Surviving a Cruel Fairy Tale

26 – Act 1. Little Red Riding Hood’s Forest – Human Proof (2)

One shot.

The moment the woodcutter’s knees bent and showed an opening, the hunter immediately drew a big smile on his lips and focused on that part to shoot.

“hahahaha, hahahahaha!!”

The impregnable fortress collapses.

The moment Tin’s body, which was virtually meaningless to be penetrated by a bullet, shrank, the Tin Woodman had no choice but to crouch down and endure the hunter’s relentless attack.

“Have you decided to stop bragging about yourself? What the f*ck is that, you tin can monster!!”

The woodcutter raises his arm to block his concentrated fire, but since he has already exposed his weakness once, his actions are restricted.

If he gets in the way, turn around and jump.

Even when he turned his body, his huge body made of iron couldn’t keep up with the already agile hunter in terms of speed.

Even overwhelming power is meaningless if you can’t wield it.

The bullets fired by the hunter tore the iron in his chest and left a crack, so the woodcutter was just trying to get in the way and hold on somehow.

“Look at that mess! Human, human. After envying humans like that, did you really put a heart into it?”

The hunter laughs.

His condition hasn’t been normal since he fell down the pit. Originally, it was a fight in which there was no way to beat the Tin Woodman.

In fact, I was driven all the way to the brink of fire, and I just kept dodging and blocking, but that one coincidence turned everything upside down.

“Come on, you tin dog!”

“Mmm.”

Not good.

The Tin Woodman drooled at the sight of the hunter running around him, somehow finding an opening.

Heart.

The source of life.

It is the core of life that any human being should have, and it is what the Tin Woodman longed for, but in battle, it was nothing more than a minus.

“Are you going to keep doing that? Then…… !!”

Seeing the iron giant crouching down and trying to protect his chest somehow, the hunter kicked off the ground and leaped.

The target is his back.

The woodcutter, who rolled up his body and covered his chest as much as possible, left his back relatively exposed, and the hunter was able to land on it without difficulty.

“It’s rude to say that scrap metal or something thinks.”

If you cover the front, it will aim backward.

One or two shots from a distance couldn’t pierce the Tin Woodman’s thick armor, but how many rounds from such close range?

“Aww!!”

The tin woodsman also quickly lifted his upper body and tried to drop the hunter, but about three shots had already been fired, revealing cracks in the tin plate.

“What am I to a dull and stupid scrap metal subject? Kill? I wonder if that’s possible!!”

After that, a battle led by the hunter follows.

First steps.

It must have been an accidental shot, but when I drove him into a corner and approached him, it was so great that he was shot through the heart.

Although not completely broken, the impact of his bullets caused excruciating pain and even the strength of the iron that made up his body was weakened.

Life was cut short.

Because of the crack in his heart that never existed before, the elements that make up him began to gradually decline.

Just a heart.

However, the heart is an organ that symbolizes the nucleus of life.

The weaknesses and limitations of the woodcutter, who had an iron body and had no limits, soon gave him unfamiliar pain.

“…… hehehe!!”

It swings its huge arms to drop clinging hunters, but once it loses its balance, it can’t keep up with the hunter’s mobility.

After that, even the huge iron giant was slowly bitten off.

As if slow-cooking prey caught in a trap, it sees a gap, aims for his loophole, and fires another bullet into the woodcutter’s chest.

“You are weak.”

In such a situation, the hunter, who finally thought that his absolute advantage would not be narrowed, stood in front of the woodcutter with a subtle smile on his lips.

“They say they can’t help it because they committed a crime, but to think that they would commit the crime themselves and try to be punished. The more I look at it, the more it is scrap metal with no way to salvage it.”

“You said you sinned? I?”

At the woodcutter’s question, he proudly nodded and uttered words bordering on disgust with a mocking laugh.

“The sin of daring to yearn for a human. The sin of being born as a machine and not being able to settle for it and looking beyond it. Isn’t that why you put something strange in your chest?”

The place where the human heart would have been located.

Originally, the heart, which was located where there should have been nothing, became life and bound the Tin Woodman, and it was a weakness.

“I didn’t even know my own strengths, so I only copied the weak parts of life, so I ended up like that. Got it?”

“This body has become weak.”

“Wrong?”

The Tin Woodman, who really shouldn’t have been weak, fell to his knees.

A machine without life.

So the iron giant, who remained strong, was demoted to a mortal bound to life by obtaining the heart.

If you look at it in terms of simple fighting power, it is a clear regression.

The woodcutter nodded at his question.

“It could be.”

“Ha, look. Stupid thing. I ended up like that because I coveted something that didn’t fit the subject, and it was too late to regret it.”

Winning or losing is already decided.

I could see the woodcutter’s movements gradually slowing down noticeably, while the hunter, though a little tired, stood on the ground without much wear and tear.

But the woodcutter denies that.

“But I have no regrets.”

“What?”

“Having a heart. Don’t feel emotions. What I wanted to be human. Even now, after becoming a human, I do not regret anything.”

I admit that there are limitations.

I felt the concept of death approaching, and I felt the heat of life that I hadn’t felt before fade away little by little.

But that was the ending the woodcutter had longed for.

“I was born as a human and have lived in a machine body for a long time to forget it.”

It was a really cold, steely time.

A hardened heart.

Emotions that did not move were numb no matter what they looked at, and the body that had lost power gradually stiffened even though it could move infinitely.

There the woodcutter realized.

Emotions were the reason for life to move.

“The body of a machine gradually turned me into a machine. A machine that simply performs repetitive tasks and stops operation when it is no longer needed.”

“What’s wrong with that? Aren’t you a machine anyway?”

“I was human.”

Although I don’t even remember that past now, I do remember that there was hot blood and a heart beating wildly that once flowed through this body.

“Because I didn’t forget that I was human, I wanted emotions and I wanted a heart.”

“Even though I fell as a result?”

“It is not eternal. This is a miracle. A very gigantic miracle that a man who lived as a machine could finally return to being a human.”

It is literally a miracle of eons comparable to God’s mercy, in which life dwells in an inorganic being.

So.

“Don’t beat yourself up, little man.”

I just chose this body.

To remain human, to fight as a human.

This is not death.

I know that human life is not just like a dying flame.

A existence that continues and flows infinitely.

It is not just blood-to-blood, but a race that extends infinitely, passing it on to future generations through the heart that was meant to be passed on.

That was the kind of person I remember.

“I lived with machines for a long time. You’ve seen everything you need to see, and there’s nothing you need to do. So finally, thank you for being able to die as a human.”

* * *

The Tin Woodman is pushed.

I could tell with my own eyes that it was because of the heart in his chest.

A small heart containing the concept of life that I handed over.

It created a small crack in the impenetrable castle, and it became his weakness, which should have been a giant without weaknesses.

…… Did you just step out?

Is the choice to give him the heart wrong?

The Tin Woodman talked to the hunter and said he had no regrets.

But what about me?

Can I really say that I have no regrets about this situation, having been involved in the death of the Tin Woodman by giving him the heart?

Aspects of battle.

After that, when I saw the woodcutter who stopped moving on his knees, I couldn’t help but feel regret.

I’d rather not have given him a heart.

No, if he did, he probably wouldn’t be here to help us.

But, even so.

“Don’t beat yourself up, little man.”

Around the time when negative emotions kept popping up in my head, the iron giant was definitely talking to me.

“I lived with machines for a long time. You’ve seen everything you need to see, and there’s nothing you need to do. So finally, thank you for being able to die as a human.”

The woodcutter slowly raises his massive body.

I didn’t feel the same strength as before.

It was a staggering figure, as if it had struggled to get up, and the hunter snorted at it and twisted the corners of his mouth.

“What can a broken machine do!!”

The Tin Woodman took a step.

The hunter fired several bullets into his heart. The iron that had already covered the heart was shattered and shattered, revealing the glowing red iron inside.

“Did you wear that thing as a heart! Are you a human if you put it on? Gibberish! There’s no way a monster like you could ever become a human!!”

His heart became the nucleus of life.

A concept I instilled.

The thing that nurtured life in his empty body was like the source of life, and if it was destroyed, he would surely die.

The woodcutter continued to move forward without hesitation.

“Stop there, monster!!”

The bullet hits the heart.

It used to glow bright red, but it began to crack clearly with each bullet hit.

But the woodcutter does not stop.

“Human life does not end with death.”

“What nonsense?”

“The mind is immortal. If this feeling is passed on to someone and continues, it means eternal life.”

The woodcutter says.

“So please tell me the story. The story of a happy woodcutter who lived as a machine and became human at the end.”

He said he could be satisfied with that alone, and eventually he pulled everything out and started running.

A gunshot rang out.

There was no way the hunter’s marksmanship could miss the heart, which was clearly visible. It must have shattered the seed of life in the woodcutter.

But the woodcutter does not stop.

“Ku, haaa!!”

The arm that the leaning iron giant swung last.

The hunter tried to block it by crouching down as much as possible from the unexpected counterattack, but after that, the strong impact knocked him off the ground and ended up being stuck over the pit.

Then comes silence.

The Tin Woodman didn’t move anymore. In a situation where I couldn’t even see the hunter who had been thrown over there, I remembered the last words he left.

“Tell the story…… Please tell me.”

A different ending from the Tin Woodman in fairy tales.

But his story was real.

Although things in the twisted and distorted world may not be love affairs, his heart that said he has no regrets about becoming a human remains here.

A Tin Woodman who wanted to become a human.

The heart left by the iron giant who wished for emotion. I was the only one who saw and felt it all and was able to convey it as a story.

If you do, I will draw it as a fairy tale.

For that purpose.

“Everything should be finished.”

Little Red Riding Hood fell.

The Tin Woodman is gone.

The only thing I can do now is me.

It’s not about whether you can.

With a firm conviction that it must be done, I jumped down the pit, recalling the hunter’s anecdote.