Yamiyo no Hotaru

Chapter 26

Reality is not always sweet and filled with hardship and pain. An ideal is an ideal because it cannot be realized, a dream is a dream because it cannot be fulfilled, and the greatest happiness in life is when the effort brings results.

This is true even today. And in a world where traditions prevail, status barriers exist, death is close at hand, and unreasonableness is rampant, life is even more difficult and painful. No wonder the concepts of reincarnation, the Latter Day of the Law, and eschatology emerged in the real ancient and middle ages.

But still, people live. Even if it is hard, even if it is painful, even if it is suffering, and even if there is no salvation, people endure hard labor in order to live. Just to earn today's food.

...yes, even if it is in the depressing world of erotic games.

"It hurts..."

Amid the snowfall, the boy involuntarily lets go of the hoe and looks at his own hand. He exhales a warm breath into his hands, which are so swollen, chilled, and chapped beyond a child's ability.

He was at the end of his rope, physically and emotionally. The boy, who had been working frantically from morning to plow the winter fields, even other people's fields, for a low salary, under the order of the local lord, finally gave in at the last moment as the sun was about to set.

Even if his spirit is more mature than that of a normal child through reincarnation, his body has a hard time keeping up. This is the result of working hard while crying and slacking off because of his poor understanding of the situation at home and in the world, and his body was so exhausted that he even felt muscle pains all over his body.

My arm... hurts. My hand hurts. My fingers hurt. My feet hurt. My whole body hurts and I feel cold and tired.

For a child who ate a little porridge in the morning, the labor that lasted from morning till night was too much even for this world... but that did not make the people around him any kinder. The only thing to do is to endure unreasonable suffering.

Therefore, the boy endures the pain in his hands, and the screams of his body, and crouches without shedding even a tear. The sight was truly painful, miserable, and pathetic.

"I have to... keep working..."

After holding his hand in his bosom for a while to warm it, the boy finally extends his badly chapped hand to the hoe he dropped on the ground. Yes, no matter how much pain he is in, there is no help for him.

The land is a shitty, cold, and barren land because it is not connected to the spiritual veins, and because the fields are so small that only a small amount of fruit can be obtained even if the work is done many times more laboriously than it should be. Even so, the annual tribute was strictly collected, and therefore, no matter what, if the soil in the fields was not cultivated by the deadline, the local lord sent by the imperial court would not allow it. So... so...

"It's dark. You finish first."

Picking up a fallen hoe, the man said to the boy bluntly.

"Dad (Oyaji)...?"

The boy looks at the man standing in front of him and mutters weakly. There was a farmer with a poor expression on his face, wearing an old straw winter coat on his body that had been trained by hard labor.

"But it has to be done by tomorrow..."

"I'll take care of it. When it gets dark, the youkai will come down to this area. Hurry up."

The boy's eyes widen in shock at these words. He must have been cultivating land several times larger than his own. And so quickly?

"But..."