Chapter 1: Carrying a Handkerchief Is Common Sense

Chapter 1:
Carrying a Handkerchief Is Common Sense

 

“I STILL CAN’T SEE the exit. Yuri, how’s your energy level? Are you okay?”

Filia and I were trudging through the forest. We’d left my cottage first thing in the morning but by the time she asked that, the sun was shining down from directly above us. Despite walking a considerable distance over the last few hours, Filia didn’t appear to be out of breath at all. Even though she looked rather frail, she had way more stamina than you’d think. More than that, she was the one worrying about my physical condition.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Actually, I’m surprised you’re still so peppy, Filia,” I said, though I held back the true degree of my admiration. For all Filia’s marching, she had only the slightest sheen of sweat.

Filia just chuckled, puffing out her modest chest. A smug grin crept across her face. “Well, you know, elves are people of the forest, after all. A journey outside of the forest would be one thing, but inside? This is but a trifle!”

“But that ‘people of the forest’ thing still doesn’t cover getting lost in the forest, to be clear.”

“Shh! You promised you wouldn’t bring that up again!”

In the midst of our bickering, we heard a sound from straight ahead. It was like someone pushing their way through tall grass, clover-patches, and bushes. It was nothing like the gentle sway of grass in the wind. No, this was the shift and crunch of someone—or something—approaching. And when you heard that in the woods, it generally meant one thing.

“A monster.”

As if on cue, the creature leaped out from the shadows between the trees.

“Well then, guess it’s my turn to show off my power, isn’t it?” said Filia, sliding into a ready stance.

The monster shambled on four legs, and in terms of height, it came up to around Filia’s waist. One majestic horn sprouted from its forehead, and I did recognize it from my prior monster-wrasslin’ experience: even for a specimen of this forest, it was notably strong. Its meat wasn’t all that good for eating, so it didn’t really offer much bang for your buck (the bang being dinner and the buck being hot-blooded action), so I didn’t think about it too often. I couldn’t even remember its name.

“A gargas, huh? I can’t afford to go easy on one of those,” said Filia.

Oh, that’s right. It was called a “gargas”!

“Please die,” said Filia politely.

Filia aimed her palm at the monster, shot me a casual smile, and sent a blade of water hurtling at the beast. The water blade whistled through the air, lightning-fast, and a brief hard crack cleaved the monster in two effortlessly clean slices from mouth to tail. Completely annihilated. Hadn’t even had a second to cry out.

Filia looked it over for a moment, just in case, before turning around to face me. “There you go. I used water magic just now, but, of course, that is merely one of my many skills. I am versed in other forms of magic as well, such as fire magic, lightning magic, wind magic, and, oh goodness, we simply cannot forget recovery magic. Quite useful, that! As long as I have magical energy, I can even regrow a lost arm. Although, such an injury is impossible to heal if too long a time has passed. That’s why one must always keep a little energy in reserve. Just in case, you know.”

“That’s incredible,” I blurted.

I’d had my doubts about whether Filia would even survive getting lost in my forest for very long, given all the powerful monsters strutting about. But if she was this powerful, I never needed to worry at all. Being able to regrow a lost arm probably meant she was a magician of considerable ability.

As I gaped at Filia, she just waved her hand back and forth, as if to say it was nothing.

“Tut-tut,” she actually said aloud, “you can’t be that surprised! I’m an elf, after all. Such arcane talent is innate. As a matter of fact, I still have a long way to go. To put it crassly, this is not even my final form.”

“Well, even if you’re an elf and all, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’d be able to use all that magic right away just after being born, right? You’ve really put the work in! You’re pretty amazing if you ask me, Filia, and not just because you’re an elf.”

I have a powerful admiration for magic. I mean, being able to conjure fire or water from nothing? Anyone should admire that. Even some bumpkin like me who lives in the forest has wondered how difficult it would be to study magic and how much you’d have to struggle with it. How many years did it take to attain Filia’s level of magical power, not to mention five different kinds of it?! Just how long had she worked? I couldn’t imagine.

“R-really? Um. Thank you,” Filia took a deep breath. “Thank you so much.”

Filia twirled her silver hair with her finger, as if she were bashful, or maybe unused to praise? That was a kinda surprising reaction. If she was able to use magic on this level, I personally thought she deserved a little pride.

“I-It’s not like I’m feeling embarrassed or anything though!” she snapped, puffing out her modest chest and pointing directly at me—though she immediately crossed her arms in front of said chest. “And now it’s ‘modest chest,’ is it? What a terrible pervert you are, Yuri! Disgust! Betrayal!”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?” I asked after she went through a few other one-word expressions of horror.

“Oh, you know. Telepathy. Impressive, hm? I can read the minds of the unwary. Which means you, in this particular case. How about that? Amazing, isn’t it? What a talent our beloved Filia has!” Filia cried, setting her hand on her hips and once again puffing out her slim chest.

“That’s…really amazing.”

Even if she could only use it when people were being careless, reading minds could offer a considerable advantage in a fight. While I was standing there thinking about how cool it all was, Filia’s eyes widened for a moment. Then, at once, she turned her back to me.

“P-please don’t look at me for a little while.” She sniffed. Wait, no. That was a sniffle. Oh no.

“D-did I say something bad? I’m sorry! Forgive me!”

She was crying? But why? What had I said?! Was it something hurtful? When I went over it in my head, all I found was a great big void where my interpersonal experiences should be. What had I done?

Filia’s back was to me and her shoulders were trembling. Slowly—I guess because she sympathized with me, or maybe because she could read my mind—she explained: “It’s not that you said anything bad.” Sniff. Hiccup. “It’s just, ah, I feel a little happy.”

“Happy?”

“Mmhm.” Sniff. “It’s because you…you said I’m amazing! The people back in my village, they called it creepy. Telepathy and stuff. Can you, umm,” sniff, nose-blow, sniff, sniff, snifffff, “can you please lend me a handkerchief?”

I handed Filia my handkerchief while her back was still to me. Filia extended her pale, slender arm and took it. She wiped away her tears, blew her nose, and handed the gunked-up thing right on back.

“Hey, uh. You know, this is someone else’s handkerchief?”

“It’s okay.” Sniff, snuffffffff, snofffffffff, snafffffffffffff. “Because I just so happen to be a most beautiful lady.”

“I don’t get what that’s supposed to mean.”

Puzzling as it all was, at least she wasn’t crying anymore. With all that out of her system, Filia seemed a little more back to her normal bewildering self.

I took a deep breath and decided it was okay to start talking again. Her eyes were still red, but she seemed mostly all right. “Feeling better?”

“Ha. Hmph. Usually at times like this, forest-man, people would say something like ‘you can cry on my chest’ or something.”

“You can cry on my chest.”

“Well, I’m done with that part. Besides, I’m not an easy woman,” she added, her eyes still red and swollen. Then, after a few seconds of silence, she opened her mouth once more. “It isn’t as though it didn’t make me happy. Because you praised me and such. So. Thank you.”

Filia suddenly giggled cutely. That smiling face of hers could enchant anyone. Even so, something like “it’s not as though it didn’t make me happy” sounded so strange, as if her words were doing gymnastics. Wouldn’t “it made me happy” be just fine? She really did have trouble expressing herself honestly, and it was worse than I’d thought.

But it was also a little funny. I felt the corners of my mouth curve into a smile.

“Well, I just said what I was thinking,” I said, “there’s no need for you to thank me. Besides, I want you to tell me what you think, too. You think these muscles are cool, right?”

“Your muscles are…cool? I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Filia gave me and my magnificent muscles a cold, probing look.

Ugh, what kind of brute couldn’t understand the virtue of such a sweet bod? So conceited!

We passed the next few days fighting and laughing and the distance between us seemed to shrink further. One day while we were preparing a delicious breakfast of recently slain monster, Filia called out to me.

“Oh, that reminds me, Yuri?”

“What is it?”

“Why do you live here?”

Ah, that question at last. Filia had probably been wondering for a while now.

Filia continued, still peering at me. “Forests certainly aren’t an easy place for humans to live, so I was thinking there had to be some kind of reason. Though, ah, now that I think about it—my apologies if I’m asking something too personal. If it’s difficult for you to talk about, you don’t have to answer. We can just argue about, oh, I don’t know. Muscles, I suppose. But do you mind my question?”

It didn’t seem that nosy to me—honestly, she seemed considerate. Although I’d thought of her as smug at first, the past few days had shown an unexpected side to her. She did think about others. Yeah, Filia was a good person—no doubt.

“It’s not particularly deep. I don’t mind talking about it,” I replied.

“I’m sorry, Yuri, but all I heard was your thought about just how adorable I was—which is true!—and then I couldn’t seem to hear a thing after! Could you please say that again?”

“Yeah, figures.” Good person? Sure. Weirdo? Definitely. I repeated myself. “I’ll tell you. About the reason why I live in this forest, that is. But I gotta warn you, it’s pretty boring.”

I got quiet for a sec as I thought back on all those years ago. “A long time ago,” I said finally, “when I was about five or six years old, I was living alone in the slums somewhere.”

Even that sentence on its own was more concrete than my actual memories. I couldn’t even remember what kind of city I was living in. What I did remember was what got me to leave.

“I didn’t have any relatives or friends,” I continued. “One day, a passerby felt sorry for me and gave me this silly picture book. It was something like, ‘The brave hero is aiming to be the greatest wizard of all time but loses in a contest of magic to his rival. After his defeat, he gives up on magic and gets really into cooking, to the point where he becomes a top-class chef. In the end, he finally wins over the rival wizard by becoming the royal cook at the palace.’ Something like that.”

Filia listened to my story in silence.

“Maybe the book was meant to convey the idea that everyone has some natural talent. But after I finished reading it, I just got annoyed. I mean, he lost a magic fight and ran away to cook? Come on.”

It was so unconvincing. Even now, years later, it got a little under my skin.

“If you lose a contest of magic, then you gotta win with magic. That’s clear as day, right? And if you lose at cooking, then you rematch in cooking. If you lose in smarts, then you go at it again until you outsmart ’em. If you don’t get revenge and make a comeback in the same kind of contest, then you didn’t really beat anybody, did you?”

Good for the cook for finding happiness, I guess, but to me the message of that book sounded a lot like “If you lose at something, give it up.” What kinda message was that for children’s literature? If you do happen to lose at something, then you should work hard until you win. That’s all there was to it.

Filia giggled. “Well, I suppose on that point, I don’t dislike this about you, Yuri.”

On that point? What was that supposed to mean? Well, whatever.

“That ending just didn’t sit right with me. It got me all pumped up! In the end, I decided to become the strongest there ever was, never giving up, always getting better one challenge at a time! So I set out on my own journey and rushed out of town to search for the best environment to train!”

“S-such incredible initiative,” said Filia. “And you were six years old? Alone?”

“I’m not saying it was easy. There were a bunch of times I came close to death, but you know how we are as kids. Dumb, naughty little rascals.”

“Not exactly what I was getting at,” said Filia, smiling wryly, her cheeks twitching.

“Sure. Anyway. Several weeks, still a kid, running around defeating monsters here and there, as you do. Finally I got to this forest, and,” I gestured vaguely around.

“I see, I understand clearly now. Can I say just one thing?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“That was absolutely, positively not a normal, mundane kind of story.”

I blinked. Come on, she had to be pulling my leg…right? “C’mon, it’s perfectly natural. Read a bad picture book, get pumped, go to the forest. Bulk up, beat up monsters.”

“Absolutely, positively, literally no one ever does that except for you, Yuri.”

“Huh. Is that really the way it is? Because it’s…it’s the forest, then, eh? Everybody else does it in the hills or by the sea.”

“It’s not a matter of place, it’s—Yuri, are you all right?” Quickly Filia came forward and got in close, face-to-face. “In the first place,” she said softly, “a child can’t go on a training journey alone.”

“Seriously?” I asked. It was so hard to believe.

As Filia stared at me—and I could feel my totally buff face pulling into an expression of shock—she looked so exasperated. “But I suppose you, Yuri, spent over ten years in this forest alone. After all that time, it might seem like common sense to you that your life was a typical one.”

I mulled all this over as we finished our meal preparation and ate beside a river. As we’d traveled through the woods over the past few days, the scenery hadn’t changed much. Plants and birds and rocks and things stretched on. The weird conversation did too.

“What do you mean ‘common sense’?!” I asked, confounded. “If someone just dropped into the woods and told me their common sense would protect ’em, I’d tell them that common sense can go jump in a lake! Better to study proper with a good book.”

“Ugh, I’m getting secondhand anxiety just thinking about it,” said Filia.

I gave Filia a thumbs up, but it didn’t seem to change her sour expression. I clearly needed to explain myself further.

“Really think about it, Filia. When it comes to books, they’re meant to suplex common sense, to roundhouse-kick ignorance. If sense was common, why would we have books to set us all straight? No, I don’t buy common sense at all. Not for a second!”

“I-I see,” said Filia. “I suppose you might have a point,” she added with a quick, more certain nod.

That proved it—my thinking wasn’t wrong after all! The knowledge I’d obtained from reading books couldn’t be wrong since this here muscley bookworm was about to prove the worth of his education by leaving the forest and heading back into the city.

“Glad we’re on the same page. So, that’s why I always carry a handkerchief with me, and if lightning strikes and causes a fire, I run to the fire,” I said, feeling relieved and tucking in to our meal.

“Okay, I was with you on the first half, I’m not going to lie, but what in the world are you talking about with the second part? Why would you do that?” She looked so doubtful. What had I said?

“Well, you’ve gotta pay respect to nature and natural phenomena. Best way to do that? Get hit by lightning directly. Just feel that sweet, sweet nature nibbling at your muscles, channeling through your rock-hard pecs. Good stuff. Highly recommended.”

“I wouldn’t…go recommending that to most people. By the way, that book in your story—do you have it?”

“No point. I’d already memorized it, so I left it at home.”

“Aww. I guess that once you know you can’t read something, you just want to read it immediately. It’s just like how the scarier something is, the more you need to see it.”

Was that common sense too? Maybe we had different definitions of the term. Probably nothing to worry about, but something to keep in mind.

“All things considered,” said Filia, finishing up her meal, “I have to say we really are lucky the river is flowing so wonderfully right now!”

Yeah, you know, it was pretty reasonable to be overjoyed for water. Hydration is essential for survival. Filia could make drinking water with her water magic, but the taste of natural flowing water was just on a completely different level from man-made water.

“Probably not luck. I’d say it’s my muscles resonating with the muscles of the water flowing here.”

“Muscles of the water…the mystical power of words is truly mighty. I just can’t understand it, even when I use all of my brain power,” said Filia, holding her head.

Did she have a headache? Worrisome.

“Of course, there aren’t any muscles in water in the first place…are there?” she murmured.

Yikes. Misguided at best, there, Filia. I shook my head. “Ah, good grief. Guess I gotta give you a lesson here.”

Now was the time to repay my debt to her. She was letting me accompany her, so I had to tell her something really important. I guided the baffled Filia over to the river and we stopped on the riverbank. There, I began my lesson.

“Listen up, Filia. Water is also in muscles. In fact, about three-quarters of muscle is made up of water,” I told her.

“Well, yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

After getting her agreement, I went and touched the surface of the water. My hand instantly became wet. I showed my palm to Filia.

“And of course, water itself is just made up of water. You with me so far?” I asked.

“Yes?”

Good. Then there was one last thing to understand.

“Muscles and water are more or less just made up of water,” I said. “In other words, water is muscle. You get it, Filia?”

“Ha ha ha! Okay, it’s a logic joke. I get it. Very funny, Yuri!” She laughed so contentedly, but it wasn’t a joke at all.

“Well,” I said with a sigh, “you’re still pretty young, Filia. I’m sure you’ll come to understand it someday.”

“Don’t be creepy.”

But I hadn’t said anything remotely creepy! What a boggling person she was.

“Water muscles aside,” said Filia, “the river looks like it’s going pretty fast, doesn’t it? Also, it looks like there’s a steep drop over there. I’d really prefer to not get too close, if at all possible.”

I turned to face the same direction. After the drop, the river, forest, and land broke rather unnaturally. The constant roar of a thundering waterfall echoed just out of sight. Had to be a steep drop, just as Filia had said. The forest extended far, far below and beyond us, teeming with creatures known and secret. A strange feeling, that.

Also, although the river came up to my waist, my feet should have been touching the river bottom. Instead, I felt like I was floating.

“Yuri, you’re awfully calm. You’re not worried about the waterfall?” asked Filia, her voice trembling slightly.

The waterfall…heh. Now there was a good idea.

“Hey, hey, Filia! How about we jump off the waterfall there, just up ahead? How about it?”

“‘How about it?’ Uh, no? It’s a waterfall? Why are you looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes?!”

“A fight with nature… Just listen to the sound of that thing!” I cupped my hand over my ear. “Hear that rush? Them’s fightin’ words!”

Come on, it’d be ridiculously crazy fun! I was grinning just at the thought of it.

Filia was…not.

“If you’re going to dive down a waterfall, you can do it on your own. I absolutely loathe that sort of pointless risk-taking!”

Huffing, Filia started walking up out of the river and away from the waterfall…and slid down on the muddy banks, right back into the rushing water.

“Eeek!”

Filia sank, rose, bobbing helplessly. She hurtled downstream and ripped past me toward the waterfall. My heart swelled with respect for my traveling companion.

“Yeah, Filia! That’s the spirit!”

I never imagined she’d deliberately head up the river and climb upstream for a real running start! And here I’d thought it was an accident! Time to follow her example, take the initiative, and summon my courage!

“N-no, that’s not what I meant to do! Ugh, Yuri, what are you even—”

“All right, let’s do this together as waterfall bros! I’m coming, Filia!”

“I cannot even believe this is haaaaaaAAAAAAPPENING!”

I rushed in and grabbed onto Filia, stopping her from getting swept away. True waterfall bros gotta fall together. I darted downstream, holding Filia tight, and—

“I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, we’re gonna fall, we’re gonna fall, we’re gonna fall, we’re gonna fall…hyaaaaAAAAAHHH!”

“WHOOOOOOOOOO! LET’S GOOOOOO!”

We shot over the waterfall arm in arm. For a second we seemed to float dead in the air…then the surface of the water below rushed up at us. The gust of wind on my cheeks, the roar of the falls—what a ride! Nature is awesome!

“This is fun, huh, Filia?!”

I called out to Filia, but she was clinging to me, curled up into a ball. Aw, and here I wanted to share a fun experience. What a shame. Then as we hurtled down the falls, something unfamiliar came into view.

It was a gray-colored man-made structure, like a tall wall. Oh, it was a castle wall! Like they might have at a town! Good news all around!

“Hey, Filia! I finally see a clue that’ll lead out of the forest!”

“Yeeeaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaa—”

Filia was clearly over the moon with happiness, to the point that if you didn’t know better you might think her eyes were completely blank and she was in a state of shock or something. But hey, that’s waterfall diving for ya! As I cackled with glee, our bodies were sucked into the basin under the waterfall.