Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14.1 - Chapter 1.0

“Awaken.”

I opened my eyes, feeling like I’d heard someone’s voice.

“Hey. What’re you sleeping for, dumbass? Are you a moron? Well, are you? You are, aren’t you? You’re such a moron. I mean, you’re trash, too. I get it, I get it. You’re a hopeless piece of trash. I know that better than anyone.”

For some reason, I was suddenly getting dissed.

Hold on.

Why?

What for?

Where was I lying? I could see the sky.

It looked like I’d been sleeping. And I’d woken up. That much, I understood.

But still.

What was this?

The guy who’d just finished dissing me like crazy crouched down, looked at me, and said...

“...Man.”

“Huh?” I said, dumbfounded.

His skin was a greenish-yellow, his nose low and smushed, with fang-like teeth protruding from a mouth that looked like a gaping wound. His ears were huge. He was, yeah, to be blunt—hideous.

The wispy excuse for hair growing out of the top of his head was curly, like a natural perm, and that pissed me off, too.

Well, ignoring the curly hair for a moment, I had more important questions.

“Man, you’re a goblin?” I asked.

“Huh?” The curly-haired goblin’s face distorted with irritation and his head cocked to the side. “Of course I am, duh. You’re a goblin, too, man.”

“Huh?” I raised my hands, bringing them in front of my face. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “What are... these hands?”

These hands.

My hands.

They really were green.

My arms, too. They were kind of weird. Sort of scrawny.

This was wrong. All of it.

“What? Something the matter? Well, you always were a stupid piece of trash, man.” The curly-haired goblin mussed his own curly hair, turning to look behind him. “Hey, Gobuhiro woke up!”

“...Gobuhiro?”

No, hold on, that wasn’t my name—or was it?

Huh?

What was my name, if that wasn’t it?

Calm down. My name. It was my own name; I had to know this. There was no way I wouldn’t.

Pressing a hand against my chest, I took a deep breath.

Now, I just had to say my own name as it came into my head.

Okay.

“Gobu...hiro.”

Seriously?

While I was still in shock, some other goblins rushed over. Naturally (?), as might be expected (?), all of them were goblins.

It was a gob of goblins.

There were one... two... three... four goblins, not counting the curly-haired goblin.

No, I was a goblin, too, so, there were four, plus me, plus the curly-haired goblin, making it five... six goblins, huh.

There were nothing but goblins.

No, wait?

One of them was awfully big for a goblin. No goblin should have been that big, so he wasn’t a goblin.

A hobgoblin, huh?

He was wearing rather heavy equipment, too. Was it because he was a hobgoblin? I didn’t even know anymore.

“Gobuhiro...?” A goblin with strangely silky hair and a clean face, for a goblin at least, but who was still unquestionably a goblin, leaned over my (goblin) face to get a closer look at me. “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Uhh... Yeah. Sure...”

I wished he wouldn’t call me Gobuhiro like it was natural, but I was, in fact, Gobuhiro, so these people (goblins) had no choice but to call me that. While those sorts of thoughts swirled through my head, I (a goblin) sat up.

“I’m fine... I guess,” I said. “Yeah. Fine... I think, Gobuto.”

“You are? Well, good.”

Even though he was a goblin, Gobuto’s smile was awfully refreshing.

—Hold on.

Did I call him Gobuto just now?

Gobuto gently clapped me on the shoulder. Even though he was a goblin.

“I know you push yourself too hard sometimes, Gobuhiro. If there’s anything wrong, I hope you’ll tell me.”

“Ha ha... I don’t think there is, though...”

I seriously didn’t think there was, but maybe I was pushing myself, just a bit...?

He’d said he wanted me to tell him, so I could, or rather I wanted to, but how was I supposed to explain this? When I woke up, there was a goblin right next to me? And I was a goblin? And there were other goblins, too?

“Nyuh? Is somethin’ wrong, Gobu-kun?”

“No, it’s nothing, Yumelin...”

Yumelin?

The goblin with the long hair, who was carrying a bow and had crouched down next to me, was Yumelin? Yeah, that was right. It was Yumelin. When I asked myself what her name was again, I only got the same answer as before. Yumelin. This female goblin was Yumelin.

I knew Yumelin was Yumelin, but I couldn’t help but feel something was off. What was it that was off, though? That I couldn’t say.

“Are you really... all right?” asked the female goblin behind Yumelin.

That female goblin behind Yumelin, the one wearing the pointy hat... I knew her, too. The staff-like stick she was clutching, and that timidity of hers, were familiar.

“I’m fine. Just fine,” I said. “I’m fine... Okay?”

However, there might have been something wrong. No, not just something, I couldn’t shake the doubt that everything was wrong here.

I spoke her name, as if confirming it for myself. “Shiholin.”

“Th-That’s... good then...”

“...Heheh.” I laughed despite myself.

I’d known it.

It was Shiholin.

Of course. I mean, she was Shiholin.

The one who trudged up next, the big hobgoblin who wasn’t a goblin, he was...

“E-Erm... G-Good morning, Gobuhiro-kun.”

“Yeah... Good morning... Hobuzo.”

I knew it.

I very clearly knew. About Hobuzo.

No matter how I thought about it, there was nothing wrong.

I, Gobuhiro, was here, and Gobuto was here, and so were Yumelin, and Shiholin, and Hobuzo, and finally Gobuta.

Five goblins, and one hobgoblin. Six people in total.

“Was I having a weird dream?” I murmured to myself.

“Hoeh?” Yumelin cocked her head to the side. “Just now, Gobu-kun, did you call Yumelin?”

“No, I did not. I mean, listen, Yumelin, if you call me Gobu-kun, everyone but Hobuzo could be Gobu-kun, so I’m not sure that works. I get the feeling I’ve said this before, though...”

“Oh, wow. You did? You were tellin’ Yumelin that before?”

“I feel like I did... Or maybe I didn’t... Hmm...”

“Well, it’s just like you’re sayin’, Gobu-kun. Ah, Yumelin went and called you Gobu-kun again. Sorry, Gobu-kun. Ah.”

“Do you have, like, zero capacity for learning, Yumelin?! I mean, seriously!” Gobuta shouted.

“Shove off, Gobuta! Yumelin doesn’t want to be hearin’ that from you! You’re just a Gobuta, Gobuta!”

“I’m a what now?! I don’t get it! I don’t get anything you say!”

This scene of Gobuta and Yumelin bickering was familiar, too.

I couldn’t work out what was up yet, but I was here, and this was where I belonged, and yet I was thinking it felt off somehow. That was a bit strange of me. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that way.

Shaking my head, I looked around.

The walls were collapsing. The floor was rotten, and the grassy ground underneath was exposed. Only, like, a fifth of the ceiling was left. The blue of the sky stung my eyes.

It felt like a ruin. That was because these were, in fact, ruins.

“Hmph...” Gobuta leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms. “Still, though. This place, it’s seriously rough. Like, even worse than I’d heard...”

When Gobuta said that in a self-mocking manner, Shiholin shrunk her neck into her body, seeming ashamed for some reason, and Hobuzo sat down in dejection.

“It looks like the place hasn’t been maintained in a while,” Gobuto said with a shrug. “It’s certainly a lot different from before. But, well, maybe it’s all in how we look at it?”

“How we look at it?” Gobuta echoed with a snort. “How are we supposed to look at this?”

“It’s a good place for a fresh start, wouldn’t you say?”

“How?!”

“F-From zero!” Shiholin suddenly exclaimed. “I-If... you look at it... l-like we’re starting over, from zero... I mean, we actually have nothing...”

“Zero, huh.” Yume chewed on her index finger, puffing up one cheek as she did. “But, you know, Yumelin’s thinkin’ maybe what we had back there wasn’t better than nothin’. Though, if you’re gonna ask what’s worse than nothin’, Yumelin doesn’t know.”

“Y-Yeah...” Hobuzo was drawing on the ground with his fat fingers. “For, well... orphans, like us... we’re in a bad position back there. I mean, we had no position at all...”

I looked up to the sky again. The color of the sky was, obviously, no different in the New City than it was here in the Old City.

Or it shouldn’t have been.

But somehow, it looked totally different.

Like the sky here was faded, you could say.

I really got that sense of, Ohh, how we’ve fallen...

It was something we chose for ourselves.

For us goblins, the most important thing was the blood of our fathers. For the hobgoblins that coexisted with us, that was no different. When we gave our names, first we gave the name of our bloodline. Whether we had inherited a name from our fathers or not. That was what decided most, though not everything, about our lives.

If a goblin or hobgoblin had five or ten wives, and each of them gave birth to children, not all of them could inherit the bloodline name.

As for the father’s financial power—well, blood relations came into play here, too. It was basically a question of how good their blood was. If they had five children, maybe one or two could inherit the bloodline name. They were chosen based on divination, appearance, or how good or bad the birth mother was. Only the ones given the bloodline name were acknowledged as his true children.

The rest became orphans.

No matter how wealthy they were, or how good their blood, it was rare for some benevolent goblin to take in orphans. Once they were weaned, they were thrown out of their father’s house.

That was why I, for instance, didn’t even know my own parents’ faces. Gobuta said he didn’t, either, and Shiholin and Hobuzo only knew their mothers.

Yumelin was an orphan born to orphans. Gobuto never talked about his situation, so there may have been something up there.

Regardless, an orphan was an orphan.

“Well, yeah,” Gobuta said, putting his hand on a hole in the wall. “Even if we stayed back there, we’d just be forced to work for free until we eventually bit it. There’s nothing here, and we can’t even feed ourselves properly, but we’ll at least be able to choose where we die. ...Oh? Did I just say something cool? That was cool just now, right? Right?”

“Not particularly...” I muttered.

“Shut up, Gobupirooo! Can a lame-o like you judge my coolness?! Hell no, you moron!”

“Ha... ha ha...” Hobuzo rubbed his stomach. “B-But... first we have to take care of, you know, getting something to eat...”

There was a loud growl from Yumelin’s stomach. “Ohhh! It’s really rumblin’!”

“Food...” As for Shiholin, depending on how you looked at her, she might have seemed ready to die of starvation at any moment.

“Food, huh...” I looked to Gobuto, despite myself.

“It’s okay.” Gobuto accepted my gaze, and despite being a goblin, he grinned. “It’ll work out somehow. Let’s all figure it out together.”