After Anas and Naivy finished bathing and washing away all the blood and filth accumulated over three hellish days in the ruins of the Vingard settlement,
Anas sat on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, wearing a clean white shirt and black trousers. His black coat hung on the chair as he ate some smoked meat he had prepared while Naivy was bathing.
Of course, after he had to teach her how to bathe.
'Responsibility is exhausting!'
He wasn't foolish enough to light a fire and risk attracting the horrors that had flooded into the settlement.
In fact, he was wondering about the nature of the things now inside the settlement.
At the beginning of its fall, he had encountered a monster with some level of intelligence and enough strength to crush him in a single blow. So what about now, after three days had passed since the place had become a playground for monsters?
As Anas tried to think through the possibilities, he reached the conclusion that everything he was doing now was merely forming baseless assumptions. He needed more information to build his understanding of this strange catastrophe that had befallen them. Especially since the wall surrounding the settlement had protected them since its construction and had never fallen—so why now? It didn't seem as though the monsters had suddenly decided to become stronger and destroy it, right?
Before he could think further, a familiar voice pulled him from his thoughts.
"Anas! This book is amazing, and it's really easy to read! It seems the wolf isn't a deceitful and evil animal—it's just smart and needs food for itself and its family, or they'll die."
Anas was about to speak, but Naivy surprised him with a strange question.
"Anas… is it possible that monsters aren't evil? That they're just hungry beings that need food? If we provided them with food, maybe they would stop attacking us."
Naivy's question was extremely difficult—even for Anas himself.
Before—or more precisely, before the nightmare—Anas would have given her an answer to make her stop thinking that way. But after what he had seen in that absurd nightmare, his view of the world had changed.
He answered simply.
"I don't know. All I know is that we don't want to die, just like they don't. A bull doesn't offer its neck to a lion—it fights back, and if given the chance, it kills in self-defense. That means we have the right to cling to life."
He paused for a moment, then added,
"In the end, this is my personal perspective. Even my own perspective may change, so it's better if you find the answer yourself. Besides, if monsters could be satisfied, they would just eat each other—but they eat anything weaker than them."
He looked directly into her pink eyes and spoke in a flat tone.
"Do you like monsters… Naivy?"
Confusion was clear on the girl's face, but she answered quickly.
"Of course I hate anything that wants to eat me and tear me apart! Do you think I'm that stupid?"
A dark smile appeared on Anas's face.
"Yes, correct answer. In the end, if someone decides to observe the life of a wolf like this book does, they would cheer for the wolf as it hunts the deer, even though they know the deer has a family and will die when caught. Meanwhile, someone who chooses to observe the deer's life would feel sorrow and wish for the wolf to fail, even though they know it and its family will starve."
He stood up and pushed the plate, which still held half a slice of meat, toward Naivy.
"In the end, the concept of good and evil is something we decide how to define, even if I don't like it. But… right now we're looking at things from a human perspective, because we are human. So we will struggle to live. Now eat—you're too thin. Maybe you should use the coming days to eat well."
The girl frowned, trying to process what she had heard. Despite her efforts, she didn't understand most of what Anas said, but she grasped the core meaning.
"We must struggle to survive."
Her frown soon faded as the smell of the meat finally reached her nose. She suppressed her saliva with difficulty from spilling. In the end, the girl was hungry, and she had never had the luxury of eating proper food before. As for meat, it was something like a dream to her.
She stared at the seasoned, carefully smoked meat, then looked at Anas for a moment.
"Did your mother teach you how to cook?"
She had never even received her mother's love, so she envied Anas if his mother had taught him.
But his answer surprised her.
"No. She didn't need to. Watching her do it many times was enough for me to learn."
Naivy began fiddling with the edge of her now-clean dress, feeling a bit ashamed of envying Anas, and hesitated to accept the food after that.
When a breeze passed and she didn't feel cold, she remembered the warm, soft clothes she was wearing.
'How shameful… am I envying him after everything he's done for me?' Naivy thought.
"Can I really eat it?" she said, staring at the plate, hunger clearly visible on her face.
Anas frowned for a moment and remained silent.
"Can you stop asking stupid questions about your rights? It's annoying. Eat your food."
Naivy was surprised by the sharpness of his response, but she hadn't expected anything else from him. He clearly had his own principles.
She finally sat on one of the chairs, lifted the piece of meat to her mouth, and took a bite…
Her eyes began to shine in the midday sunlight filtering through the curtains. Then she started crying as she stuffed her mouth with meat. Meanwhile, Anas looked at her, a faint smile appearing before he turned his face away to continue training his eye.
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After they finished eating, they gathered whatever food they could carry into a bag.
Anas put on his black coat, then looked at it.
'Maybe it's time to get a new one.'
But he remembered he was broke now, so he decided to postpone that thought and make do with what he had.
Naivy stood beside him, and he noticed she wasn't much shorter than him.
Perhaps just by a head.
Naivy noticed him observing the difference between them and frowned slightly.
"Are you going to brag about your body?"
Anas tilted his head.
"I don't understand."
Naivy turned to face him and raised a finger at him.
"Don't pretend to be dumb. Do you think I didn't notice that your body has lean, well-defined muscles?"
She lowered her finger, then raised her hand in front of her and started counting.
"I treated you twice. I saw your body through your torn shirt, and on top of that, when your shirt got wet, I saw your muscles too. It's true you don't have big, bulky muscles like large men, but your abdominal and limb muscles are strong."
Anas blinked twice.
"As if I said you were wrong? In the end, I'm not stupid enough to ignore that I'm lean and relatively short. I trained until my whole body hurt, and then I reaped what I sowed."
Naivy stared at him, then placed her hand on her chest proudly.
"Hah, I knew it! You weren't weak!"
Anas's gaze darkened, and he replied quickly.
"I'm not strong. I'm weak."
Naivy froze mid-motion, the excitement slowly fading from her face. But she soon realized from Anas's expression that he did not hate himself or regret this weakness he claimed. Rather, he seemed to… know his limits. So she did not argue further, as she had learned that those who boast about their strength are rarely truly strong.
At least, that was something she knew well from living on the edges of the settlement.
Naivy's thoughts were interrupted by Anas's footsteps as he walked toward the door. She followed him, carrying the bag of supplies on her back.
Anas placed his hand on the handle. Inside him, his questions about the world grew, but he also knew they had to leave this hell.
To satisfy his curiosity, he preferred to meet certain conditions—one of them being that he stays alive. Otherwise, his curiosity would be nothing more than a child's questions.
Finally, he took a deep breath, lowered the handle—which creaked as its gears turned—and stepped outside.
It was his first step beyond his home into the ruined Vingard… to leave it behind.