Chapter 4. Day 26 — The 2nd Floor
“It’s especially nice weather today. Wilson, you look like you’re in a good mood too. You’re rolling better than yesterday.”
🙂
“Haha, that’s true. If you exercise every day while getting some sunlight, a person is bound to become healthy.”
(:
Wilson rolled around in circles, always answering me with a smile.
I could only make eye contact with him for a brief moment at a time, but even after repeating it over and over, I never got tired of his face.
“Huff, huff. That’s it. I finally made it.”
[You have cleared the 1st Floor, ‘Tutorial.’]
[You have realized the skill ‘Endurance.’]
It was my third day with Wilson.
Although I made the mistake of slipping twice more, I finally succeeded in breaking through the first floor.
My mistake had been getting impatient because the goal was right in front of me. I learned that whenever my stamina started running low, the best thing to do was stop for a moment and endure.
As long as I supported Wilson with my back, he wouldn’t run away anywhere. He was a dependable friend.
Once I came to believe that Wilson wouldn’t betray me, pushing him gradually became easier. I had gotten the hang of it, so to speak.
“Whew. You rest here for a while too.”
I leaned Wilson against the boundary pole and took a long-overdue, blissful rest.
There wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t hurt—my arms, legs, waist, everything—but I couldn’t have been more satisfied. I had accomplished something.
“Now it finally feels like things are really starting.”
I turned my head and looked toward the upper part of the mountain.
The first floor had relatively rough, frictional dirt ground, so I could plant my feet and push with my strength, and Wilson had been fairly stable as well.
But the second floor I had just entered had a ground covered in gravel and sand.
It looked like it would take even more effort to roll or support Wilson.
More than anything, there were more obstacles. Fallen trees and uneven rocks were scattered all over the slope, obstructing the path.
“It’s fine. It’s not that different. I can make it. Right, Wilson?”
🙂
“Hey, even if you’re my friend, saying that makes it sound like I don’t have any other friends. I was pretty popular back home, you know.”
After becoming the lord, I could no longer do things like go to the public bathhouse with my friends or run around the marketplace.
Come to think of it, that had already been quite a long time ago.
“Don’t be jealous, Wilson. I even had a childhood friend who was closer to me than you. We were always together.”
Since Wilson seemed curious, should I tell him about her?
I had to rest until my body recovered before challenging the next floor anyway.
“Her name was Clea. I think we met when we were five. Ah, I didn’t know she was a girl. Well, I thought she was a boy when I was very young too. That’s why we became friends so quickly. Now…”
I smiled bitterly.
“Now she’s my fiancée, and we don’t even exchange a single word.”
“Sisyphus, I heard Glauke rejected you? I knew that would happen.”
I must have been around eleven.
She came to me while I was dejectedly tending the cattle and grinned from ear to ear.
“Rejected, my ass. She just refused when I asked her to come to the temple with me.”
“How did she reject you? Did she run away crying?”
“I didn’t cry. …I did run, though.”
Perhaps my answer pleased her that much, because she clutched her stomach and burst out laughing.
Her hair was a pale golden color, almost white, lacking the vibrancy one might expect from such a lively girl.
Her translucent blue eyes, as if they had been dyed with the same color as her hair, were the complete opposite of my pitch-black eyes.
The little girl wore a pure white dress that fluttered around her, clearly proclaiming her noble status.
Her name was Anticleia.
I called her Clea.
“You should’ve known your place. Glauke is the prettiest girl in your city. She probably already has at least five marriage candidates.”
“That’s what’s wrong with that statement. I didn’t have any ulterior motives. My father said he needed some help, and Glauke happened to be nearby…”
“My brother stole my bread this morning. I’m sad, so hurry up and comfort me.”
“Are you already done listening to my story?”
“We’re childhood friends, so hurry~.”
Clea wrapped her arms around my waist from behind and rubbed her face against my neck.
Clea always acted that way, using her hurt feelings as an excuse to act spoiled around me.
She should have done that with her own family.
We had known each other since childhood, but for years, every day as soon as the sun rose, Clea would practically hop across the river and come over to our territory to play.
That’s right. Clea was from a neighboring territory.
She was the daughter of Autolycus, the cattle thief, and the granddaughter of Hermes.
When I was young, I didn’t know much about the relationship between my father and Autolycus. I simply thought of Clea as a girl my age from the neighboring estate whom I occasionally saw, so I spent a lot of time with her.
Even after I became old enough to understand matters concerning our families, I didn’t particularly want to ruin my relationship with Clea, so I never rejected her.
“Sisyphus, you left two cows on that hill over there.”
“Really? Where? One, two, three…”
“You grouped them into sets of four. There are twelve groups in total, so forty-eight, right?”
“…There really are two missing. You’re good at counting.”
“Hehe, stupid. Praise me for doing well.”
Clea never turned down praise. Whenever she did something well, she would stick her head toward me and ask me to pat her.
This was an age when mathematics was considered the exclusive domain of intellectuals. Being able to multiply was a sign of considerable genius even by adult standards.
Even I couldn’t do mental arithmetic at the time, so Clea was faster than me.
I learned not only numbers but all sorts of knowledge from Clea—how to run faster, how to find north by looking at the night sky, and more.
We were always together.
“Run! Faster! You’ll miss it if you’re late!”
“No, slow down a little…”
“You’re such an idiot, Sisyphus. If you’re this weak, how are you ever going to get married?”
I had never been particularly physically fit, even as a child. I wasn’t especially big, either.
I was always slower than Clea when we ran, so that should tell you everything.
“Look, it’s falling!”
It was one night when the two of us had secretly slipped out of our homes and run up a hill for quite some time.
“It’s the Pleiades meteor shower. They say that once every ten years, the seven goddesses drop stars from above the clouds.”
The sight of the sky raining down around us was, well, quite impressive in its own way.
She bent down and picked something up from the ground before handing it to me.
It was a strange pebble that sparkled even in the darkness.
“What is this?”
“A fragment of a meteor. I just found it. Amazing, right? If you want it, I can lend it to you.”
“…Come on, that’s a lie. It didn’t fall here.”
“I told you it’s true. You don’t want it?”
Blinded by the strangely sparkling stone, I placed my hand over hers, and then—
She suddenly threw herself into my arms.
“What are you doing?”
“We used to do this all the time when we were little. We even went to the bathhouse together.”
“That was when we were kids.”
“You’re such an idiot, Sisyphus.”
For once, Clea spoke without a hint of laughter.
“I’m going to become a hero.”
A hero.
Those who wielded mana as demigods, exterminated monsters, and fulfilled the tasks given by the gods.
Since childhood, Clea had told me that she wanted to live the life of a hero rather than that of an ordinary human.
I learned later that she inherited the blood of Hermes on her father’s side and Aphrodite on her mother’s. She certainly had the qualifications.
“I’ll become a magnificent hero and run across the plains of Plataea. This meteor…”
She arbitrarily made a promise as she fidgeted her little finger against mine.
“When that time comes, give it back to me.”
“But… dreams don’t always have to come true.”
Beneath the falling meteor shower, Clea said something ridiculous to me.
“If we’re both still stuck here at thirty without anyone to marry, how about we just get married?”
Well, Clea immediately added that she was joking and told me that we should both keep trying to find someone.
But the conversation we had that night eventually became meaningless.
Our relationship fell apart several years later.
It was because of an incident involving her father, Autolycus, stealing cattle.
After I caught Autolycus in the act, he swore at the Temple of Hermes that he would repay twice the value of the stolen cattle.
But his financial means weren’t enough.
So what he sent along with the gold coins as interest was his own daughter, Clea.
He even sent her under the pretext of becoming my wife.
In ordinary human families, people sometimes pay a bride price and take a woman as a wife in order to obtain the blood of a heroic family descended from the gods.
Clea was valued as though she were worth that bride price.
In other words, it was human trafficking.
Since the oath had been made before a god, it couldn’t be canceled.
I suddenly found myself in a position where I was supposed to enter into a transactional marriage with Clea.
And Clea had lost the heroic life she had wanted so desperately.
When Clea arrived at our home in a carriage, dressed up from head to toe, the expression on her face was utterly miserable.
“…Is this what you wanted?”
Of course, I didn’t want it either, so I never entered into a formal engagement with Clea.
There wasn’t even time for that in the first place, since Hermes and the monsters descended upon us not long afterward.
Autolycus’s estate soon collapsed, and he left the region.
As a result, Clea was left behind in our home, still technically my fiancée.
After that, we never spoke to each other again.
“Well, I guess friendships can fall apart over things you never expected. You know what I mean, Wilson?”
: │
Maybe it was just my imagination, but Wilson’s expression seemed a little gloomy.
It was probably because of my own mood.
“Come to think of it, when I was dragged here, I came without saying anything to her.”
I wonder if she’s worried.
Though she probably isn’t.
She’s probably hated me ever since that day.
Because Autolycus sold Clea to me through the oath he made to the god, her fate had essentially been decided: she was to become my wife.
It was a kind of unbreakable contract.
The gods were always like that.
They played with human fates as they pleased.
“All right. Shall we get going?”
The fatigue in my muscles had mostly subsided, so I decided to start pushing Wilson again.
If I’d known things would turn out like this, I should have built up my stamina more when I had the chance, just as Clea told me.
The second floor looked to be three times the length of the first.
Countless stars filled the night sky.
“Let’s go.”
I began putting strength into the arms supporting Wilson.
[Strength has increased by 1.]
[Stamina has increased by 1.]
On a quiet night when the only sound was the eerie whistle of the wind.
There was no moon in the sky, but countless stars instead decorated the heavens, showing the way she was supposed to go.
And yet, still not knowing where to go, the platinum-blonde woman stood alone atop the hill.
“…Where did you go?”
The meteor shower they had watched together that day showed no sign of appearing.
“…Sisyphus, you idiot.”
Only the hair of the now-adult Clea fluttered endlessly in the wind.
