Are You Deaf When You Hear the Season’s Call? (1)

He tried to regain control and although he failed, he barely avoided crashing into a tree.

Shuji stepped on the pedal after that and the car wouldn't go. Maybe it was the shock, the suddenness of it all, but it took him too long to understand. He got out of the car frustrated, angry, but not worried which was how he should be.

Even after checking with his own eyes that the front tires of the car were flat, deflated, he didn't feel the panic he should have felt. Just dumb surprise, like a kid who would stand with his mouth open at anything.

“But what the fuc...?”

Then, the bandits came out of hiding.

And he choked on his words.

Bandits were the first thing anyone would think of after being assaulted in the middle of the road, but to this day he wasn't sure if they had been mere bandits or soldiers who had deserted.

They certainly gave the impression that they were overdressed. And in uniform.

Black, head to toe, tie included. But with a few touches of gold. Like the chain around their necks.

“Oh, of course.” He'd considered himself a lucky boy until he'd been transported to this world. Then Shuji's luck had only gone from bad to worse. The strange thing, he distinctly remembered thinking, was that it hadn't happened to him sooner. "Look, I don't want to do this. No one has to die today.”

He had told nothing but the truth.

The conflict was completely unnecessary. It was obvious they weren't desperate for money or food to put in their mouths. They could have gone their separate ways, each to their own. They could have sought a weaker target. Or better yet, changed their lives.

But, of course, that's not what happened. Otherwise the boy wouldn't be dreaming of this day.

Perhaps because they saw him as easy prey, they jumped on him. Making a massacre inevitable. He had to defend himself, even if it was against other human beings. Although, like most people in a modern society, he found killing someone unthinkable.

They weren't human beings, Shuji told himself.

They didn't even belong to the same world, so he didn't have to see them any differently than all the monsters he had killed so far. He had discarded the useless sword for an ax, and he had become strong.

In other words, he could do this.

Bandits, soldiers, it didn't matter.

The first of them lunged at him eager as a shark after smelling blood in the water. Shuji parried several blows with his ax, crashing against the enemy's weapon. When he found an opening, he attacked.

But not to the neck, the head, or another of the dozens of ways he could quickly dispatch an enemy.

He went for one of his legs. Making sure not to cut it, because it would be impossible to keep him from bleeding to death after that and he didn't want to see that, didn't want to have such a thing burned into his mind for the rest of his life. He just made the man fall, sinking one knee to the ground.

As if the bandit had prostrated herself before him.

With a groan of pain.

Shuji's next move should have been to slit his throat, but when he heard that he froze like a statue. He couldn't help it.

Suddenly he saw him on the floor, trying, in vain, to stop the flow of blood dripping from his open neck and.... and he couldn't. Cowardly or not, he couldn't.

The next of the enemies threw himself at him. Literally.

Tackling him, managing to knock him to the ground. He weighed more than Shuji. He was bigger, stronger. It was no great feat, not to mention the bandit had caught him off guard. But the details didn't matter. Only that he now found himself

(had found himself)

in a bad position.

But he got out of it.

Quickly.

Shuji got out, and how? By driving the ax into his chest. So, when he jerked it hard to the side, the body flew away.

Two more fell on him immediately, not even giving him time to breathe. Of course. This was a real fight. Not with monsters, but with humans, which was worse.

For starters, he couldn't think and his heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

They exchanged blows with one of his knees driven into the ground, as he hadn't even had time to get up at all. He should be an easy target like that, in the literal sense, but he was managing. A cycle where it was proven that truly the best defense was a good offense, or at least that sometimes offense and defense were indistinguishable.

He swept the legs of one. As he fell face-first onto the hard sand, he hindered his partner.

Not enough to knock him down too, but it gave Shuji time.

To finish getting up. And to hit his enemy with the ax pommel directly in the mouth up to three times. He saw a few teeth pop out, as well as blood, but it was better than corpses scattered around him. Maybe this hasn't gotten out of hand yet. Maybe he would still be able to do this without staining his soul, but without ending up dead.

He needed to live.

He had to get back to his mother.

If there was still a chance, however slim, he had to try. He owed it to her.

“Please. I don't want to…”

What the hell was he talking about?

A chance? He was practically begging. This way he would only make himself look like easier prey, a poor lamb that wasn't willing to get its claws out even surrounded by hungry wolves.

It couldn't be helped.

It was arguably the most popular truism in his country, wasn't it?

Shoganai, he thought as he swung the sword again. He executed a blow hard enough to knock the attacker's sword out of his hands. Yes. More accurately, the blow tore off one of his hands, and then he lost the sword. Blood gushed out, forming puddles, the hand hadn't fallen, not yet, it swung like a pendulum.

He felt like vomiting. Even the sight of animal entrails disgusted him, no matter how much he ate them all the time. Humans were nothing but animals, too. And these people had tried to steal from him, to kill him. But somehow it was... Different.

Somehow it was too much. Almost.

It was a horrible image, but at least it hadn't killed him.

Yet. Yet. He was only fooling himself if he thought he could get out of this without getting his hands dirty. The fight continued as he kept repeating in his head, shouganai, shikatanai, which in the end amounted to the same thing, over and over again, like a mantra, like a broken record.

It couldn't be helped, no, it couldn't be helped.

Sooner or later an attack would be lethal and so it was. So it was. He saw one fall, saw the blood begin to flow, realizing it was like the crash of thunder, realizing there was too much blood, realizing it had gotten out of hand, realizing that, really, shouganai.

Because this world was like that. And he might be no more than an outsider, but when in Rome, do as Romans do.

What they did here.

Nothing but violence and...

I feel like throwing up.

——

He woke up along with the morning sun, along with the forest around him too, probably, although no noise reached his room with the window shut tight. And if it did reach him it probably wouldn't be a pleasant sound, anyway.

Shuji lay curled up on the bed.

Just like during the night. He had slept, but he couldn't say he had rested. It wasn't the first time he dreamed of that day and it certainly wouldn't be the last. During the night, it was a terrifying thing, plunged into the irrationality of sleep and swept along by an unknowable tide.

In the cold, rational light of day, however, it was irritating.

Okay, yes.

He had killed that day. He had killed them all, mercilessly. Because they had wanted to kill him first. But he had killed again. Not that much, more times than he would have liked, but not that much. Still, enough.

Why did Shuji have to see precisely that dream over and over again?

The circumstances in the other times had been perhaps, no, surely worse. That had just been him against some bandits. Self-defense. There was nothing to question, unlike those other times, yet his mind could not stop going back to that place and that time.

And why was that?

Just because it had been the first time?

Was that what weighed most heavily on his conscience as he slept and he could be more honest with himself? The first time he had killed, not the first time he had regretted it?

Shuji put a hand to his mouth. But he didn't throw up.

In the end he didn't throw up.