Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Decision

I’m gulping down some tea in the living room after being called by the old woman, Helene.

Apparently, she wants to talk where there aren’t that many people.

Fortunately, there isn’t anyone here right now except Helene, her granddaughter Selene and my girl, Ivanna.

"This might sound a little dubious, but-……"

After attaching an unconfident remark, Ivanna starts to tell me what’s going on with a complicated expression on her face.

After attaching an unconfident remark, Ivanna starts to tell me what’s going on with a complicated expression on her face. She then turns her gaze towards the old woman, Helene.

"I'm sorry. My power has been declining due to aging. When you came here, I somehow detected you but this week... I am not able to do that." Helene elucidates. 

"What do you mean? Is somebody out there with zombies?" I say it nervously.

Helene casts a magic onto a mirror in front of us and blur image appears. 

I sit on a chair and looked at the mirror before me. The roughly one meter wide mirror does not reflect my face, but a patch of grass. The mirror is like a television set, showing images of a distant plain covered with snow. The falling snow sway in the wind, proving it is not a still image.

Helene reaches out to the mirror and swipes using her hand right as if changing something in a smart phone. The mirror’s image changes.

"It is the actual view of villages outside this sanctuary." Selene explains. After weeks, she could talk to me normally.

We enjoy the movie-like quality of the view within the mirror as the image changes. 

“It would seem that she can move the image with a wave of the hand. That way, she won’t have to keep looking at the same spot.” I commend on her actions that look like searching something on a smart phone.

The scenery and the angles with which it is viewed changes within the mirror. Although she had swipes to several empty places so far, the old woman keeps changing her gestures to alter the landscape within the mirror, hoping that she would find someone. However, up till now, she has not found any intelligent beings — for instance, humans.

She repeats the same simple gestures over and over again, but all the images we get are the same: plains and snow. I am starting to get bored, so I look at the other persons in the room.

"Can't you just be a bit patient." Ivanna scolds me, says what is on her heart.

She is the only girl who frequently defies and lectures me. She is not under some brainwashing cheat like Clementine and Sekrit, and not broken by Stockholm syndrome like  Sylvia after all.

After grumbling in my heart, I look back to the mirror.

I do not know how long it has been.

Still, why can’t she switch to a higher vantage point? If only there is a manual… With these thoughts in mind, we go about the painstaking work of figuring the mirror’s controls and searching the villages out by boring, repetitive trial and error. 

It might have only been a while, but so far her work has not borne fruit, and U could not help but feel like this is all a waste of time.

Helene casually waves her hand with a vacant expression, and our field of vision suddenly expands.

"Oh!”

Surprise, delight, relief, my exclamation is filled with all of these. At our wit’s end, she made a random gesture and the screen suddenly did as she wanted. This was a cry of joy one would expect out of a programmer who had pulled eight hour’s worth of overtime.

Cheering and clapping answered her. The source of these two sounds is me.

"Ahhh. Finally!" 

Granted, this is the fruit of extensive trial and error, so I don’t need to go that far. I thought that, but when I see that two pretty girls, Ivanna and Selene look quite happy, I decide to exaggerate the laudation.

"Thank you, Hiro. Although I apologize for making you accompany me for so long.” Helene says while her old hand slightly trembles.

Selene taps my shoulder as if wanting me to stop talking and interrupts,

"What are you saying, grandma? Staying by your side and obeying your orders is the reason for their existence. There is no need to thank or apologize to him… although, it is true that this process took quite some time. Grandma, would you like to take a break?”

The old woman just smiles and shakes her hand as I give cue that we have no problem waiting.

She continues studying the ways to control the mirror. Finally she discovers a method to adjust the height of her viewpoint.

The old woman smiles in satisfaction, and begins looking for a populated area.

Finally, an image of something like a village appears on the mirror. From the arrangement of houses, it looks like the village we encountered zombies weeks ago.

We didn't realize when we were there last time but from bird's view, there is a forest nearby, and wheat fields surrounded a settlement. It appears to be a rustic farming village. By the looks of things, the village itself is not very developed.

As she zooms in on the village, U feel that something is amiss.

The people, no, the zombies are walking quickly between the houses as if chasing something.

"Something weird with the zombies." I give a comment.

"No, they are chasing something. Actually, she shows me before. At that time, we accidentally found men." That stuck-up voice comes from Ivanna, who is watching the display with a keen look in her eye as she stands beside me.  So, that's what happened.

There is an undercurrent of uneasiness in her stern words. As the old woman, Helena enlarges the image, she too furrowed her aged brows.

Several men in ninja attires are swinging their swords at the zombies, who are dressed in rough clothes. A zombie falls with every swing of a ninja’s sword. The ninja are killing while escaping  horde of zombies. Zombies swarm the narrow lane between houses and pursue the fleeing ninja. 

I scoff, intending to change the image. This group of ninja have no value to me. If I could extract more information from it, perhaps I might have a reason to save them. But as things stood, there is no reason to save them and endanger our life.

We should abandon them.

I am taken aback by how I could make such a heartless decision. A cruel slaughter is occurring before my eyes, but the only thing I could think of is our safety. There is nothing like pity, anger, or worry, basic human emotions anyone should have.

It feels like I am watching a TV show or to be precise, watching a zombie movie on TV.

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The old woman swipes again, showing a scene from another part of the village. 

It seems like three men in ninja attire are trying to pull a violently struggling zombie off another ninja. The zombie is pulled away, its head is cut off, and it is rendered motionless where it is.

Several more zombies jump to them but either being kicked away or cut. A zombie that somehow slides into them stumbles to the ground. The zombie is stabbed with a sword. The blade entered its body and exits from the other side of its body. It should have been a fatal blow to a living man but the zombie does not stop moving. One, two, three strikes — the ninja that was hugged by a zombie before seems to be taking out his anger on the stabbed zombie as he hacks at the its body. In the end, the ninja kicks away its head and the head is detached from its body.

As Helena zooms even closer, we see a terrible bite wound in his shoulder. It seems this ninja who is going amok has been bitten by a zombie in the struggle before and now is beyond salvation.

He blocks the incoming zombies with his body while shouting to the other ninjas. The other run away as he blocks and cut zombies.

The ninja being bitten by zombies looks straight at me. No, this might have just been a coincidence. It is definitely a coincidence.

There is no way for anyone to detect the mirror’s surveillance. 

Frothy blood leaked from the man’s mouth as he tries to open his mouth. His eyes are unfocused, and I could not tell where he is looking. Even so, with what may have been his dying breaths, I gasp his last words:

—Please save my the girl, please save Hana-iiiii— His mouth is saying something like that.

"What do you intend to do?”

Helene seems to have been waiting for this moment to speak.

There could only be one answer. I reply coldly:

“Nothing. There is no reason, value or benefit in rescuing them.”

The young elven girl, Selene nonchalantly looked at us. 

"Hiro !!!!" Ivanna talks to me in high pitched voice and her left hand grabs my shoulder.

She continues, "At least you should notify Kurotsuchi and Mirai. Those men obviously come from Sooka hidden village."

I look at Selena's judging face and Ivanna's angry face. I am being judged here, whether I am hero would save the people in trouble or I am merely cold-hearted coward.

"At least, we should see more to get more understanding." Cowardly  evading their stare, I stand up and walk closer to the old woman's side. She enlarges the view of the village until we see everything. After that, she tries to pick out the surviving ninjas.

The image changes, and now it shows a sturdy looking man sending a zombie flying with a punch on its face. Another man is slashing several zombies. They are the one with the bitten ninja before. Both man leads a young woman with long braided black hair. A kunoichi, based on her attire and weaponry. had a braid of straw-blonde hair that reached down to her breasts. Her skin, white but athletic from working in under the snow, is now deathly pale from fear, and her dark eyes were wet with tears. I am not sure as the view zooms up to about 10 meters from them, but her breasts are not small. 

"Let's go, girls." I automatically mutter that words.

***

A zombie walks with trembling legs around a well in a village. Mindless with blurred sight but it is attracted to sound. Suddenly, a bucket on well moves slightly and produces a sound. It mindlessly walk the well. When the bucket falls to the ground beside the well, it bends down to look at it. Shortly, it ceases moving at all, when a hand slides out of the well, grabs it by the throat, and send its consciousness sinks into darkness with a cracking sound. There are three living persons hanging on the rope connecting the pole outside the well. The man that killed the zombie focuses in studying the surrounding before climbs out. 

"Good. Clear. Come out now." Upon his instruction, another man climbs out the well stands there dripping, observing their silent environment. They summon the only woman in the team in a soft voice. 

"Hanabi, come out "

She gives a small nod and then nervously take the rope and begins climbing the wall. Despite the handholds, the side of the well is slick, she couldn't let go of the stiffness that comes with her anxiety and fear. However, as she is still a skilled fighter, she toughens herself and climbs up. Just when she thought her hands wouldn't move anymore, a glove reaches out and and catches her, pulls her the rest of the way up. 

"Th...thanks "

The men just silently nod. They say nothing more but crouch low, begin walking quickly. The leader doesn't speak but Hanabi sees the implicit instruction to follow him, and does so.

In any event, she doesn't want to contemplate what might happen if they are separated. It makes her very obedient.

There is a tremendous uproar coming from the other village, not far away but not very close. Probably zombies chasing after their remaining comrades. They don't have mug time.

Hanabi sees the leader is moving away from the direction of that sound, she thinks they might be anticipating a minor retreat. It is an expectation she knows clearly would be betrayed. They can only lurk in the village and kill zombies until they find the lord's granddaughter.

They walk towards the edge of the village until they see a lake from afar. 

They are back at the frozen lake they fought zombies yesterday. The men crouch down, pull out their medium length swords, in icepick grips and drives them into the ice. Hanabi, unsure what else to do, also draws her  short swords and does the same. As she was the only person whose body in the water in the well, her cloth is soaking. Her soaking body begins to shiver, she thinks she must dry herself off, otherwise she would get frostbite.

Still, she is too embarrassed to take off her clothes here, so she does what she could by wringing out the hem and  sleeves of her clothes. It produces a copious amount of water. Her clothing clings uncomfortably to her skin, and her long wet hair is tremendously heavy.

"Are you guys not cold?" 

"What do you mean?" The second man answers in annoyance while hitting the ice. 

"We are fine " the leader answers distractedly, with a slight nod. 

Despite her sopping clothes, she could feel a hint of her own body heat. But they hardly seems enough of it to take comfort in it.

"That's why, finally, hesitantly, she calls out to the leader. There is nothing else she could do.

"What?" His deep voice is quiet. His hands work ceaselessly and he doesn't turn to look at her. At length, he takes the ice has carved away and sculpts it further with his sword, then tosses it to her.

"Use these. Throw them like kunai. So that you can kill them from distance."

They then pass a dozen more of those hand made small daggers from ice to her. She keeps them in he bag.

***

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