Late that night, Itsuka Shido did not return ho. Instead, he ca to the airship floating fifteen thousand ters above the ground.
He walked through the long corridor and arrived at the lounge. The spacious room was empty. Only the faint echo of his own footsteps lingered.
(Kotori and the others should be in the command room right now.)
Shido thought.
Although there was very little for Shido and the Spirits to do before the battle, Kotori, as fleet commander, could not afford to relax. She had to organize and mobilize every resource they could prepare within the limited ti they had left.
He did feel that he should go over and offer so words of encouragent. But if he went while she was busy, he might only disturb her. Besides, right now, Shido himself felt sowhat gloomy and exhausted. He wanted to be alone for a while.
Fortunately, even for DEM's Nibelcole, sneaking through the high sky and infiltrating this airship without anyone noticing would be extrely difficult. For once, Shido did not have to worry about being ambushed out of nowhere.
He bought a cup of hot milk tea from the vending machine, one that supposedly helped with sleep, and sat down on the bench closest to the window.
"It's beautiful."
After taking a sip of the slightly scalding milk tea, Shido could not help murmuring.
Looking up through the window, he saw the endless night sky decorated by countless stars. It was like a brilliant painting spread out before him, open in its entirety, enchanting enough to draw anyone in.
This was probably a view that could never be seen from within Tengu City. Shido could not help wondering—perhaps even standing at the top of the city's tallest Tengu Tower, one still would not be able to see the stars through the clouds.
Like a wedge fixed into the unsupported sky. A beautiful view that could only be seen from this airship.
"But on the other hand, you can't see the city lights from here."
As he said that, Shido lowered his gaze. Today was cloudy. Dense clouds drifted several thousand ters below the airship, blocking the city's lights.
Under the night, the pure white clouds were dyed into a vast gray.
Hazy, ominous, murky—the flowing clouds seed to conceal a deadly serpent, sending a chill through his heart.
"…"
With an inexplicable trace of fear, Shido withdrew his gaze and raised his head back toward the sky.
"Now that I think about it, where's the moon…"
As though simply passing the ti, Shido let his gaze wander through the starry sky, and eventually found the moon fixed in one place.
"So thin."
That was Shido's first impression.
Compared to the dazzling stars, the moon's presence was so faint. The curved crescent was as slender as a toothpick.
But thinking about it carefully, that was not strange. When the moon was bright, the stars were few; bright moonlight would conceal the stars's glow. If the moon had not hidden most of itself, Shido probably would not be able to see such a sky.
(Co to think of it, I once went into that night sky too.)
Thinking that not long ago he had been wandering through space, Shido could not help feeling that anything could happen in life.
"One day… will I beco a star in the sky too?"
"What kind of nonsense are you saying, Shido? Do you want to beco a shooting star or sothing?"
Soone lightly knocked the back of his head. Shido turned around and saw a girl with long tea-colored hair standing behind him at so point, smiling at him.
"Yutsuki, when did you get behind ? I didn't hear your footsteps at all."
"I wanted to surprise you, so I erased my footsteps."
"Hey, that's not a surprise, that's a scare!"
"You could sense my ki through the movent of the air."
"How would I ever do that?!"
"Not enough training~"
While exchanging a banter back and forth, Yutsuki sat beside Shido without the slightest restraint.
"So? You ran all the way here alone to gaze at the stars. What's on your mind?"
Hearing Yutsuki get straight to the point, Shido could only smile wryly.
"When did you notice?"
"Not . Tohka noticed." Yutsuki sighed. "She said that after you had a nightmare during your nap, you'd been absent minded the whole ti."
"Uh, really…" Shido froze for a mont, then awkwardly scratched his cheek. "I thought I was acting pretty normal."
"You're the only one who thinks that… The mont I saw you, you looked like soone who had gotten lost in life."
"I see… I made Tohka worry… Sorry."
"Rember to tell Tohka that yourself later."
Yutsuki shrugged helplessly, then continued.
"Well, to sum it up, in order to keep you from overthinking alone and spiraling into a dead end, I ca specially to give you so talk therapy."
"T-Talk therapy?"
Hearing that unfamiliar phrase, Shido was slightly confused.
"No injections, no dicine, just sitting down and chatting with you—cough, sorry. Put simply, it ans using conversation to make you open your heart, understand your past, analyze your inner world, then tear open your wounds, dismantle your ntal defenses, and finally perform a precise operation with the right treatnt."
"Why does that sound dangerous to ?"
Cold sweat appeared on Shido's face.
"Well, it's just a joke to adjust the mood. Don't overthink it. Just say whatever's bothering you."
"Haha…"
Shido looked at Yutsuki, unsure whether to laugh or cry. But indeed, thanks to Yutsuki, his originally gloomy mood had lightened quite a bit.
"Yutsuki, you should know already, right? These past few days, I've been having a dream…"
And so, once he opened his mouth, Shido told Yutsuki everything about the contents of his dream.
In the dream, he was not nad Itsuka Shido, but a high school student nad Takamiya Shinji. His younger sister was not Itsuka Kotori, but Takamiya Mana.
One day, he encountered an unfamiliar Spirit. After discussing it with Mana, he decided to take her in and nad her Mio.
As an existence beyond common sense that had intruded into Shinji's ordinary life, Mio naturally left a very deep impression on Shinji. Combined with her beautiful appearance and innocent, gentle personality, Shinji gradually developed feelings for her.
Then, in the dream not long ago, just as Shinji handed the plush he had obtained to Mio, Itsuka Shido was suddenly driven out of the dream by "Shinji."
After that, Shido could no longer enter the dream, as though the personality known as "Takamiya Shinji" had shut him outside.
"Do you think it's possible? That there's another personality inside my body… or sothing like that."
When he said this, Shido's voice trembled slightly.
"Hmm… I'm not too sure. After all, I don't know much about psychology related to multiple personalities. And with Yoshino and Yoshinon as a real example beside us, I can't say it's impossible."
"I… see…"
"But—"
Just as Shido's spirits began to sink, Yutsuki suddenly changed the direction of the conversation.
"I don't think that's the case for you, Shido."
"Eh?"
"Actually, I've also encountered sothing before… sothing similar to what you're experiencing now."
Yutsuki clasped her fingers together, paused for a mont, then spoke in a calm yet solemn voice.
"S-Similar to ?"
Shido swallowed and asked curiously.
"Mm, that's right." Yutsuki nodded, then said, "Shido, you should know, right? My angel—Ratziel—the ability it has to preserve mories when history changes."
"Yeah, I know."
Although he did not know why Yutsuki suddenly brought this up, Shido still nodded.
"Then do you know how that ability preserves mories?"
"Uh… I don't."
Shido honestly shook his head.
"This is only my personal feeling. To put it simply… after history is changed, the entire world is like a movie whose rewind button has been pressed, returning to that point in ti and starting over. The preserved mories are also sent back to that point. Then, when I use Ratziel in the future, I act as the terminal that receives those mories. Hmm… you can think of it as sending a text ssage to the past."
"Don't treat like an idiot, Yutsuki."
Shido protested sowhat unhappily. After taking a deep breath, he said,
"You an that when I change history, your angel copies down all of your mories first, then sends them to the version of you closest to the changed point in the future who uses Ratziel, right?"
Yutsuki looked slightly surprised.
"Oh… For Shido, that's quite a thorough understanding. Well, it's more or less like that."
Yutsuki shrugged.
"In the end, that's only a speculative guess I made to give the ability a logical explanation. There's no evidence for it. But that's not the important part right now. We got off topic by accident. Sorry."
As if apologizing to Shido, Yutsuki winked and showed a playful smile.
Shido's heart moved slightly.
"Shido, what you changed back then was the history from five years ago. So the point where I received the mories was when I had just co to this world and used my angel for the first ti. Shido, do you know how I saw you back then?"
"How?"
Shido asked, following the topic.
"Hatred. I can put it that way. If you had appeared in front of back then, I probably would have beaten you to death on the spot."
"Wait?! What did I do wrong?!"
Shido asked in shock.
"It wasn't about what you did wrong. To back then, your very existence was a mistake."
"That's even worse!"
"After all, I had just been hunted by Wizards. Compared to settling down in this world, I wanted to go back to my original world more. Being told that in the future I would live in an unfamiliar place with a group of unfamiliar people—and that my first kiss had been taken by a guy—if soone suddenly told that, I could only see it as a very low quality prank."
"Well… yeah."
Hearing Yutsuki's complaint, Shido could only nod with a wry smile. If he stood in Yutsuki's position back then, he really would have thought the sa.
"Shido, before you used Michael on yourself, you told Kotori that no matter what happened, you would always be her older brother, right?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Can I understand that sentence to an this? Even after seeing Takamiya Shinji's mories, you don't want to acknowledge him, and you don't want to change because of it?"
"That…"
Shido was speechless for a mont.
"Well, I can understand. At first, I didn't want to acknowledge it either—that the future would actually beco like that."
Yutsuki rested her chin on her hand and sighed with helplessness.
"But blindly denying it is aningless. Unless you completely erase or seal away those mories, the more you reject them, the harder they'll spring back, like a compressed spring."
"So that's…"
"That's how it is."
Shido fell into deep thought. Indeed, just as Yutsuki said, his current situation was very similar to Yutsuki's. One was recognizing the past, the other was accepting the future. But fundantally, both were about facing mories that he had never personally experienced, yet still belonged to him.
"Shido, while you were recovering your past mories through dreams, weren't you using all sorts of thods to remind yourself that you are 'Itsuka Shido,' so that you wouldn't beco 'Takamiya Shinji'?"
"Mm… I did." Shido nodded, then asked anxiously, "Could it be… I did sothing wrong?"
"No. Rather, you succeeded too well." Yutsuki spread her hands and speculated, "Precisely because you insisted too strongly that you are 'Itsuka Shido,' your subconscious began drawing a clear line between yourself and the dream."
Hearing that, Shido widened his eyes in surprise.
"You an… my current situation isn't another personality inside preventing from dreaming, but that I'm instinctively rejecting the dream?"
"Well—"
Of course, everything Yutsuki had said so far was still only conjecture. She had no decisive evidence to prove her guess or to deny the possibility that Shido had a dual personality.
However, since this was talk therapy, she did not need to be overly hung up on that.
So Yutsuki gave a thumbs up and declared firmly,
"That's right!! That's exactly what's going on!!"
(TL:I love talking chapter)
User Comments
0 comments from readers