๐๐ถ๐บ๐๐ฟ๐ฎ ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ล
A cherry blossom leaf falls on my nose.
I opened my eyes slightly and smelled the cherry blossom but as a minute passed, I blew it away with my nose.
A voice speaks, most likely coming from a younger boy. "You okay?"
I turned to see a man in his late twenties wearing a ragged montsuki while resting in my hammock watching something from a screen.
The man's unsharpened katana was stabbed to the grass next to his scabbard, since he was pretty much ignoring me, I called out to him. "Hey, who died and told you that you could rest in my hammock?"
"Then make another hammock, and besides you like laying on the grass more and someone has to use it."
Akira returned my question with sass as he let out a single "ha". The boy who spoke earlier, held tightly his metal pipe which he found on the side of the building he's currently in, and began to attack the clearly inexperienced group of high schoolers.
"Quite the delinquent you are."
He adds. The memory was from a first-person perspective of a boy holding a metal pipe meaning it was me who was currently brutalizing most of them while the more experienced one gets a hit or two at me which seriously hurts.
After a few seconds, I respond. "Shut up alright, I was dumb as hell back in my last year of middle school and I sure wasn't about to let my only classmate who actually interacted with me get beat up by some ruffians that have been ordered to do so."
As I attacked them, another child was behind me, wearing the exact same uniform as I do as we were both attending the same school, that boy wasn't exactly terrified of what was happening but in fact, wanted to stand up and help me fight with me but his leg was injured so he could only watch as I get knocked to the ground with a punch to my face before rolling to the side and standing up and hitting them at the side of their head.
As I watched the memory, I could feel myself cringe a bit so I decided to head deeper into the woods. "Not surprised by my appearance in your so-called paradise?"
"Not really, dreams happen in our brain, and since you're connected to mine, I already expected this."
I said before finally entering the forest of cherry blossoms.
He shrugs and he continues to watch, leaving me by myself. The sun barely passed through the leaves but the light that passed through led me to another open space, this time it was flat.
I breathed a sigh and then closed my eyes.
Opening them again, I looked at the open space and saw many pillars of stone then in my hand, I saw a hammer in a chisel.
Although I never knew their names, I remembered their faces quite well so plan to build a bust, a type of sculpture that focuses on the upper half of the body so that I could remember the day I sinned for killing an innocent being.
As I sculpt the first bust, I felt nothing of guilt about what I have done. I did what I believed and mercilessly gave them death to send them to a better place but in truth, I did it because their eyes are the same as mine and I greedily killed those people because I despise these eyes.
But for some reason, I couldn't feel guilty about it. "Haha..."
I laughed self-deprecatingly trying to know whether my humanity has truly died or I deluded myself into thinking that I did the right thing.
"Probably the former, but no matter what it is, the facts still remain, I am a murderer and I will bear my sins till the day I die."
I said as I finish the first bust. The face was similar to the man that screamed at me and the first face that I had remembered.
Although sculpting wasn't my strong suit, I studied a great deal in realism but recreating something so realistic is still quite hard, however, I was in a dream so I could close my eyes and see a newly made bust, the only reason I'm manually doing it is for my own reasons, my own "punishment".
As I sculpt the second bust, I reminded myself that I was in a dream so theoretically, I could just hit in random spots and it would magically form a bust made by a master.
My eyes fell on the first bust and doubts start to form. "Am I really half-assing my punishment?"
The longer I think about it, the more I hated myself so I stopped caring and moved on, bottling those frustrations again.
As the fifth bust was finished, my dream abruptly came to an end and I snapped awake from the knocking on the door.
'How long have I been out?'
Akira abruptly answers. "I don't know the exact time but from your memory, you woke up at 6 a.m the last time you checked the time was about 9 a.m and it has been a good thirty minutes since you last checked."
'So I've slept for about three hours, goddammit I still need a good sleeping schedule, I can't go breaking it now.'
I thought to myself as I walked toward the insistent knocking.
Opening the door, I immediately put my hand on my katana but met Alice's gaze.
"Took you long enough." She said with a pouting face, it looks like she was getting anxious about disturbing the nearby people even though she wasn't really loud.
"What?" I asked, still in a dazed state as I blink multiple times, trying to focus my gaze.
"Nothing just came to see you since I've heard you finally returned."
She briefly said, it seems it was weird for me to take that long but since I was in the maze, suspicions on me were not much so I didn't care.
"I see, well I'm alive and well as you can see."
"Also a woman named Jade was looking for you..."
Alice speaks as she looks from side to side.
'What could she want from me?' I thought to myself but Alice asks me for an answer.
"...what's your relationship with her anyway." She asked, eyeing me suspiciously for some reason, naturally, I answered. "We met inside the maze, not much interaction after that."
"I see..." She responded before seeing a group of people approach us so Alice quickly put a stop to our conversation and went to her room as that group passes me.
I closed the door and laid down on my head.
"By the way, how did it feel doing her?" Akira asked half-jokingly, trying to tease me. I open my mouth and answered as I closed my eyes, trying to sleep. "Pretty much the same as having sex with a human, just with fur. Not my cup of tea in my opinion, since the fur wasn't that fluffy so it just became annoying."
He responds with a "Huh." before going silent so I opened my eyes and then spoke. "hecellou, imwai inaime iiss Heciimyerac. (Hello, my name is Himura.)"
I said in common, even now, although I don't stutter and take long pauses anymore, anyone would notice that I speak weirdly and take short, almost unnoticeable pauses when speaking.
As I said back in Bellken, the language of Common doesn't roll off the tongue since I wasn't even from this world, it also doesn't help the fact that my translation ring, always translates it into Japanese so holding a conversation with anybody was already hard enough.
For words to be formed in Common, they must be combined like any other language, and for someone to pronounce it, you would remove a single letter from how each letter is said except for the last letter, e.g., Apple = Appee (Ac + Pe + Pe + El + E).
It's quite simple on paper but pronouncing it is challenging, it's only thanks to the fact that I practiced my most common responses and most common questions like "What is that?".
Longer, more complicated words are still hard but I can manage it without the other party finding out that I spoke the language until a few months ago.
I sigh to myself, adding another thing for me to work on other than getting stronger but I continued speaking to myself.
The door opens, making me surprised though I didn't show it.
I saw Shin enter the room alone and asked. "Were you talking to someone?"
"No, just talking to myself since I still couldn't speak common naturally."
Shin immediately understood since he knew that I came from another word.
"I see, then I think I can help with that."
"How?"
"You just came back don't you, I'll tour you around the town and you will introduce yourself to many of them, after all, talking to people in the same language is the best way to learn." He said, smiling at me.
"I see, I appreciate it."
I said, smiling slightly since I didn't expect the help but for some reason, I felt quite happy. Shin laid down on his bed and soon slept after that conversation, it seems he was drunk so tried to sleep as well, trying to get as much energy as he can for tomorrow since I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of those people.
This would also be a good alibi to investigate the town for the potential traitor, it took about three hours but finally managed to sleep.