24 Hearts

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The twenty-fourth fragment, Carpe Diem

Requiem looked arrogantly down at me from his rock for a long time, as if etching the memory of my face into his mind. He then lay down upon his stomach once more, his head resting on his forelegs.

It seemed like he was going to sleep, and the energy I had felt faded away.

Once their king no longer paid me any attention, the other black wolves rose and went on their way, as if there was nothing for them to see anymore. Some wolves did glance at Tia and me while sniffing the air, but most of them were indifferent to our presence.

“Are you okay with those injuries?” Tia asked me in an anxious voice as she approached, on her guard as she scanned her surroundings. It did hurt, but it was bearable due to the temporary increase in regeneration after I had leveled up. My wounds were healing at a greater pace, so I could take the pain.

“I’m okay.”

“Then be patient. Once we get out of here, I’ll tend to your wounds.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. I didn’t want to show weakness in front of the wolves by being healed here. Tia hunched down to make it easier for me to climb onto her. As I grabbed onto fur, about to mount her as one climbs onto a motorcycle, I saw something shimmering on the spot where Korkan had died.

“Code?”

I reached out and picked it up. I had defeated a named monster, and it was a bit disappointing when I couldn’t skin him and get a gemstone, also called a manastone. This b code} was left as the reward for my kill, though. The wolves seemed to show no interest in whether I took the b code} or not. This one’s cord shown faintly green, which meant it was [rare], just above [common] grade.

──────────────────────

「Code: The sneaky one who aims only at the enemy’s wounds 」

Class: [rare] weapons only

Effect: 5% increase in blood lossÚmage 10+3% increase % increase in Durability Decrease Rate

──────────────────────

Korkan had been a mean beast, and the {code} gained from him reflected his nature. I placed the b code} and my broken sword into the {Bag} and then climbed onto the impatient Tia.

The wolves surrounding us remained indifferent. It even seemed as if they wouldn’t care if we went to sleep here, but Tia moved quickly, and we escaped from the plain of wolves.

Not one of them followed us, but Tia did not slow down, and we quickly returned to the clearing where we had made our base. Tia carefully dropped me next to the campfire. The embers still glowed among the ash, so it was easy to rekindle it. As I watched the roaring fire, I then realized that Tia stood beside me, naked. She had changed back. I hurriedly pulled her clothes from the b Bag} and handed them to her.

Tia frowned at me as she took the clothes, then placed them on the ground near the fire.

“Are clothes really important now? Take out the healing potion. No, wait, it’s in my pocket.”

Tia hastily searched through the clothes I had handed her. I felt rather embarrassed because it seemed strange to me that Tia was not ashamed to be naked.

She approached me proudly and, like a beast, tore the clothing around my wound off with tremendous force. Tia then applied a medicinal poultice to the dried blood on the wound, wiped it clean, and finally applied the healing potion.

‘Shii-ik,’ a sharp sound was followed by white smoke which wafted from the wound, creating a tingling feeling in my body. Once this simple treatment was over, I sighed. Tia had used up the bottle of expensive healing potion. She handed the empty glass vial to me and stroked my hair.

“Wow, what a wonderful guy. You fought well.”

I laughed weakly at her praise. I had fought with all my strength, and my body had run out of energy. All the magic I had consumed was recovered as my level rose, yet I still questioned why there was no complete generation of health and healing of wounds upon gaining a level.

Is Tia not ashamed to be seen by others?

Tia finally dressed in the clothes she had left near the campfire. Once clothed, she looked at me with a smile.

“I had a hard time of it, Tia. Thanks to you, it was comfortable to go there and get back again. Will you give me another ride later?”

“Huh!?” Tia’s face hardened. “Yeah, look at this stupid guy. It was only because today was a special case. Don’t get used to it. And you…”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

“What do you mean?”

Tia spoke no more and then pulled out a cigarette from her pocket and put it in her mouth. I could see that she was thinking carefully, and instead of speaking, she lit the cigarette and inhaled the smoke.

‘Fwooo’

The bitter scent of medicinal herbs came to my nose, so unlike the unique smell of tobacco.

It was a scent that I could never adapt to, no matter how much I smelled it. When I didn’t say anything, Tia finally spoke.

“Those shadows on the ground, and that figure that appeared which looked like you. What was it? Isn’t there far too much that you’re hiding from your teacher?”

I felt embarrassed when I heard Tia speak in a sad tone, and with a depressed expression. Was there a lot of things I was hiding from her? She had asked me questions, but only two things came to mind: {Bag}, my inventory, which Tia knew as a subspace, but I had already shown it to her. And Shadow Justice, which made out half of my skills as a b Black Claw}.

There was nothing other than this that Tia could’ve known, yet she thought that I was hiding more from her. I knew that, depending on my answer, the credibility of my explanation would increase or decrease. I pondered things for a moment and then decided that it was unlikely that anything would change for the better if I kept hiding certain things from her. She already knew about Shadow Justice, anyway. I looked at her and smiled.

“Are you sad, Tia?”

“What? No, why would I be sad about something like this?”

Perhaps because she thought that I had noticed her emotions, her face turned slightly red, and she spoke in a louder tone. She had always acted as if she was my big sister, so these emotions were different from her normal behavior. I also thought that it was somewhat cute for Tia to act like this.

“It’s not that big a deal.”

“Even if you say it doesn’t mean much, I’m curious because you’re my student and… you’re like family. So, tell me. But if it’s something you can’t really talk about… It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to.”

I was rather embarrassed to think that I had been making fun of Tia a little. My heart pounded when I heard her say she considered me to be like her family. As Tia had never lied to me before, I could feel the sincerity of her words. It didn’t matter if she told Kain, anyway. One day, Kain would find out about it, but I had hoped to keep it from him until we faced one another as enemies.

“It’s Justice.”

“Justice?”

“What I’m learning is the Swordsmanship of the Forgotten Kingdom, you know?”

Tia would know. She must have heard it from Kaseun on that first day when she had evaluated my skills. Of course, I had told Kaseun a half-truth, only about my Swordsmanship. It seemed that Tia now recalled something like that; she seemed nervous.

“I remember. But that must only be half of it, Judah. How can you only know Swordsmanship but not Justice? No, wait! Then you lied about not knowing?”

“Yes, I lied. Only you and Kaseun know. I’ve hidden it from everyone else.”

“Why?”

I didn’t want the information getting to Kain, who would later become my enemy, and in the case of Shadow Justice, I could practice it alone, unlike Shadow Swordsmanship. And above all, I hadn’t gotten many chances to use it. Most people knew about Swordsmanship, while Justice was not a natural thing to use, and there was no way to earn experience by using it in training.

“Because it’s not good if people know about it. Tia, have you heard about how my parents died?”

“Huh? Um, no. Why bring it up all of a sudden?”

Tia hadn’t heard it from me in person, but I knew that Kaseun had told her how I had lost my parents. What everyone knew was that they had been killed by mercenaries who had adventured with them in the past. What was unknown was why they had visited my parents and killed them. I had been the only witness at the scene, and I had stated that I couldn’t remember anything.

“It didn’t happen all of a sudden. This is the beginning of my explanation. You probably know… Didn’t my grandpa tell you? In the middle of the night, mercenaries came to the house and murdered my parents. I was sleeping.”

“…”

“When the mercenaries couldn’t find what they were looking for, they tried to kill me so that I couldn’t tell anyone. One of them came in with a huge ax, but by using the Justice technique I had learned, I managed to kill him. Oh, no one knows this Tia, so please don’t tell anyone. Okay?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say a word.”

I could see my story had her worried. Tia looked uncomfortable as she continued smoking. I could also see that she thought she had hurt me by asking useless questions; it even seemed as if she was regretting it. But I continued talking, embarrassed. Even if they had not been my real parents, they had died without the chance of defending themselves. It made me feel sorrow in the pit of my heart.

“Actually, it turned out the mercenaries were searching for these exact Swordsmanship and Justice techniques that I am now learning. So I didn’t know how powerful such shadow skills were, but I guessed it would be dangerous to walk around and let everyone know about them. It turned out that it wasn’t a half-technique, as is common, but rather the completely forgotten Swordsmanship of a fallen kingdom. If someone hears about this level of Justice and Swordsmanship, they might also appear and try to take it, right?”

“Ah…”

“And in the case of my subspace… I don’t know quite how I got it. It seems to be a side-effect of the process of learning Justice. I could just naturally access it after a certain point in time.”

***

Tia nodded. She had encountered many people who used magical powers in a similar manner, but there were also people who possessed special abilities that were not tied to the use of magic.

Of course, depending on the development of such talents, they are people who possess tremendous abilities. She knew that there were those who were touched by magic without having studied it, but she had only heard tales and never seen such things in person. It was perhaps Judah’s natural ability to be able to use the strange forms of swordsmanship and justice that he possessed.

Tia was silent, and during that silence, she only inhaled and blew out smoke. Judah sighed as he watched her smoke, not even trying to make eye contact with her.

***

When I called up Tia’s status screen, I knew that she had felt true sympathy for me. Her likeability had risen a little, while her reliability stood on 90.

“…Well, it wasn’t that I was trying to hide it from you, Tia. It’s just that I can’t explain it… I don’t know.”

“No, I understand what you mean. Thank you for telling me, even if it must be difficult after what you saw, at such a young age.”

“That’s not it… Have I answered your questions?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a good thing. I really don’t want to be hated by Tia, so you can know even if others don’t.”

***

As Judah smiled and talked, Tia felt her heart ache as it beat faster and faster.

Even though he was still a boy, Tia thought that he was smiling in quite a charming manner. She didn’t know what she was thinking by noticing such things, so she hurriedly changed the topic.

“Ah. Are you tired? Come on, let’s go to sleep. We have to head back as soon as the sun rises.”

***

Am I sorry? I have nothing to be sorry about.

I smiled bitterly and fell asleep, just as Tia had suggested. As soon as morning came, I went back to Serenia with her. We halted at a spot where the guards wouldn’t see us. We then tied the pelts of a hundred-and-fifty black wolves with leather straps into piles and then into rows, and we dragged them toward the city gate.

Charles the knight and the other guards gave one look at us and then came down and opened the gates. It wasn’t time for the gates to be open, but Tia and I were thought to be dead after not returning for four days, so the guards were happy and surprised that we had returned with so many black wolf pelts.

I sold the hides and gemstones to clothing stores, and to the Tower. I earned a tremendous amount of money for four day’s work.

Once we returned home, we both entered our respective rooms and fell asleep in our beds.

We awoke in the evening after sleeping nonstop.

I was used to getting up in the mornings as the sun rose. When I opened my eyes, the sun was setting—what a ridiculous situation.

I gave an absurd chuckle, and once in the kitchen, I took out the lunch box filled with luxurious foodstuffs that I had placed in my b Bag} and shared them with Tia. We had originally planned to stay in the forest for about a week, but we had no choice but to return after the appearance of the countless wolves who had watched me fight with Korkan, an alpha wolf.

I then asked Tia what I should do with all the food I had placed in my b Bag}.

“Leave it alone! It functions like a subspace anyway, even if you aren’t sure what it is, so no food will rot or spoil even if you store it in there for a long time.”

I simply nodded, having learned that I could eat it at any time once I put it into my inventory. However, even if we were eating such a nice dinner this night, we would be back to eating rice the following morning. All that was left in the house were five eggs and some vegetables.

I have to go to the grocery store.

Even though Kaseun visited the market on the first day of every month and brought me food, there still remained some time before the first. Meanwhile, we needed something to eat, so I figured Tia and I would go grocery shopping the following morning.

I also had to leave my broken sword and low-durability daggers at a forge.

“Juudaaah!”

I heard Tia calling me from the living room. It sounded as if she was in a good mood; her voice was filled with excitement.

“Come quickly!” she urged me.

“Yes! I’m coming!” I replied.

We shared the house as a teacher and her student, almost like a sister and her younger brother.

However, after calling me so hastily, I saw that Tia was lying relaxed on the sofa. Her arms were reaching toward the ceiling.

“Are you exercising?”

“No, come and hug me, quickly… What are you doing?”

I was looking at something, anything that was far away from Tia, but she kept staring at me. I really tried to escape, to avoid gazing into her eyes, but then Tia started speaking in a low voice.

“Judah… Aren’t you coming?”

You want to die? That was the tone she spoke in. I hesitantly approached Tia, but she was less than hesitant. She reached out and grabbed me. Her stern expression became soft and caring as she hugged me.

“On days like today, we have to take a break. What were you doing in there, anyway?”

“We have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. We’ll have nothing to eat for breakfast.”

“Yes, you can go. But that’s something that has to be done tomorrow, isn’t it? There’s nothing to do today, right?”

Tia shifted me to the side of the sofa like a girl sleeping with her doll, and she had no intention of letting me go. It wasn’t that cramped, for the sofa was generously sized. Yet, I couldn’t escape, so tightly was I being hugged.

“Yes, nothing to do today. So don’t complain. Sleep now.”

When I didn’t speak, Tia looked down at me with a frown.

“Why don’t you answer?”

“…Yes. Good night.”

I had wriggled around in her arms countless times, but in fact, despite my sullen expression, it felt really good. Tia felt really good.

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Oh, I saw a movie.

After seeing Now You See Me 2, I did a paid preview for Train to Busan, so I saw that too.

I enjoyed both quite a bit.

Of course, in the case of Now You See Me 2, I wondered why China was the background.

In the case of Busan, it was surprisingly fun for Korean zombies.

It was a fun day.

All of you are happy, too… Have a nice weekend!