JK Haru is a Sex Worker in Another World: Summer Page 7

  Demons are demons, I thought. There’s no way a couple tattoos can bring humans any closer to them. Humans are nothing but food. We get eaten and die—that’s it. The thought made me pee myself.

  But I didn’t die back then. I was saved.

  Men who fail to pass the trials but also fail to die are made into wall men. They become the wall outside the village that protects it.

  Standing before me was a man with long, dirty hair. I had never met him inside the village. He shouted something that wasn’t human language as he scooped water out of the river and flung it at the demon. That made the demon back away. Little by little. The demon that went into the river voluntarily now hated the water once the man had touched it.

  Then the man began binding his own arm. He wound a thin string tight around it just below the elbow, then bit the inside of his mouth and spat blood on his arm. The blood bubbled on his skin and started to smell like rotten eggs. He thrust it toward the demon and screamed like a horse, “Neigh, neigh!”

  The demon chomped the arm and sucked the blood that spurted out. All I could do was shake with tears coming out of my eyes. But the demon just did what it was doing for a little while, then eventually removed its mouth and tamely went back to where it came from.

  The man’s arm was a mess. He was groaning on his knees in the river when I approached him. “Are you all right?”

  He turned to me and said, “That one wasn’t starving. We’re lucky,” smiling through his cold sweat. “All it cost us was a little blood. Today’s a good day.”

  I noticed upon taking a closer look that one of the man’s legs was made of wood. I thanked him. But he wasn’t happy about that. He didn’t seem to like my tattoos.

  “Don’t tell anyone you met me. Go home.”

  I was helpless anyhow, so even though I was worried about the man, I went back to my house. Then I heard from the men of the village about the wall men. They said it had nothing to do with me, but they told me a little when I pestered them.

  Men who couldn’t become warriors were thrown out. They were put outside the communal society and made into tools to work like horses. In our village we had this thing called dark arts, which is sort of like magic. The difference is that while magic uses spirit energy, dark arts are from the same tree as what the demons use.

  In other words, that’s why we’re persecuted as the Cursed People. Plus the technique used to create the tattoos. People from outside think we have demon blood running through our veins.

  But when we’re persecuted like that we’re forced to rely even more on the dark arts. You probably don’t understand this, but if someone hates you, that means they fear you. We couldn’t very well abandon the dark arts; they were our only weapon. Not even if we were isolated, persecuted, or ignored. We had no choice but to go on using dark arts and be feared in order to survive.

  And in that shitty environment, the dirtiest jobs were left to the weak. The muck sinks to the bottom. That’s just how it went.

  A man who becomes a wall learns particularly nasty dark arts from the wall men before him. And then they fight to protect the village from demons. The men who couldn’t pass the trials were forced to do the most difficult work.

  It’s strange to me that they didn’t run away. But at the time, that didn’t occur to me. It was only natural to work for the village. That little area around it was our entire world. Somewhere to run to? No one imagined that.

  Anyhow, all I had to do was look down on the wall men like the other men of the village. After all, I would be a hero.

  But then one saved my life. A man never forgets a debt. I wanted to meet that wall man again. And there was something about that dark art I caught a glimpse of that attracted me. That power to repel the demons. Despised or whatever it was, it was still strong.

  I made the mistake of thinking it was awesome.

  At first the wall man avoided me, but when I kept following him around, he started to talk to me little by little.

  “You have tattoos, so you don’t need dark arts,” he said, but he never got to the most important point. He only really asked me what kind of trials I had passed and what life in the village was like. Other than that he silently dragged his foot, ate some grass now and then, and walked in circles around the village.

  To me,heseemed like a hero. Because he was fighting—and without getting compensated in any way.

  One time, I observed a day in the life of the wall man from a bit of a distance.

  He mostly just walked. Even if he passed another wall man, they didn’t make eye contact. He walked ’til he was exhausted, sat once in a while, and was up and walking again in no time.

  Honestly, it was so boring, I immediately got sick of watching him. But things changed in the evening.

  A demon came out of the forest.

  He got down low as if he were a demon himself and then crawled toward it. I was pretty far away, but I saw it: a floating ball of fur, about as big as if a kid had curled into a ball. It was drifting toward the village.

  The wall man took some wood chips from his breast pocket. They had been shaved from a keeli tree. Then he took a swig of the liquid inside his leather pouch as he chanted something in a mumble.

  I learned later that the liquid was poppybat blood. Yep. It’s a prohibited substance. Just a tiny amount erases fear completely. Taking too much makes you high, though. It was the only thing our remote village could trade with the cities. I used to collect it all the time.

  Once he drank that, the wall man’s body stopped shaking. Then he screamed—in a beast-like voice, in a beast language. He stuck a keeli chip into the ground. The attacking demon instinctively backed away from the wood. Having repelled the demon, the wood chip burst into flame and burned up. But the wall man provoked the demon and stuck chip after chip into the ground.

  It was a barrier.

  He hopped around in the grass on all fours, and when the demon approached, he shoved it back with the barrier. At some point, other wall men showed up. The scream must have been to call his partners. Everyone else did the same thing, gradually driving the demon away.

  The wall men didn’t kill the demons—because to us they were like gods. They just cautiously, politely asked for them to spare us. The men would fight if one entered the village, but of course, that was only if the wall had been completely killed off.

  The wall man I knew ripped a branch off his wooden leg, bit it, and blew fire. A man with no arms drew a design on the ground and used a dark art to launch himself into the air for a body strike.

  That kept up until nightfall. Eventually the demon floated up high and seemed to disintegrate into the dark sky.

  For a time, the men didn’t move. Then, after a little while, they walked off one by one. They went back to their wall duties without any celebration of or delight in their victory.

  I had been watching the whole time—and I cried.

  The noises the kids of the village were scared of, the ones they thought were “demon voices,” were the shouts of the wall men. They were only allowed to scream at the demons.

  I decided to become a warrior—because becoming a hero sounded good to me. All I had seen was our little corner of the world, but even so, I swore to turn it upside down.

  Alas, I don’t think even three years passed before...

  Our village was destroyed.

  *

  “Do excuse me for my sudden intrusion the other day. To reintroduce myself, I’m Sister Kiyori. I heard from Mr. Widgecraft that if I came here I could meet Mr. Igo.”

  That lady had come to the pub again, looking out of place in her Sister habit. I never imagined that bastard Widge would send a Sister looking for me. He’s always playing such nasty pranks.

  “I believe you’ve met Miss Haru. I’m her friend. That’s how I found out about you. She said you’re a very powerful wizard.”

  Oh, Widge’s new chick?

  Last time we went into the forest, he said he was bringing a prostitute a
long, and I thought maybe his lust for women had gotten to his brain. But he shocked me by saying he was bringing her along as fighting power.

  And sure enough, she was so strong I thought I might be crazy. She could do practically everything Widge could, so I almost thought she was his daughter. But he said that wasn’t the case.

  “I’m still working on her. Apparently she’s fallen for some other guy, but I’m definitely going to steal her away.”

  I hate that Haru chick. Her face is tolerable, but she’s dumb as a rock and has a foul mouth. Yet she seems to think that she’s every guy’s taste and is always interfering in our business.

  She said, “Phat tats, my dude!” about my tattoos (What does that even mean?), and put her hands all over them. I’ve never had a woman do that before. Who does she think she is?

  “Miss Haru told me you can use a powerful barrier, Mr. Igo. As a Sister, I’m learning to use holy barriers. I’d love to learn your technique, if you would teach me. What do you say?”

  And who does this girl, that one’s pal, thinksheis?

  There was no way a Sister would be interested in the dark arts in the first place. I figured she was either a fake or trying to trap me. Hilariously, she even brought some cookies she said she baked.

  I took a sip of my drink and waved her over. Once she was next to me, I aimed at her pretty face and spat it all over her. “That was the mist-blowing barrier. Remember that and scram.”

  The Sister blinked with her wet eyelashes. Then she bobbed her head and turned to go. The cookies or whatever she’d left on the table, I kicked toward her ass.

  “Hey, you forgot your brat snacks!”

  She bobbed her head again, swept all the crumbs off the floor, and left.

  A man I didn’t know sitting nearby made a dumb remark, so I boiled his drink with a dark art.

  *

  While I was working seriously toward becoming a hero or whatnot, passing my trials, a real hero appeared and set the world on fire—a man who was summoned from another world to defeat the demon lord, just like the legend said.

  I heard he was unbelievably strong despite being a kid. He told people his name was “level 300” or something. I don’t think there was anyone who could beat him with a sword.

  And apparently he knew all sorts of things: how to make tasty food, stories no one had heard before, how to compete in both war and politics. The city people were more obsessed with his knowledge than his strength. They forgot that he was just a kid and started taking orders from him.

  My village wasn’t destroyed by a demon, but by a person. The reason the persecution turned into an attack was part of that kid’s policy: unity and solidarity. We were all supposed to chant,Down with the demon lord!

  In other words, each individual was supposed to lend their strength to the effort to defeat him. By doing that, all the influence and military might would gather in one place. Anyone who opposed the leader was driven out. He kept a tight rein on authority by only parceling out power to people who believed in him.

  And apparently that worked quite well. I dunno anything about politics, but city folks must have been pretty open-minded if they let a single hero take all the benefits for himself.

  We were a powerless people on the very edge of Seigaya. There weren’t many of us, and we used the dark arts. And somehow we had just barely managed to carve out a place for humans in the forest. We were a handy stepping-stone on the way to take out the demon lord and were seen as unpleasant outsiders.

  It was raining that day. The army had only just shown up, but the village was lost. They said it was military training. Of course, the hero was there, too. The cheeky-looking little punk was dressed up in gleaming clothes.

  “When I heard ‘people of the forest,’ I thought there would be fairy cuties or something. Who are these ugly mugs?”

  We didn’t know why they were laughing at us. But they told us to move to the city because the army would be staying in our village now.

  Of course, the adults said we couldn’t do that. If we went to the city, we’d be harassed and we wouldn’t have any way to make a living.

  So they said they would let us live in the garrison. In other words, we would have to work ourselves to the bone for the army that took over our village. If we did that, then we could continue living as we had been. We just had to pay taxes and serve them.

  A few of the adults tried to protest and were killed. While they were at it, they killed some of the younger remaining men, too. Their reason was that there were too many of us.

  Us kids were spared. The hero acted all cool saying,I can’t kill women or children.I dunno why he spared them, but it was probably about satisfying his desires—the same reason he killed off the men.

  There were some others who were spared: the wall men. It was assumed they wouldn’t put up a fight since they were already injured. But I knew better, and I had a plan. The invaders thought the dark arts were like good luck charms or tattoos. They underestimated us when they thought we had no anger or pride.

  I gathered the wall men and announced that I would go to the city and kill the hero. “So teach me the dark arts,” I said.

  They all agreed—except for the one who had saved my life.

  For several years, I studied the dark arts. Whenever soldiers showed up, we hid in the woods.

  At one point I spent several months in the woods on my own. I needed to get stronger. I worked on my physical strength, but more than anything, my dark arts.I wanna scare the crap out of them, is what I was thinking.

  Then it was time to carry out my operation. I was going to go to the city and kill the hero. The wall men said they would come with me—because it would be a dangerous journey.

  ...Heh.

  Yeah, I have to laugh. Now I’m an adventurer who lives in the city and heads into the dangerous forest. How does that work, right? You can only laugh.

  There were four of us. The wall man I knew didn’t come.

  The day we were setting out he said to me, “Maybe I shouldn’t have saved you.” When I asked him what he meant, he said, “You could have died in the forest.”

  That was the last time I saw him. I was a bit, well, yeah—sad. But I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

  We left the forest and walked. When we eventually reached a town, we snuck in at night. I was light on my feet and young, so I stole us some food and then we hightailed it to the next town. That’s how we moved. Nothing on the road could frighten us, but the busyness of the towns was hard to handle.

  We traveled on, trying not to do anything that would draw attention. But when we arrived at the big city where the hero lived, we needed somewhere to hide out. Somewhere out of the way with no people around—somewhere dark where we wouldn’t be seen. In a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of town, there was a church. We made that our secret base.

  The key location was where the hero lived. Apparently he had seized the mansion of the noble or whatever (the rich guy who previously owned the land), rounded up the lord’s daughter and other beautiful women of the city, and created a house where no other men were allowed.

  That was fine with us. It meant all we had to do was get past the guards outside and the only people in the house would be women. We thought about when to make our move.

  One windy night after a streak of fair-weather days, the wall men and I mixed poppybat blood into the guards’ drinking water. That much color and smell could be hidden. Dark arts could make piss water drinkable, after all.

  Then we surrounded the mansion with a barrier and set it on fire. We made it easier to burn by covering it in vines grown with a dark art. Of course, we didn’t think that would be enough to kill the hero. Besides, I had decided to kill him with my own hands.

  Gripping my short spear, I went into the house. I was protected from the flames and smoke by a barrier I had created around me, but that gave me less air, so I didn’t have much time. I had to get this done quick.

  Everything was going f
ine—or at least it had been up to that point. That’s why I thought something so conceited as,I have to get this done quick, about killing the hero.

  From a bedroom on the collapsing second floor came the hero wielding a sword. When he saw me he looked surprised, but in the next moment he blew me away, barrier and all—with a simple horizontal swipe of his sword.

  My spear broke, my barrier scattered, and I went flying through the burning wall to land outside. I broke my left arm and a rib, but that was probably thanks to my barrier. The hero meant to slice me in half.

  I realized the situation was hopeless. One hit was enough to open my eyes. Between him and me...there was something that made us very different. We were from different worlds, after all.

  But I couldn’t run away. I had a sword stabbed through my thigh. As I struggled like a pinned bug, he had the nerve to say, “Well you’re a new kind of demon. Is that your attempt at transforming into a human?” He coughed. “Your skin color’s off.”

  I felt insulted, so I forgot my fear and yelled at him. How he’d stolen my village. How he’d killed my friends. And how he spared me because I was a child.

  And what do you think he said to that?

  “I dunno who you are, but if I saved your life, then why aren’t you more grateful?” He seemed honestly confused.

  I couldn’t get through to him. He saw us as puppies or something. He thought that even if he murdered our friends and invaded our territory, he could just feed us and we’d like him.

  I realized that begging for my life or spewing hatred at this guy would be pointless. So I told him to hurry up and kill me. He took the sword out of my thigh. He seemed about to stab me through the heart, but then he saw the drinking pouch on my back. The smoke was ruining his throat. He opened the pouch and gulped down what was inside.

  Then—he started to hurt. He clawed at his throat, writhing.

  “You little—is this—poison!?”