INTERLUDE
OLD MEMORIES
—A woman. There was a single woman.
The woman was emotional. She was always weeping. Sensitive to pain, she was always crying.
There was one reason why she wept: She could not forgive her own lack of strength.
There was always conflict, fighting, stealing going on all around her.
No matter how many times she called out, no matter how she clung to it, no matter how much she cried or wept, the sadness did not end. So she cursed her fate.
And while cursing fate, cursing and cursing it, she realized something. No matter how much she cried, it was pointless.
And realizing that, what she desired was pure and simple strength.
Strength to overpower others, to mow down everything. She raced forward, wanting to see what level of strength she could achieve by throwing herself at her limits.
What was necessary wasn’t simply the strength to hurt others. Not just the strength to take away.
What she sought was a strength so overwhelming that no one could even hope to compare. She believed that would stop the fighting.
The woman who was still crying wanted the strength to be able not to cry.
So long as she was powerless, she could not stop a battle where strength clashed with strength.
Her voice could not reach anyone’s ears. Her wish could not be fulfilled. Her grief would be ignored; her sadness would just fill the sky.
How can they be indifferent? How can they hurt other people? How can they think to go on living like that? How, how, how can they not think there must be another way?
“Children are weeping. The elderly are weeping. Men are weeping. Women are weeping. Everyone is weeping. So why?!!!”
In order to stop that, she wanted plain and simple strength.
She forged herself, attaining a will of steel that could endure any pain.
And finally, the woman reached it. Incomparable power, an overwhelming summit that none could approach.
Standing on the battlefield, she raised her voice and shouted for the battle to stop.
She raced forward to bend strength with strength, to crush all grief with strength, to destroy all malice with strength, to stop her tears.
She pummeled those who held a sword, kicked those who relied on magic, shattered those who bared their fangs, pulverized every last person who sought to fight.
But the more she struggled, the stronger she became, the more swords, magic, and fangs appeared.
It was like a spiral. A spiral of conflict.
No one had an answer for how to live other than by pitting strength against strength.
So no one knew any way other than to win in combat.
“Why?!!!!”
And even as she thought that herself, she also wielded violence.
Lowering her gory fist, covered in the blood of others, the woman looked up at the heavens and wailed in lamentation.
The battle never ended. Her efforts and running were all wasted, and her tears would never stop.
And as she continued to run all around, never-ending despair finally seeped into her breast.
The tears flowed. Overflowed.
Not the hot tears that had poured from her eyes before, but the cold tears of powerlessness and despair.
But at the same time, another feeling swelled inside her.
A rage that stained her heart pitch-black, that made her see the world in a crimson tint, that made her mind go blank.
Even as she wept, she knew the true form of that feeling.
And knowing the name of the emotion, knowing the origin of that emotion, the woman understood.
She had never been weeping out of sadness.
She had always been mad with rage.
The name of that emotion was anger—no, Wrath.
This world that demanded tears, these people who refused to stop fighting, the absurdity of lives that would always come to an end someday…
I’ll punch it all.
At some point, the woman stood up, brushed the mud off her dirty knees, and started running again.
Leaping into the midst of the people who were still continuing to fight, punching their faces and screaming.
Stop fighting. Look at the sky. Listen to the wind. Smell the flowers. Live with your family, your lovers.
Hearing her voice, for the first time, a disturbance ran through the battlefield.
A fist that could split the ground, a kick that whistled through the air, they saved people.
Wounds closed over, screams stopped, knees buckled at the warmth, and battle lost its meaning.
Life returned to normal, and the lamentations disappeared from the battlefield.
The people’s tears stopped. The people thanked the woman. Calling out, waving their hands, smiling, but by that time, she was no longer anywhere to be seen.
Naturally.
There were still things she needed to do. She did not have time to look back, she did not have a reason to stop.
She wanted a world where no one cried, where there was no conflict, where nothing was stolen.
Running, running, always running, the woman kept swinging her fists.
Until all the tears stopped, until the hot tears running down her own cheeks stopped.
—The Witch of Wrath ignited her rage at the existence of sadness and continued charging forward.
<END>
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