Swamp Girl! Chapter 4

I sprinted away from the hillside highway, which had quieted down considerably, without stopping.

My feet hurt.

Because I was barefoot. Plus, this body really wasn’t used to doing that sort of thing. I could feel the pressure of the ground against the soles of my feet.
Being as careful with the bottoms of my feet as possible, I angled toward the two people running ahead of me and the river below them. The river was fairly wide, and its current flowed quickly.
How convenient.
We should jump in the river and leave our escape in the hands of the current.

Gradually, I gained on the other two. They were also driven to desperation, but in spite of this body, I was an adventurer. Our levels of experience were different.
It was impossible for me to do things as I had before, of course, but my expertise could compensate for that in its own way. I found some meager comfort in that.
But I couldn’t afford to rush things. From now on, I’d train myself little by little.
In order to do that — first of all, right now, I had to survive.

Roughly three steps away from them, I raised my voice.

“We’re jumping into the river!”

It was important to first determine whether they could swim, but I cut that part out.
The other two were startled by my voice as they ran, but even so, they turned to look at me with clearly relieved expressions.
Then, both of their faces immediately stiffened.

“B–B–Big Sister, wh–what happened? Why do you look like that? W–Where’s the other girl?”

Well, you would worry about that first, I guess. I must have been covered in her blood when it spurted out.
So I thought, but for some reason, hearing about the subject unexpectedly p.i.s.sed me off. For a moment I ground my teeth together, then I shouted at both of them.

“–! …Leave that for later! Can you do it or not!?”

“Y–Yes.”

“I can.”

It wasn’t clear, but for the time being, I judged that they’d be able to swim. In the meantime, I approached the river before us.
I turned to look behind me.
The goblins were looking at us from the direction of the highway, making a racket. Looks like we got found out in the end. In that case, we didn’t have the luxury of messing around anymore.
The riverbank rose into a slightly higher cliff. It hung three, maybe four meters above the water.
No big deal.

“Jump in just as you are!”

The moment I spoke, the young girl took the lead by a bit and leapt off the cliff without the slightest hint of hesitation.
As I expected, Aira wavered for a moment, so I came up from behind, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, and dragged her with me as I jumped.

“Kyaaaaa–”

Aira screamed. But only for a second.
We sank under the surface of the water, and as we floated back up, we rode the river current forward.
Poking my head out of the water, I looked up at the highway. The goblins hadn’t moved from there. They saw us leap into the river and gave up, I guess.
Had we escaped our predicament for now?
The river current was faster than I thought. Honestly, simply floating along was taking a lot out of me, but in exchange, the goblins grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
Even though they were bobbing up and down, the other two somehow stayed afloat too.

“…Let’s go on like this for a while.”

“Guho–, y–yes…”

Before long, the goblins had vanished from sight.

–

–

“O–Oh–…going through all that was terrible…”

Coughing, Aira climbed onto the riverbank. With her long hair wrapped all around her body, she looked like a ghost, but there was also something erotic about the way her thin sack-dress clung to her figure.

d.a.m.n, is she stacked. I tried to come up with something vulgar.
It was erotic, but there was nothing welling up within me.
If possible, I wanted the reason to be because of everything that had just happened, or because I was tired thanks to my long immersion in the river, but if anything, being tired, I’d usually expect to be turned on.1 I couldn’t lie to myself.
In other words, was this caused by my transformation into a woman after all?
Or to be more specific, was it because I’d lost the part of me that would have gotten excited?

The other girl got up in a similar way. In her case, well, having a body appropriate for her age is just fine.
Along with the nasty look in her eyes, she had the sour face to match. Maybe out of exhaustion, which wouldn’t have surprised me, she dragged herself forward with tired steps and dropped to her haunches.

“Hold on for a bit, I’ll get a fire going right now.”

I lost the sword during my stint in the river, but I still had the pouch and knife I took off the unfortunate slaver. Digging around in the pouch, I found a flint striker, so appropriately, while the others took on the labor of gathering the fallen branches in the area, I lit a fire.

“O–kay…”

And so, I took off my soaked clothing.
It wasn’t like I was particularly fond of it, but because it was all I had to wear at the moment, there was nothing for it but to hold it over the fire to dry.
Gradually, the sun sank below the horizon, and the wind felt a bit cool. It may have been summer, but with our wet bodies, we could catch cold. Precisely because there was nothing else, we had to take care of the bodies. They were all that was left to us, in the end.
I had no idea how strong this body was to begin with. There was no such thing as being too careful.
Just in case, I examined the soles of my feet.
No injuries…maybe it was stronger than I expected.

“You guys come over too…You’re going to catch a cold.”

“Y–Yeah.”

“Got it, thanks.”

The two of them took off their clothes too. Unlike my complete nakedness, they…it was just the bottom, but they had underwear on.
Well, even if they hadn’t been wearing it, it wouldn’t really have made a difference. Given my sorry state.

Without speaking or moving all that much, the three of us sat around the bonfire.
Even after our clothes dried and we got dressed again, we occasionally add some kindling to the fire. That was all we did. Under that strange atmosphere, night fell.

The whole time, I was thinking about where we should go from here.
For now, I thought we should head for Telaberan. The river flowed along the highway, so if we followed it, we’d ultimately end up at the port city.

However, there was first the considerable distance to travel before getting there. Though we rode the river current, one day’s worth of travel by carriage wasn’t a short distance either. Since we should’ve had three days left in the journey from the raid site, it would basically take us five days on foot–minimum.
Of course, it wasn’t an impossible distance to walk. But that was only the case with the right equipment.

Right now, all we had were the knife and pouch in my possession.
It was a stroke of luck that the pouch had a flint striker in it, but the rest of its contents were five copper coins and a weird red rock. The weird red rock was literally just that. I knew it obviously wasn’t a gemstone or anything else of value. Maybe that slaver picked it up from the roadside and held on to it because it was strange. Maybe he was torn but couldn’t bear to throw it away, on the off chance that it might be something valuable.

After that, there was the axe that the girl had kept ahold of in the river.
To be honest, I thought that was a pretty big deal. I mean, even I had dropped the sword myself.
Then there was Aira, but sure enough, she hadn’t held onto anything. But that couldn’t be helped, I think. Honestly speaking, that young girl was too amazing.

Anyway, that was all we had. Under these circ.u.mstances, were we going to be able to walk for five days?
Me, I’d manage somehow. The other two…
Slowly falling to exhaustion, my stomach grew hungry. Even though we took water from the river, I didn’t know what to do about food. We were already fairly hungry to start with. I could still hold out, but if I didn’t get anything to eat, before long, I wouldn’t need to imagine pa.s.sing that point anymore.

And what’s more, a.s.suming we even get to Telaberan, where would we go from there?
The world wasn’t so sweet that a couple of escaped slaves could live their days without trouble.
Adventuring was the family business, after all. Whether I could continue in this state… wasn’t clear to me.

“Um…”

“Yeah?”

Silent Aira suddenly spoke up.
Feeling a little put out by the interruption to my thoughts, I looked at her.
Our eyes met, but she immediately turned them away to stare into the bonfire…How should I say this? It was suspicious.

“What is it?”

“Eh, ah, um… um, you know, that person. The one you stayed with when we escaped, she got left behind, right? …I wonder what happened to her…”

Ah, come to think of it, I hadn’t said anything about that.
‘Later,’ I’d said, and forgot.

“I killed her.”

“!”

Faced with that question, I readily answered with the truth.
I could hear Aira, or maybe the young girl, lightly sucking in her breath.

“Wh… why?”

asked Aira. She trembled, but with her eyes on the bonfire. I couldn’t tell if the emotion in her profile was anger or fear.
I sighed and looked up at the night sky.

“It was to save us.”

Looking at the floating moon, I spoke as if talking to myself.
The sparks from the crackling flames, dancing, rose up into the sky the same way. Finding something incomparably dignified in them2, I continued with my words.

“To save me. To save you. And — to save her.”

“…– how would — why — killing her…”

I turned just my eyes to Aira. Unable to understand this time, she looked back at me in disbelief.
Hardly unexpected, is it.

“At that time, her eyes were pleading. [I want you to help me], [I want you to save me]… but that was all. Maybe she was praying, too. But that place had become too much of a killing ground. If I’d tried something, then I probably would have died too.”

There was no question about that. Slowly encouraging her, or perhaps carrying her away, none of it would’ve worked in real life.

“Because you didn’t want to die, was it?”

“Well, I suppose. First of all, no, I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to abandon you two either. That’s why I [saved] that woman, who had no intention of trying to survive.”

I took out the knife and held it out to the fire. Despite its dip in the river, it was still clotted with blood. It wasn’t much of a knife, but that’s life for you.
I’ll wash it later.

“Goblins, you know, can impregnate human women. The long and short of it is, even if I could have left her there, she’d either be beaten to death, or taken away to bear children until she died…It would have been h.e.l.l. Even though she’d be alive.”

The truth was, I’d partic.i.p.ated as an adventurer in the [Goblin Colony Purge] several times.
In the purge, which was essentially a military-run extermination campaign, rather than an adventurer, my position was more like a soldier’s.
Why? Because the operation is closer to being a kind of war. Even among the many kinds of adventurer commissions, it’s considered a pretty miserable task.

The goal, first and foremost, is to eliminate all the goblins in the colony. That’s about it. Though the second is the rescue of human captives, more or less, hardly any newcomers partic.i.p.ate in it, and no one expects them to.
If you ask me why, it’s because before the extermination, and possibly during, nine out of ten captive women die. The lone survivor, in almost all cases, will have gone insane.
Chained, raped without end, and continually pregnant with a monster’s child. How would anyone be able to hold on to their sanity in that situation?
If they’re incredibly lucky, it might be possible to save them, but I, at least, have never seen that even once.
Of course, if we knew about the captive, if we immediately dispatched a rescue team, and if we succeeded, those women would be saved too, I think.
But goblin colonies are a kind of fortress. On a really bad day, there might even be a troll, like this time.
It isn’t a place you can take on with small numbers. Retaliation is the best we can do. Because of that, it’s the military that carries out the subjugation.

And every time, we’re too slow.

“I knew it would be a living h.e.l.l, so it was better to kill her now.”

“But, but you might have been able to manage it somehow.”

“There was nothing I could do.”

I repeated myself to the still unconvinced Aira. Whether she agreed or not, the young girl said nothing. She stared at our exchange intently.

“In this world, there’s no such thing as ‘making it work somehow’. Not [succeeding] somehow. Not [doing] somehow. Especially when your own life hangs in the balance.”

I paused once. I was irritated. I knew I’d lost some of my composure.

“It’s fine to have those sorts of expectations when it comes to trivial things. Hey, maybe you’ll [succeed] somehow. But if that doesn’t happen, what then? What if that’s your life, and possibly the lives of others, at stake?

“What would you do?” I prodded Aira, staring at her. Aira turned her eyes away, but she mumbled, “But…” and “I mean”. I ignored her and went on.

“At such a time, what’s important is always the will to survive, and taking action to make that happen. That’s what they say, right? [G.o.d helps those who help themselves]. …If you flip that around, then even G.o.d can’t help those who won’t try to help themselves. Understand?”

I stopped talking. Then, I took a breath and continued.

“Those without the will to survive, won’t.”

My declaration was a slap in the face to Aira.

Dusky memories revived in the flames before my eyes.
The time when I was a child, doing nothing but crying and screaming, ‘Help.’ Precisely because of that, I couldn’t protect myself or the things important to me.
Was I powerless? That wasn’t it.
I should have been able to do something.
If there was time to cry, if all I did was scream for help, there should have been more that I could have done myself.
And yet, I, and I alone, [made it work somehow].
That was a memory that I would absolutely never forgive myself for, no matter what.

“Palmira.”

“Mn?”

In the middle of brooding over my memories, the young girl, who’d remained silent until now, suddenly opened her mouth.
When I looked at her, she had her unpleasant eyes fixed on me. Our eyes met. I thought she was glaring at me, but somehow, that didn’t seem to be the case.

“My name.”

“Ah, okay.”

Her out-of-the-blue introduction startled me. The look in her eyes was nasty, but that impression seemed to falter in the face of her straightforward gaze.
However, I didn’t know what she was thinking.

“Your name is?”

And so the ball landed in my court. For some reason, Aira audibly sucked in her breath from beside me.
In other words, in order to ask me for my name, this girl… Palmira named herself first? She seemed very mature for her age, somehow.
But paired with her glare, her curt words and lack of expression were unnerving.
If she changed the look in her eyes, it would be perfectly reasonable to say she was quite a beautiful girl, but conversely, that made her all the more off-putting.

It occurred to me that her demeanor could have been the result of her former life as a slave, but when I thought about it some more, I recalled Aira’s unexpected variety of expressions. Maybe it was just a quirk of her character — well, people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

“It’s Chris.”

I’d considered my real name to be Christopher this whole time, but it was kind of embarra.s.sing. So when I was asked for my name, I told them it was Chris.
Besides, it wasn’t because I’d turned into a girl. I used to go by that name a long, long time ago.
In that sense, very few people in this world right now knew my real name. I didn’t intend to go out of my way to hide it.

“Chris, nice to…it’s an honor to make your acquaintance. I would like to go with you. May I?”

Her transition to more polite speech was jarring.
Well, enough about that, it was the second half of Palmira’s statement that puzzled me. You’d expect that after coming all this way, there was no way we’d split up, right?
For the moment, we were all in the same boat. It wasn’t much, but we should work together until we reached Telaberan.

“I don’t particularly mind…”

“I see…I’ve come to like you. I look forward to accompanying you.”

With that, she bobbed her head.

Eh–?

Hearing those unexpected words, I looked over at Aira, but there wasn’t really a meaning to it.
Aira looked dumbfounded for a moment, but noticing my look, her expression became one of surprise and she hurriedly came closer to me.

“I–I’ll accompany Big Sister Chris as well! Always!”

What.
My brain unable to keep up, I looked up into the night sky.

I found nothing divine there.

Author’s Notes
I’m happy that the evaluation went up a little!
↓
That’s right, let’s keep writing!
↓
Is it okay like this? I don’t feel so good about it.
↓
I got insecure, so I’ll revise it.
↓
I’m done revising.

So it doesn’t work when I submit on momentum after all…

Footnotes
1. Guessed: むしろ疲れてたりするほうが、そういうのってこみ上がってくるものだと普通に思う ↵
2. Probably? 俺は、そこに例えようも無い何か神聖なものを想い、言葉を続ける ↵