by Takehaya
And Fatra, the Blue Knight’s title, was one commonly used among squires. A knight’s title was determined by the one who decorated them. Established knights were customarily given personal titles, but it was typical for a squire to be given a title that corresponded to a color, plant, or animal selected by the lord they served. And out of all the options, lords seemed to favor giving titles based on colors so that their squires could color their armor accordingly. So a title like “Blue Knight” naturally led Alaia to think that Koutarou was the squire of some lord or another.
Such a strong knight that isn’t an enemy... He would have to be from Pardomshiha or Wenranka. But I’ve met the squires from Pardomshiha before, and Wenranka doesn’t use colors for titles... And it seems he’s using magic too. Just who is this knight?
Alaia understood Koutarou’s title, but that made her even more unsure of his identity than before. If Koutarou had a title like Blue Knight, current circumstances meant there was a high chance that he was an enemy. Despite that, he had saved her for some reason.
“Wait a minute! Explain what’s happening! I don’t have a clue about what’s going on!” Koutarou demanded that Clan explain herself.
“Sheesh, guess I have to...”
Clan had mostly ignored him as she dragged him away, but since Koutarou was so persistent, she finally stopped after getting some distance away from Alaia.
“You and I were just fighting. So why on earth would I listen to you when you tell me to stop what I’m doing and come with you?”
“Look, I get it. I’ll explain, so I want you listen to me after I tell you what’s going on.”
“Depends on your explanation.”
“Really...?”
After glancing at Alaia in the distance behind Koutarou, Clan let out a small sigh and began explaining.
“The truth is... this isn’t Earth.”
“What?”
“I said this isn’t Earth!”
“This isn’t Earth?! What’s that supposed to mean?!”
Koutarou’s eyes opened wide. He barely trusted Clan as it was, so it was extraordinarily hard to take her at her word making a ridiculous declaration like that.
“Do you remember the weapon I was trying to use?”
“Yeah. That strange bomb, right?”
“That’s right, the Super Space-time Repulsion Shell. Because of that bomb, we were blown to a different planet.”
Clan gestured an explosion with her hands.
Blown to a different planet?! Is that even possible?! I can’t b— No, thinking about it, it just might...!
Koutarou just couldn’t believe what Clan was saying, but at the same time, something about it was hitting home. The strange scenery, plants he had never seen before, bizarre reptiles. Even the strange language the people here were using.
“On top of that, it seems we’ve gone back in time.”
“Back in time?”
This time he was so dumbfounded by what she’d said that he didn’t even try and argue. He just stared blankly into her face.
“Yes. Simply put, it’s a time slip. We’ve traveled from our own time to a past age.”
“A time slip?!”
Even Koutarou knew that term. He’d heard it before in movies and video games.
“S-So getting caught in the explosion from your bomb... we warped to a different planet and also time slipped to the past?!”
“I’m glad you understand.”
Clan let out a loud sigh after Koutarou finally seemed to process what she was telling him.
“R-Really?!”
“Is there a reason for me to lie in this situation?”
“Well...”
Koutarou and Clan were enemies who had been locked in a deadly struggle just a short while ago. Clan calling it off for this... It was just too strange to be anything other than the truth.
Which means she really is serious...
After calming down some, Koutarou decided to give Clan the benefit of the doubt. It seemed like the right thing to do. These were the words of a princess, after all. A proper scheme would be one thing, but this would be far too cheap a lie just to buy time.
“Anyway, this is all your fault.”
“It’s yours too, I’ll have you know”
“Mine? How?”
“The Super Space-time Repulsion Shell was originally designed to open a hole in time and space and cast its target out of the universe. But since you cut it in half, it activated before it was ready, and now here we are.”
Clan shrugged her shoulders facetiously at Koutarou.
“Whatever. If you were staring down death, you would have done the same thing.”
To Koutarou, he was going to get caught in the blast either way, so it made far more sense to cut it in half early and try and keep it from harming everyone else. He wasn’t very receptive to the idea of having responsibility for the whole thing shoved on him.
“And I’d rather use that than lose.”
“...Fine, I get it.”
Koutarou threw his hands in the air and sighed. He realized that carrying on with an emotional argument wouldn’t lead anywhere, so he instead tried asking Clan some questions. It didn’t seem like she was interested in fighting for now. She also had said they were in an emergency situation, so it wasn’t smart to waste time.
“So then when and where are we?”
“This is Forthorthe. And we’re about two thousand years in the past.”
Clan gave him a blunt answer, but hearing it made Koutarou’s jaw drop.
“Forthorthe?! Two thousand years ago?!”
“Yes, that’s right. I’m sure of it since I used the Cradle to observe the stars. This is Forthorthe, just two thousand years in the past. I couldn’t believe it at first either, but there’s no mistaking it.”
Clan nodded with a hint of satisfaction when she saw Koutarou’s surprise. She was happy that he had finally realized the gravity of the situation. She was relieved that they could now move forward with what they needed to do.
“That’s how it is, so let’s hurry back to the Cradle and come up with a plan to return to the future. There’s no need to risk changing the future by dawdling here and doing something unnecessary.”
“I see, so that’s why...”
Koutarou was overcome with disbelief at first, but he was now strangely satisfied and nodded repeatedly at what Clan said.
“What?”
Realizing his change in behavior, Clan curiously asked him about it. In response, Koutarou pointed to the girl behind him.
“See that girl over there?”
“...Yes.”
Clan followed Koutarou’s finger with her eyes towards the girl standing some distance off.
“I saved her as she was being attacked by some strange guys, but she called herself Alaia Kua Forthorthe.”
“Alaia Kua Forthorthe...?”
Now it was Clan’s turn to pick her jaw up off the ground.
“You s-s-saved her...?”
“She said she was being chased because of her position, so we’re probably in the middle of that period.”
Ignoring Clan’s reaction, Koutarou continued his explanation.
“It’s been one weird thing after another since I woke up here, but now I finally get it. No wonder I didn’t recognize this place or the plants. And that explains how it wasn’t part of the play either... It all makes sense now.”
Now that he had his answers, Koutarou repeatedly nodded with a refreshed expression. Not even thirty minutes had passed since he’d woken up, but it had been an excruciatingly long half an hour with so many questions running through his mind. Feeling on top of things was a nice change of pace.
“W-Wait just a minute, fake Blue Knight!”
“H-Hey, what now?!”
Clan, on the other hand, didn’t share his sense of relief whatsoever. She grabbed on to Koutarou and almost burst into tears.
“You can’t just lightheartedly change history! What are you
going to do if we can’t return to our world?!”
“Wh-What are you so angry for? C-Calm down, Clan.”
Clan gripped Koutarou’s armor with both hands. Koutarou tried to calm her down as she shook him, but it was to no avail.
“As if I could calm down! D-D-D-Do you have any idea of what you’ve done?!”
“What? I just saved a person in trouble.”
He had traveled to Forthorthe some two thousand years in the past and saved a girl being attacked by a bunch of strange men. Koutarou didn’t see anything wrong with that, but Clan was freaking out.
“Didn’t I explain to you where we are?!”
“You did. Forthorthe two thousand years in the past, right?”
“Don’t you get it?! Anything you do here will change Forthorthe’s history! At this rate, we won’t be able to go home!”
“...What?”
Not being able to return home would be a big problem for Koutarou. There was something he had to do in his own world and time.
“W-Wait a minute! Explain it so I can understand, Clan!”
Koutarou’s expression turned serious. He hadn’t fully understood what Clan meant, but he was starting to grasp the gravity of the situation they were in.
“The history that time and space weave is like the flow of a river! If we casually drift into a different river, we might not ever make it back to the original one!”
Clan began explaining things to Koutarou with a grave expression on her face. Since this could be even more important than life and death, she was beyond serious. She had long put her revenge against Koutarou behind her.
“A different river...?”
“That’s right! In reality, we’ve already entered a different current! In the original timeline, someone else saved her, and it was most likely the Blue Knight! But you just saved her first, preventing that from happening! That means whatever happens from here on out will be different too!”
What Clan was saying made more sense now. Saving Alaia from the ten men should have been the job of someone from this reality. And based on the situation and what they knew, it should have been the Blue Knight. So even if Koutarou hadn’t saved her, the Blue Knight would have eventually swooped in to help. But now Koutarou had interfered, denying the Blue Knight and the Silver Princess their fated encounter.
“So I got in the way of the Blue Knight and the Silver Princess meeting?!”
“That’s exactly right! At this rate, history will never recover!”
Clan nodded. She was blue in the face. Since her skin was quite pale in the first place, it made it all the more obvious just how worried she was. Now that he’d gotten his head around how precarious their situation was, he had more questions for Clan.
“Wait, what exactly is going to happen?!”
“Like I said before, history is like the flow of a river! If we flow into a different river, we get carried away in a different direction! If we tried to go back home now, it wouldn’t be the same future anymore!”
The Blue Knight and the Silver Princess hadn’t met. So if Koutarou and Clan returned to the future now, they would return to the future that sprung from the two of them never meeting. They would end up in a world completely different from the one they’d come from.
“If the Blue Knight and the Silver Princess hadn’t met, there’s almost no chance the empire of Forthorthe would have ever lasted two thousand years! And that would mean Theiamillis-san and Pardomshiha would never go to Earth! They never would have been a part of your life!”
“So if we return to the future now, it’ll be a world where I never meet Theia and Ruth-san?!”
Having it explained to him in terms of how it would affect him personally really hit it all home for Koutarou. Now that he was in the past, all of his actions had consequences for the future.
“That’s right!”
“That’s terrible!”
“That’s why I asked you if you had any idea of what you’ve done!”
At this rate, Koutarou would never meet Theia and Ruth. They would never even be born. And without them, almost everything that had happened since Koutarou started high school would be different. Theia wouldn’t come to invade, and there wouldn’t be a mess at the sports festival. They wouldn’t go to the beach on summer vacation, and they wouldn’t have a manuscript for the school play. And those things didn’t just affect Koutarou either. Everything that happened between him and the other invaders up until now would be totally different.
“What should we do?! How do we return to our own world then?!”
Koutarou had something he had to do. Something he couldn’t do if he returned to a different world. He had to get back home—to his original time and place—no matter what.
“We have to find the real Blue Knight and make sure they still meet! He has to be somewhere around here! And we need to find him as soon as possible!”
“Will that work?! Wouldn’t that still change history a little?!”
“It would be much better than it is now! We have to do what we can to get this timeline back to the way it should be to raise our chances of returning to our own world! All we can do after that is pray that it’s within acceptable tolerance levels!”
While history could easily split, it often rejoined as well. If the split histories were almost identical, there was a high chance of them converging. For example, if someone went to the past and moved a single grain of sand, that alone would technically be enough to change history. But because the change was so minute, the split histories would shortly rejoin. As such, there was a tolerance for change in any given timeline. Clan’s goal was to find the Blue Knight and make sure this timeline still fit within that margin of error.
“G-Got it. So what do we do specifically? What should I do?”
“Well...”
Clan crossed her arms and put her mind to thinking. As she did, she casually glanced at Koutarou’s armor. The next moment, her eyes went wide and began sparkling.
“That’s it! You’ll have to take the Blue Knight’s place for now! Meanwhile, I’ll search for the real one and bring him here!”
The Silver Princess hadn’t met the Blue Knight. At this rate, she would continue her travels alone and defenseless. That was dangerous and might lead to further trouble. So Clan’s plan was to have Koutarou pretend to be the Blue Knight and stay with her to keep her safe until Clan found the real Blue Knight. Then they would just switch him for Koutarou. It would still mean history had changed some, but that way they could ensure everything still panned out the way it was supposed to, meaning they should be able to return to their own world.
“I only have to protect her, right?”
“That’s right. While pretending to be the Blue Knight, of course. But that’s your forte, is it not?”
“Well, that’s true, but...”
Koutarou understood that Clan’s plan was solid, but he couldn’t hide his hesitation when it came to putting it into action.
Things sure have taken a strange turn...
For their play, Koutarou had ended up taking Kenji’s place. And this time around he ended up taking the real Blue Knight’s place. Of course, Koutarou was incredibly bemused. It seemed like his several months of practice would be useful in a most unexpected way.
“Sir Knight, what’s the matter?”
That was when Alaia approached.
It sounded like they were talking about Forthorthe and Pardomshiha...
Alaia had been watching Koutarou and Clan from a distance, but she’d heard a few words she recognized while they were arguing. That piqued her interest in their conversation.
In this age, it would be... Lower Ancient Forthorthian.
Since Alaia had walked up to them, Clan sneakily activated her translation device.
“No, it’s nothing, Your Highness.”
Koutarou responded in the same language Alaia was using. He was actually speaking Japanese; it was just translated through the translation device automatically.
<
br /> “My servant and I were just talking about moving out before the men I defeated wake up.”
“‘Servant’?!”
However, when Koutarou’s words reached Clan’s ears through her own translation device, she was none too pleased. Careful to whisper, she leaned in and let him have a piece of her mind.
“So I’m your servant now, am I?!”
“What else was I supposed to tell her?”
“Fine... I suppose we don’t have a choice.”
Being called a servant was extremely displeasing to Clan. That said, she couldn’t exactly reveal her true title, and she couldn’t come up with anything more convincing in this situation. In the end, she acquiesced to Koutarou’s call, albeit begrudgingly.
“I see. It’s true that we should hurry along.”
Alaia nodded and looked behind her. The ten men there were still unconscious, though some of them were starting to groan. It was pretty obvious they’d be opening their eyes soon.
“I have to rejoin with my allies too.”
“I understand. Which way shall we go?”
Koutarou lightly nodded and indicated they should move into the forest behind her. He would be ready to go as soon as she told him the direction to proceed in from there.
“Huh...?”
Alaia looked surprised. She looked up at him, trying to tell what he was thinking.
“You intend to travel with me, Sir Knight?”
“That’s the plan. Is that a problem?”
“That’s—”
Alaia hesitated to say anything. She still didn’t yet know whether she could trust Koutarou or not. If he was an enemy, her allies might be in danger if she led him back to them.
I want to trust him... but there’s a small chance I’ll be putting those girls at risk too...
She didn’t want to distrust her savior, and she personally felt like she could trust in Koutarou. She didn’t sense any evil intentions in his behavior or words, but her responsibilities and her position made her especially cautious.
“Your Highness, I can understand your hesitation, but let us at least move away before these men come to.”
