February 3rd, 981–in the Era of Equilibrium.

Helena was hanging her laundry when the bright blue sky turned red. A massive magic circle appeared in the sky out of nowhere. It circled around in its place, and a second later, a stream of fire rained down upon the area below it. Her eyes were glued to that.

“W-what–”

The scene lasted for a few minutes, but it lingered in her memory for the entire day.

So, couldn’t resist her curiosity anymore, Helena went outside the day after.

It was her first time going out of her “hideout” alone. Her master–whose face had become a blur in her mind–had banned her for this, but now that she was gone, who would stop her? And when the wind carried the lingering stench of blood in her direction, she knew she had to go outside at least once.

“Sorry, master,” she muttered.

On foot, it had taken her a few hours of walking. With every step taken, the smell became more horrid. Thoughts kept piling up in her mind, most of them were concerns. After all, she didn’t know what to do or what she should do upon her arrival. Then again, she still had to see with her own two eyes–the mystery that this world carried.

At the end, Helena reached the destination with sweat clinging to her apparel. She hadn’t noticed that her legs were trembling. As far as her eyes could see, everything was just a bleak wasteland. Corpses mangled, blood splattered, limbs scattered–it was a nightmare seeping into reality itself. The smell of iron brutalized her nose.

Covering her mouth, she pressed on forwards.

“A-anyone?”

Her first instinct was to call out for anyone as the thought of being alone sent a chill down her spine. And yet, what answered was the deafening silence. The hope of seeing or hearing or feeling another living soul in such a place within her heart wavered.

It wasn’t until she heard splashing mud near her. She gazed in that direction to find a body rolling on top of a pool of blood that had dried. The body seemed to move at first, but when Helena inspected closer, its throat had been slit open. That revelation caught her off guard as she stumbled back and lost her footing, crashing down onto a pile of corpses behind her.

“O-ouch!”

Regret crept up onto her mind. Now covered in mud and smelled like corpses, the day couldn’t have started worse. That was when she heard a breathing sound next to her. Buried in that pile of corpses was a body that, despite being taken over by coldness, was still warm to a certain degree. The body’s right arm had lost its color.

“H-hey, are you okay?”

Helena poked the body with her finger. It reacted with a groan. She had found someone alive. Seconds passed.

With both hands, she grabbed that body’s legs and pulled it towards where she had come. It was heavy, but after seeing such a scene, she knew she couldn’t let this person die here. Whether or not it was the right choice, what her heart desired mattered the most. This time, it was to keep the man alive.

***

“....So that’s what happened.”

Pierrot processed the story Helena had just told him.

It had only been a few minutes since they returned to the cottage. The pain on his tongue had dissipated, but the fear remained. Their conversation started small, and with time, it led to Helena’s side of the story of his near-death experience. Hearing that he had been bedridden for three days should have shocked him, but he lacked the energy to do so.

“That’s…, plausible.”

To his understanding, there wasn’t a crack in the story. All of it was believable. Besides, what good would it be for her to trick him?

“Then, what about–”

Pierrot was about to continue the conversation when he saw Helena with both eyes closed. Her head wobbled left and right as it tried to balance itself against the relentless push of gravitational force. In contrast, her body below the neck wasn’t moving as much as before, conserving her energy until she finally succumbed to exhaustion.

“Helena?” Pierrot said.

Soon enough, Helena–sitting across from him–buried her face in her own arms on the table. Her breath was steady, like serene waves approaching the shore and washing the shimmering sand down with their beauty. The golden strands, which reflected the sun coming in from the window slid down, disappearing beneath the wooden table.

Helena had fallen asleep.

That didn’t come as a surprise. From what he had heard, it seemed to him that Helena had been taking care of him before he got up from his slumber. An image of Helena taking care of him flashed in his mind. Scene after scene, played out more beautifully and elegantly than a jester entertaining his king–vivid yet also fleeting. Because of him, she must be so tired.

Though simultaneously, he couldn’t help but grin a little thinking of a person like her taking care of him. Of course, he wiped the grin out of his face. Being delusional now would be the most embarrassing thing he had done.

“Eat…, what…, tomorrow….” she mumbled in her sleep.

Pierrot let out no more sound. He only wished that, if she were dreaming right now, it would be a vision of something pleasant–a scenery of a peaceful land that only a magnificent painter could capture its beauty with his brush or a meadow where grasses and flowers danced in harmony while fluffy clouds above watched over them.

With that imagination in his mind, Pierrot stood up and walked towards the room where he had come to his senses early this morning. Seconds after that, not even a full minute, he exited the room with a blanket. The edge, although just a small part, got dragged across the wooden floor until it stopped just a few inches away from Helena.

Letting gravity do most of the work, he let the blanket fall flat on Helena’s back. After some adjustments here and there, the blanket now embraced Helena in its warm and comforting hug. Only her head was still sticking out.

It was the best action he could think of now. Sure, he could have carried Helena to her room, where her slumber would most likely be accompanied by a soothing bed and pillow. But there were two obstacles he deemed impossible to cross, at least for now: the first being his lack of arms, which made incidents more likely to occur, and the second being his inability to breach a maiden’s privacy.

No matter how he spun it around, he found no will within him to do something that the person herself hadn’t and couldn’t consent to. “Disgusting” was the first word that entered his mind, followed by “repulsive” and “ashamed.” Who knew what Helena had in her room, so he refused to take even a single step into her room.

It was enough for now, he thought.

Now, it was a matter of what he would do after this.

Or to be more accurate, what should he do now?

Unfamiliar place, unfamiliar circumstances, unfamiliar person–everything was against him, it seemed.

He couldn’t go back to the battlefield now, could he? He knew where he was now, of course, but the distance itself begged a question. The war might have shifted to another side of the kingdom.

Besides, just thinking about it twisted his guts in a way he hadn’t experienced before, though it wasn’t easy for him to forget the lingering scent of steel and blood.

The battle Pierrot took part in was a defensive act against the rebelling army of the Aethel Kingdom approaching from the South. As an ordinary foot soldier, he knew nothing about the details other than its perpetrator–the Third Prince of the Aethel Kingdom himself, a figure shrouded in mystery, even to his people. According to Pierrot’s superiors, the Third Prince and his retainers wished destruction upon the current Royal Family. He had killed the Second Prince, now aiming at the First Prince’s throat. It was all to realize his ambition, waging this war that had lasted for a few months.

With that prospect in mind, it’s no wonder that the Aethel Kingdom’s army fluctuated in its numbers. Almost everyone had the same idea in their minds, using this situation as the perfect opportunity to make a name for themselves. The better their feat, the greater the reward they could reap, and if fate itself sided with them, a future crafted in opulence and prestige wouldn’t be that far from their reach.

Pierrot, on the other hand, was driven by a different motivation. He sought no glory nor achievement. Joining the army was his attempt to protect the village he was born in the Northern part of the kingdom. No one knew what might happen once the kingdom fell into the hands of traitors, so it was safe to assume that he had expected the worst.

He had prepared his heart for that sacrifice. Facing death became meaningless as long as the blood spilled was his own, not his family’s .

Or at least he had believed that to be the case.

After realizing death hadn’t come to greet him, that his beating heart still nourished his so-called fluttering life, he admitted that fear had nailed his feet to the ground. Not even the desire to protect his family could help him overcome the terror peering into his eyes, the horror that stabbed him through his nose, and the warm coldness which blanketed him in despair.

With those thoughts piling up inside his mind, Pierrot instinctively cupped his mouth. The sensation of acid forcing its way out of his stomach burned his throat. It took him everything within his strength to avoid repeating what had happened in the bathroom. But with just one push–the image of his comrades’ lives vanished from existence–he couldn’t hold it back anymore.

In reality, he was afraid of dying.

He rushed to the outside, hand still cupping his mouth as his last ditch effort to avoid spilling what he had consumed onto the cottage’s floor. Disgust broke the dam, and once he reached outside where the scent of grass swayed around, he let it all out.

Hurk!

A flood akin to that of a waterfall came rushing down from his mouth. He gagged a few times. Every time that happened, murky and transparent liquid poured down in rapid succession. His eyes also teared up. It took him a bit of time to adjust himself, letting his stomach rest from all the contractions.

On the ground, pieces of digested fish swam in the pool of his vomit–still dead. Around it was rice, squeezed and mushed all together into a white paste with a color that contrasted the ground underneath. Stepping on it would cause a soft sensation that tickled his feet and crept up his nerves like a vine. And not to anyone’s surprise, he didn’t dare to do it. Even now, the aftertaste of today’s breakfast stuck on his tongue with a touch of uncomfortable warmth on the surface.

The whiplash reaction was stronger than he had anticipated.

Pierrot realized he needed to distract himself.

It was then that he turned around, noticing an item propped up next to the door. It was simply a nice broom without too much to talk about it. He then decided what to do to pass the time.

Sweeping.

It might not be the most high-octane action where sweat (unless the dusts were stubborn) and blood (unless the broom was covered in spikes) were required. No clash of steel. No adrenaline rush filling the body with strength. Just a simple act of making the floor spotless.

For Pierrot, who had lost an arm, it would challenge him to adapt, and what other activities could do that better than such a simple activity. Step by step, starting from small.

So he did.

With the broom in his left hand, Pierrot entered the cottage again–his next battlefield.

Sweeping back and forth, Pierrot focused on the dirty spots. Its head made a swooshing sound against the wooden floor. Soft and gentle, he sneaked around to avoid bothering Helena deep in her slumber.

Pierrot found it difficult at first. It was uncomfortable, feeling the absence of something that should have been there. But after a while, his movements got sharper. His accuracy improved over time. His left arm became much better at controlling the broom. It was still far from perfect, but he felt relief washing his worries of being unable to do basic stuff such as this anymore. This feeling propelled him to continue what he was doing until he finished.

Now the floor was all clean.

“Well done, myself,” he encouraged himself.

It wasn’t fulfilling enough, however. He felt that he was still capable of doing more. If anything else, being passive didn’t suit him. At the very least, he wanted to move and sweat.

With that in mind, Pierrot went outside. The world around him had darkened a little, with a soft, orange hue getting more intense in the distance. He tried paying no attention to it, as doing so would remind him of another war that might be happening on a different side of this kingdom. So he began sweeping outside too, but not before piling up dirt on top of where his vomit lingered.

Whenever there were dead leaves and twigs, he pushed them aside. He circled the cottage, and when he had done half of a circle, something caught his eye. Amidst the beautiful flowers, there were several patches of dead grass, and alongside them were dying flowers with petals scattered on the ground. Their color had withered away as they bowed down, no strength within them to keep the stem from standing up.

The fact that Helena still kept them showed how much she was fond of flowers. To Pierrot, that was admirable.

Soon enough, Pierrot completed a lap around the cottage. He was already sweating, though he wasn’t planning to stop either. After entering the cottage for the umpteenth time, he took a napkin and drenched it in water. For how he squeezed the excessive liquid soaked in it, well, I’d leave that to your imagination. Simply pressing the piece of cloth as hard as he could with his only left hand, twirling it in the air until the water decided to splash everywhere, or drinking it to keep himself hydrated–the details didn’t matter, all that mattered was him having a proportionally-wet napkin.

Anyway.

Using this time he had for himself, he began wiping the surrounding furniture, which helped him to realize something else. Without his right arm, balancing his weight became a task he had to do consciously. Leaning too much in the direction where he was scrubbing could lead to a fall. For someone whose height was average amongst other soldiers, he felt pity for those who were taller given they suffered from the same condition.

The time it took for him to complete this task–giving no mercy to dirty and dusty spots all over the cottage–almost reached half an hour. His saving grace was the lack of small objects he had to pick up and put down. Also, it served as a workout, so he didn’t mind.

The rest of his day was all about doing chores. Whatever he could think of, he would do it–finding gaps where dust had accumulated or pesky spiderwebs near the ceiling. After doing so much of this, it might become his new hobby in no time.

Before he knew it, the sky had turned dark. Once he stepped outside, the caresses of the wind became much colder now. It bit into his skin, sinking its teeth until he felt the bones covered within his flesh trembling. The flowers from one corner to another were swaying as long as the wind begged them to, soaking in the peacefulness amidst the air.

Yes, peaceful–one word Pierrot would use to describe his surroundings.

Away from the dread of bodies being mangled….Away from the shrieks of terror….

He sat down on one of the stairs. Now he had all the time in the world for himself, basking in this stillness, which wasn’t bad at all. However, he couldn’t help but frown. He felt undeserving of such privilege. The blood smeared on his hands couldn’t be washed just by atoning.

As that thought tore his mind apart, the door behind him creaked, followed by the sound of soft steps and a yawn.

“I-it’s…, dark already…?” It was Helena with hair all ruffled up. She was rubbing her half-shut eyes, trying to scratch the drowsiness away.

“Good evening,” Pierrot answered. Compared to how awkward he had been before, this time words rolled up more easily from his tongue. “How was your sleep?”

“Nghhh….” she groaned, still walking between the realm of consciousness and unconsciousness. “I think so…, I had a pleasant dream.”

Feeling interested in what Helena had to say, Pierrot kept quiet, but his eyes were glued to the woman.

“I’s a meadow….Very beautiful with so many flowers…, you should have seen it with me too, Pierrot.”

“I see.” Pierrot smiled hearing that. “Glad to hear that.”