by Akira Kareno
……
“The buildings there are all jumbled together this way and that, and it’s not very safe, either, so all sorts of nasty stuff ends up falling from the sky. It’s usually kettles and oil cans, but sometimes it’s a chicken, which is a big help with dinner.”
………What?
“But that was my first time seeing a girl fall from the sky. I was pretty surprised.”
…………What is he talking about?
She didn’t know this story. Though she could imagine it must have been some sort of precious memory, she couldn’t find it within her own memories. She hadn’t forgotten. And it wasn’t missing.
The girl she thought she knew she was, was no longer there.
“…Chtholly? You okay?”
“Ah… Um…”
She didn’t know how to answer.
She wasn’t confident she could accurately describe the odd feeling that was running through her mind if she tried to put it into words. No, she was more afraid of disillusioning Willem if she did. She was terrified that he would realize she was not worth holding dear with the way she was now.
“I, uh…”
What was that?
What had she been thinking about?
Willem was worrying about her. She had to look up at him and say she was okay. She needed him to stop worrying. She couldn’t have him suspect her. She couldn’t have him realize something was off. She couldn’t let him know the truth. What was off? What was the truth? She didn’t know. She didn’t know, but it was important. That was a line she couldn’t cross if she wanted to stay Chtholly Nota Seniorious.
“Hey.”
Willem peered down at her dubiously.
Ding.
There came an ominous metallic sound from above them.
She looked up instinctively.
The outside of the warehouse roof was surrounded by a metal rail. But not only was it not a particularly nice-looking rail, it was deteriorating and rickety, and there was the dangerous possibility of it breaking under just the slightest weight. Everyone had been pretty busy recently, and they kept putting off fixing it sooner rather than later.
They spotted a little girl at second-floor height, having just fallen into the air from the roof. She was especially small, even among all the little faeries. Her hair was a messy lemon-yellow.
(Almita?!)
She wasn’t that high up, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t take long until she hit the ground. If they ran from where they were, they would not make it in time.
Willem dashed off.
He didn’t use that speedy something-sweep technique. It was too far of a distance. A skill developed especially for traversing short distances quickly could not be used for anything just a bit farther than its limits. But there was no way he could make it in time on his flesh-and-blood leg strength alone.
Chtholly used her Sight.
She could see the magic beginning to fire up inside Willem.
(Urgh, that idiot—!!)
She kicked off the ground.
Willem’s body was covered in old wounds, to the point where Nygglatho had even commented, “It’s strange how you’re alive.” For him to activate his venenum with a body like that was suicide. And this man was going to commit suicide with a straight face in order to keep his precious girls safe.
So she activated her own magic first.
She spread out her phantasmal wings, a blue-silver phosphorescence scattering around her, gliding through the air at about waist height. She surpassed Willem as he ran, twisted her body around to face the sky, and spread out her arms; she caught the girl’s body in her bosom just as the girl was about to hit the ground and curled around her.
Chtholly crashed to the ground.
Impact.
But a body in motion does not stop so easily. She hit the ground countless times, tumbling as she did so, and finally stopped when she hit the wall of the faerie warehouse.
“…Phew.”
She wasn’t going to say she wasn’t in pain. But her activated venenum had protected her body, and she couldn’t spot any obvious wounds. The girl in her arms looked to be in a daze but seemed fine otherwise.
“Chtholly?!”
Willem rushed over to her, his voice strained.
“Sheesh… You sound like you’re about to cry. Aren’t you an adult?” She stood up and brushed off the dirt that clung to her shoulders and the hem of her clothes. “I’m fine. See? Almi… Um”—she gently rocked the girl in her arms—“the girl is fine. She got a little dirty, though.”
“That’s not the problem here! You overdid it! Are you dizzy?! Can you feel your fingers?! No weird sensations running down your spine?!”
He grabbed her shoulders and pressed closer.
“H-hey, you’re too close! I appreciate it, but this is wrong! Try it again!”
“Listen! Magic is a contradiction to our life force. Activating it is just the same as abandoning the very energy that’s keeping you alive. You can’t call yourself a sorcerer without a mechanism to step in just before you die!”
Of course she knew that.
That was the first step of first steps, most basic of basic logic for anyone who consciously used magic.
“And a leprechaun’s strength to live is scant in the first place. So even without a restriction on your life force, the magic you can create is incredibly strong.”
“Yeah, so—”
“That was different!” he yelled, his voice pained. “What the hell was up with the way you activated it? It was so reckless! Leprechaun or not, you’d normally be dead the moment you did that!”
“Oh…”
Now that he mentioned it, he was right. It was the first time she realized that.
Activating venenum was like kindling a fire. One needed to spend time carefully handling a smaller flame to raise it in order to wield the power of a roaring blaze. It was not meant for responding to spur-of-the-moment situations. At the very least, it shouldn’t be.
It wasn’t enough to be reckless or dangerous.
Logically speaking, there was no way she should have been able to pull that off.
“I… I thought…I was going…to lose you…again…”
“Oh geez.”
Her head had been feeling funny for the past while, and she had a lot to think about, and Willem’s face was too close to hers, and looking at him like this, she realized how long his eyelashes were, and she started noticing other stuff like that, and she was starting to hate it.
“Calm down.”
She lightly smacked his cheek.
And she smacked her own while she was at it. She, too, needed to calm down.
“First, I need to say the same thing to you. If I hadn’t done it, you would’ve done it first. That thing where you force your magic to activate and run really fast. I was watching, okay? I could see it.”
Willem’s breath caught in his throat.
“And I’m fine. I’m not dizzy, and my spine feels okay. My fingers feel a bit tingly, but it’s not like I can’t move them at all. It’ll get better pretty quickly.”
“You’re not putting up a front, are you?”
“Don’t you believe me? Sheesh.”
She grinned and removed herself from Willem’s grip on her shoulders.
She looked up to the roof. Just as she suspected, the railing was completely broken. Tiat was on her hands and knees beside it, looking down at them, her eyes brimming with tears.
“It’s okay—I caught her!” Chtholly waved up to her, and Tiat beamed. “But it’s still dangerous up there, so no one is allowed on the roof for now! Take all the children there back downstairs!”
“O-okay!”
Tiat scrambled to her feet and corralled the group of children still on the roof. Chtholly figured she probably didn’t need any help with that.
“Well then, I’m going to draw this girl a bath. You go help Tiat.”
“Oh… Okay…” Willem nodded, perplexed.
&
nbsp; Luckily, there was still plenty of warm water left in the washtub. There was no need to gather more from the river or use venenum to boil it again.
And so, just as Chtholly said she would, she put the girl into the bath.
She massaged the foamy liquid soap into her frizzy, lemon-yellow hair.
Her thin, fluffy locks had gotten mangled with quite a bit of dirt from rolling on the ground. Chtholly had to wash it thoroughly.
“Uh, um…” The girl, her eyes squeezed shut, hesitantly began to speak. “I’m…sorry.”
“…You should be apologizing to Tiat, not to me. If you’d have listened to what she said, this wouldn’t have ended up so serious.”
“O-okay… I’m sorry.”
Is she even listening to me?
That was what she was thinking, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. It was typical for girls Almita’s age to lose track of what they did once they shrank away from the reality that they’d done something worth reprimanding. And since the girl felt no fear for having almost lost her life in the first place, she probably had no idea why everyone else was so angry with her like this.
Every living being had a natural instinct to survive. Yet leprechauns lacked that and were still alive. Chtholly thought again how odd it was.
She suddenly looked up.
There was a large mirror in the bathroom at the faerie warehouse. When Nygglatho first came to the warehouse, it was one of the things she installed, insisting, “Whether weapons or not, young girls should always look their best!” There were plenty of other things that were added when she came, but those were for another time.
“…Hmm?”
Something was strange about her reflection in the mirror.
Red.
Something was red. It was her hair. It was just yesterday…no, just a few hours ago that only a small section of her hair was red, but at some point, it had spread to almost a third of her head.
What was going on?
Nygglatho mentioned that some semifer races changed color as the seasons changed or as they matured, but Chtholly felt like this situation was a bit different. Their hair would fall out and grow back a different color, not change color while it was still attached to their bodies like this. So really, whatever was happening to her was something completely diffe—
The girl with
the red
eyes
is looking this
way.
This feeling…
Images, both absurd and unknown, flashed before her eyes.
That’s right. She remembered now. She looked like someone who wasn’t her. She felt a baseless hatred and a sense of loss, and—
“…Elq…?”
She remembered the name.
She remembered nothing but the name.
“Wha…? What…is…?”
Her body shook. Her eyes spun.
“Chtholly?” The little girl, her head still covered in bubbles, turned back dubiously and looked up at her. What was this girl’s name again? She didn’t know. Was she supposed to know? She was one of the thirty-some residents here in the faerie warehouse; she was supposed to be a precious member of her family. Why? How?
“Are you cold?”
No. She wasn’t cold. Something else entirely was freezing her heart from the inside. But she didn’t know what it was. She couldn’t put it into words.
She wanted to hear her warm welcome home.
She wanted to announce her return.
She wanted to eat butter cake.
All her wishes came true.
She came home to the place she was meant to be. She saw the man she wanted to see so dearly. She had done everything she wanted to do. And so—
She was out of promises.
The end that had been shadowing her silently placed its hand on her shoulder.
Even Without a Visible Future
-moonlit sorcery-
1. The Girl Without a Face
What am I? Chtholly thought.
She was Chtholly Nota Seniorious. Mature faerie soldier. Compatible wielder of dug weapon Seniorious. Someone who had met the single living emnetwiht, Willem Kmetsch, and received from him his teachings—as well as hope.
Really?
…Really.
She summoned Ithea in the middle of the night.
“Brrr, sure is cold. Shoulda worn another layer.”
They sat at the top of a small hill next to the aire-port. It was always windy here. It gave them a good vantage point, so they’d know right away if someone was coming.
“Sorry. This shouldn’t take too long, so bear with me.”
“…Hmm?”
Ithea shivered, then narrowed her eyes to study Chtholly.
“So’s that why you brought me all the way out here? For a little chat? You got something you don’t wanna risk someone else overhearing?”
“Yeah, something like that. But you should already know what I’m here to talk about, shouldn’t you?”
“Hey, come on. I just know a little more and hear a little more than your average person, but I’m not a god. It’s not like I know anything and everything.” She placed the lantern on the ground as she spoke and sat herself down as well. “Actually, there’s something I want to check with you, too. If ya don’t mind, I’d prefer if I asked you my questions first.”
“…Okay, sure. What are they?”
“Who are you?”
She asked it so naturally, almost as though she was asking what was on the menu for dinner that night.
Chtholly’s breath caught for a second.
“Chtholly Nota Seniorious.”
After a quick, deep breath, she slowly stated her own name, biting into her words.
“You sure?”
“Do I look like anyone else?”
“Guess you have a point.”
The wind teased Chtholly’s hair.
Her blue hair melted into the darkness of night and rendered it practically invisible. But the red mixed in stood out from the rest, and it looked like it was dancing in the wind.
“…Okay then, all the questions from me are done. Your turn.”
“Mm.”
She looked up to the sky. The black clouds looked like nothing more than shadows, and they sped across the sky above her with fantastic speed. Beyond them, she spotted the blurry stars and a somber gold-colored moon.
“I was really worrying about how I should talk to you about this, but if you’re asking me questions like that, then I guess it’s safe to say you’ve seen through me, right?”
“Not really. That was more like a surprise question to force an answer out of you, in the style of our officer, and there’s only one thing I can confidently say I got from that: Your past-life encroachment hasn’t gone away or stopped. The personality and memories of Chtholly Nota Seniorious are—in the present continuous tense—being taken over. Right?”
“Yeah. I think so.” She grabbed her hair as it whipped about violently and held it to her chest. “Past-life encroachment itself is already rare, and for it to happen before the twenty-year mark is irregular in an already rare case… Right? Is this how your encroachment progressed for you, too?”
“I guess you could say so. I myself don’t really remember much, and I think the process was a lot different compared to yours.”
Ithea gave a sloppy grin.
The smile was a mask. Whenever this girl tried to hide how she was really feeling, she would always plaster on this vague smile.
“We’ve known each other a long time, and you knew the old Ithea, too, right? She was bright, nosy, got so involved in everything around her it was annoying, and yet wasn’t honest at all—loved creating fiction and never went a day without writing in her diary. That’s what Ithea Myse Valgulious was like. I first learned that when I read through the girl’s entire diary.”
Ah, right, I remember, thought Chtholly.
It was about two years ago. There was a time just after Ithea became an adult faeri
e soldier when she said she’d caught a cold and spent days holed up in her room. This girl must have spent all those days urgently reading through the many, many diaries.
In hindsight, now that she thought about it, it was about that time when Ithea’s personality changed slightly… But maybe, maybe not. Back then, they weren’t close enough friends to talk about that.
“Was it hard?”
“Sure. I thought I was gonna go crazy. There were so many times I just wanted to die. But if I did that, it wasn’t like the original owner of this body…the real Ithea…was going to come back.
“I guess the only way I could pay for my sins was to inherit the life of the poor child I erased, of Ithea Myse Valgulious, without anyone noticing… Well, that’s what I told myself, at least, and I’ve made it this far.”
“We’re being tricked, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Does that make you mad?”
Did it? Was she angry?
Chtholly asked herself. She felt no anger, no bewilderment. There was just an oddly silent feeling of understanding.
“A diary, hmm.” She sat down by “Ithea’s” side. “Maybe I should start one.”
“I dunno. I feel like in your case, it’d be impossible to pass on your life without anyone noticing. Unlike me, see, your appearance is changing.”
Oh, right.
Maybe the red mixed into her hair would eventually completely overtake her own blue. It wouldn’t be easy to deceive the doubtful gazes around her with such an obvious change present.
“Who is it you want to pass on your life to, Chtholly? I know you probably don’t want to hear this from me, but someone who’s not you is going to be going to all the places you wanted to go, and it’s going to be someone else settling down in the places you wanted to stay, you know.”
Oh no. She certainly didn’t like the sound of that.
“All your feelings of wanting to go somewhere and the wishes you have of staying there will quickly disappear. Regret won’t help anything.”
She hugged her knees tightly.
“…Or maybe I should die now, while I still remember things.”
