TFOA Chapter 26

Gilbert, the admirable village head, said he would donate half of today's harvested root vegetables to Raul's tavern. His reason was that if there were neighbors who were hungry but had no money and could only nibble on basic bar snacks, they should be given food.

"As expected, good deeds are something only people who can afford to eat do. Not just anyone can be a village head. Right?"

Niksi playfully poked Gilbert's side with her finger.

"You never know. Someone who becomes able to eat and live well thanks to my good deed might help someone else in turn."

"I don't believe in that stuff because I have trust issues with people."

"Ha ha. Then you wouldn't believe in me either?"

Gilbert handed her a white root vegetable with beautifully peeled skin.

After all, Niksi was also one of those neighbors who was hungry but had no money and could only nibble on basic bar snacks.

"People who give me food to eat are the exception."

Niksi pursed her lips and bit into it. It was sticky and tasted like dirt.

Gilbert rolled around the harvest that remained only half-full in his basket.

"...Should I secretly take some of this to Mr. Richter's house tomorrow too?"

"To the painter? Why secretly? You could just give it to him."

"Mr. Richter doesn't really accept things when they're given to him."

"That's true. The painter is also one of Auvers' human-distrust members."

Niksi, who had finished eating one root, straightened her body that had been leaning.

"I'll take it to him tomorrow. I left a shovel at his place anyway."

"A shovel?"

"Yeah. He said 'If you don't fill in the bean holes, I'll bury your paintings there,' so I diligently shoveled for a few days."

Gilbert couldn't imagine the painter saying more than three words. He chuckled.

"I'd be grateful if you did that."

Both the painter and this neighbor before his eyes were people he had worried about because they had many peculiar corners, but they seemed to be getting along well enough.

Not only that. As they say, a strange sweet potato grows next to a strange sweet potato—the strange people were subtly banding together well.

Gilbert stared intently at Niksi's profile as she chattered about the painter's messy living patterns.

He had no complaints about them banding together subtly.

It didn't seem like the two of them banding together would become dangerous elements threatening the village's safety.

As the village head, he had no worries, and as a friend, he had no childish feelings like 'I want to be closer!'

But Gilbert, as himself...

"Aren't you scared?"

"Of what?"

"Benjamin Richter. He was a soldier from the enemy country."

Now she brazenly knocked on the painter's door, but she herself had only started casually striking up conversations with him not too long ago. It had been just over a year now.

Because she was someone who couldn't shake off the past and had been burying it quite deeply and for a long time.

Simply put, she held grudges for a long time. She just didn't show it.

"He's a soldier from the enemy country and someone who's hard to even talk to. Who knows... as some people say, that Germanic savage blood might flow through him too. Aren't you scared? What if his current appearance isn't his true nature and he's hiding it? What if he might change suddenly at any time? And also..."

"......"

"He might have... killed people."

If put in complex terms, she still found that man difficult for such complex reasons. She just didn't show it.

Niksi looked at Gilbert.

A vacant gaze that seemed to be looking somewhere else, slipping away from her eyes.

It was unmistakably the gaze of someone whose mind was elsewhere.

—Tap.

Niksi raised her hand and lightly stroked Gilbert's head.

Thanks to that, he, who had been lost in other thoughts, turned his head toward her.

"Don't keep making that expression. It's bothering me."

"...Huh...? That expression?"

"Yeah. Not the village head Gilbert expression, but the Gilbert Grace expression."

The appearance of the kindhearted him with one layer peeled away.

An expression of inexplicable loneliness that made her feel like 'You weren't this kind of person!' and like she needed to make a fuss and find out his inner heart.

"So don't make that expression. It makes me feel like I need to get to know you deeply. I'm not good at that kind of thing."

Opening hearts, approaching with one's true self. Friendship deepening. Becoming best friends.

Easier said than done.

For her, who had difficulty understanding normal people's emotions, it was the same as saying, 'Well, now that we've become friends with linear functions, shall we discuss Bourbaki's definition of functions?'

In other words, she had no idea what it meant.

Whether the other person opened their heart or chest, Niksi couldn't tell what the difference was, and she didn't understand why they were opening anything in the first place.

Right. So when she wondered 'What am I supposed to do in response?' and asked, this time the other person would say back:

'You were this kind of person? How could you not understand my feelings.'

No. From my perspective, it's a one-man show where you're playing both the drum and the gong by yourself.

That's why Niksi avoided meeting that mysteriously deepest hidden true persona of people.

"...Then I can't set the mood in front of you."

"You can set it! You can set it, but so..."

How should I explain this? Niksi made a groaning sound and waved her hands dismissively.

"Just know in advance that I'm not good at giving decent answers!"

"Why go that far? It wasn't anything special."

Gilbert scratched the back of his head and laughed awkwardly but refreshingly.

He was his usual self.

Alright. Getting up from his seat, he efficiently gathered the harvest to give to the painter and transferred it to Niksi's basket.

"Then I'll leave this delivery to you, Niksi."

"Roger that. Roger."

Niksi, staggering under the weight of the now-bulging basket, set off on her journey again.

Gilbert happened to be going to the village hall to resolve some village matters, so she decided to escort him to the hall.

"Ah."

In front of the hall. At her single exclamation, Gilbert looked at her.

"Then why do you take food to the painter so he doesn't starve? Aren't you scared?"

"Hmm..."

Uncharacteristically, he drew out his words quite long.

Whether he had finished this and that judgment, Gilbert grabbed Niksi's shoulders.

Then he spun her body around and pushed her away with a gesture that said 'go on your way.'

It was clearly a gesture refusing to answer.

Niksi, who had been suddenly pushed away, turned around with a look of absurdity.

"I don't know either. If I knew that, I'd probably set the mood, so hurry up and go!"

"Geez..."

Grudge-holder indeed. Niksi grumbled as she headed home.

After escorting the busy village head Gilbert to the hall and greeting the village people returning from field work, Niksi's daily routine was over.

On the way, she was near Betty's house, so she briefly stopped by.

Betty was still in the middle of making twisted rodent sculptures.

"Oh my, where did you go to get so covered in dirt?"

"Hi Betty! Living and trying to make a living led to this! Do you happen to like yams?"

"Of course."

Niksi handed over more than half of the yams that had filled her basket to Betty.

Betty, who laughed saying her mouth would be sticky for a while, gathered several canned goods in exchange for the yams.

Sausage risotto canned goods made with smoked sausage, tomatoes, peppers, and seasoned beans. It was a successful barter.

"Still, don't go up the mountain late at night. There might be some wild beasts around lately—the village animals keep dying."

"Wild beasts?"

"Yes. The village people are probably gathered at the hall discussing it right now."

So that's why Gilbert was summoned to the hall, Niksi thought.

Betty said that just yesterday, the chickens from the house across from hers had disappeared.

There was no commotion during the night, and no trace of chicken feathers, so it might be the work of quite a large beast, she said.

Moreover, the baby sheep that had been born recently had also disappeared without a trace.

Curious about the incident, Niksi visited the house across the street where the attack had supposedly occurred.

The chickens in the coop who had witnessed the accident scene were trembling in terror, huddled in a corner.

She secretly hoped there would be police tape in front of the chicken coop. Because traces of incidents always made her curious.

But the chicken coop was too clean.

Whether the beast had plucked chickens from the coop like getting soup from a vending machine, there wasn't even a single claw mark.

'How boring.'

"So don't wander around too late at night!"

"Thanks Betty!"

After saying goodbye to Betty with a hand kiss, Niksi continued her journey home.

Today's goal was to grate kudzu roots, let them harden softly, then make pudding.

To do that, she needed to get home early today!

That had been the case until just 5 minutes ago.

But she, whose life had many side branches, couldn't possibly go straight to her intended goal.

She kept pondering something and turned away from the path home toward the northwest of the fields.

"Painter!"

The place she arrived at was the beehive Niksi liked to stir up the most. The house of the painter Benjamin, who would scrunch up his face whenever he saw her.

"Painter? Not here?"

As always, Niksi poked her head through the window and clunk set down her basket inside the painter's room.

The painter's house was always quiet and dim, but today without anyone there, it didn't feel like a place where people lived.

'The house feels warm, so it doesn't seem like he's been away for long.'

Paints and a painting knife that seemed to have just been organized caught her eye, as if he had been painting.

'Then he must have just stepped out for a moment.'

Right now it was just night, not too late at night, so she wouldn't be breaking Betty's warning!

With that excuse, Niksi decided she would 'wait for the painter!'

She sat down properly, stretching out her legs. And she mulled over the mysterious beast that had taken the village animals.

Since Auvers was quite rural, she didn't think there wouldn't be such beasts.

However, what mysteriously bothered her was how skilled at hunting this beast must be to leave not a single trace.

She flopped backward.

"I have a feeling. Something interesting is definitely going to happen."

She pressed her index finger between her wrinkled brow.

Lying on the floor, she contorted her body like Rodin's 'The Thinker.'

"Right. I feel like something is hidden."

—Click.

Above her head, she heard the sound of a door opening.

"Something incredibly incredible too."

Humid water vapor. The bitter scent of a water-soaked hazelnut forest.

At the familiar painter's smell, Niksi raised her chin to look above her head.

And she made direct eye contact with Benjamin, who was coming out shaking his hair as if he had just washed it.

"Right? Paint— Oh."

His stern expression, water droplets like sweat flowing down through his hair across his face. The water droplets ran smoothly along his jawline, racing across bare skin without any fabric obstacles.

Finally, they dropped onto the floor where Niksi was lying.

Definitely something was hidden. Something incredible.

Benjamin covered Niksi's eyes tightly with a towel.

"Ah, hey, hey hey hey, painter, tie it a bit more gently."

He had tied it so tightly that Niksi's head, with blood not circulating properly, had turned red like a well-wrapped watermelon.

She hadn't tried to look on purpose—she had just happened to turn her eyes to where the freshly washed painter happened to be, and he happened to be shirtless.

Opening one's eyes wasn't a crime, was it? Niksi felt it was unfair.

But Benjamin couldn't hear her sense of injustice.

The 'Oh.' exclamation that seemed to have risen from Niksi's belly just kept echoing in his ears, making his blood pressure rise.

"I didn't know you were washing! If I had known, I would have been meditating or something!"

"......"

"...Actually, I have bad eyesight! I'm practically blind. I can't see anything! I only saw steam earlier, so there's nothing to be that embarrassed about! Ha ha."

Of course, it was a lie.

Being a born observing chemist, the moment his upper body was recognized by her eyes, she had instinctively completed a full scan within 0.6 seconds.

The 'Oh' exclamation was like lightning flashing first, followed by the belated thunder.

The painter who always buttoned his shirt up to his neck and never rolled his sleeves beyond his elbows.

His body had long and short small scars scattered here and there. She had known his height would give him good skeletal proportions, but... she hadn't known he would look that good.

He took out the shirt he had neatly folded and put it on.

While putting his arms through the long sleeves and carefully buttoning up to his neck, he kept watching warily in her direction.

"Don't you have something else to say besides that?"

He stood in front of Niksi after carefully putting on his shirt, outer garments, and even wrapping himself with the blanket he often carried around, despite it being early summer.

"What, what...?"

When he approached, Niksi shrank at the wind that suddenly blew.

Although she had lost her sight due to the towel, she could smell his sandalwood fragrance amazingly well.

"...What do I have to say to you...? Uh, why did I come here?"

"......"

"Is that not it? Then the reason I appeared covered in dirt?"

Niksi rambled trying to guess the right answer.

'Why doesn't this girl ever have the normal option of saying sorry?'

Benjamin looked at Niksi's head, which had now turned blue from lack of blood circulation, and sighed.

He crouched in front of Niksi and untied the knot.

"Not that kind of thing. Simply."

"Uh... um..."

"......"

"...Amazing?"

"......"

"Ah, hey, hey hey hey, humanely speaking, don't strangle the philtrum."

Benjamin untied the towel.

"Starting with 's.'"

"S?"

"Right."

"...So crazy?"

Are you crazy, really?

He swept back Niksi's bangs, which had been pressed against her cheek ridiculously like a sheepdog's.

Only then did Niksi, who had regained her sight, blink her eyes.

"Forget it. Just quickly tell me why you came and go back."

"Um, well..."

Niksi, who had been rubbing the red marks pressed on her forehead, got up from her seat as if something had occurred to her.

"Ah! Painter! I want to have a cultured conversation about this!"

She rummaged through the basket full of yams looking for something.

Dirt flew everywhere. Thanks to that, his spirit became distantly faint, having finished cleaning the floor that morning.

"This is it."

What she pulled out was a bundle of wire that had turned brown with rust.

It was something he had grown familiar with seeing at the border, but it didn't suit the trivial village called Auvers.

Benjamin quietly looked at the wire bundle Niksi had handed him. It looked very familiar.

"...It's a snare."

"Right. You think so too, right?"

"Where did it come from?"

"From someone's hideout I discovered today."

The form twisted spirally with a thickness like a reed. The shape that would tighten the loop when pulled, and how it had been fixed to the ruins of a broken house.

It was exactly the same as the one that had been carelessly set up beside the trail yesterday and caught Helen's ankle.

"It looks the same to me as that other one. What do you think?"

The one that had caught Helen's ankle. The snare that seemed recently installed and the rusty old one found in an abandoned house.

If both were handmade and had similar structures?

Benjamin raised his eyes to look at Niksi.

There was no gesture of affirmation, but Niksi could tell.

The painter was thinking the same thing as her.

Then it was time to show off the pieces of curiosity she had collected.

Seemingly handmade snares. Someone's hideout. Animals that disappeared cleanly. Could this really be coincidence?

No!

Niksi's sixth sense, having spent half her life in the military, was telling her.

"You know, painter. I think there's a bad hunter in the village. What do you think?"

"......"

"Why, when there are many people gathered together, there's always bound to be bad ones among them. It's the law of conservation of weirdos."

"......"

"Why are you staring at me like that? It feels strange."

"No."

"Anyway, it would be nice if there were only good people in this good village, but there might be one strange guy mixed in."

Niksi shook the wire bundle.

"Like the owner of this thing, who steals other people's livestock and sets traps for people."

"...Stealing?"

"Oh right, the painter wouldn't know, would he? Well, chickens and sheep from the village have been disappearing since a few days ago. They think it's the work of beasts, but I don't think so. There were no traces of beasts and no commotion either!"

She finished her story and wore a proud expression. Perfect logic! Amazing insight! Wouldn't detective officers have to step aside?

But even after time passed, there was no standing ovation.

She had thought it was an amazing deduction, but such rude silence! Niksi, who had become sulky, plopped down on the floor.

"So the village people don't seem to have noticed, but I have a feeling that there's a bad hunter hiding in the village."

"Any solid evidence?"

"Uh... there isn't any?"

Benjamin covered himself with his blanket like a quilt and lay down on his side.

"Wait, wait. Don't sleep, listen."

Niksi grabbed his shoulder and pressed down. He turned his body with displeasure.

"It's plausible! So if we pick out people in the village who know about hunting, we might be able to find the culprit!"

"Whether there's a hunter or not, what does that have to do with me in the first place?"

"It does matter!"

"How?"

"Would you just watch the place where you live turn into a wasteland?"

Her question was both obvious and not obvious.

The painter was originally someone who had drifted into the village in the first place. He was an outsider and a stranger. So from the beginning, whatever happened to the place where he lived, what did it matter to him...

"...I'm not interested."

What business was it of his?

From the beginning, his relationship with Auvers was screwed up.

Benjamin lay on his side again.

Why!

Niksi, still frustrated that her argument wasn't over, grabbed his shoulder again, but the painter closed his eyes as if he wouldn't respond.

'So stubbornly blocked.'

Niksi moved to his side and rested her chin on his shoulder as he lay on his side.

"Painter."

"......"

"Someone asked me 'Aren't you scared of him?'"

Since it was Gilbert who had said that, Niksi was inwardly surprised and amazed.

She had thought that Gilbert, unlike other people, wouldn't have any major aversion to the painter.

"Right now, to the village people, you and the hunter are the same kind of existence."

What she had learned during her time in the military, though she hadn't particularly wanted to know it, was this: humans are social animals.

In such community fences, remaining as someone unsavory helped with absolutely nothing. Unless one was a moron dreaming of a dictatorship.

Such a path would only be lonely and desolate. Like herself at any of those times.

"Painter, at this rate you'll get driven out of Auvers. Even now you're on the outside. Even if someone dragged you away, everyone would casually wave goodbye. Would that still be okay?"

Niksi recalled something her superior, Noel Hugger, had once said.

It was probably what he had said to her when she was irritably saying, 'I don't know why or how I should be friendly with people.'

To her, who didn't know and couldn't understand universal goodwill, he had said, 'Help them. Then good things will happen.' Just like talking to a four-year-old kindergartner.

Help? Kindness? How could such things help her situation of being ostracized by people?

She had thought bribery would be better.

But Niksi tried doing as he said, pretending to be deceived.

Helping people stupider than herself required persistent patience, but exactly three weeks after doing that ridiculous thing, something did change.

People began to change their assessment of her over nothing special.

From 'mad dog' to 'she's a mad dog, but not a bad dog.'

"I'm... not okay with it."

"......"

"I'd like you to stay here."

"Why?"

Like a fortune that I'm destined to become your 'most precious person'? He asked as if reciting.

"No."

Niksi answered quite firmly. Only the one who had created the mood felt absurd.

"Then why?"

"Because you and I are similar."

The fact that both were ultimately outsiders who couldn't mix in.

Herself, who couldn't understand people's emotions. The enemy soldier who could absolutely never mix with people.

Ultimately, herself and him, both destined to forever remain on the outside.

"No matter how much we pretend our insides are worn down, we're ultimately destined to wander searching for warmth."

Niksi muttered, using his shoulder as a cushion and squashing it.

People each carry a seed called loneliness. That was true for him too. Though he hoped others would never know.

"...You're heavy, so move."

He just closed his eyes. Loneliness and such things. He wanted to pretend not to know until the very end.