By Zephyria =======
It wasn’t a common seabird. Seeing it from about twenty paces away from the corpse, it stood out immediately. It was a bird Silver had never seen in Stohl, and it was incredibly cute. Could it be an Atanian pet bird that escaped from a shipwrecked merchant ship?
Silver’s heart pounded. Right now, the expression on his face beneath the human-skin mask was likely no different from the looks people gave when they first saw Starry eyes. I—I want it! I want that bird!
As if it mistook the corpse for a delicious piece of fruit, the bird pecked at the neck. Silver approached stealthily, cat-like. Five paces away. From there, he lowered his body completely and crawled forward. The moment he was one step away, he locked eyes with the bird.
“Pretty thing, I’m not a bad person…! Yahhh—!”
Silver flung his arms wide and lunged at the bird. Thump.
The only thing that hit his chest was the hard corpse. Looking up at the sky, the bird was soaring away. Dammit!
〔Pururu. When you say ‘I’m not a bad person’ with a face like that, you look like the worst person in the world, you know?〕
On his shoulder, Starry eyes tapped Silver’s cheek with a front paw. Silver ignored him, pretending not to hear, and stood up while brushing off his clothes. For a drowned body, the corpse was remarkably intact, with almost no swelling. Blonde hair clung to the waist like seaweed. Tattoos were plastered all over the back.
“Goddamn, how many moles does he have… Do you think cutting a donkey’s ears makes it a fine steed?”
Cursing under his breath, Silver flipped the body over with his foot. The tattooed area on the front was much wider than the back. It seemed the moles were concentrated on the torso; his mother must have wailed in sorrow after giving birth to this guy. Whatever, let’s just strip the pants… Huh?
What is this iron bar…?
〔Pururu. This human body is mysterious.〕
Starry eyes pointed to the corpse’s third leg. On the left thigh, wrapped in water-soaked Atanian Belfoca cotton pants, a heavy, long, and thick outline stood out prominently.
〔The elasticity of the fabric is excellent. It didn’t tear even while wrapping a weight of that size.〕
“…True. No wonder the senior would covet it.”
Muttering, Silver then doubted his eyes once more. The face of the corpse entered his gaze as he looked over absentmindedly. It looked familiar.
No way.
Silver squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. He focused his gaze and stared intently at the corpse’s face, harboring the usual misplaced hope that it would change if he looked again.
As expected, it didn’t change. It was that face. The face that seized his vision like a sudden attack in his dreams or when he was drunk. A face that looked very slightly like that Attendant bastard—a man Silver wouldn’t mind grinding into powder and scattering into the sea.
H-he’s a different person, right…? The Attendant wasn’t this handsome.
The frame was the same. To use a metaphor, they were bread baked from the same mold.
However, Wolf was underbaked bread pulled hastily from the oven.
The corpse was a premium loaf, baked golden-brown by a chef who carefully adjusted the fire in front of the oven.
Wolf was the kind of ‘decent-looking local hyung’ one might glance at once in a while.
The corpse was an ‘overwhelmingly handsome man’ whom God himself had sculpted with a carving knife and sent down to earth, admiringly thinking, ‘I really made this one well.’
It’s a different person. A person’s face can’t change this much in a year.
Around this time last year, Silver had seen Wolf from a distance. After traveling all over the world to find out if Black Weasel and himself were real people, he had headed to the capital of Stohl. In truth, he had heard rumors long ago that Wolf was the biological child of White Deer and that Red Eagle had committed suicide. The journey Wolf took to meet White Deer was also known to be a story completely different from Silver’s memories. In no rumor regarding Wolf did a wandering mercenary wearing wolf skin and his son appear.
Nevertheless, he had headed to Stohl wanting to ask Wolf, ‘Don’t you know me?’ To put it simply, Silver had caught a brief glimpse of Wolf attending a festival with the royal couple from afar and then turned his back and left. Fear surged within him the moment he saw the man’s face. He feared that even from Wolf’s mouth, the answer ‘Who are you?’ would come. No, such an answer would undoubtedly come.
The Wolf he saw then had barely changed, with only his hair grown longer. While he had frequently encountered cases of people aging rapidly in a short time due to hardship, he had never heard of the opposite. It’s surprising when a friend you meet after ten years has changed beyond recognition, but turning into a stunning beauty in just one year? Is that realistically possible?
It wasn’t just the face. First, the solid muscles. He looked like a guy who tore into meat every three hours, spent all day doing strength training, and slept in a push-up position every night. Next, the tattoos filling the upper body. There was no way the Attendant, who didn’t have a single mole on his body, would make such scribbles.
Third was the height. The corpse’s height matched Black Weasel’s. Finally, the third leg. Wolf was big, but this guy was bigger. Overall, the face was hundreds of times more handsome, and the build was several inches taller and thicker. No matter how he looked at it, it was a different person.
But…
“Starry eyes. You remember that Attendant bastard’s mug, right?”
〔That guy? Hmph, of course I do! I saw him last year too.〕
“This guy. Does he look like the Attendant?”
At those words, Starry eyes scanned the corpse and decisively crossed his long front paws into an X.
“Are you sure? Isn’t it just a mistake because it’s been a year?”
〔Pururu, my memory retention is different from humans. It is permanent and without distortion.〕
Starry eyes’ pupils gleamed coldly.
〔That mysterious human body only looks slightly similar to the Attendant; it is completely different. Comparing such a high-quality face to the Attendant is an insult!〕
“Couldn’t a person change drastically in a year?”
〔Pururu, the probability of a human achieving this level of skeletal rearrangement in one year is extremely low. Rather, it is more reasonable to assume that mysterious human body is blood-related to the Attendant. If they are distant relatives, their features can be strangely similar.〕
“Still… there are many cases where people look completely different once they lose their baby fat.”
〔Losing fat doesn’t turn a donkey into a fine steed. The quality of that mysterious human body’s face would have been excellent even in his youth.〕
Starry eyes shook his front paw.
〔Anyway, biological activity has ceased. Even if he is the same person as the Attendant, it’s meaningless now.〕
“Why is it meaningless?”
Silver’s lips twisted.
“That bastard is someone I’ve been saving to rip apart and kill. He can’t die in a boring way like this.”
〔Rest easy, pururu. That human body is not your enemy.〕
“It should be so, but…”
Still feeling suspicious, Silver leaned down to look into the man’s face. Up close, he was even more handsome. In common terms, he shone like the sun. Come to think of it, if this guy really was the Attendant bastard, that would also be a problem. How could I… wait?
Somehow, the corpse’s chest seemed to move minutely. It wasn’t an illusion. At some point, the man’s lips parted slightly and he exhaled.
This bastard isn’t dead?!
Right on cue, the man’s eyelids lifted weakly. The moment his pupils were revealed beneath eyelashes as dense as a comb, Silver was left stunned. They were amber.
The man’s eyes were out of focus. He looked like a drunkard who had spent the night drinking and sleeping in a ditch, barely waking up to the morning sunlight. The wandering eyes eventually locked onto Silver’s face. A scream erupted immediately.
“Aaaagh—! Fuck—!”
He looked like someone who had suddenly opened their eyes while sleeping soundly, only to find a giant cockroach entering their open mouth. It was a natural reaction. Silver had reacted exactly like that the first time he saw his own appearance in the mirror while wearing the human-skin mask.
“How! As soon as I open my eyes! Hey! Get your face away! This is fucking disgusting!”
The man grabbed a handful of sand and flung it as he pushed himself up. He gasped, pointing toward Silver, then looked around his surroundings, and backed away while bracing himself with both hands on the ground. Silver became even more dazed.
Even the voice is similar to the Attendant bastard’s.
However, it was slightly lower and heavier than Wolf’s voice. It was a subtle difference, but this was a tone that children would compete to imitate, calling it ‘cool.’
The man suddenly paused. His gaze shifted to Starry eyes sitting on Silver’s shoulder. Only then did Silver snap out of it.
“Don’t drool, you brat! This is my insect friend!”
He hurriedly stuffed Starry eyes into his belt pouch. The man’s gaze did not leave the pouch.
“Why are you so surprised? First time seeing a mantis?”
When Silver asked after fastening the pouch button, the man lifted his head.
“Well. It’s my first time seeing a talking mantis.”
Gasp?!
“I thought I heard it. You’re conversing with a mantis…”
“You heard wrong, you brat! You just picked up nonsense from your dreams!”
Silver raised his fist. The man flinched and backed away.
Silence.
Neither Silver nor the man spoke. Silver glared at the man with his fist still raised. The man did not avoid it and stared back. Only the sound of waves washing onto the beach and the laughter of pirates raving like they were at a post-harvest festival scattered through the air.
“Hey.”
The man spoke first.
“Who are you?”
“…For starters, the guy who came to strip your pants.”
81 – Hell Execution Order