Sirin changed into the clothes she’d been given.
She roughly covered her face with her long, trailing hair and put the crude mask back on.
That should keep anyone from getting a clear look at her face.
Sirin kept walking toward the plaza.
The sense of liberation—that she could finally speak properly—put a lightness in her step unlike anything she’d felt before.
Now that her tongue was free, she’d have to give Marta a proper greeting.
She’d already thought up a few choice words for that little brat, Vera or whatever her name was.
Well, she wasn’t planning to go too hard on her, out of respect for Marta—but there was no way she was letting those strawberry-freckles slide without at least one comment.
Sirin was in a good mood.
She was feeling generous enough to give the little squirt a full lecture on the relationship between mud and skincare.
Her feet practically floated off the ground.
But the closer she got to the plaza, the slower her steps became.
The commotion was worse than before—shouting, and something that sounded like a woman’s scream mixed with sobbing.
The scene in the plaza came back into view.
The mercenaries.
There were fewer of them now, like the rest had wandered off somewhere, but whoever was left seemed to be the worst of the lot—their behavior was uglier than before.
Heres was in front of the bakery this time, gripping Vera by the wrist and making a scene.
“P-please, stop…! Money—I’ll give you money, just please…!”
Marta was wedged between Heres and Vera, desperately trying to pry them apart, but the mercenary’s arm was like iron.
The people around them still kept their distance, murmuring among themselves or looking away.
Not a single imperial guard in sight.
Heres cackled.
“I heard this village has some Order of the Savior thing, or Order of Romance, or whatever it is? They say you’re all supposed to love each other and get together—so why can’t I get a little romance too? Huh?”
Something in Heres’s words snagged Sirin’s attention.
She already knew Peter was with the Order of the Savior.
But Order of Romance?
The Order of the Savior tells people to fall in love?
Peter had never said anything like that to her.
“Oh.”
It hit her all at once.
Wait—was that it?
All those times he kept telling her to play the whore—was that his way of saying ‘fall in love’?
Sirin thought about it.
Yep, that old man is definitely not all there.
Then again, you’d have to have a few screws loose to make any sense of the insane things I say.
Sirin nodded, thoroughly satisfied.
—Ding!
[ Your understanding of others has increased! ]
[ You have partially fulfilled the activation conditions for the Mind Enlightenment basic system! ]
‘What the hell is this supposed to mean.’
Seeing a system notification for the first time in six months felt genuinely strange.
And Mind Enlightenment, of all things.
She demanded an explanation, but the system stayed stubbornly silent.
While she was mentally cursing at the system window, Heres’s voice was getting uglier by the second.
“Son of a—what, am I some kind of rapist now? Goddamn it, is this why I risked my neck out in this backwater killing monsters? Huh? Am I a rapist? I just said let’s have a little fun, and I have to put up with this?!”
Heres’s grating voice bored into Sirin’s sensitive ears.
Her mood was souring fast.
“Kyaaah!”
Thud.
Marta hit the ground with a scream.
“M-Mom…!”
Vera’s crying as Heres kept his grip on her.
The villagers murmuring, too scared to step in.
The smell of bread scattered across the dirt.
Unable to stomach the sight any longer, Sirin tilted her head back and looked at the sky.
“Wow….”
For a moment, she forgot everything.
The sunset had become a massive golden spear, cleaving through ashen clouds.
A clean, majestic sight—the kind that could never exist in the smog-choked sky of her hometown.
The spear of light was slowly fading as violet darkness bled across the heavens.
Sirin closed her eyes for a moment and felt the wind on her face.
Her sharp senses told her it was the wind of early dusk.
Soon, the darkness would lift its head fully.
“….”
But Sirin could feel something else, too.
In the sun that had nearly set and lost its shape—a faint, lingering warmth.
She thought that warmth felt like the rough, hard bread Marta had pressed into her hands.
Sirin let out a small, wry smile.
There’s a saying: don’t take in a black-haired beast.
Contrary to the common misreading, it doesn’t mean don’t help others.
It means don’t turn your back on the one who showed you kindness—don’t make yourself the beast.
Right.
What you owe, you pay back.
Whether it’s a debt, or the warmth of a single piece of bread.
“You only die once—so what’s the difference?”
She muttered it quietly and snickered to herself.
Sirin doesn’t die.
That was the first thing she’d learned in this other world.
Right after she’d been dropped here, she’d assumed she was dreaming and thrown herself off a cliff.
The result was obvious.
Compound fractures bad enough to leave her completely immobile.
A person dies after three days without water.
Sirin had spent several times that at the bottom of that cliff.
A horrific stretch of time that was painful just to remember.
She’d tried licking her own blood to ease the burning thirst, but it was useless.
Even after all that, Sirin hadn’t died.
Sirin doesn’t die.
So what was there to be afraid of?
What was there to fear?
It wasn’t pain she feared.
What she feared was falling into something less than human.
What she had to guard against was giving up on being a person.
Sirin would never become a beast.
She started walking.
She had a method for resolving this in the most civilized way she knew.
Sirin shouted.
“Hey, Heres! You brain-dead little pedophile!”
Language that no villager could have produced slammed into Heres’s ears.
“Who the—?”
Heres spun around with fury twisting his face, but when he saw who’d spoken, he froze.
“The mute bitch… she can actually talk?”
Sirin was something of a local celebrity.
Fair enough—in a frontier backwater, being known as the crazy beggar woman who could only curse was basically being a reverse idol.
Sirin savored his stunned expression and spoke.
“Hey, Heres. What exactly are you doing over there twisting a kid’s wrist?”
“….”
Heres was so thrown off he lost his words for a moment, but a sneer quickly crawled back onto his face.
“A crazy beggar bitch… I don’t care whether you can talk straight or not—if you don’t want to see something ugly, get lost. Why would I want blood on a festival day like today?”
But Sirin just cackled and stepped closer.
The sound of her laugh scraped at his nerves.
“Heres, Heres, you dumb piece of shit. I know why you’re out here twisting a little kid’s wrist on such a fine day.”
Heres’s expression darkened, but Sirin didn’t care.
“You’re Heres, vice-captain of the Blade of the Herald Mercenary Company.”
Heres’s face went rigid.
How does this bitch know who I am?
But what Sirin said next made that question completely irrelevant.
“Word’s been going around about you. You hit Merye and got kicked out of Wilson’s place, didn’t you?”
The puzzle pieces clicked together in Sirin’s head.
Why would this idiot hit Merye and get himself thrown out?
Back in her beloved home world, there was a saying.
[ PHGBT ]
Please, His God-given Bits must be Three centimeters!
Something average-looking men say about a well-built, handsome guy—with a mix of envy and spite.
“Average” back home had high standards, mind you.
Heres fit about half of that description.
He was what you’d call a “just right” kind of muscular.
But only half.
His body was fine.
His face was not.
That meant a bonus point.
His bits were probably 3.5 centimeters rather than 3—fair enough.
But 3 or 3.5—same difference.
“Yeah, now it all makes sense.”
Sirin nodded with a satisfied look.
“The picture’s coming together perfectly. A grown woman like Merye wasn’t going to be impressed by that pathetic little thing, so now you’re sniffing around a kid who’s easier to push around? Figured since she’s small, maybe you’d actually have a shot with your adorable little situation?”
“Shut your mouth! You filthy—!”
Heres’s face had gone scarlet.
The villagers’ murmuring stabbed into him like needles.
Sirin kept going, smooth as butter.
“Merye must’ve had a rough time of it, honestly. With your… cute little… whatever that is, she probably couldn’t feel a thing. Ugh, she took the money so she had to do the job, but trying to fake it with something that small must’ve been so hard to—”
A bolt of enlightenment struck Sirin’s brain.
“Oh—is that why you hit her? Because Merye wasn’t putting on a convincing enough performance?”
—Ding!
[ Your understanding of others has increased! ]
[ You have fulfilled the activation conditions for the Mind Enlightenment basic system! ]
[ Congratulations! ]
Sirin dismissed the system window from her vision.
That wasn’t important right now.
“….”
Heres let go of Vera’s arm without a word.
His hands were trembling.
His breathing was ragged.
His eyes were shot through with red.
“You little gutter rat.”
He spoke with murder in his eyes.
“Looks like you’re real excited about finally being able to run your mouth. Go ahead, enjoy it. Today’s the last day that clever tongue of yours is going to be any use to you.”
Sirin’s mood lifted considerably at that.
She could repay the debt.
She was going to beat the hell out of these thugs and settle what she owed Marta, one way or another.