"Hei Amaris, have you ever go hunting?" Alma asked Amaris in the afternoon.
The girl's face is buried in the book she read. Truthfully Alma doesn't know what Amaris read because the letter looks like a strange symbol for her.
"Yeah, why?" Amaris replied shortly.
"How's the hunt? Can you tell me anything about it?"
Amaris looked up from the book she stares at Alma in silence for five seconds before smiling. "The leader gives you a hunting mission?"
Alma squirmed in her seat, Amaris gives her that smile again. Alma is now sure there's something in this mission. "Yes, it's five days from now. Can you tell me what is it like?".
Amaris' smile deepened, her dimples showed in both of her cheeks. "Just wait and you will know. Ah yes, who's your partner?"
"A jerk called Rohan," Alma grumbled when she remembers about that annoying man.
"Don't worry, he's a capable Noctacian. You will enjoy it," Amaris encouraged.
"Uh, I rather partner with someone else than that man," Alma muttered.
"What's wrong with me?" a voice asked from the door. Rohan leaned against the door with his usual lazy face.
"You! Why are you here?" Alma asked with gritted teeth.
"Relax, I also don't want to team up with you but I don't have any choice since that's an order. I'm here to tell you that you will train with me tomorrow morning."
"What?! Why do I have to train with you?"
"Because you're weak. Meet me in post 12 at eight o'clock," he said.
"You!!" Alma yelled again, but Rohan doesn't look back.
Amaris just ignore both of them and continue to read her book.
"Aargh! Why is that man so annoying," Alma grumbled again.
***
It's been five days since that, the last five days feels like hell for Alma. She has to put up with Rohan's poisonous mouth. He keeps mocking Alma for her skill, but what can Alma do? She's indeed still weak. Alma already steeled herself to get stronger after her fight with Rohan, because she realizes how weak she is. So, despite feeling annoyed, Alma also feels grateful to Rohan. After all, in the last five days, he helps her train to perfect her control.
Now Alma is waiting for Rohan in post 19. The man said to wait for him in this place.
"Where's that man?" Alma muttered. It's been fifteen minutes since their appointment time. Alma is not a fan of waiting and tardiness.
HONK!
A horn startled Alma. She looks to the source of the voice and sees Rohan driving a container. "Get in, Kumaika!" he yelled.
"I can hear you even if you don't yell, and how many times I told you, my name is Alma, not Kumaika," Alma retorted.
"Ya, ya, just get in quickly will you?" Rohan said impatiently.
He quickly drives off after Alma closed the door.
"Where are we going?" Alma asked.
"To the hunting ground, Kumaika," Rohan replied.
"You know, please stop calling me Kumaika. I have a name," Alma complained.
At first, she doesn't mind the nickname as she has plenty of nicknames before. But then when she asked what Kumaika means, Amaris told her it means 'traitor of their own race' in Noctacian language. Of course, Alma will feel upset being called like that. She might no longer human, but that's not something she wants.
"You better get used to it. Everyone called you like that."
"What do you mean by everyone?" Alma asked.
"I mean everyone in the family. All of them already heard about you and they gossip about you."
"Why they do that?"
"Because you're a Kumaika."
"Really? You guys never seen a Kumaika before?"
"What do you think? The chance of someone become a Kumaika like you is only one in a thousand. The rest don't survive."
Alma gets silent after hearing Rohan's explanation. If what Rohan and Zach said true, then how many lives her family already sacrifice for their so-called 'protection'? Alma never feels her family so hypocrite like she feels right now. They said they fight against Noctacian to protect humanity, but they have lost their humanity. Such an irony.
***
Alma and Rohan currently crouched behind a big bush, their eyes watched the surrounding alertly. "Listen Kumaika," Rohan whispered. "We will hunt animals but we also hunt poachers," he continued.
"What do you mean poachers?"
"This is our hunting area, we're the ones who take care of the habitat in here. But some poachers like to come here and hunt the animal inside. Now, we can't let that happen right? We have to kill those intruders."
'What?! Why we have to kill them? We can just scare them off."
"Because they keep coming and make the animal in here become endangered. Besides, not all the poachers are locals, some of them are the spies our enemies sent."
"But-".
"Look we have one, get ready," Rohan interrupted.
They watched the poachers walked through the forest carrying a rifle in his hand. Rohan signaled Alma with his hand 'wait and follow', Alma nodded and follows Rohan tailing the man.
The poachers still walked calmly without noticing there are two shadows following him. Then suddenly, he falls down a pit. Alma can hear a scream and then silent. When Alma and Rohan reached the pit, she was petrified by the sight in front of her. Inside the pit, the body of the man is skewered by a wooden spike.
"What is this..?" Alma whispered, trying to hold her nausea.
"A spike trap. There's many other like this and other trap like a bear trap."
"What… what did you do?" Alma asked shakily when she sees Rohan pulls the man corpse from the spike.
"What else, collecting his body of course. We can't let the body in here or other poachers will be suspicious." Rohan dragged the body behind another bush and covered it with some leaves.
"Let's go, we still have many jobs," he said.
Along the way they keep encountering poachers, some of them died because of spike trap, and some of them were killed by Rohan. Alma just watched, her feeling turned from apprehension at first to numb. What she feels grateful for is Rohan never asked her to kill the one that still alive, he only asked her to hide the corpse and cover it.
"Hey, Rohan."
"What is it?" Rohan answered without looking at Alma
"You said we came here to hunt animals and kill poachers. But why all this time we never hunt animals and only poachers?" Alma asked suspiciously.
"Hah, you should realize by now that the one we hunt isn't animal but human."
"Why did you lie to me?!" Alma snapped
"Because you're weak, you won't be able to go this far if I told you the truth from the start, right?" Rohan quipped.
"Of course! We killed humans Rohan!" Alma fumed.
Rohan turns his body and looked at Alma's eye. "That's how Noctacian survive Alma," for the first time Rohan's voice turned serious.
"That's how we survive. We can't survive if we don't eat humans. We might stay alive by eating animals, but that doesn't help us. While we're weak, our enemy won't let us go. They will take every chance to destroy us. We have babies, kids, and even the elderly in the village. Is it wrong if we want to survive? We can get humans from the cemetery, but that's not enough to feed the entire family. We will starve if we don't hunt. If we can eat human food, we won't be like this either. But this is how we are created, we're born like this," he explained with a sad voice. Alma can feel that this man in front of her doesn't enjoy killing. He kills not because he wants, but because he has to.
"I'm sorry…" Alma muttered.
"It's okay, I know it's hard for you to accept all of this because you were human. I hope you can think about what I said to you."
"Yeah, I will."
"Let's go back now. We will pick the body along the way. Alma, if you want to survive you must remember everything in this world doesn't consist of black and white."
They walked back in silence. Alma just followed Rohan blankly, her head still full of conflict.