Episode 56: “Enviable”
“Is that… all Dad did?”
Having heard from Kevin about dealing with monsters, Adam responded, sounding disappointed.
It was the reaction Fiine had expected, but she found herself looking away all the same, unable to bear it.
(Setting traps, retrieving whatever gets caught in them, night patrols… it’s barely different from ordinary pest control.)
She’d known this was how it would go, which was why she’d offered to dress up the facts a little.
But Kevin had turned her down.
“Yeah. But this village has kept doing just that, year after year, decade after decade.”
He hadn’t said anything especially impressive, and yet there was something strangely proud in the set of Kevin’s shoulders.
Maybe that was why — Adam, who’d looked disappointed at first, had started listening seriously again.
“Hey, Adam. Say me and the other men in the village went out at night and fought whatever monster showed up here. What do you think would happen?”
“…Maybe… we’d get hurt?”
“Getting hurt would be the good outcome. Reality’s harsher than that.”
“…Maybe… we’d die?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Listen, Adam. Charging in against an opponent you can’t beat isn’t courage. All it does is scare the people you love. If you said you were going to fight monsters, both Helena and Mary would be scared for you.”
“…Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
“So does that mean we should do nothing at all, and just leave it all to somebody else?”
Adam fell silent for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
“No, I don’t think that’s right either. Because it’s our village, our own field. It’s fine to rely on other people, but I don’t think it’s right to just leave it all to them.”
“That’s exactly right.”
Apparently satisfied with the answer, Kevin nodded broadly and ruffled Adam’s hair.
“Everyone doing what they’re able to do, each in their own way — that’s what matters.”
It was the kind of thing you’d find in a children’s picture book — idealistic, with no real grounding in reality.
And yet Kevin’s eyes were completely serious.
(There’s no way it actually works like that…)
Those with both power and conviction get every responsibility and every job pushed onto them. And even among the powerful, plenty of them look out for nothing but themselves.
That said, there was no guarantee the powerless would even try to do what little they could, either.
(A society where everyone acts exactly the way they’re supposed to — there’s no such thing.)
Yuria had dreamed of a world just like that.
But she’d died with that dream only half-realized.
“So once you’re older, and there are more things you’re able to do — you go and help people too, all right, Adam?”
“Yeah!”
What could possibly be the point of passing on an ideal like that?
According to Adam, other villagers were already starting to think about moving away.
Sooner or later, the owners of the large landholdings would relocate to the royal capital anyway.
Farm work, dealing with monsters — all of it could simply be pushed onto the laborers who had no money to leave.
“I’m gonna work hard with everyone, just like Dad!”
Watching Adam nod, his eyes shining, Fiine found it almost too bright to look at — and she bit down hard on her lip, envy welling up inside her.