“Still not the point.” Blood took a step towards him.
To me, it seemed like an invisible aura was enveloping his entire body. I hadn’t really been aware of it up until this point, but Blood was very large. What people meant when they said “big-boned.”
“Hey, now…”
Even just watching from the sidelines, I could feel my skin tingle from the sheer force of Blood’s advance.
“Listen, Old Gus. I know it’s your nature to talk like that. I’m not gonna bother trying to change you after all this time. This is what makes you who you are.
“But you don’t call a kid ‘trash’ while he’s in earshot. Even you’ve gotta be able to imagine how hearing that must make him feel.” Blood glanced at me, then stared back to Gus.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“Mgh…”
Arrogant, bigoted Gus was being overpowered. This despite the fact that it was normally Blood who got chewed out by the other two for his irresponsible, “it’ll do” attitude.
“If you want to stay out of raising Will, be my guest. You can go be a crank where none of us have to listen to you. But if you’re gonna be teaching him, do the kid a favor and cut that stuff out. That sound fair to you?”
Gus was silent for a while. Then, shaking his head slowly and sighing, he accepted the blame, and backed down.
“You’re right. It was a thoughtless remark. I’ll be a little more considerate in future. Sorry, Will.”
“Uh, it’s okay…”
I’d never seen anything like this from either of these two before. Pulling myself together, I decided to say something to defuse the situation. I had to make a show of overlooking it so we could all move on.
“Um, I’m fine, Gus. Don’t worry about it.” I couldn’t think of anything better to say.
Hearing that, Blood cooled off as well, and bowed his head slightly toward Gus in apology. “I was out of line, too. Shouldn’t have gotten aggressive with you all of a sudden like that. Sorry. Can we let it be?”
“Mm.” Gus nodded. “Your lack of refinement is nothing new. Forget about it.”
“Hey, Mary, gonna borrow Will for a sec.”
Mary had been watching over the two of them with her usual peaceful expression. “Yes, all right. Gus, would you mind telling me a little more?”
“Will, come outside a moment.”
“O… Okay.” I couldn’t really grasp the meaning of what had just happened. It had all been too fast.
But I was sure of one thing.
Blood had gotten angry, and he had done it for me.
The city’s ruins were as beautiful as ever.
The morning sunlight was glittering on the lake.
“Uh, so… Will.”
And sitting on the hill, gazing at this glorious sight: a skeleton.
The mismatch was phenomenal.
“You probably don’t know anything about this, ’cause you’ve been here as long as you can remember, but…” Blood scratched his skull, as if hesitating over how to explain. The pale blue flames in his sockets swayed. “You can still tell, right? That you’re different from me and Mary and Old Gus.”
“Um… Yeah. I know. I’m the only one who’s warm and breathing.”
“Yeah, that. It’s, uh, complicated. All kinds of complicated…”
I was obviously aware there were some unusual circumstances behind where I came from. A ruined city, the undead, and in the middle of it all, one single living human child. It was unnatural.
Gus said I was “picked up,” so maybe I was an abandoned child or something. Mary was the mothering type, so maybe she took me in, and Gus was against it or something. I could make all kinds of guesses, but ultimately, I wouldn’t know the truth until it was explained to me. And…
“Now’s… not the time.”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t surprising. No respectable adult would tell a child my age he was adopted, or try to explain all the complicated background of it to him, no matter how brainy he seemed for his age. You’d keep it hidden.
Blood shrugged his shoulders gently. I suddenly realized that the reason Blood got mad at Gus might not just have been for being so thoughtless around a child, but also because he spilled the beans about my background.
“Uh, and about Old Gus. Don’t be too mad at him, okay? When he gets excited, he’s, y’know, whatever he’s thinking just comes straight out. Even when he’s not excited, he doesn’t do the whole ‘considerately choosing your words’ thing in the first place.”
“Yeah. It’s okay. I’m not mad. It just surprised me a bit.” And the reason his anger had been so ferocious might also have been to distract me.
Before I fully understood what Gus meant by “trash off the ground” and started to think poorly of him, Blood had caused a scene and given me something else to think about.
“Hm. You’ve got a big heart, Will. It’s good to be big. How about this. When your body gets as big as your heart, and you’re old enough to take it all in, I swear I’ll tell you all the things I can’t talk about right now.”
“Yeah.”
It was all for me.
Now that I could understand him, I found that Blood was being surprisingly compassionate towards me.
Blood is amazing, I thought. Had I treated other people like that before I died? Had I managed to be like that? My memories were vague, but I thought the answer was probably no. Almost never? No, straight-up never. The thought made my chest tighten.
“Blood?”
“Hm?”
“Um, thanks. For all this.” I couldn’t word it very well. He deserved better.
“Hahah! Don’t worry about it.” The will-o’-the-wisps in his eye sockets shimmered. I couldn’t read the expressions of a skull, but I felt as if he’d just grinned at me warmly.
He ruffled my hair and stood up. “Okay. Go talk to Gus and learn about writing and magic and all that. At the end of the day, that old man’s a damn good sorcerer. A zeni grubber first and foremost, though.” Rattling his jaw in laughter, Blood added, “Ah, I guess you don’t know what zeni is. Right…” and cackled a few more times.
“Oh, and if the old man’s teaching you, then I’m gonna do my part, too! I’ve got a ton of stuff to teach you! Look forward to that!”
“Yeah! What are you going to teach me, Blood?” Now I was curious. Blood didn’t really look like the scholarly type.
“Hm… Violence.”
Come again?
“Violence. How to really go berserk. And how to train your muscles, I guess?”
“Huh?”
“It’s useful.”
What?
“While Blood was alive…” Mary began, as she sat beside me on a bench in the temple’s main hall.
“Uh, while he was alive? Then, wait, that means…”
“Yes. We weren’t always like this, you know. It was… a lot of things. Yes, a lot happened for things to turn out this way.” Mary smiled a little sadly.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask just what had happened. Of course, even if I had, she would probably have dodged the question.
Still, this felt like something important to keep in mind. The three of them hadn’t always been in the forms of a skeleton, mummy, and ghost.
According to my memories from my previous life, the standard for these things was that the dead were being dragged along by their regrets and attachments. Did this follow that formula, or was there some other reason?
Due to my age, I still had very little access to information, and couldn’t say anything for certain. I decided not to engage in conjecture and avoid holding any strange preconceptions.
“While he was alive, he was a warrior.”
“A warrior?”
“A warrior. It means a person who fights in battles with a weapon. Little boys love that sort of thing.”