TFOA Chapter 33

It had been over a week, yet Benjamin hadn't been caught and thrown into jail. Even the police officer who had been stirring up the village had gone quiet—whether his enthusiasm had cooled off or what.

From his perspective, having prepared his heart for it and all, this left him feeling rather awkward. Of course, that's not to say he'd wanted to be dragged away.

Benjamin leaned against the front door, looking out at the sky where dark clouds hung heavy beyond the hill. Though it wasn't the season for numbness, his hands felt tingly—most certainly rain clouds. Quite long-lasting ones at that.

The village was quiet, the police officer was quiet, the village head was quiet, and the neighbors were quiet too. Normally this would be a situation where heaven itself couldn't be better, but now it was different. He was starting to catch a whiff of something fishy.

The tiniest speck of connection. Meeting Gilbert for the first time—one. The fact that a gun had been aimed at him—two. Before he knew it, he'd struck up conversation and gotten quite a bit out of it—three. Those trivial kindnesses had gotten tangled around his own ankles.

'Again. Not being able to turn away from the situation because of these paltry emotions.'

His bad habit.

Before he knew it, he could tell he'd gotten himself dragged into this mess by a few personal feelings that were something like affection.

'This doesn't look like it'll end easily.'

Like those distant, densely spread darkness and the long rainy season clouds bringing that fishy smell.

'How bothersome...'

Benjamin rose from his seat.

Benjamin was just about to leave the house to tell Gilbert that the police officer knew about someone called 'Mark Richter.'

Someone was standing in front of his door.

"Hello, painter."

It was his neighbor he was seeing for the first time in close to ten days. Always stamping her presence without missing a single day, but after not seeing her for just a week and three days or so, her voice felt unfamiliar.

"You were alive after all. Since you weren't visible, I figured you'd either starved to death or been dragged off."

"Ah ha, well you see, just in case the police officer might catch me, I've been hiding and living only inside the house. Taking the opportunity to prepare for the rainy season too!"

She bragged that she'd built an earthen wall as big as her own body to protect her field.

"Only the sweet potato field is left now. I'm going to decorate the sweet potato field's waterway as prettily as the Seine River."

Listening to her usual chattering as always, he brewed coffee.

"Painter, you must be running low on medicine, right? I know you well, so I made some fresh ones."

Since he'd split what should have been one cup into two, the coffee was closer to coffee-scented water. After briefly wondering what to do about this, he gave up and picked up the two cups of coffee.

"Like I said last time, this time I've also put in painkillers and fever reducers together. The painkillers are white and the fever reducers are yellow. When your hands hurt, take the white medicine! Oh, thank you."

She accepted the coffee.

"I don't suppose that actually tastes good either."

He still hadn't gotten used to the medicine that only produced a sharp, bitter taste.

Niksi smiled silently. 'So it does have a taste.'

"I'll take this coffee as payment for the medicine!"

She got the jump on the painter who was rummaging through his pockets looking for money.

She gulped down the coffee like an elegant country bumpkin at a cafeteria.

"...Is this barley tea?"

'Brewing coffee until even one cup tastes like water... Poor painter...'

"It's not like that, so don't look at me that way."

"Gasp! How did you know? I didn't say anything!"

He could tell just by looking now. Though he wished he couldn't.

Niksi, having drained her coffee in one go, set the cup down with a thud.

"Hey, painter. Want to go on patrol with me tonight?"

Patrol?

Benjamin, who had no friends in the village and was slow to get news, couldn't have known about this.

Niksi explained the series of events that had occurred in the village, mentioning that she and Gilbert had been patrolling the village for the past few days.

"We protect the villagers, and it's rewarding. It's exercise too! Plus, it's time to see Gilbert, who's been incredibly busy lately."

Even after listing all these good points, the painter who heard this would naturally say 'I don't want to.'

So Niksi was frantically racking her brains to come up with a reason that would force the painter to leave his house.

"Sure."

"I knew you'd say that... Wait, what?"

"Should I go to the village hall at the designated time?"

"What's wrong with you, painter? Why are you accepting? Are you about to die? You're not that kind of guy..."

What kind of guy is that supposed to be? He had no idea what kind of image she had of him in her head.

"Well this worked out nicely. I was bored because Gilbert's been quiet lately! It'll be more exciting with you there."

Ever since Gilbert met that suspicious man, he'd become strangely quiet, wondering what he was thinking.

Thanks to this, Niksi had been holding oratory competitions by herself every night to break the silence. Of course, even with the painter joining, Gilbert wouldn't come to his senses, and she wouldn't be able to stop her speechmaking either.

'But at least it won't feel like talking to a wall!'

Meanwhile, Benjamin figured out why Niksi's voice felt particularly unfamiliar today. At first he thought it was because he hadn't heard it in a long time, but it wasn't that.

She was very, very, very slightly... 'dejected?'

He didn't know if that was a word that suited Niksi. But once he became conscious of it, it kept bothering him. To the point where even Niksi observing the grain-of-rice-sized spider in the painter's house corner would be mistaken for 'she's more spaced out and blank than usual today.'

After thinking for a long while, he stood up as if he'd made up his mind.

"Coffee."

"Hm?"

"Are you going to drink another cup?"

So Benjamin squeezed out kindness that wasn't like him. When a person does something they don't usually do, it's natural to become suspicious like 'his time to die has finally come,' and end up having unsettling thoughts.

There was only one depressed-looking farmer, but he didn't want to end up overthinking just because of one depressed farmer. He didn't know any proper way to comfort her either, and though he had no decent ingredients or food supplies, he had plenty of coffee.

If complicated thoughts could be settled with a cup of coffee, wouldn't that be a pretty decent trade?

Niksi grinned at his words.

"Well then, shall I taste the coffee that this countryside barista brews?"

And so she tasted the coffee beans from countries around the world that were in the painter's house, then grabbed her pounding heart saying it felt like she'd gotten heart disease.

—Creak.

Gilbert opened the box.

Long ago, when his father had been a father to him, there were words he'd said.

'Do you know what a hunter should be most careful of?'

The gun I'm holding? The prey that might charge at any moment? The steep mountain paths and dangerous hunting grounds?

'Yourself.'

Gilbert didn't understand the meaning of those words.

Why should he be careful of himself? It wasn't like his hands would suddenly lose their self-awareness and strangle his neck. It didn't seem like he'd suddenly start trembling as if he'd become the prey either.

His father said nonchalantly while cleaning his gun:

'A hunter lives by taking the lives of living things. When you first hunt, whether the prey is a small rabbit or a big wolf opening its maw at you, the guilt that comes from killing something is considerable. But you've heard that the first time is difficult, right? Those feelings are very brief, and eventually you get used to catching beasts and peeling their hides. Then you reach a point where killing something gives you no excitement at all. That's how you become a monster.'

For young Gilbert, these were difficult words that he could only half understand.

The man stroked Gilbert's hair.

'I have to be careful not to become a monster myself.'

—Click.

Inside the box was a shotgun. The gun he'd brought from Niksi's basement. The gun he himself had discarded. The gun with that bastard's name engraved on it, reeking of blood.

Plant beans where beans are planted and beans will sprout; a beast's child is a beast. Anything is difficult the first time—was that what they said? In some ways, it was the right thing to say.

Really ridiculously, when he first heard that the man was alive, he thought about how to kill that bastard again.

Gilbert wore a self-mocking smile.

He gazed at it quietly, then closed the lid.

Ten minutes before midnight. The painter waited under a tree in front of the village hall for his neighbor and the village head.

Though it was summer, the nights were quite chilly. He exhaled a long breath.

"Oh, painter! You came early?"

Niksi was 3 minutes late. You didn't need to ask why she was late—you could tell just by looking at her two hands. Cupped concavely like drinking water, those palms had mulberries piled high inside them. From her blackened teeth, you could even tell she'd picked up and eaten a few on the way over.

"Where's Gil?"

"Not yet."

"That can't be!"

The word lateness didn't exist in the village head's dictionary. He'd always been diligent like a morning bird.

"Did something happen? Like he tumbled down the stairs and lost consciousness?"

"Making a fuss over 3 minutes."

"Life can roll any which way. How could you have known you'd be here at this time today instead of at home?"

"Wouldn't it be more credible to see it as him just falling asleep?"

"Painter."

"...What."

"You're pretty smart, aren't you?"

Benjamin unconsciously tilted his head to the side. Then he fell into faint self-disgust. He'd just made a gesture that anyone would see as 'what's the big deal about something like this.'

"Should we wake him up then? He probably couldn't sleep well these past few days from village patrol."

Though her words sounded like she was worrying about someone, her feet were faithfully heading toward Gilbert's house. The painter knew brilliantly well the sound of her footsteps starting up her trademark mayhem.

"Oh! Gil!"

Right when she and the painter arrived in front of Gilbert's house, he opened the door and came out.

"Sorry, I'm a bit late."

"You don't have anything to be sorry to me about. This isn't something like a promise, it's just village patrol. If you're really going to be sorry, ask forgiveness from the village's public safety."

"I'm sorry, village people."

Gil and Niksi walked along, chattering with silly jokes.

According to Niksi, Gil should have been quite quiet, but he seemed more like his usual self than expected.

They first passed the stone wall along Willow Road. They walked past the terrace of the white house where a brown cat came to get food, then climbed a small rising hill.

"What a waste... It was really delicious."

Niksi had been carrying mulberries in both hands full when she fell on the hill. Regrettably, when she fell she ended up clenching both fists tight, so the plump mulberries became juice inside her palms. Her fists were dyed black by the sacrifice of the mulberries that died gloriously.

"It's fortunate your teeth didn't break."

"If I'd known it would be like this, I should have just left them all instead of picking them. Then I could have eaten them tomorrow too."

They passed the small hill path alongside the sheep ranch. They stopped at a place with a small lake. The reason was that the moon reflected in the lake was pretty.

"Nothing that looks suspicious today either. No wild beasts or hunters either."

"...Maybe there's no need for them to appear anymore."

"What do you mean, Gil?"

Gilbert made a long humming sound like he was thinking about something.

"Niksi. Someone's not home so you keep pressing the doorbell. If you stop pressing the doorbell, what would the reason be?"

"Um... because someone inside said 'I'm coming out!'?"

"Similar reason."

Niksi said she was even more confused. What did wild animals have to do with doorbells? Did wild animals these days press doorbells and announce 'I'm coming in to hunt'?

While she looked puzzled, Benjamin roughly caught on to what Gilbert was trying to say.

'A hunter who was hunting village livestock stopped hunting because someone in the village seemed to have noticed him.'

Now that they knew Mark Richter was a hunter, someone in the village had noticed the hunter. That would be Gilbert.

Then the reason the hunter was looking for Gilbert was...

'Is that related to the police officer?'

The police officer who was planning to put him behind bars soon on espionage charges.

They confirmed that even the furthest house attached to the northern forest was safe.

It was now deep dawn. The time said to be the darkest.

Instead of returning through the village to the three-way path junction, they decided to cut across the village's wheat field.

A wide, green wave that tickled above the knees. The dark green wheat field was clearly visible in the bright moonlight.

Niksi rushed into the thicket with a "whoosh."

In an instant, countless clusters of light shot up through the wheat field. They were fireflies.

"Waaah...!"

Countless fireflies flew up into the night sky, startled by the big yellow human's assault.

Niksi let out exclamations like a puppy trying to catch snow and bounded around energetically.

"Painter, Gil! Do you see? It's so pretty!"

These were clusters of light hard to see in the city.

Niksi smiled cheerfully and deliberately ran into the middle of the wheat field.

She ran off far away, and the painter and village head were left standing alone in the middle of the field.

'I'm not doing this completely without confidence either. I heard it from someone reliable!'

Now it was finally time for the painter to be able to bring up what he had to say to the village head.

"...The police officer knew about someone called Mark Richter. That person told the police officer about you."

As Benjamin expected, Gilbert's eyes widened, suggesting there was indeed something there.

Gilbert leaned against the wheat field fence and let out a deep sigh.

"So the police officer did know something when he came looking."

The police officer's strangely confident tone had been bothersome—he'd heard something from that bastard.

Benjamin glanced down at him.

"Didn't you say you killed him?"

'That's the bastard I killed.'

Benjamin remembered Gilbert's crumpled face when he'd said those words.

"...I thought I had, but he's alive and well."

'So that's why he said that.'

'What would Mr. Richter do if he found out that what he thought he'd eliminated was still perfectly alive?'

"......"

The painter stood next to him.

Fireflies that had flown up from the wheat field passed by them one by one, following the wind.

Benjamin quietly watched things swaying this way and that in the wheat field's night breeze.

Then he blurted out:

"He was your family. That man."

"How did you..."

How. Gilbert swallowed the rest of his words.

"...Even Niksi, who saw him directly, didn't seem to believe he was family, but Mr. Richter figured out he was blood-related family without even seeing him."

"......"

"How did you know?"

"......"

"...Did it show?"

He said this and clenched his fists tight.

The painter didn't answer. Sometimes silence would be more helpful.

Gilbert leaned against the fence and crouched down in place.

The green wheat field that had risen to eye level made it look exactly like water had risen in his field of vision every time it swayed.

He stretched out his hand to caress the grass with its cool texture.

"...I always wanted to live like my father."

The person Gilbert called father was only one person. The man who bequeathed him the surname Grace and died emptily, who said smiling was a weapon. Not some hunter-like piece of trash.

"Do you know why?"

"Well."

"Because I could never be that person's real son, even if I died and was reborn."

No matter how much he lived in his house and tried to resemble him. No matter how much he wore his surname, there were limits.

The limit called inborn blood.

Gilbert had eye corners that curved roundly when he smiled, but actually, that was the result of earnest effort. In reality, his eye shape was the type with sharply upturned ends.

A face that resembled that bastard. A hereditary limitation.

At first, he thought it would be fine. Doesn't everything depend on how you set your mind to it? What's so important about resembling someone's face? What's so amazing about being made from that bastard's genes?

"But no. It was too great. What's inherited—that inborn nature."

"....."

"Tell me, Mr. Richter. Does a person's inborn nature never change?"

A round of wind blew. The dawn air that was only tilting was quite chilly.

"...It changes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I've experienced it."

"How did you change?"

"It's hard to say with my own mouth."

"Still, please tell me. I'll listen with one ear and let it out the other."

"...I was kinder than I am now."

A kind painter. Gilbert smiled slightly. It was a desolate smile.

"Lies. You're kind now too."

At his muttering, Benjamin also chuckled. Because he said exactly the same thing as someone he knew.

In the distance, Niksi, who had finally caught a firefly or something, could be seen walking this way excitedly.

"If the police officer heard everything from that bastard, getting arrested is just a matter of time, right?"

"You won't go alone. I'll probably be going together soon too, wearing the disgrace of being an enemy country's spy."

"Haha. That's quite comforting."

So was this scenery he was seeing now Auvers's last scenery?

Gilbert blinked.

For the last scenery to be a pitch-dark dawn where you can't see anything properly, a scenery full of bugs with their butts on fire. If only it could have been pretty and beautiful.

Yes, like sometime back then. That hill where purple violets swayed overwhelmingly. That scenery when he went on a picnic with his peaceful family.

"Benjamin."

The painter, whose name had been called, looked at Gilbert's profile.

"...What should I do from now on?"

At Gilbert's question, Benjamin remained silent for quite a while before speaking.

"Just keep your mouth shut."

"Haha. What kind of answer is that? To act like a muzzled dog?"

"Then this village will protect you even if it kills them."

Benjamin knew. Though he was just an outsider, the village wouldn't just leave Gilbert Grace, who was a village member, alone.

It's the habit of those who've shared affection to scream and chase after even a street dog that gets dragged away.

But such tight-knit village people wouldn't just quietly watch their smooth and kind village head Gilbert get dragged away. They'd all bare their teeth, grab their tools, and raise hell. It was obvious.

"That's the problem. That they'll protect me even if they die."

Gilbert stood up.

"Put the other way, if I keep my mouth shut, the village people will get hurt. All... all because of me."

"......"

"So if I don't do it first..."

"Gil! Painter! What's with the mood? Why is it like this?"

Niksi appeared, cutting through the wheat field.

She looked back and forth between the two, sensing something was off.

Thinking the painter might be the culprit since breaking up conversations was his specialty, she looked at him, but he was the same as usual.

The one who wasn't his usual self was Gilbert, who'd been unusually quiet lately.

"Look, look! I caught a firefly! Did you know? They say fireflies are the murmurs of the dead. Shall we listen to what they're saying?"

Niksi carefully opened her blackened hands.

Then, with a gentle glow like luminous stars, a pair of mating fireflies appeared.

"What the hell, you crazy bastards!"

Niksi shrieked and frantically shook off her hands.

Gilbert chuckled at the sight.

Unfortunately, they couldn't hear the murmurs. It seemed like they shouldn't hear them anyway.

He quietly watched the scattered points of light in the distance.

"Let's go back. It's time to sleep."

"Good idea. I was getting tired anyway."

"That's probably from trying to catch fireflies!"

Gilbert and Niksi walked ahead down the road.

The painter walked one step behind, watching their backs.

Whatever they'd talked about, Niksi suddenly yelled that they should have a running race to the three-way junction path.

Niksi drew a long line on the ground. It was the start line.

"Get ready!"

Benjamin, who was dead set against joining in, walked past them.

"Go!"

The queen of cheating, Niksi, started half a beat early.

"Painter! Here, let's come again tomorrow!"

She yelled as she rushed past Benjamin.

Niksi sprinted at full speed far into the distance, and Gilbert pretended to run moderately then slowed his steps when he came near Benjamin.

Gilbert smiled emptily at the painter who looked like he was asking why he wasn't running.

"I was planning to let her win anyway."

It was a very characteristic reason for him.

Benjamin watched Niksi's back as she ran hard in the distance, not knowing the match was already decided.

"Yeah. That might be better for her."