1.1.3 : Calling

 

 

Looking into her eyes, my knees unexpectedly buckle and I slump onto them, weakly clutching at my side.

Wrapping her arms around me, Kairi yells something as a dizzy spell overtakes. I look at her, barely able to make out what she’s saying, “It’ll be alright. Relax. They—”

Two paramedics bustle over to us and between the two, they hustle me onto a gurney. They buckle me down while a third pulls up my shirt to treat the wound with disinfectant and to bind it with gauze. Blood rolls down my body to drip onto the gurney as they lift it and me to roll it around the back of the ambulance with sirens going off all around. The flashing lights give me a worse headache. Trying to lift an arm to shield my eyes, I find that even if they hadn’t fastened my arms down, I wouldn’t have the strength.

With only a single alternative way to rest my eyes, I close my eyes, feeling a fierce but soft grip on my leg. There’s a pinching sensation in my right elbow pit as my heart pounds furiously and I drift off.

I’m drifting—Darkness. No thoughts—No emotion. Just like whenever I’m sleeping.

Still conscious, despite an inability to think, all around me feels… nebulous. 

Haku… you… you were absolutely amazing…

…

……

………..

You know, I didn’t think you were so incredible. I mean, you look great, but… that was…

…

……..

Dumb, but cool.

……….

I feel like I’m crying and I don’t know why— Why?

……

I couldn’t have done anything like that, Haku.

……….

Do you really think so?

……………

Don’t try to pretend like you’re not the store’s superhero or something like that. You do more work than anyone else.

…….

Not more than you, Kairi. Your beautiful smile you share with everyone, every day when all I can do is to dully stare off into the distance while I’m working quietly in the back… Who you are is what a real hero means to me.

…..

…….

How about we go to Shibuya for our first date? Um… under Hachiko’s statue… um… unless that’s too corny?

……..

It’s not corny… I… I look forward t-to the day…

…….

……….

Our lips press against each other.

……

………

…. you’re probably the closest thing to a hero that I’ve ever met…

“A hero, huh? Is that what you think you are?” a voice asks.

…..

You are reading story Euphonia – Requiem to a Cursed World at novel35.com

Kairi?

………

“Are you a true hero?”

No. I’m an idiot.

“That’s why you gave your life to save the girl you love?”

Anyone would do that. A-are you… You’re not Kairi?

“Correct. Who are you, hero? Do you only fight for love?”

Who? I don’t recognize…

“Without love, what do you fight for? Life?”

I… I guess so. That’s how it’s always been ever since my parents died. I’ve fought just to live.

“If you found something else to fight for, no matter how hard it might be, would you hide?”

I don’t hide from problems…

“Like in the back room, hauling boxes while Kairi handles all the customers because you don’t think you could be a real hero?”

Yeah… it doesn’t take a hero to move boxes. Just a meathead with some muscles.

“Noted… When you only get one brief flicker of existence in a blink of the universe, you put it all on the line for what you love. Is that who you are?”

….

I guess so. I fight for what I love.

“... As I thought, Hero. You claim to not be a hero, but these qualities are the words of the one. You shall be graced by the light, Hero. No longer shall you drift in the nexus of the unconscious collective. Forge your own path, your own destiny. Hardship awaits you, yet do not stray, Hero.”

Opening my eyes with a yawn and stretching… 

Or, at least I try, but then something hits the back of my head and I realize that my back hurts so incredibly that I have to wonder what’s going on. It’s not like I have broken bones that need setting, just a bullet hole through my side. 

Shit. As though I know anything about medicine. Just let them do whatever they’re trying to do to help me. I do my best to relax and trust the medical practitioners. I hope Kairi’s okay…

Something hits the back of my head again and I’m unable to restrain my yelp and a screamed, “Damn it, ouch! What the hell are you doing, you fucking quacks!”

My legs fall from an elevated position and I groan, practically immobilized by my pain. Even when I stock the shelves back at the convenience store, working long into the early hours, hauling all the heaviest boxes off trucks into the storage areas, stocking the shelves, and all the coolers and shelves… no matter what I had to do that day, I still have a fine night of sleep and wake without any lingering aches, at least not since the first months after my parents passed away… My mind shies away from thinking about the time when they vanished from my life, leaving me to figure things out alone.

After a moment, the blanket over my head is thrown off me and gathered around are five brawny-looking green—things. Above them are large trees with lush foliage rustling in soft breezes. When I think about things, upon a minute examination of their faces, they have knobby bulbous noses with stained and possibly diseased jagged teeth, snot and spittle leaking from most of the holes in their heads and their ears are so very hairy and pointed that it’s something you don’t see outside beasts, not on anything man-like like they are.

Their eyebrows are arched and mean-looking and their hair is as horribly unkempt as possible, as though they have no idea what a comb is and constitutionally never did nor would groom themselves. They wear crude and rusted, ill-kept armor shoulder pads with leather jerkins that look like they’ve been looted off dead bodies with red-stained holes.

“The food still moves.” One snarls as he leaps at me with a curved blade and pulls the edge against the skin of my neck. Goosebumps rise from my head to toes. Oh, my gods… what’s the fuck going on here?!

To lend this surreal situation some legitimacy, the blade starts to slide against my throat and I feel blood start dripping down my neck along with a growing and sharp pain there. W-Wait! Are you fucking kidding?

I struggle and thrash for my life and scream, only for it to fall short instantly. My fear is quenched by a realization that the scream that came from my throat was far too melodic, not to mention VERY UNMANLY! When someone threatens my life, do I turn into a screaming child?

Having grown up in a secure and relatively safe country with highly hidden crime, would anyone else from a similar background have done any better than me, waking up in a situation where they were about to die like myself?! Clutching at the wrist of the large green creature holding me, I claw at that wrist with my nails, drawing greenish pus-mixed blood.

“Hahahaha!” One of the onlooking smelly creatures chortles, smirking at me. “This one’s some fun. We’re too quick to eat them and come to think of it, she’s not hideous. What say we have some fun with this one before we cut her body parts off, one by one, savoring her pained moans.” I look at this one with a terror-stricken expression, but my eyes narrow. 

He’s absolutely out of his mind! Am I? Why would I be dreaming about green mutant homosexuals? This can’t be real!

I grit my teeth, digging my nails deeper in rows on the rough skin of the creature’s sword arm that holds me against him. I haven’t had many judo classes, so throwing him would be difficult even getting my feet under me… In fact, I only know the basics and stretches. I don’t have time for such nonsense in a country where self-defense is only necessary when you really screw up and guys have very little to worry about for the most part. If you can fight, it’s enough to get you by, not that I like to. Mustering all the strength I have left, I pull myself up the wrist of the ugly big green monster holding me while the others watch, amused by my show of resistance. Obviously, they expect nothing from me.

The sword digs further into my flesh and the front of my shirt is soaked with my blood. The creature holding me grimaces down at me, joining in their collective satisfaction. Contempt. To my dismay, he’s hardly phased by the damage that I’ve managed to inflict. Pulling myself to my feet, I try something different: to wrench the thing’s sword from his grasp. He sneers at me contemptuously and lifts me with ease, robbing me of what leverage I was trying to get on him. 

What the hell has happened to my strength? I don’t lift weights regularly or anything but damn it! After hauling the heaviest boxes at work, I should be capable of more than this!

Looking into my captor’s eyes, I futilely wrestle with him for control over his weapon while hoisted up. Since I have to use both arms just to keep the blade from slicing my throat, severing my windpipe, he’s free to lift his free hand, paw, or whatever he calls it to contemptuously bring it down onto my head. He brings it down hard and stars flash in my eyes, so to speak, and my vision clears as I notice something with a dazed smile and an aching head. 

I've noticed that someone here isn’t properly guarding his junk with his poorly-fitting armor, armor that was never made for his ungainly body. 

The first thing anyone learns in street self-defense is to go for the jewels when up against a guy. Lifting a leg with more flexibility than I’m used to having, my foot makes a sharp, crunching noise between the asshole’s legs, landing way harder and faster than I intended, although that’s probably for the best.

Groaning, he collapses, letting go of me and his blade comes free of his grip in my hands as we fall together. Scrambling up and away, I hold up the sword that I’ve earned before to defend myself, but the moment I backpedal, the other large green creatures that were watching with amusement swarm all over me without any regard for their own safety.

It’s child’s play for them to disarm me while it was a struggle for me to free myself even once and all. Before they get a grip on me and wrench the sword from my grip, I slice across the closest one’s toughened leather jerkin that protects his torso. At least I managed to get a hit in before being mobbed. Sadly, I realize that I’ve done no significant damage. All six of them laugh coarsely together as the green creatures tear off my clothes.