by Akira Kareno
Willem had turned him down, saying that he didn’t care about the things he’d already lost, that the only things he was focusing on were the things within his reach.
At the time, he didn’t think his own attitude was appropriate. But he didn’t regret it, even without using the word appropriate to quantify his behavior.
And what it was that he could hold in his arms now—
“Hey, what is going on?”
It was her third time asking.
Willem stood without a word and walked over to where Chtholly sat.
“Wah—”
And he pulled her into a tight hug.
“…Seriously, what is going on?”
Chtholly reached out to pat Willem a few times on the back, as though soothing him.
“Aren’t you surprised?”
“I’m super surprised.”
“Aren’t you flustered?”
“I am flustered, actually. My heart is pounding. I don’t know what happened, but I know it’s unusual for you to show me weakness, especially since you’re usually putting on a face. My feelings of happiness and how much I want you to feel better are both so much greater than my surprise or fluster.”
“…You…”
“Right now, you look like you’ll vanish if I leave you alone. It’s really embarrassing, but I can’t just ignore it.”
He tightened his hold around her.
“H-hey, that’s too much…”
“You’re a good woman.”
“…Sorry, I couldn’t hear you very well. Could you say that again but louder this time?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Ugh, hey, you sore loser! Say it again! Just say it again for me!”
“Marry me.”
“Nooo— Oh, wait, um, what?”
This time, Chtholly squirmed about, flustered in his arms.
There was no way he would let her get away, so he tightened his hold on her even more.
“Rather…he seems like stubbornness incarnate. He holds only one purpose within him. He sees no value in anything that has nothing to do with that goal. So he will not bend. He will not stop. He will persist.”
He finally found it.
He was once a shadow of a Brave who failed in protecting what he should have kept safe, who never returned to the home he should have gone back to. But he met Chtholly, came to the faerie warehouse, and discovered a new way of life.
He finally had something he wanted to protect.
He finally found a home he could return to.
He finally felt like it was okay for him to keep living, that he was worth it and qualified to keep on living. And so—
“I wanted to make Chtholly happy.”
—He was going to make Chtholly happy.
He clung to that wish.
He wanted to forget about the past. He wanted to keep on thinking of nothing but the present and the future.
“Ahhhh…”
He realized the girl in his arms had, at some point, stopped struggling, so he checked on her.
Maybe she couldn’t breathe anymore, or maybe she’d passed the limits of her own shock, or maybe it was both—but either way, Chtholly sat there in a daze.
2. The Smiling Princess in the Icicle Coffin
That was probably a dream.
That was the first thing Chtholly thought when she woke up.
It wasn’t entirely impossible. The punch line was a proposal, after all. Those weren’t the kind of words that would come out of Willem, even if she shook him upside down. It wasn’t very realistic.
But…when she asked Nopht and Rhantolk about what happened yesterday, they said, “That officer guy asked me to let him borrow my sword” and “He came back in such a good mood that it seemed creepy.” Their answers made it seem like her dreams and reality were getting mixed up. What was up with that?
“What is it about the emnetwiht?”
When Rhantolk asked her, Chtholly responded extremely naturally, “I-i-i-it’s nothing; don’t worry about it.” There was no way she was going to open discussion with, “I think he proposed to me, but it might’ve been a dream.” Even if she did, all she would get was Rhantolk’s cool gaze and a burst of laughter from Nopht.
Maybe the best choice in this situation was to ask the man himself.
“—Hey, did you propose to me yesterday?”
Nope, impossible. It was absolutely impossible. Especially since she was aware now that her memory was vanishing, it seemed kind of…tacky.
“What do you think it means to be happy?”
Instead, she took the question that came to her mind and tossed it Rhantolk’s way.
“—That’s a rather philosophical thing for you to ask. Are you starting a religion or something?”
“No, it’s just a more personal thought of mine.”
“I see.” Rhantolk closed the book she was just about to read, and a pensive look crossed her face. “First of all, happiness is different for everyone. There are people who are happy from simply eating. There are people who are happy just reading books. There are people who place great importance on living to the fullest. There are people who only feel fulfilled when they accomplish something. There are people who are happy when others are happy, and there are those who are the opposite, when they’re a nuisance to others.”
“…Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
There were many different kinds of people. There were many different kinds of hearts. There were many different kinds of desires. So that meant the number of forms happiness could take matched all those variables. Logically, that was a given.
“But most people aren’t self-aware. They don’t know what it is that is connected to their own happiness. Yet they all say they want to be happy. They don’t even try to learn what exactly those words mean.”
“Aha!” A smile spread across her face. “That strikes home. I certainly am guilty of that.”
“People like that may be able to realize happiness, but that doesn’t mean they can become happy. The most important thing is to not look away from your own heart. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes.” Honestly, she hadn’t expected such a detailed response, so she was taken slightly aback, but of course she couldn’t say that. So she finished with an honest, “Thank you.”
She went to the mess hall to have breakfast.
By Willem’s request, faeries Rhantolk and Nopht were now allowed to use the mess hall. She invited Rhantolk to come along, but she refused, saying, “I’m not very comfortable in places with people I don’t know.” Dragging along someone shy wasn’t going to get either of them anywhere. And so, Chtholly went alone.
Now then. She once again started thinking of what happiness was to her.
She slapped a sweet-boiled lemon peel onto her toast. She stuffed it in her mouth. A titillating sweetness and acidity spread throughout her mouth. She was happy. But this happiness probably wasn’t it.
It was a faerie’s state of being not to have any ambition-like ambitions or, rather, to not even think of having them. That was because faeries had no time. It would bring only sadness to dream of the future with a life that might not even still be around the next day. And that kind of situation still held true for her, even though she was no longer a faerie.
But Willem would never allow her to give up. He would tell her that even with a life that wasn’t guaranteed the next day, she should hold her head high and head full speed for the day that came after. That was incredibly difficult and cruel, but she had started to like that part of him. She probably couldn’t escape it anymore.
Thorny pills.
A gecko with
lovely round eyes.
Soaking wet
baked goods.
An incoherent string of images flashed in her mind. It seemed her encroachment was advancing steadily, albeit slowly. She should probably end up feeling pathetic in this kind of situation, which was reminding her she had no future, but she was used to it alrea
dy, and she did not even waver.
She waved her hand to chase out the interruption in her mind and started thinking again.
She could think of only one thing. And that keyword was marriage.
Her old favorite book said it was synonymous with a woman’s happiness. She didn’t personally know any married women, so it didn’t quite strike any chords with her, but for now, she would believe that it was and start her fantasy.
She remembered what Nygglatho said to her the other day. Marriage would make Willem family, or something, and keep him in the faerie warehouse forever.
She started daydreaming.
The setting was ten years from now. The stage was… Well, the faerie warehouse as it was now was fine. There was Willem, who was a little older… It was hard to imagine him like that, but giving him a beard and stuff was probably good enough. She placed herself, now more grown-up, right by his side. The two of them had children of an unknown race. Two boys and a girl. One of the boys looked like her, and the other two looked like Willem. The three were energetic and mischievous—they would run off and fall over and get all covered in mud the second she looked away, and she would chase them and catch them and throw them in the bath, then Willem would lazily remark, “It’s great they’re so energetic,” as he baked his cake—
(…I can’t remember very well, but I think that’s exactly how it is right now.)
She cut off her daydream.
Somehow, that wasn’t it. That certainly was a very happy life, but if someone asked her if that made her much happier than she was now, she would find herself tilting her head in thought.
A redheaded child
clutching her stomach,
rolling about in laughter.
Her past life was so loud. Now was not the time for her to be paying attention to it, so she begged it to shut up.
“Why are you making such funny faces while eating toast?”
She suddenly noticed that, at some point, Nephren had come to sit next to her.
“You’ve been so weirdly bubbly this whole morning. But I mean, you’re always weird.”
Gulp. The toast caught in her throat. Milk—where was the milk?
“Did Willem say something to you?”
Hrgh. The milk entered her windpipe.
“…I knew it. I was right.”
She coughed, choked, and swallowed it. She started to calm down a little.
“Wh-what made you think that?”
“It’s obvious.” Nephren’s answer was simple, and Chtholly found herself speechless. “But that’s why I’m worried,” she continued, ripping her bread into smaller pieces.
“About what?”
“The both of you lately have this look in your eyes like cats that’ve lost their homes.”
…Oh.
“It doesn’t look like you want to talk about it, so I won’t ask. But something’s been happening since your hair started changing color, hasn’t it?”
Well…
“Um… I guess.”
“You can always talk to me if you want. I can’t do much but stay by your side, but…at least I can do that much—” Nephren cut herself off, finishing with a sentence that didn’t quite make sense.
“Okay… Thank you.”
Ithea, Nephren… How did she come to be surrounded by such wonderful people? For a moment, she forgot about her situation and felt happiness.
That was probably a dream.
That was the first thing Willem thought when he woke up.
It wasn’t entirely impossible. The punch line was a proposal, after all. Those weren’t the kind of words that would come out of himself, even if he was dangled upside down. It wasn’t very realistic.
“…No, it’s definitely impossible.”
He had to face reality. He had definitely embraced Chtholly and said some stupid stuff to her yesterday. He knew why he did it. It was because he never wanted to let her go. No, that wasn’t it. It was because he wanted to stay with her forever. No, that wasn’t it, either. It was because he was going to make her happy for the rest of their lives.
…He should stop. The more he thought about it, the more his thoughts rolled in absurd directions.
He took his thoughts a step back. Desperatio, the emnetwiht-killing sword. The monstrous beings that acted as ingredients for the weapons that were the Seventeen Beasts. If he put those two things together, the answer was simple. Whether or not she knew about Desperatio’s specifications or not, that faerie Rhantolk had also arrived at the same conclusion. That was why she was so hostile to him, since he was an emnetwiht.
So in essence, the conjecture was that the Seventeen Beasts were emnetwiht themselves, modified in some manner.
He felt nothing.
He didn’t want to think about it.
If that was the truth, then that would greatly change the meaning of “the emnetwiht destroyed the land.” They didn’t just create the cause of destruction. They were the cause of destruction itself, and even more so the very symbol of walking destruction.
“Nah, it can’t be.”
There was a big, gaping hole in that explanation. The Beasts’ growth rate talked about in the tale was much too fast to be rationally possible.
This should go without saying, but in order to completely rearrange one living thing into a different creature, it would take a considerable amount of work and time on top of mythic skill and technique. Vampires were legendary monstrosities that had a soul-infecting talent, and even that required three days at the least for their victims to transform into vampires. He’d heard the Seventeen Beasts, on the other hand, completely wiped out a number of countries mere days after they appeared. They were incomparable.
“I’m definitely thinking too much,” he concluded and nodded to himself.
Now he had one less thing to think about.
Now what was left was the result of him proposing to Chtholly.
“……”
Yup. He wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye for a while.
“We made the research adviser mad,” the first officer muttered, his shoulders drooping, the expression on his face like a child scolded for his mischief.
“Ah, I see.” Willem gave a vague response, not really sure what the context was. “You brought along an adviser, of all things? Haven’t seen ’im round.”
“Well, it’s a civilian salvager the Alliance hired and the research team brought along. He apparently has plenty of experience, so they wanted to take his opinions into the highest possible consideration.”
“Huh. What happened?”
“Well, you’ve heard we won’t be taking off for another five days, haven’t you?”
“I guess.”
For Willem, who was not interested in the adventure and allure of the surface at all, there was no reason for him to want to stay in this place for an extended period of time. He would want to immediately fly away if that were possible, but he knew things weren’t that simple. They had to check on the health of the research team members, reload all the excavated articles into the ship’s hold, and collect necessary tools and machinery from the Saxifraga, which would be left behind—there were many things they had to do, apparently.
“We also have to think about our budget, so we can’t extend our stay any longer than that. But just bringing back the artifacts we’ve collected so far would put us in the red.”
“Well, sure.”
“And so tomorrow, we’ve decided to send out an additional, larger excavation team underground.” The gremian first officer raised a purple finger, flaring his nostrils as though proud of his great idea. “The members will be mostly made up of Guard members, since we want the results to go to the Guard. We will have the Alliance take care of miscellaneous duties here on the surface. It’s up to you if you want to come along. How about it?”
“No, thanks. I see, and that’s what made the adviser guy mad?”
A veteran hired by the Alliance would certainly not be happy to hear that
they were pettily trying to earn achievement points by carrying out such extravagant feats with a group made up entirely of Guard members.
“No, that’s not it.” With his raised finger, he scratched his bald, purple head. “He told us not to send so many people underground at once. That it’s against general surface activity theory.”
“…So why is that?”
“I don’t know. I asked for his reasoning, but he didn’t give any. It’s more than likely a myth of sorts. Not everyone is logical and thinks about things like we do. Those sad people who believe in unreasonable conventions as absolutes because of their narrow world view will always be around, no matter the time and place.”
“Ohhh. So is that what you told that adviser, imprudent First Officer?”
“It is.” The truly imprudent first officer dropped his shoulders in disappointment. “I had no intentions of misstating things. But I did not hope to dismiss his experiences and beliefs, either. Do you think I could ask you to follow up on his feelings?”
“I don’t mind,” Willem said as he thought, What a pain.
“Things that one person will think are right will always be huge mistakes to a different someone with a differing background. If you ever feel like you’ve failed, remember that.”
“…I understand.”
The gremian nodded bitterly.
When Willem asked the workers walking down the corridor where he might find that adviser guy, they told him he was headed toward the research equipment vault in the hold. Equipment vault? That was near the bottom of the ship, a confusing place that was hard to walk around in. Why would he be there?
He really thought it a pain in his neck, but he wouldn’t ignore it. He pulled open a heavy trapdoor, climbed down a rusted ladder, weaved through rooms filled with nondescript metal items scattered about, and headed for the lowest part of the ship.
They said the adviser was a civilian salvager hired by the Alliance. He tried to imagine what kind of person that would be, but all he could think of after hearing it was a “salvager with lots of experience” was Glick and company. They were, after all, a remarkable bunch who excavated one of the extinct emnetwiht—and even got him revived.
