In Fontaine, below some mountain somewhere in Beryl Region, in an unnamed village.
---
*{???}*
"Thank you as always, dear," The old lady said to me, her voice warm and soothing.
I nodded and hummed softly in response, carefully placing the sack of potatoes down on the worn wooden floor of her kitchen. The air inside smelled faintly of herbs and old wood.
"Have you eaten? It seems that I accidentally cooked too much again," She added with a smile, her hands smoothing the folds of her apron.
I shook my head from side to side gently, I avoided her gaze, knowing full well what she was trying to do. Without another exchange, I turned and headed toward the door.
I still have 1 delivery left.
'Did it come off as rude?' I wondered as I adjusted the weight of my super hyper ultra ultimate deluxe perfect amazingly strong frame backpack and stepped into the crisp afternoon air.
Maybe.
But then again, I knew her well enough to see through her words. The "accidentally cooked too much" was just an excuse--a kind gesture disguised as happenstance. It wasn't the first time she'd done this.
She was a good woman, the kind everyone in this village adored.
Her family--daughters and grandsons--sent her money regularly, urging her to rest and live comfortably. But instead of keeping it for herself, she spent it on others. Whenever they visited, they would scold her because she kept feeding others, yet she never changed.
Still, I couldn't bring myself to accept her kindness. She lived alone, and though her family provided for her, I didn't want to add to her burdens. She deserved better than worrying about someone like me.
I adjusted the strap of my frame backpack. Only one more delivery to go.
It's exhausting, but I had given up on dreams of a comfortable life long ago.
Instead--
I want to get strong.
If I have strength, I won't have to worry about food, or shelter, or even my safety.
Absolute freedom--That's what strength promises. I could do whatever I wanted, and nothing would question me.
I would be like a natural disaster, accepted as it was natural.
Starving? Irrelevant. I wouldn't even need to eat.
Injuries? They'd bounce right off.
Paying for things? Please. Let them try to charge me--I'll hand over a rock with my name on it and tell them to make it worth something.
Can't understand me? Not my problem. I'd toss them to the moon and move on--Gently, of course.
The strong don't care about anything anymore, after all.
...Right?
'Sigh'
I sighed and slapped my cheeks lightly 'What am I thinking.'
Every three months, I carried sacks--sacks of carrots and potatoes cultivated in the mountains near my home--to villages and shopkeepers.
I handled everything; tilling the soil, planting, and tending. The rivers providing me with clean water for washing and the mountains offers solitude.
It wasn't easy, I was young when I started after all. Pests were a constant threat, but over time, I learned to set up a proper farm to keep them at bay when some passing adventurers taught me.
They probably took pity on me when they saw the 9 years old mute little girl me trying to sell them some when I offered. They are good people, I want to be like them.
The days of planting and weeding were peaceful, almost meditative. Harvesting, on the other hand, was grueling. And the deliveries? I don't even want to think about it.
'Fortunately, I built this super hyper ultra ultimate deluxe perfect amazingly strong frame backpack!' With it, I could carry three sacks of potatoes on my back, leaving my arms free to hold another two.
Yes, I'm carrying three on my back.
Balance? Gravity? What's that against my muscles?!
Every 3 months I carry 4 sacks of potatoes and 1 sack of carrots to 4 different houses.
Three sacks on my super hyper ultra ultimate deluxe perfect amazingly strong frame backpack and one sack for each my arms.
'Hm?'
---
"Look at Liliane!" A boy's voice rang out, snapping Liliane out of her thoughts. A group of children stood by the roadside, their eyes wide with awe--or perhaps disbelief--as they pointed at Liliane, the one who wields the legendary hyper ultra ultimate deluxe perfect amazingly strong frame backpack.
"She's like a gorilla! Like a mita!" One of them exclaimed, his tone parts admiration and exaggeration.
"Hah?! Do you guys think you're cool when you say stuff like that to a girl, huh?!" one of the girls shot back, for some reason defending Liliane. Her glare was enough to make the boy flinch.
"Yeah!" Another girl chimed in, nodding vigorously. "Look at the snot on your face! You look like you were dropped as a baby!"
"W-what's wrong with it! I'm a kid--Right right?!" As the boy wiped the snot off his face, the boy trying to gain support, looked at the last boy in the group who was dazed, gazing at Liliane.
The boy who initiated this whole thing froze, looking at his dazed friend.
In the dazed boy's eyes, The world seemed to blur around him, replaced by a dreamlike haze of flowers and glowing light--
"... She's gorgeous," He whispered, his voice barely audible.
The first boy gaped at his friend. "What?!"
--It seems the little boy doesn't want to play marbles anymore.
Liliane raised a brow and kept walking.
---
*{Liliane}*
After being made fun of by the village kids, I laughed it off and delivered my last two sacks, then headed home. The path back to my house, through dense forest and rocky trails!
It's part of my training, yep, training.
It's real, denying it just means you have a big chunk of your brain missing.
Living deep in the mountains is a choice made by me. Not because It's free. For real.
Most importantly, hunting is easier when you're one with nature! So yes, training.
... Anyways.
Now, lying in my bed, I let out a deep sigh of relief. This bed had been one of my biggest investments--a comfort I didn't take lightly--a solid frame, and a thick mattress. Rest was essential for strength. That much I knew. [1]
The final delivery was uneventful. The shopkeeper was polite as always, offering a quick word of thanks before moving on with their day. I appreciated their brevity--It wasn't a secret that I couldn't speak, it spared me the awkwardness of fumbling for a response. [2]
'Hmm...'
'Should I... read?' That thought came to me suddenly.
'Right... I shouldn't be too idle.'
I rolled my self to the left side of the bed and reached out for a book at the miscellaneous shelf a bit above.
This shelf is where I place things that I frequently use just before sleep or while resting.
'Err, well, most of the items placed here were passdowns.'
There are 3 worn out books placed at the shelf. One is a book about agriculture, second is a light novel from Inazuma, and lastly, a book on basic arithmetic for kids. The last book, is the one I got from a group of those green adventurers a decade ago when I was 12.
Yes, I am uneducated.
I couldn't afford it nor was there anyone willing to teach me.
But that was fine
You don't need what they teach you at school to butcher livestock. As long as you know basic arithmetic so that you don't get swindled and practical skills to go about your daily life, you will live.
Not that I would know what they teach you at school though.
'Sigh, how evil.' I sighed as I got back on the bed, a book now in my hands.
It was the light novel from Inazuma. [3]
I quite vividly remember how I got it, so pretty much there's this...I forgot how I got this.
Anyway, I turned to the page where I left off before.
Why I'm reading a light novel or whatever this book is instead of the educational books I have, you say? Well, I was practicing how to read properly.
Though I was mute, I could still make some sounds, and I frequently heard how others pronounced words. It would be more convenient if I could speak, wouldn't it?... I.. I-..
---
Her hands, her fingers, trembled as if the weight of its pages suddenly equaled that of a boulder.
The book seemed heavier with each breath Liliane took, the effort of holding it up feeling insurmountable.
Yet, despite that, she kept on reading aloud.
The sound of the wind outside mingled with the rustle of leaves, her halting, monster-like pronunciations forming a rhythm, her tongue twisted awkwardly around the sentences, the meanings sometimes lost to the effort of pronunciation alone.
The first one slid down her cheek, it was warm, soaking into the pillow beneath her head. Another followed, then another, until it became a steady stream.
Without warning, her tears began to fall.
Her lips moved still, shaping the words she couldn't hear over the silent sobs wracking her body. Each letter, each halting phrase, was forced out with the determination of someone desperate to be understood, even if only by herself.
The book slipped from her grasp, falling onto her side with a soft sound puff. Her fingers hovered above it for a moment. Her chest heaved as she bit down on her quivering lip, her voice finally falling silent.
'This is a waste of time.' She thought, the tears wouldn't stop flowing as she kept wiping it with her sleeves but to no avail.
'What am I doing? Why am I crying?' [0.9]
Liliane's started forming questions, thoughts she never had before, things she never say to herself--Why cry now? You had this since you were born! Why do I have to bear all these misfortunes?! Why does it have to be me?! I have tried my hardest not to inconvenience with my presence!! I learned gratitude for life!--negative reasoning flooding her mind.
'Why am I suddenly like this?' She asked herself. 'Was it not enough? Everything beyond my control, everything forced upon me… While also being all alone in this wor--S-STOP! W-why am I saying those things?!'
Suddenly, the surrounding scenery changed.
It was a familiar place, in fact, she had just gone to this place this morning. It was just a distance away from the house of that nice old lady.
She looked around and from the hue of everything, it seems to be just around noon--No, afternoon just between midday and close to sunset.
'What going on?'
Liliane inspected her surroundings and checked her body for any abnormalities, there is none on her body, but the place is definitely different from that a few seconds ago.
===
*System Panel: Initiating*
*Unsealing Memories.*
===
"Are you also deaf? Didn't I tell you before to stop leeching off of grandma?!"
Liliane's eye widened, she quickly looked at the source of the voice, It was a line imprinted into her mind.
She might've moved on from it, but that doesn't mean she'd want to back to experience it again.
"Ay. ont. min. tu. solee--" A little girl said incoherently in between sobs, tears flowing down her face as she wiped it with her little hands as soon she felt the wetness. She truly didn't mean to, she doesn't know what to do at this moment, and all she can do is apologize.
However, that didn't prevent the knuckle of the young man from smacking her and interrupting what she was saying. "Then why do you keep coming back?"
Liliane's heart panged at the scene, her fist clenched as she watched everything continue from the distance.
"Look at what you're wearing!! Isn't that the same fabric grandma asked me to buy?! We worked ourselves to exhaustion just for some random orphan from the mountains to benefit from it?!" The young man, seemingly venting his anger. Constantly lightly slapped the little girl's face while talking.
It's humiliating.
"o-o. soree--" The words that came out of the little girl and the words inside her head, the little girl wished she could switch it.
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
"eet. hers. sap. peis." The little girl pleaded she couldn't cover her head because the man kept preventing her from doing so. 'It hurts, please stop, I'm sorry,'
The young man's hand trembled for a moment and stopped. His eyes subtly shook unnoticed by the crying little girl.
He sighed and lightly gripped the girl's hair with his left hand, while the other hand slightly trembling, is holding the little girl's jaw.
The little girl, forced to look in his direction, held the young man's hand, trying to get out of his hold but failing. The young man is significantly stronger than her, bigger, and older, nothing a little girl like her can go against.
So, the little girl is forced to look into the widened eyes of the young man, and as he spoke;
"Listen well, If you're going to leech off of others like this, you better have some value to offer. You are useless to anyone as you are now; you don't know how to cook, you're uneducated, with the way you smell, it seems you don't even know how to properly clean yourself, and you're weak. Look at you, you can't even talk..." The young man's voice was steady and chilling to the little girl.
"You are just a walking burden."
As he said the last part, for some reason, unknown to the child, his voice cracked for a moment, his hold on the little girl weakening, giving the little girl the chance to escape from his hold.
The little girl ran a few steps and picked a rock, turning back as she looked at the young man, seemingly intending to throw it directly at him.
The young man didn't move, his eyes locked on hers. His gaze carried a strange, desperate hope, as though he wanted her to throw him the rock.
The violent young man saw the determination in the little girl's eyes as she looked at him.
But she didn't. The little girl's fingers slackened, letting the rock fall to the ground. Then she turned and ran, disappearing into the distance.
As her figure shrank into the horizon, the young man remained motionless.
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the rustle of leaves in the wind.
Liliane stood frozen in place, watching the scene play out as if it were the first time. Her heart ached as she relived the memory. 'Yes, this is exactly how I remember it,' She thought. The little girl running to the mountains, the young man left behind… all of it.
She didn't follow the little girl, as she remembers exactly what would happen after, so there is no need to watch it.
However, what she's curious about is what happened to this violent young man, one thing she had never seen before: what happened after she ran… From what she remembers, this young man is in no way related to that grandma he's talking about.
He's a stranger to that old lady.
So, is he just a violent loser who beat up children for no reason?
She's curious.
She was just a child then, she couldn't understand, nor did she want to know why he had done that to her, she's just an uneducated orphan child from the mountains who just wanted to play, eat, and have fun with the other children from the nearby village.
Well, what he said indeed have some truths to it, she's indeed leeching off of the kindness of the old lady and other sympathetic villagers back then, but how was she supposed to understand that she can't do this and that?
She's but a child.
Ignorant of the world.
Living in the mountains, alone.
A being who has only lived in this world for a mere 9 years, while he has probably lived the world for more than a decade and a half.
Liliane is now standing at the place where the girl picked up the rock, looking at the direction the little girl ran, the young man whose head gazing at the ground behind her.
*Rustle
Suddenly, Liliane, startled, hurriedly looked at the young man.
He's also gazing at where the child ran, just like Liliane a moment ago.
Albeit, there's a difference, the once steady gaze, now trembling uncontrollably.
His hands facing the same problems, he set his eyes on them slowly.
The young man, now kneeling in the dirt. His hands trembled as he stared down at them, clenching and unclenching his fists. His shoulders shook, the weight of his emotions pressing down on him.
"I… I'm sorry," He whispered, his voice cracking. "Forgive me…"
After Liliane heard that, the moment she blinked, the scene changed again.
In contrast to the previous scene, where the sun's casually blessing the world, now it's night.
The sun's glow is replaced by the moon's.
Staggering slightly and stepping back, she looked around her to check--It seemed to be a camp, a camp of bandits to be exact.
She squinted, her brows furrowing. 'Huh? Did he feel guilty because he hit a child?'
She shook her head, confused. '... Why show it to me in the first place if you're not going to finish it...?'
"Huh? Lumian? Where the fuck is your group?" a gruff voice echoed through the night.
Liliane blinked. 'Who?' She turned, Her gaze also shifting toward the source of the voice--she was standing behind a little boy, also facing the grunt.
She decided to move, slipping around the boy to stand a little far to the side, keeping her distance but close enough to watch everything. 'Huh? This little boy looks like the young man earlier... Is this his memories then?'
'... Lumian's his name, huh?' She shook her head and squinted her eyes at the scene before her, 'So. Why am I here--'
Her musings were abruptly cut short as a black, semi-transparent panel appeared before her, floating just inches away, as though answering her unspoken question.
However, because of the time, the panel looked like nothing but floating text.
===
*System Panel: Initiating*
*Unsealing Memories...*
===
'Uhm... What?' Liliane frowned, paying half her attention to the boy and the gruff voice.
She reached out instinctively to touch the panel, but her hand passed right through it as though it wasn't there.
Lumian, meanwhile, his posture defeated. "They got captured," he muttered bitterly, his voice laced with contempt. "I mean, that's to be expected from them."
===
**System Panel: Answer--
*Unsealing Memories that have been sealed.*
*[1/3]*
===
Liliane's eyes widened. 'Oh! It can understand! Is it like the Terminal something from Sumeru?' Furrowed her brows in thought, she wondered, to her, who doesn't know anything, the panel awfully resembles the Akasha Terminal from what she heard, with the only difference being that this panel can be accessed outside the borders of Sumeru.
===
*System Panel: Answer--*
*Approximately correct.*
*[2/3]*
===
'No wait, I didn't want you to answer that!' Liliane shouted in her mind, 'You know what, I'll just ignore you.'
She attempted to shove the panel aside with her hands, but it remained stubbornly in place.
The conversation in front of her continued, the grunt's voice breaking her focus.
"Suspicious, how are you here then?"
"Heh, Is that even a question? C'mon you know me--AAAA"
The grunt grabbed Lumian's head with one massive hand, his grip so tight it looked as though he were holding a fruit, not a boy's skull. "You better answer me properly, little boy, or I'll make you wrestle with Meks naked near the Aqueduct for every tourist to see."
"AAAKAY OKAY!" Lumian gasped, struggling in the man's grip. "They're just wasted at the tavern!"
The grunt narrowed his eyes, nodding as if processing this. "You sure you didn't rat them out? After all, this would be the perfect moment for you to report them--when they're drunk and passed out," he growled, lifting Lumian higher by the head to meet his eye, his voice dangerously low, his face--err.
"Why would I do that?! You're stretching out my neck—LET GO, LET GO!" Lumian's words were strained, panic in his voice.
The man finally released him, grinning smugly. "Oh, Hm-K. It was just little uppies. Why are you so dramatic?" He teased, ruffling Lumian's hair like the little boy he is.
---
-End Of Chapter-
[n] : This was written last year, July 16, 2024, this is basically its anniversary, wtf is this fuck ass upload schedule
Latest Chapter:Chapter 19 - Is there a there there.
patreon.com/bitum
[0] : Is the length of the chapter alright?
[0.5] : Bear with me
[0.9] : Her kiddy feelings leaking to her present self
[1] : The cheapest bed she could afford.
[2] : The pay is like a subscription, so yeah, no need to hand money every delivery.
[3] : Fontaine script translation