Chapter 58

Chapter 58. "What the Dead Feel Toward the Dying." 18

After hearing those words, Narsh stepped away from Kal and bowed her head to him once more.

If Aruma had heard those words, he would have been truly saddened.

“I am sorry. I acknowledge my wrongdoing. So please forgive me.”

-Does acknowledging your wrongdoing mean you will accept punishment without complaint?

Narsh obediently nodded at his words.

“Yes.”

At that, he stared steadily at Narsh.

Just as he was about to speak, Kal smoothly moved to stand in front of Narsh, shielding her, and looked up at him.

“I am sorry, but I will intrude for a moment. Could I not receive the punishment you intend to give my lady? I am the one who brought my lady into this place, and furthermore, I am the one who removed the heart from your forehead. I believe that should be enough reason for me to receive punishment in my lady’s place.”

At his words, all of us looked at Kal, who stood in front of Narsh and looked up at him.

Kal said that with a broad smile on his face, which only made everyone look at him even more strangely.

The dragon, who had been silent, spoke quietly.

-It is not you who decides that, but I. Step aside. Otherwise, before I ask you to pay for her crime in her stead, I will make sure you do not see this morning’s sun.

At his words, Kal’s smile vanished completely, and he moved slightly aside with an extremely bitter expression.

Narsh was once again looking up at him.

He spoke.

-What is your name?

“I am Imid Narsh.”

-Narsh. I ask you. Answer me. Why did you take my heart?

“Because I wanted to live.”

-And?

“I wanted to live and try smiling like the people around me. I wanted to grab Mr. Jeff by the neck and shake him like Kal, then laugh fiercely at him.

I wanted to take a wonderful man like Mr. Han as my husband, like Miss Rene did, and smile happily.

And I wanted to always smile coldly at others like Luna, while wrapping them in warmth.

I wanted to toss out jokes and smile shamelessly like Mr. Jeff, and I wanted to hold a beer mug in one hand and smile pleasantly like Mr. Jimant.

And I wanted to smile wonderfully, like Exel. I wanted to keep living and be sure to try doing all of that.

That was why I dragged my dying body here and followed Kal into this place. I acknowledge my wrongdoing. If you will punish me, I will accept it.”

Narsh held her head high and spoke as though reciting it all without taking a single breath.

After finishing those words, she lowered her head and let out a small sigh.

Then, with her head still lowered, she turned slightly to look at us and smiled clearly.

“I wanted to try smiling like all of you, even if only once.”

As I listened to her words, something surged up inside my chest.

Damn it!

I heard a strange sound and turned my head, only to see Kal, who had been standing silently beside Narsh, shedding tears as large as chicken droppings.

He remained like that for a moment, then seemed to notice everyone’s gazes and quickly raised his hand, roughly rubbing at the corners of his eyes.

Narsh, Rene, and I showed faint smiles.

-Is that so? If you say that, then I wish to ask you something. What was your wrongdoing? Tell me. What crime did you commit against me?

His sudden question flew at us, and all of us lifted our heads to look up at him.

And at that moment, thanks to the sunlight that had finally risen to some extent, we could roughly make out his true form.

It was quite a sight.

His outer skin was intact, but the enormous pair of wings attached to his back had lost their membranes, leaving only the bones barely remaining.

When I first saw him and thought there was some kind of structure on his back, it seemed I had been looking at those wing bones.

He cannot fly like that.

However, everything else was so clean that it was impossible to think of him as a corpse that had been rotting for four hundred years.

But now that I looked, it seemed they did not rot like other living creatures.

The body I had expected to be decaying was cracked here and there.

That was right. It was cracked.

Then did that mean they did not rot, but instead turned directly into earth?

Perhaps because of that, trees had sprouted here and there from his back.

Well, when we had seen him before, he had been a small hill in the north.

But when I looked closely, there was a strangely shaped scar on his chest.

It did not seem to be recent. It was probably a wound he had received from someone when he was still alive.

It looked like a scar from being cut by some kind of sword. I also tried to identify the color of his body, but his entire body was a dull gray, so I could not tell what kind of dragon he was. He was absolutely not a silver dragon simply because he was gray.

Narsh tilted her head a little at his words, but still answered his question clearly and properly.

“I stole your heart and tried to extend my own life. I committed theft.”

-Because you wanted to live. Does that become a crime?

At his words, Narsh’s eyes widened, and we all wore puzzled expressions.

What does he mean?

“Yes?”

-You wanted to live, so you tried to take my heart. But does that become a crime?

“Um, if you put it that way, then… before that, what I did was theft.”

-Did you not say you wanted to live? If so, is that theft not meaningless? If one of you were hungry and stole food, would you ask them to answer for that crime?

Huh? We—though by “we,” I meant only me and Kal—looked up at him with puzzled faces, but only Narsh and Rene were smiling softly.

Luna had been wearing a sour expression since earlier, so I left her aside. Narsh looked up at him with a gentle face.

“Humans are different from other races. I do not know about dragons like you or other races, but humans do ask someone to answer for that. Even if they did it to live, what they did in order to live becomes a crime. I am sorry, but you do not seem to understand humans very well.”

This somehow feels a little embarrassing.

After we got married, Rene had also continued asking me questions like that for a while, with a face that said she had always been extremely curious.

If a person on the verge of starving to death stole bread from a bakery and ate it, would that be a crime?

I naturally nodded, and Rene gave me an extremely bizarre look.

According to her, Why would that be a crime? They did it in order to live.

I looked at her, laughed for a while, then patted her head and said,

Before anything else, what he did was a crime. He may have done it to live, but he stole something that belonged to someone else.

At that, Rene had spoken with contempt in her eyes. Rene’s personality back then had been very different from how it was now.

Do humans weigh right and wrong more heavily than life?

I had no choice but to smile bitterly and nod.

Mm. To think I would hear that same conversation again here.

In any case, Narsh said that, and the dragon looked down at her as though he did not understand, tilting his head.

At that, Narsh smiled brightly and said a few more words.

“Then how about this? Let us reverse the situation. I stole your possession because I wanted to live. Then, from your point of view, how do I appear? Rather than a person struggling to live, do I not look like a mere insect that stole your precious possession?”

At her words, the dragon, who had been tilting his head, straightened it.

-I am already dead. If a living person says she will use a dead person’s possession because she needs it, who would object?

“But then how do you explain your current situation? You rose like this to catch the thief who stole your possession, did you not?”

Narsh said that with a playful smile, like a child listening to an adventurer’s thrilling tale in a tavern.

Is your heart pounding quite a bit? To think you are playing word games with a dragon.

Narsh, now that I see it, you are quite a bold young lady.

However, Narsh’s adventurous expression was greatly reduced by his words.

He spoke confidently.

-There must be a reason behind all things. In your case as well, you coveted a dragon’s possession because you wanted to live. If so, you must have been prepared to some extent, must you not? A resolve such as: since you obtained what you wanted, you would run away even if it cost you your life.

When this object in my forehead came into your hands, did you not have that resolve? If you struggled to live without even that much resolve, then I would call you a fool.

Narsh stood with her mouth open, looking as though she had been struck by his words, and he continued speaking again.

-If someone stole the bread you possessed because they were hungry and ran far away, would you hire a ranger to catch them? No. You would not go that far over a single piece of bread. Unless one were hungry enough to die at that very moment, no one would do such a thing.

I am the same. Look at me, Narsh. This is a dead body. What use is this mass of mana to me? The amount of time I can move in this state is not very long. Perhaps one day?

If you had stolen this from me with such resolve and managed to escape without being caught by me for even a day, you would have been able to live again.

I, too, would have left whatever such a person stole from me as a gift, if they had the resolve to flee from me to that extent. A person of that caliber would have earned the right to possess my belonging.

After hearing his words, Narsh looked blank.

Her lips were moving slightly, and no matter how I looked at it, she seemed on the verge of bursting into tears again.

Kal, who stood beside her, also raised his head blankly and looked up at the dragon.

A short while later, Rene approached Narsh’s side and began soothing her again, while Luna continued looking up at the dragon with a sullen face.

While I was wondering about Luna’s behavior, the dragon spoke again.

-Narsh.

At his call, Narsh lifted her reddened eyes and looked up at him.

He looked at her for a moment, then slowly raised his head upward.

And his voice came.

-From where I stand now, seeing you struggle to live, fail even at that, and fall into despair makes me think this.

“Yes?”

-It may sound strange, but I pity you.