Wearing the Face That She Keeps in a Jar by the Door

"Get the fuck out of my house."

This Luna (if she had shared her real name with him, but he supposed there wasn't as much reason not to as in the modern world) seemed to have lost any trace of fear of him, as she didn't even react to that. She didn't move, didn't blink. She kept looking at him as if trying to extract the answer from within. The eyes are the reflection of the soul, he thought. How is my soul?

"Get out. Now."

"You didn't have it to defend yourself," she repeated.

"That's none of your business. I've been more than generous to you. But get out of my house. Get out, or I swear to God...."

His hands were shaking, he realized. His hands were shaking, and if he was able to retain the slightest hint of steadiness it was because they had closed around the rifle again, unnoticed.

And yet Luna didn't seem afraid of him. Perhaps she had indeed seen in his eyes that he wasn't capable of that.

He had killed monsters plenty, and humans too, unfortunately. But... It wasn't that easy.

"Shuji... You're going to throw me out there, with all that's going on?"

He grimaced.

"Then get out of my sight." He sighed, resigned. "There's plenty of room in this place. And it's big, we don't have to see each other until the storm passes."

Luna simply nodded.

Having finished eating, she disappeared into the darkness of the stairs. For him the difference between light and dark was something easy to forget, though. The dining room was lit by a single candle, billowing as if driven by a strange wind. As if rocked by the storm that battered the walls of this inn.

Shuji put his hands to his head.

"Really, I haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing."

He sighed, again.

As if so he could let go of all the burdens inside him, dragging him down, always, always down.

Once she was gone, he would finish what he had started.

Yeah.

He was scared, but there was no point in going on. Two years was long enough to say that he had tried everything he could and had had enough.

He remained for a while in that position, his face hidden in his hands, curled in on himself on the table on which rested the meat of a giant bear that he had torn to pieces with his bare hands in a world completely different from the one he had been in. Had been born.

He was going to die in a world completely different from the one he was born in.

But then Shuji just got up and went to his room.

He sat down on the bed, leaving the rifle propped against it. He wanted itclose, though he didn't think Luna was exactly a threat, he could never be sure. Of nothing or nobody. Furthermore, just as Luna had broken into this place, some bandit might show up seeking shelter. It wouldn't have anything strange. He thus felt safer.

This world was strange, dark, and full of danger.

He had seen too many people let down their guard and die. People not close to him at all, but it had been hard not to be affected anyway by seeing the terrible ways their lives had ended.

He wanted to die, okay. But on his own terms. Not killed.

And in peace. Not brutally.

It didn't mean he was going to let himself get killed by whatever came his way. That was completely different.

Shuji went to bed because he didn't want to see her more than anything, he wouldn't be surprised if she went rummaging through his pantry in the middle of the night, that she hadn't had enough. And out of habit, his life had become a series of mechanical routines, without gain. That too.

Sleep? That would be completely impossible, even for a last dream, where everything was as it should be.

He wasn't even tired in the physical sense.

Spiritually, he supposed this was how someone who hadn't slept a wink for weeks must feel. Whole weeks.

He wasn’t wrong. He didn't sleep a wink throughout the dark night.

Shuji just sat there, listening to the storm, until it left with the dawn.

***

Shuji left the room first thing in the morning, by which he meant as soon as the sun came up. What would be the point of wasting even more time? And, of course, despite the lack of sleep he didn't forget his rifle. It was his most reliable partner.

He sounded like a complete idiot with chūnibyō when he said that, but it was no less true for that.

If you pulled the trigger, it would shoot. He hadn't found anything more reliable in this other world.

He knew it was too soon, but he hoped Luna had had the sense to leave quickly, even before he woke up (he hadn't slept a wink, of course, but she had no way of knowing that).

So he made a round down the hall, knocking on doors with a clenched fist. He didn't know which room she'd gotten into exactly, he hadn't bothered, so he'd have to try them all. For all he knew she might not even be in this hallway. It was an inn, there were rooms to spare, as he had told her.

"Are you still there?"

He received no answer either time. Shuji went down the stairs, he didn't see anything or hear anything either.

"It looks like she's already left. Good."

He supposed he wished her good luck.

Now that she wasn't in front of him, he could let go of his anger. Admit that he had reacted defensively. As if he had something to hide, something to be ashamed of.

He had fought long enough. He wasn't selfish for wanting to rest.

Isekai.

Like most young men his age in Japan, he had liked those kinds of stories. He had even dreamed of being the protagonist of one, in fact. How ironic. How damn stupid.

He would say that the gods had done this to him to teach him a lesson, but he had been neither the first nor the last to have those kinds of fantasies. If that were true, then Japan would be suffering from a severe lack of young boys.

Well, their population did have an aging problem. But not because young boys were continually disappearing by falling through a portal, or getting run over by a truck, only to end up in places like this!

Anyway.

The thing is, there was no lesson or meaning in what had happened to him. Shuji had just been unlucky. That's what real life was like, while people were busy looking for patterns, drawing crazy conspiracy theories out of thin air.

Half of it was chaos, but that wasn't a truth that was easy to be comfortable with.

Shuji wasn't sure he'd feel better if he found out it had been at the whim of some god of this strange world, or if he would have been comforted by being given the mission to save the world from the Demon King or some other cliché, though.

Maybe chaos, where he could blame no one, not even himself, was best.

Shuji dragged the chair he had used to dine with a complete stranger last night away from the table, more or less to the center of the room. He didn't want his body to be visible through the windows as he decomposed. While he was at it, he'd close the curtains, pull down the blinds.

While he was at it.

Once it was done, he put the barrel of the rifle back in his mouth.

fFinger back on the trigger.

This is not what I want, he realized at last.

I want to hug my mother. I want to be with my friends again, even if they're all idiots, because I’m the biggest idiot of them all. I want to...

I want to live, Shuji thought as tears trickled down his cheeks.

But I can't.

No, what he'd had all this time couldn't even be called a life. This was simply finishing the job.

He was about to pull the trigger, in truth he was done with hesitations, but suddenly the room was filled with light. It was so sudden after what seemed so long in the dark that it was a shock, it burned his retinas, causing him to recoil, to groan.

Light had entered the room.

Because someone had opened the curtains.

Because someone had come in.

No. Back. Luna had returned to the inn, or maybe she had never left. She was a shadow approaching him in the midst of a world that had gone white. She placed her hands on the rifle, again. But this time not to try to take it away. Not forcefully, demanding.

Very gently. As if she was afraid of scaring him and making him pull the trigger.

"Please, don't do this."