"Ever since that day, the two of you seem to spend all your time together. And with the happy smile Cyrene sometimes gets on her face, I'm guessing Caelus confessed to her that day, right?"
Phainon spoke with complete confidence.
"Mm. I confessed."
"Cyrene is my girlfriend now. In the future, we'll marry and become each other's lifelong, eternal partners."
"Congratulations!"
"When you two have children someday, if it's a boy, I'll be his master and teach him swordsmanship! If it's a girl, she can learn the rites with Cyrene. Everyone says Cyrene has a real talent for that."
Caelus looked at the cheerful, bright-eyed Phainon and asked,
"Phainon, if an opportunity to become a hero appeared before you, would you take it?"
"Of course I would!"
"I grew up listening to stories about heroes. Naturally, I'd love to become someone who punishes evil and helps people in need."
"That sounds incredibly cool!"
"But what if becoming that hero cost you everything?"
"Your old friends would become your enemies. The burden you'd have to carry would be unimaginably heavy."
"Even if it truly gave you the chance to save the world, you would spend all that time being misunderstood and condemned."
"Even your past self wouldn't understand you."
"He would oppose you."
"If becoming a hero meant becoming that lonely, would you still do it?"
Phainon found it strange that Caelus would suddenly ask something like that, but he still began thinking seriously.
After a long while, he answered,
"If that's the only way to save people and save the world, then I think I'd still choose to become that kind of lonely hero."
"But no matter how I look at it, something like that probably wouldn't fall to me."
"I've learned a few sword techniques from the adults in the village, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that means I could become some kind of savior."
"At most, I'd probably become a wandering swordsman who helps people."
"Just imagining myself as the savior of the world already sounds incredibly stressful."
"I'd probably spend every day wondering whether I was actually good enough for the role."
"Then what if someone else stepped forward and willingly accepted everything I just described?"
"What if that person clearly had a way to save the world, but the price was that the heroic epic in which you became the savior would disappear?"
"In its place would be an entirely new chapter whose ending no one knows."
"Would you accept that?"
"Of course."
"If he genuinely knows how to save the world, then that's already better than someone like me who has no idea what to do."
"As for that so-called heroic epic where I become the savior..."
"I like heroes, and I'd love to become a great one someday, but it's not as though I absolutely have to be a hero."
"I'd be fine staying here, inheriting my parents' fields, and becoming a farmer."
"What I really want is to protect everyone in the village."
"To protect this ordinary life."
"To protect the happy smiles everyone gets to wear every day."
Phainon smiled as he spoke.
There was no hesitation in his answer.
His desire to become a hero had always come from wanting to protect people.
It had never been about applause, cheers, admiration, or respect.
If anything, those things would only make him feel pressured.
They would make him believe he had to become an even better hero to live up to the image people had of him.
Otherwise, he would feel as though he had betrayed their expectations.
"Caelus, why are you suddenly asking me all this?"
Phainon looked at him curiously.
"Did you receive Oronyx's blessing or something?"
"Did you see something from the future, like in those stories nobody knows the author of?"
"Did you become a prophet?"
"Nothing like that."
"You're overthinking it."
"I just read a story like this before."
"In the story, the only way to save the world was for the savior to sacrifice everything he had."
"It made me curious what someone else would think about that."
"The only way to save the world is to sacrifice everything..."
Phainon considered it.
"That sounds like the kind of story filled with regret and painful farewells."
"Tragic heroic epics like that were pretty popular for a while."
"After all, tragedies really do tend to stay with people more deeply."
"But a lot of those books focused so heavily on making everything tragic that it started feeling like the author was tormenting the characters just for the sake of it."
As someone deeply obsessed with heroic epics, Phainon was also interested in relics and cultural records from older eras of Amphoreus.
He knew quite a lot about the subject.
"For a while, tons of authors started copying that style."
"But when a story forces tragedy purely for the sake of tragedy, instead of feeling moving or heroic, it can just leave you frustrated and miserable."
"I heard there was once a book like that which became incredibly famous."
"Even the ending was so relentlessly depressing that a group of furious readers eventually dragged the author out, beat him senseless, and forced him to change the ending."
"After that, the trend gradually died down."
"That kind of story requires extremely good pacing and a lot of writing skill."
"Most people can't pull it off."
"But back then, everyone was obsessed with tragedy."
"They all thought a life without regret and suffering somehow lacked meaning."
"So a lot of authors blindly followed the trend without ever considering whether they were actually skilled enough to control the pacing."
"In the end, they usually wrote something strange instead."
Watching Phainon speak so animatedly, it was difficult to imagine that under the destiny that had originally awaited him, this cheerful boy would one day become a savior who sacrificed everything and resorted to any means necessary to save the world.
Someone who silently carried every burden alone.
But perhaps this was better.
Just as Phainon had said, his original dream had never been anything more than protecting the people around him.
Protecting other people's dreams.
He wanted to become like the pure heroes recorded in the stories he loved.
People who had once lived completely ordinary lives, yet stepped forward when something precious needed to be protected.
Farmers.
Craftsmen.
Ordinary people who could hardly have seemed less remarkable.
Those were the people Phainon considered heroes.
Caelus looked at his friend.
Then he took out a notebook.
On its pure white cover, he wrote a single name.
Phainon.
"My friend, if you don't mind..."
"May I start with you?"
"Huh?"
Phainon raised a hand and pointed at himself, completely confused.
"Me?"
"I want to record people."
"To write their stories."
"But I wasn't sure where to begin, so I thought I'd start with the people around me."
"I want to write stories that belong to them."
"Their own legends."
"I want everyone to have the chance to become the protagonist of their own story."
"Oh!"
"That sounds amazing!"
"Of course I don't mind."
"Friends are supposed to help each other."
"So that's why you were asking about things like my dreams earlier."
"You were gathering material for your writing!"
"I actually know quite a lot about stories, so ask me anything you want!"
"Mm."
Caelus nodded.
"Then, Phainon."
"Which would you prefer?"
"Traveling across the world, punishing evil, defending justice, and protecting the weak?"
"Or remaining in your homeland and protecting the people and land you've always known?"
"If I absolutely had to choose between those two..."
Phainon thought for a moment.
"I think I'd stay."
"My parents are still here, after all."
"If I left them behind to travel the world and something happened at home while I was gone, I'd regret it for the rest of my life."
"Mm."
"I understand."
Caelus opened the first book that would record this world.
Its title was:
Phainon.
In a quiet, peaceful village on the distant fringes of Amphoreus lived a handsome young man with white hair and blue eyes.
He was Khaslana.
He was the one who had once carried everything.
He was the one who had saved the world.
He was...
a hero.
(To be continued.)
◇◇◇
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)