In my entire life, nobody had ever placed any importance on me.
I never even knew my parents’ faces—they’d tossed me away into the slums not long after I was born. As time passed, I ended up having to lie, cheat, and steal every day just to survive. Everybody talked about me behind my back and constantly spat out all kinds of nasty abuse at me.
That was how I had always lived, and I had assumed that was how I would die—buried in a heap of trash along the side of the road with the remains of sewer rats and cockroaches, unnoticed by the world.
I had stolen from someone that very day, swiping a bit of food from a roadside vendor. It had never occurred to me that it was wrong to do things like that—after all, I didn’t have any choice, did I? I’d die otherwise. It was impossible to survive without taking from others. That was why, even when I messed up and got caught and was receiving a beating from the townspeople like I did that day, I never had the faintest sense of being in the wrong.
However, I did end up feeling miserable. What was the point of living when everyone shunned you? Life felt empty when nobody wanted you. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my heart, I started wishing someone would just kill me.
Just as I began to harbor those thoughts, the flood of violence I had been receiving came to an abrupt end.
When I looked up, I saw the sun shining down on me. A woman stood over me, protecting me from the other townspeople, bowing and apologizing to them on my behalf. For some reason, the people at the receiving end of her apologies seemed apologetic themselves—a completely different attitude from the looks of disgust they always gave me.
Once the townspeople lowered their weapons and left, the woman turned to look at me. Her beautiful face held a certain kind of inborn elegance; the thought came to mind that she must’ve lived in a completely different world than mine.
“I saw what happened back there—you were fighting against five grown men. Considering they were armed, though, of course you weren’t going to win.”
Is she going to hit me?
Or will she yell at me, maybe?
I braced myself, but all she did was smile.
“You were amazing!”
I stood there, mouth agape, after hearing that unexpected word.
Amazing?
Did she just compliment me?
“I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Aria.”
I had heard the name Aria before. That was the princess of Sorcera’s name.
Why on earth would a princess speak to me?
“Would you be interested in coming to work for me?” she asked. “You have extraordinary strength—and I’d like you to put it to use to protect our people.”
I stared in bewilderment at her outstretched hand. Nobody had ever considered me important before—yet this woman was treating me as though I was.
Before I realized what was happening, I had already taken her hand. Even as she touched my grimy skin, she didn’t show the slightest sign of discomfort; her smile kept shining as brightly as the sun.
“What is your name, may I ask?”
Guided by her gentle voice, I responded that I didn’t have a name—that my parents might’ve given me one, but they’d abandoned me without ever calling me by it, and I’d survived alone ever since.
“In that case, how does the name ‘Alma’ sound?” she suggested.
Alma—I thought it was a fantastic name.
For my entire life, all I had done was take things from people—so I had never thought twice about having things taken from me. I had never had a single thing I was worried about losing.
But on that day when she first found me, I made a firm vow to myself: I would never let anyone take that name away from me. Even if I lost everything else, no matter what happened, I would protect the name she had given me, forever.
✦ ✦ ✦
A voice reached my ears. It had a gentle, nostalgic ring to it, and it made me feel nice and warm, like a sunny spot on the ground.
Drawn in by the sound of that voice, my consciousness began to float up out of the frigid dark depths. I wanted nothing more than to rise to the surface and see that sun.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Princess Aria. She looked exactly the same as she had back then—the day she had pulled me up out of the darkness back in Sorcera. As my consciousness gradually came into focus, her appearance soon morphed into the present-day Guard Corps version of herself.
She’s grown so much stronger...
But that sunny smile of hers, and the warmth she gives off, are still exactly the same as they were on the day she rescued me.
When she saw me open my eyes, tears began to well up in hers. Then, she held a tender hand out to me.
“Welcome back...Alma.”
With her and the rest of my Guard Corps comrades behind her watching over me, I gently took hold of her outstretched hand.