I remember it. Vividly.
The night that our village was attacked by the Witch Cult.
It was a truly terrifying night.
The burning buildings, the corpses of innocent people and the blood.
Ooh the blood.
Blood was everywhere.
Seeping into the ground, sprouting into the sky, on people, on the buildings, on my dad, my mom, me.
All I saw was blood.
I could feel my legs burning from overworking, I could feel my lungs gasping for air that I couldn't give, I could feel my eyes drying out from having cried everything out of them, I could feel my stomach turning and my stomach juices coming out of my mouth and nose, I could feel my heart beating faster than I thought it ever could.
I felt like I was in hell itself.
The only thing keeping me sane were my mom and dad.
They tried to distract me from the awful sight around me, needless to say that it didn't work.
An attack from the Witch Cult isn't something that can just be ignored or forgotten.
I could remember my mom telling me: "Everything is going to be fine. Just follow dad and you'll be safe."
I remember running alongside dad while looking back at mom standing to face the Witch Cultists with a fearless smile. Her back looked so big back then.
...
That Witch Cult attack had a surprisingly small amount of casualties. Or so my dad said.
I couldn't disagree with him more.
The amount of corpses I saw was nowhere near small.
But in return for this 'small' amount of casualties, a lot of people got sick.
Most of those who got sick were people from the frontlines.
My mom was no exception.
Most people who got sick died not long after, but my mom pushed through it.
We could see that she was losing her strength, but it was happening much slower than for the other people.
In order to make sure that she didn't die, my dad worked hard and payed a healer to heal her.
But the healer couldn't do much.
Her complexion improved a bit, but she was nowhere near healed.
Even from another room I could hear how angry my dad sounded.
After the healer left I could also hear him cry.
But no matter how much he cried or how angry he was, whenever I entered the room, he would always look at me with a smile.
I was also worried for my mom, but my dad tried his best to make sure that I wouldn't be sad.
He couldn't do much, but he did his best.
After the failure of the first healer, he started working even more.
This made me feel more lonely, but I could manage. He was doing this for the sake of my mom after all.
I also tried to work or help in some way, but my father always scolded me for that. He always said to enjoy my youth. And so I did.
Whenever I was with friends I played with them, talked with them, laughed with them.
I had a very extraverted mind and I didn't allow the trauma from that night haunt me.
...That's a lie. The gory sight from that night made me unable to see blood in the same way as before.
Whenever I saw blood, I would feel the sudden urge to throw up, I would feel my head spinning and my whole body trembling.
It would become less severe as time went on, but it never fully went away.
After earning enough money, my dad hired a more expensive and better healer, but once again it yielded no good news.
He started hiring more and more expensive healers, but none of them could do anything.
Due to the huge amount of money my dad needed to make, my contact with him was basically null. It was because of this that he didn't know that I was trying to get a job.
It was then that I understood just how hard it is to get a job and keep it. I don't remember the amount of times I was either rejected or fired.
These failures made me understand that I couldn't keep my happy go lucky personality at work. I needed to be more professional.
By using this kind of thinking I finally managed to get and keep a steady job.
The job didn't pay well, but that wasn't surprising. I was only a 13 year old girl at the time.
The face my father made when I showed him my first paycheck was priceless.
He was so happy that he cried tears of joy for probably the first time since the Witch Cult attack.
Ever since then, I started helping my father with making money.
We kept hiring healers, but none of them could do anything.
Nonetheless, we still had to keep hiring them. Without constant medical attention our mom would get too weak and die.
At this point, my dad was getting desperate.
He started trying everything. Even things that looked fake.
As failure followed failure followed failure, he got more and more desperate.
But before he could go any further down that rabbit hole, I managed to get him on the right track again.
After not a lot of thinking, we understood that we only had one option left: Felix Argyle. The best healer in the world.
We worked tirelessly. My dad sometimes worked for multiple days straight so that he could get just a bit more money.
After a lot of painstackingly hard work, we finally managed to get enough money.
But alas, even the best healer in the world couldn't fix her.
We lost almost all hope, but then we got a sudden letter from Crusch Karsten herself.
We were shocked. What could such an important person want with us?
I remember how my dad wanted to go alone, but I made him take me with him.
Being in front of Crusch was extremely stressful. This was a person not only of great power, but also with a certain aura that demanded respect.
No matter who you were, you would feel small in front of her. We were no exception.
As we were too scared to speak, Crusch was the one who spoke first.
And the words that came out of her mouth shocked both of us to our core.
She wanted to make a deal. A deal so that Felix would constantly heal our mother and try to find a cure for her illness. And the only thing she asked for in return was me working for her.
We couldn't believe our ears. The deal didn't seem that beneficial to Crusch, so my dad wanted to clear things up, but I immediately said "Yes!" before my father could get a single word in.
My dad seemed shocked at my enthusiasm, but I haven't regretted saying yes back then for even a second.
After that, everything became much easier.
The biggest problem was moving to the Capital, but we managed it easily enough.
Since previously a lot of our money was spent on healers, now we could work for much less.
Though, since I didn't earn any money from my job, my dad still had to work to provide for our entire family, but we could get by without him working 20/7.
I was extremely happy to see the dark circles under my dad's eyes disappear.
My new job as a maid was hard, but everyone was very nice, so I adjusted quite fast. I already knew how to clean and cook due to my dad always being at work, so I didn't have to learn much.
I did have a few mishaps with blood, but they were taken care of just fine.
It was then that a new hire came along.
His name was Cylob.
His relationship with Crusch was pretty similar to mine. His attitude at work also seemed very similar to mine. Both of us were very serious about our work and always wore serious expressions.
But his attitude started slowly changing. Though I wasn't at the scene myself, I remember someone talking about the first time he made a joke on the job.
After that, he started talking with the others much more often.
The first time he talked with someone in my presence, I felt... mad. At myself.
He was basically exactly like me on the job, except he also talked with others, and more often than not, he made them smile.
Those smiles made me even more mad at myself. He was bringing joy to others around him while taking the job as seriously as me.
I wanted to be like him.
But no matter how much I tried, my stubborn mind didn't change its attitude.
Since this job was the sole reason my mother was alive, I didn't want to lose it no matter what, and since I had bad experiences with losing my job when doing something that I wasn't told to do, I unconsciously followed everything to the letter and did nothing extra.
Breaking that stereotype was going to be hard for me, but I wanted to be like Cylob. His kindness was something I wanted to have as well.
The progress was slow, but it was there.
But no matter how much time passed, whenever I was in the same room with Cylob, I would regress to my old habit.
I wasn't sure why, but whenever I was around him, I was always scared to talk over him or to him.
I was probably scared of him not making people smile anymore due to my interference.
It seems like the night of pure terror still hasn't left my mind. And due to that, I wanted as many people to be happy as possible.
Because you never know when something might go wrong.
It was because of this that I looked up to Cylob.
He managed to have some people get loads off their chest by talking to him. He was surprisingly mature and knowledgeable for a kid his age.
Whatever he said didn't work all the time and sometimes it made the situation worse, but most of the time his interference resulted in a positive outcome.
There was one other thing that I liked about Cylob though.
I remember the time I found out about it.
I was walking around the manor when I saw Wilhelm and Cylob training.
They were exchanging fierce blows with real swords!, and even though I couldn't follow them with my eyes, I for some reason knew that Cylob was about to get sliced.
I instinctually closed my eyes and looked away, but for some reason I wanted to see what actually transpired.
When I looked back I didn't see any blood.
Huh?!
I wasn't sure why, but I was sure that blood must've been spilled in that exchange, and yet there was none.
It was then that I looked at Cylob. He had a pretty deep cut on his face... but there was no blood.
I was confused. It was when I strained my eyes did I see something.
Something blue was inside Cylob's body.
I was honestly doubting my eyes for a second, but then I noticed something else.
He had cuts all over his body and all of them had that weird blue stuff.
It was then that I realized something.
He doesn't have blood.
That was the dumbest conclusion one could come to, and yet I felt that it was right.
I wasn't sure why, but that information made my heart skip a beat.
A person without blood should raise confusion or panic, but I felt... peace.
No matter what happens to him, I won't have to see any blood.
That simple realization made me like Cylob.
Afterwards, the more I heard about him, the more I was around him, the more I started to feel something special towards him.
It wasn't just reverence, but something more. Something closer to the heart.
And just at the peak of this feeling, he left to train. I remember hearing that it was something about a mabeast invasion.
The days without him were much less interesting, but I did manage to talk quite a lot, so I saw that as a plus. I was improving myself.
Due to not seeing him for some while, that special feeling died down.
And as soon as he came back, I... Well, just see for yourself.