organizations that employed such individuals for security were closely regulated, but then there were criminal organizations that might prove an alternative. For me, though, that avenue was out of the question.
“Looks like you have it hard, then, in the grander scheme of things,” she said sympathetically. It seemed the message had gotten through.
“That’s something I have no power over,” I said, looking into the sky.
It had taken a while, but the line was finally quite a bit shorter. I’d been distracted by opening up about myself—to Meg, of all people. It irked me how everything I’d said might lower her estimation of me.
In any case, she was correct in pointing out that I had difficulty living in a peaceful world. Not just because I’d been jobless and without a place of my own. If I had to admit it, I was simply bored there. No matter what I did, I didn’t feel stimulated. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. For example, I enjoyed delicious food and interesting anime. Such mundanities would stave off the boredom to some small degree.
It hadn’t always been like this. At least, it wasn’t before I returned from my first adventure. Prior to that, I could remember experiencing joy, fun, and sadness…all the various ups and downs of everyday life. Gradually, though, things had changed.
I’d finally become aware of it after returning from the fourth or fifth world. I wondered if my brain had been fried from exposing myself to so many perilous situations. I realized I now thrived on danger, and the more danger the better. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. I wanted to live, but I could only ever feel alive when I was dancing with death.
Nowadays, I felt more truly alive in these other worlds. Every place I was sent to was filled with danger and adventure. I could sense the seams coming undone even in those worlds that at first glance appeared safe and secure, and this made for a nice sense of tension. Troublingly enough, whoever was sending me to these worlds had become both the root of all evil and my sole salvation.
I didn’t intend to open up to Meg any more than I already had, lest she start acting all smug on me. I wasn’t like her. I didn’t actively cause battles for my own sake. I intended to fight as a hero until the end. While the only worth to my existence might be found in battle, I still wanted to remain human. I would fight only to save a world and its people. Drawing the line there kept me sane.
No… we were worlds apart, Meg and I, and she would never truly know about me. Still, if I strayed from the path I’d set for myself, I had a feeling it would sadden her.
“Hey, Hero. Looks like it’s our turn.”
When I looked up, I saw the last priest disappear into the tower.
“You’re right.”
We followed behind him, into the tower, then down into the underground chamber.