Chapter 22: Chapter 22 — The Beautiful Thing About Being a Father
After witnessing the horror in the forest clearing, we returned immediately to the village with the rescued children and dragging the miserable cause of it all behind us. We headed straight to the adventurers’ guild to give our testimony in the leader’s private office.
Mister Pain listened in silence, nodding gravely at each of my words, while his eyes reflected a contained fury I’d rarely seen in him.
The little thief, who had finally woken up and was wrapped in a large blanket, was entrusted with recounting the rest of the story. Her voice was barely a fragile thread cutting through the silence of the room.
According to her heartbreaking testimony, she had been kidnapped a few months earlier while helping her mother with household chores. That cursed swine had invaded her home, cruelly abused her mother before her eyes, and then murdered her without mercy. But the monster’s perversion didn’t stop there: to earn a few extra coins, he sold the woman’s corpse to a local necromancer.
The little girl continued explaining, between choked pauses, that she spent the first days locked in a dark, cold cell, only to then be forced into hard labor. The fat man’s whip fell on her every time she failed, made the slightest mistake, or even when she did nothing wrong at all; that bastard beat her purely for his own amusement.
As she spun her tragic memories, the girl hunched her shoulders instinctively and began to sob hard, clutching at the tatters of her clothes as if trying to shield herself from an invisible enemy. She told us she had made friends in captivity, but had been forced to watch many of them die at the hands of that monster.
Seeing the physical and psychological marks on her fragile body, I understood the hell she had lived through; the systematic abuse had left a deep trauma carved into her small soul.
God... The more I listened to the horrors that child had suffered, the more I wanted to stand up, go down to the cells, and beat that bastard to a pulp myself until he begged for death. Yet, seeing the disfigured face Samira had left him with brought me a bitter consolation. At least he’d paid a fraction of his karma.
Mister Pain reviewed some documents and spat on the floor with contempt. The wretch’s name was Gorgoroth "The Voracious," a highly wanted human trafficker for major crimes across several kingdoms. Human trafficking was strictly illegal in this world, and knowing Samira had captured him—or rather, destroyed him with her fists—put a dark smile on the guild leader’s face.
The other surviving children, who were being tended to outside, gave sadly similar testimonies. The collective pain in the air was suffocating.
"Mister Pain... What’s going to happen to the children now?" I asked, breaking the heavy silence.
"Well, they will be formally handed over to the Church of the Eternal Goddess," Pain replied, softening his tone. "They’ll take charge of investigating whether any close relatives remain alive to return them to their homes. For those who have no one... the Church will raise them in its orphanages and give them a dignified education."
"Good, I suppose that’s for the best. Thank you for taking care of this, Mister Pain," I murmured with a trace of sadness, preparing to leave.
"Don’t mention it, Harold. It’s my duty," the guild leader answered, bidding farewell with a wave.
Before leaving, I stood watching through the interior courtyard window. Samira, with a tenderness that melted my heart, was playing on the ground with the rescued children alongside Master Delsey. The greenish spirit floated about performing magical light tricks to coax small smiles out of them.
It was the least they deserved after so much suffering; seeing my beautiful woman’s maternal and sweet side reminded me why I loved her so much.
---
When I took the first step to leave the hallway, I stopped dead, feeling a slight, trembling tug on my boot. I turned and looked down.
It was the little girl. She was completely latched onto my foot, using her tiny hands with desperate strength, as if terrified that if she let go, she would fall back into the darkness.
I crouched down slowly until I was at her eye level and, with all the delicacy in the world, extended my hand to stroke her unkempt hair. She tensed for a second, averting her gaze slightly from residual fear, but upon feeling the warmth of my hand, she tilted her head, accepting the affection.
"I-I’m really sorry for stealing your gold pouch, mister..." she said with extreme shyness, her voice trembling as her little fingers fiddled nervously with the hem of her rags.
"Hey, you don’t have to apologize for that, little one," I answered with a gentle smile, looking into her eyes. "You didn’t do it because you wanted to. You were forced to, to survive. We all make mistakes or do bad things at some point in our lives because of our circumstances; what’s truly important is to learn and not repeat it. Could you tell me your name?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders, moved by my words, and lowered her gaze.
"Lia... Lia Baker," she whispered.
"You can rest easy, Lia. You’re safe now. I promise you no one will ever hurt you again—not you, not your friends."
Lia looked at me with her big eyes glistening from accumulated tears, and with an innocence that shattered my soul, she let out:
"L-Lia... Lia wants to stay with Mister. Don’t send me away, please..."
I froze. My heart lurched violently.
"Ah... Well, um... Lia, are you sure you don’t have any more family besides your mom? Someone who might be looking for you or missing you?" I asked to make sure, feeling a knot in my throat.
She shook her head with deep sadness.
"And are you sure you want to be with me?" I insisted, trying to be reasonable. "We barely know each other. I could be a bad person, a monster in disguise..."
"You’re not bad," she interrupted me, looking at me with absolute faith. "You saved Lia. Your eyes are kind."
In that moment, I felt a presence beside me. I turned and saw Samira kneeling next to us. She was looking at me with misty eyes and a smile full of love and pride. She didn’t need to say a single word; her gaze was begging me not to let go of that child. Delsey, floating behind, nodded with approval.
I took a deep breath, felt a new determination ignite in my chest, and looked toward the office.
"Hey, Mister Pain! Can we keep the girl?!" I exclaimed loudly.
Mister Pain, who had come out into the hallway and was watching the whole tender scene with his arms crossed, let out a raspy laugh, wiping a treacherous tear from his eye.
"Fine by me, Harold! Alright! But you’ll have to fill out the official adoption papers as soon as you get to the kingdom’s capital. Consider this a temporary authorization under my responsibility!"
---
After settling matters at the guild, we went straight to the same shop where we had bought our clothes a few days earlier. Samira, with an overflowing enthusiasm that seemed like that of a first-time mother, gently pushed me aside and told me she would take charge of choosing Lia’s entire wardrobe.
Well, I admit she made a wise decision. I don’t have the slightest clue about women’s fashion, much less children’s, but I promised myself I’d pay attention and learn her clothing sizes so I could help her on future shopping trips. I wanted to be useful in this.
As I waited for them, sitting on a stool in the shop and watching Samira laugh while trying clothes on the girl, a wave of nostalgia struck my chest.
"I think if my old man saw this back on Earth, he’d mock me right to my face," I thought with a melancholic smile. "He’d surely give me a smack on the head and say something like: ’Idiot, you don’t even know how to change a baby’s diapers and you already want to take responsibility for a girl that age!’..."
A sweet, painful tightness settled in my chest. How I missed my father. In my previous life, I was just a cynical office worker who spent his time fighting on the internet, dodging any kind of real responsibility. And now, here I was, in another world, about to become the protector of a small, broken soul. I hoped I could live up to what my old man taught me.
We returned to the inn as evening fell. Samira prepared a hot bath and, with infinite patience, washed away the dirt, the fear, and Lia’s past. When they emerged from the bath, the girl wore a beautiful, simple pastel-pink dress along with matching little white shoes. With her hair clean and combed, she looked exactly like a little doll—a beautiful princess straight out of a Disney movie.
We spent the following hours enjoying what felt, for the first time, like a true family. While Lia devoured a warm dinner with shy gratitude, I began recounting our stories to entertain her. I told her how I defeated an enormous Orc on my first day in this world, omitting the bloody details and exaggerating the part where Samira gave me a tremendous scolding for being reckless. I also told her about how we beat the group of undead and our strange journey with Dollmun.
Hearing my clumsy gestures and Samira’s amusing interruptions to correct me, Lia let out a beautiful, crystalline laugh. It was the first time we heard her laugh. The sound filled the inn room, completely dispelling the shadows of the horror we had lived through hours before.
Night fell, and exhaustion finally claimed the little one. We arranged the large bed in the room and the three of us lay down together. Lia ended up in the middle, hugging one of my arms as if it were her most precious stuffed toy, while Samira curled up on the other side, intertwining her hand with mine over the girl’s belly.
I stayed awake for a long while, gazing at their serene faces beneath the faint moonlight filtering through the window. The silence of the night was peaceful, lulled by their tranquil breathing. I stretched my arms gently and drew them both toward my chest in a warm, protective embrace.
Comments