Rokka no Yuusha – 06

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Our boy Adlet is in a heap of trouble, with a most of the other Braves either suspecting him (Maura), ready to kill him (Hans and Chamo), or abstaining and letting the others do what they want (Fremy). Only Tania still believes in his innocence, and is both confused and outraged by the positions of the others.

When it’s Goldolf’s turn to offer his thoughts, he offers them in the form of a strike against Adlet, ignoring his princess’ doubts about his guilt. Hans joins in, and Adlet has no choice but to improvise, knocking Fremy out cold and running out of the temple. And thank God he does, too, because I was dead tired of that stuffy glowy room.

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Adlet doesn’t get far, as Hans throws a dagger in his back and he passes out. While out, he helpfully dreams about his backstory, back when he wasn’t even the strongest boy in his village, to when he presented himself before his future master, a pitiful bag of bones, begging to be trained.

We don’t see the in between, when his friend, mother, and village are presumably wiped out by fiends. The longbeard begins the lesson at once by beating young Adlet up, telling him he must smile when things go bad and laugh at despair if he wants to become strong.

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Adlet isn’t smiling much when he wakes up to find Fremy has saved him, but not only to prepare for what she calculates is just a 1% chance he isn’t the seventh brave and her enemy. Still, there’s something to the fact she didn’t make a lot of noise so the other braves could capture them. Perhaps she’s giving Adlet that 1% chance to convince her he’s not lying.

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Adlet doesn’t do so well at first, but then starts to smile again, remembering the words of his master. No matter how dark the night gets, he’ll pierce it with his defiant grin. He doesn’t know how to convince Fremy that his theory about an eighth brave helping the seventh (who then framed him), but he won’t concede defeat.

Even though Fremy flatly refuses to help him, his boundless optimism moves her to ask him why he wanted to become a brave, a question that suggests, for the first time, that she has the slightest interest in anything about Adlet (other than her suspicions he’s the enemy). It’s not much, but Adlet—and I—will take it, and similarly look forward to the morning when he must figure out a way to prove his innocence and foil the real enemy.

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Author: magicalchurlsukui

Preston Yamazuka is a staff writer for RABUJOI.