2 – And so, just beautiful

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It was not until a full year had passed, that I finally adjusted and accepted my situation.

(Apparently, I have turned into an infant.)

And I had been abandoned in a forest? Then the old man rescued me.

Of course, I had no idea where I was born, and why I was left there.
Thankfully, it seemed like I was just old enough to eat weaning food.

After all, the old man had taken me to a small cottage in the mountains. There was no one there who could feed me milk.
An old man could not be a wet nurse.
And there was no powdered milk like there was in my old world.

For some reason, the old man had built this small house deep into the mountains, and lived there.
I suppose he was one of those people who wanted to be cut off from the rest of the world.
He was very quiet, and rarely spoke to me. Silently, he just repeated the same routine every day.

Wake up in the morning. Boil water. Eat. Feed me. Go outside. Return eventually and eat again. He would wipe himself with a towel dipped in hot water, and then go to sleep.

(This old man has no idea how to raise a child.)

To be blunt, he was absent from the house for at least half of the day. I had little control over the waste that came out of me, but had to deal with it myself.
As for the food, I was given some strange paste made of crushed beans. It was disgusting.
Anyone else would not have been able to stomach it.

However, had the old man not helped me, I would have died.
And so I never held it against him. ‘It can’t be helped,’ I thought.

After all, in my past life, I tended to blame others for everything bad that happened to me.
I did not want to live like that ever again. That feeling was also strong.

The old man had saved me. And looked after me in his own way.
Besides, perhaps this was the norm in this world.

…Yes. I had reincarnated into another world.
I realized this when the old man took me walking around the outside of the cabin.

In the far distance, a great lizard…a dragon, was flying in the sky.

(That dragon is huge! Woah! How terrifying!?)

A baby. Reincarnated in another world.
I had read a novel or two like that. And to be honest, I was excited. Without any reason, I thought that I could finally accomplish something in this world.

(Though, it seems like there are no statuses in this world.)

Nothing so convenient. At all.

But there was one other thing I learned recently.
The old man would leave in the morning and come back in the evening. As for what he was doing, he was training with a sword.
From sunrise to dawn. Just swinging a sword.

…And that sword. It was beautiful.

I could lose track of time, just looking at it.

And so perhaps it was inevitable.

“Old man, I want to use a sword too.”

Years later, when I could finally speak with words, that was the first thing I said.
His sharp eyes glared at me. And then he looked away without answering.
So he’s going to ignore me. I thought, but I was wrong.

A few days later, he brought it from somewhere… Later, I learned that the old man had made it himself. A wooden sword. He threw it at me.
It was quite heavy. It could have hit me in the head!

“Come.”

He said, and took me outside.

…After that, days of endless training continued.
From morning until night. My routine was just like the old man’s.

Swinging a sword. But not just swinging. I copied him as much as I could.

The way the old man taught… It was about the same level as the way he raised me.
If I swung badly, I could expect a knock on the head. That’s all. He did not instruct me with words.
Still. I realized that he wanted me to watch and learn.

(I want to…be like that…)

Swing. To do it more like him. And yet, it was so difficult.
But with every ‘knock’ from the old man, I started to understand just how complete it was.

How much time passed then? After I became used to such days.
When the day finally came, when the training ended without a single ‘knock,’ the old man said to me.

“Tomorrow, we will go on an excursion.”

Next Chapter

Ken yo, kaku katariki ~ Ken to mahō no isekai ni tensei shita noni jitsu wa bunmei ga gendai reberu datta ken