Side Story 1: His Name (I)

How does it feel to be chosen?

The boy would occasionally peek out the window to see the children leaving the filthy, ruined slums to meet their new parents. Their faces, which had become quite bleak, were shining with new hope and happiness, unlike when they were at the orphanage.

While children were expecting to meet their new parents someday and get out of there, the boy was praying that time would pass quickly and he would become an adult. This was because he didn’t want to be hurt by useless expectations.

The orphanage where the boy lived was always crowded with children abandoned by their parents, and everyone had a sad story.

The children sometimes used to shut up when the boy appeared, as though they competed as if there was a ranking in misfortune.

Not surprisingly, among the children of the orphanage, only the boy did not receive a name from his parents.

People in the orphanage who were busy taking care of numerous children did not necessarily name the boy. Children with names were also called ‘boy,’ ‘you’, and ‘there’ rather than their own names anyway.

The same was true of the children. ‘You know him’ mainly replaced that boy’s name. In the first place, the boy’s presence was so faint that he was rarely called by others.

He wasn’t particularly friendly with anyone, and he didn’t particularly hate them. Both likeability and hatred were possible if interest was a prerequisite.

Sometimes the boy deliberately hid his footsteps. Then no one in the orphanage found him. Hiding in the shadows and watching the world confidently go by even without him, the boy wanted to cry sometimes.

However, when he bowed his head to cry, nothing flowed over his pale cheeks. Just as usual when he closed his eyes and looked at the sun, his eyes just turned white.

People used to say that the boy was broken somewhere. It was not necessarily wrong to say that he was broken since the most basic human means of communication – laughter and crying – did not come out at will.

He didn’t know why he had to live, but he believed that he would someday find it.

Like the children who walked through that alley holding the hands of grown-ups in joy, the boy would one day stand tall in his sunny life and drive away the shadows that were invading him.

It was around that time when he first held a sword.

The orphans did not have a proper way to make ends meet, so they used to become handymen or mercenaries.

The waist of a female mercenary, who stopped by the orphanage for a while to meet someone she knew, had a long real sword, different from a kitchen knife. The mercenary approached him as she felt the boy’s gaze.

— Do you want to try it?

The boy nodded. However, the first sword he had ever held was so heavy that his hand could not even wield it. The mercenary touched the boy’s arm once and said,

— You should eat a lot. But the sooner you learn the sword, the better, so I will sharpen a wooden sword.

Then the mercenary went outside for a while, picked up a suitable wooden rod, and began to trim it. When the mercenary went outside, the boy, who did not believe she would return for him, blinked.

The boy asked,

— Why are you so kind to me?

— Do I look like I’m being nice to you?

— You don’t know me.

The mercenary replied, stopping her touch to trim the wooden sword.

— I was also from this orphanage. I am going to have neither parents nor children, so my family is only orphans who are in the same situation as me.

The mercenary held out the sharply trimmed sword to the boy as she said so. The wooden sword forged by the mercenary was strong and fit the length of his arm.

He looked down at the mercenary who was still sitting, holding a wooden sword that weighed less than a real sword, but weighed more than he thought.

The mercenary spoke quietly,

— Do you want someone to get you out of here someday? Such miracles don’t happen to ordinary people like us.

The boy knew that fact better than anyone else. The mercenary looked into the boy’s eyes and raised herself. Then, without a word, corrected the boy’s posture of holding the sword. She said,

— If you want to get out of the mud, you have to develop strength.

The mercenary never came to the orphanage again after that. However, the words she left and the wooden sword remained by the boy’s side, becoming his milestone.

The boy lived a busy life. He swung a wooden sword whenever he had time, and when a mercenary who could handle a sword like the mercenary who handed him a sword visited the orphanage, he approached them and asked them to refine his posture.

Although they all looked troubled, they did not refuse because they had also gone through a period of anxiety at the orphanage while not knowing what to do.

One day, a drunken male mercenary said, since the weight of the real sword and the wooden sword was different, it would be helpful to practice with the real sword as much as possible. When the boy said he didn’t have any money, he gave advice with a crooked voice.

— After becoming an adult, the temple will distribute clothes and food.…. If you sell it at a lower price, there will be someone who will buy it.

Thus, the boy had a real sword, but lost a place to stay. He passed the examination to join the Knight’s Templar, which he had aimed for.

However, until he was officially appointed, he was just a trainee knight, and there was no accommodation given to such a boy. No, actually, they didn’t even ask for his name.

The first few days he just tried to close his eyes on the street. However, as he was homeless, he was not relieved of fatigue, as well as his body aches, which made it difficult for him to train as a knight.

With the minimum cost of maintaining dignity for trainees, they were too tight to pay for their meals.

It was a child younger than him who reached out to the boy in trouble.

— How many days have you been sleeping in front of my house? It’s a neighborhood where people die easily, but I don’t want to clean up the body with my own hands.

When the boy looked at the child without saying anything, the child asked the boy if he had nowhere to go. The boy nodded, and the child looked around for a while and whispered into the boy’s ear.

— Do you want to stay at my house for a while? I used to live with my father……. It’s been a while since that man came in. It’s a house that doesn’t have anything to steal, but I’m a little scared to be alone.

— Is that okay?

— I’m telling you in advance, but I can’t feed you. I don’t have anything to eat. I’m only giving you a place to avoid rain and wind.

There was no other option. The boy did not hesitate and replied to the child that he would, and the child moved away so that the boy could come in. From that day on, the two stayed together.

The child who introduced himself as Kynthia spoke very well for his age, and to be honest, he was very precocious. Even considering that the children in the back alleys grew up so quickly, he acted like an adult and a little desperately.

And he often used to anxiously look around. Like someone who believed something very scary would chase him.

He didn’t ask because he didn’t want to talk, but soon after, the boy saw the source of Kynthia’s anxiety.

It was the darkest and coldest morning before sunrise. The shabby door swung open with a loud sound. A heavily drunk middle-aged man appeared with a loud shout.

As soon as he heard the voice, the boy could guess that it was this man that Kynthia was so afraid of.

When the boy appeared, the man began to act more harshly, asking if he had already brought a man into the house.

Kynthia shook his head, making eye contact with the boy, but when Kynthia was dragged out on his knees by the man, the boy could no longer wait and see.

Instead of a sword, the boy’s fist hit the man’s face. As the man faltered, the boy’s next fist immediately flew into his chin.

The man let out a gasp and relaxed his strength from the hand holding Kynthia’s hair. He was skinny compared to the man, but a drunk middle-aged man’s body was, in the first place, no match to his body training to become a knight.

The man, who was hit a few more times, stopped resisting and began to beg for him to stop.

But the boy didn’t stop. The man in front of him would not have listened to Kynthia’s plea to stop either. Only after turning the man into a blood rice cake did the boy step gently on the man’s head and said,

(PR/N: blood rice cakes refers to blood clumps.)

— Don’t ever think about coming back. This is not your house from now on.

— I, I get it…… Just let me live…!

— Crawl out. I don’t want to touch your body anymore.

The man hurriedly crawled out on all fours. Kynthia stared blankly at the series of events. His hair had been torn apart and disorganized. Kynthia burst into laughter and said.

— It’s the first time I’ve seen that b*stard behave like that.

— Did I do something wrong?

— No, you did a great job. ……He was a b*stard who came in when he was in his mood and beat me up, but he was looking for a chance to sell me and do something pimpy.

(TL/N: pimp – a man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking a percentage of their earnings in return.)

Kynthia tried to comb his tangled hair with his hands, but soon quit.

— My original name is Futill.

He said quietly. He didn’t think there was a need to tell him, but he revealed the hidden fact.

— I was named by that little b*stard who was in your hands before.… ‘Useless’…… That’s what it means. That’s why I don’t like that name. I heard from the lady next door that fate would follow one’s name.

Kynthia put his ear to the door for a moment to check whether the man would come back. After confirming that he had gone away, he roughly opened the half-loose lock and leaned his back against the door.

— So, I made a new name for myself. With ‘Kynthia’. It’s pretty, right? It’s the goddess of the moon in the legend.

Kynthia tried hard to smile, but he was shaking as if the shock had not gone away.

— I won’t ask you anything.