Vol.1 Ch.3 - Edward Saint

I woke up early the next morning. Way too early, some would argue, as Iactually woke up before my parents, and that’s saying something, because myfather works as a butcher, so he has to get the shop set up, and my mom needsto pick up yesterday’s milk order. It’s a peaceful life for them, but I can’t helpbut call it monotonous and boring.As I said previously, I will be departing on my grand journey today, so Ineeded to get up super early and sneak out of the house in order to begin thistrek across the world. I took out the rope I had tucked away in my closet andtossed it to the green grass below me after making sure I tied it tightly aroundthe windowsill. After that, it was as simple as a hop and a skip!Walking around this tiny little village of mine one last time, I expected to atleast feel a bit sad, but I genuinely couldn’t care less. It’s just too boring!“Dad’s shop is over there, right next to it is the bakery, which runs adjacentto the village well… Argh, I’ve seen it all thousands of times before! Whenis anything ever gonna change around here?! The least they could do is makea library or something to get these goddamned village idiots educated! Butnoooo, they’d rather I wait for months before I can accompany dad on abusiness trip to the nearest town in order to buy myself some new readingmaterial…”Whilst I was busy making rude comments on all the annoying neighbors thathave wronged me in the past, I had heard a peppy, boyish voice show itselfbehind me.“Good morning, Grim.” A blonde-haired boy with bright green eyes the sameshade as mine greeted me, “Heh, I guess it’s still not morning, given the Sunstill isn’t out at this time.”“Morning, Ed! Don’t worry about it, morning isn’t gonna come for a while,so it’s best you don’t worry yourself too much over what the proper greetingfor this time is.”This person here is without a doubt the most interesting person in the wholevillage of Whitehood. His name is Edward Saint, a timid boy with an almostunheard of naivety to him. He’s around my age, if a year younger, but we’vegotten along since we were around five. But don’t underestimate him justbecause of his weak aura, because what he lacks in social charisma healmost certainly makes up for in looks. It’s no secret that he’s the morehandsome between us, to the point where even I can’t deny it.“Did you get everything ready on your side?” I asked.“Yeah, I brought the wooden sword you made me, and the food’s safelytucked away in the hideout.”“That’s perfect! Now that we have everything ready, we’ll be just likeSchnell as we begin this grand journey! Now, to adventur-!”“STOP!!!”Oh, come on! What is it now? I was just about to begin our journey on a highnote whilst striking a cool pose!“I-I just think that we haven’t prepared enough.” Ed tried to explain, “I-Imean, Schnell was alone when he started his journey, and while some foodand a wooden sword may have been good enough for his time, you have tounderstand that that was almost a millennia ago. Surely we can wait a bitlonger before heading off? Ha-ha…”His nervous chuckles had all but given away his true intentions. He didn’t atall think what he said was the truth. Both he and I know that the necessitiesrequired for living haven’t changed at all this whole time, so his entireexcuse was rendered invalid the moment the words left his lips. Apart fromthat, we’ve been delaying this day for a year now. Any more and we might aswell just give up on the entire idea entirely!“Alright, what’s got you so nervous?” I asked with a ticked off tone.“C-Could you give me a rundown of the plan once again? I seem to haveforgotten, heh…”Geez, this guy really doesn’t know when to stop with his endless excuses,does he? I mean, I get being a bit anxious about leaving your home, but a birdhas to leave its mother’s nest eventually! Come on, don’t get cold feet now ofall times!“Sigh, how can you forget such an easy to follow plan? It goes like this: ”Step 1: Acquire Food, Water, WeaponsStep 2: Go out and Adventure!“Simple right?”“Yeah, now I remember. The whole Two Step plan thing you’ve got going on.Thanks for reminding me, but…”Looks like I was right on the money when it came to figuring out the source ofEd’s worries. He’s definitely not the forgetful type, so obviously this wasnothing more than an excuse on his part. Even still, I can’t figure out what itis that’s troubling him to this degree that he doesn’t wanna talk about it withme. I’ll just ask and hope he’s reasonable.“Tell me the real reason you stopped me just now, Ed. Don’t hold back, youknow I’m not one to judge.” I shook him up a bit to try and get him to openup. This was my way of livening people up when they were feeling a bit onedge.“Wah, stop shaking me! Well, i-it’s just, what will my family think of theironly son leaving without even leaving them a letter or something? Isn’t thatkind of sad?”“Ed, I know how you feel, but we can’t give them any info on our location,otherwise they’ll track us down in an instant. Trivis Numerica is a prettysmall country when it comes down to searching for someone, because there’seffectively only like 10 places that are inhabited. Everything else is justcrops and farms as far as the eye could see.”“Right…” He said as his eyes began to tear up.Ugh, he’s gonna start crying again, isn’t he? Oh God of Meditation, Prylos,bestow upon this crybaby the charming and endearing nature befitting of aproud member of the Saint family! Do not let him be naïve to the ways ofthis cruel world, for it will only eat him up the moment he leaves thecomfort of his home! There, I even made a prayer for him. I’m such a goodfriend!But how do I find the right words to convince him fully? Hmm, I need to actbrave and strong, but also show him that we’re in the same boat by puttingmyself in his shoes. That’s what Schnell would do!“Listen Ed, I too have a family like you do. Even still, I think that it’s alrightfor me to follow in Schnell’s footsteps and leave this accursed place to find abetter one. It’s as simple as that – you’re not betraying anyone by doingsomething that you think will make you happy.”“Sniffle, mhm.” He nodded as he wiped away the tears from his face,“You’re right, this is something we both wanted to do for over a year now.No turning back.”As he spoke these resolute words, the pupils of his Eyes shone a brightGreen. Indeed, this was the most obvious proof of his willingness toaccompany me on this trip. In this world, a person’s Eye Color defines theirlife philosophy. To put it another way, it’s a direct indicator of how theyperceive the world around them.Green Eyes signify the Thrill of Adventure, to find something new. It isusually found within people who do not know about a certain subject, but aremore than willing to take as much time as possible to learn it. This is alsowhy everyone is born with a Green Eye Color, or Green Iro as it is called.After having satiated their thirst for learning or otherwise seeing somethingnew, a child will usually convert to another colored Iro, depending on wheretheir newly acquired knowledge of the world leads them.An interesting fact about both Ed and I is that neither of us have convertedfrom our Green Iros, despite being well over the general age range of IroConversion, which is around six or seven. It’s a very rare case to get evenone kid like that, but to have two kids born with this condition in such closeproximity to each other is pretty amazing. That’s also why we kind of gotbullied by the neighborhood kids, for being “Too childish to convert”…Yeah, we didn’t have a lot of friends at this village. What of it? As you canimagine, not converting basically means you’re “still not done with this firstphase of life”, which has a bit of a negative connotation attached to it. Thus,a lot of the neighborhood kids would throw rocks at us and call us names. Ididn’t hesitate to send those very rocks flying back at incredible speeds, butEd would always be the one to put his head down first when the adults werecalled in. He’s way too much of a pushover, but I guess the fact that we bothshared this little Green quirk made us closer, so I guess there’s alwayssomething good that’ll come out of a normally pretty bad situation.“Hey, Lune?” Ed asked after looking up at the horizon.“Yeah?”“Check it. The Sun’s rising. It’s finally dawn, but the stars can still be seen.”“Whoa, you’re right. I wonder how that works. Wait, now that I think about,what even are stars?”“Dunno, probably something to do with the Gods, if I had to guess.” Ednoted, “But I don’t like chalking up the unknown as ‘Something to do with theGods’ anymore. It’s a stupid tradition that encourages ignorance.”“So what do you propose we do about it?” I asked, “It’s not like we can goup there and pick one up to dissect it, right?”“Yeah, but what if… We made it our goal to one day learn the secrets of thestars during our travels? That’d be like a fun side project to keep us occupiedwhile we’re going from country to country.”Whoa! Isn’t that like, kind of a lot to take in? We’re already squaring upagainst a pretty big task of documenting each and every country, not tomention even attaining the funds to visit them all in the first place. Will it bealright if we did that? Then again, checking his face, I knew for a fact that hewas serious about his proposition. It’s at these times when I can’t show anyuncertainty!“I rather like that idea, Ed! Then before anything, let’s make a pinkie promiseto never forget this new task we had added on our first day of our journey.”As I said that, I had raised my left pinkie and awaited his answer. It wasn’t atall surprising that he agreed to it, so we quickly locked fingers and swungthem from side to side before raising them high up into the sky. With thevisage of the sunrise in front of us, it made for a pretty epic sight, now that Ithink about it. With nothing more to prepare, and no more regrets to mullover, we had set off on a journey spanning a lifetime.