Yuel Razian (7)
In this world, there are no absolute right answers, and no absolute wrong ones.
That was just how the world was. It did not split neatly into black and white, and it did not clearly divide into good and evil. Hadn't the Lighthouse Keeper, Eurypylus, said the sa long ago?
The world was not that simple.
So never stop doubting.
Najin had taken those words to heart.
Maybe that was why. When Yuel said with bitter self-mockery that there were no right or wrong answers in this world, Najin answered on reflex, "There has to be a better answer."
There had to be. A better answer.
If there wasn't, he would make one. It was a sad thing when hard work went unrewarded. And at the end of this story, as far as Najin could tell...
"Looks like we found a better answer, right?"
He still could not say whether it was right or wrong.
But at least, it felt like they had found sothing better.
"Looks like my gut was right. If we'd executed Yuel like the Tower Master said, it would've beco a real disaster."
"Well, yeah," rlin said with a nod.
"The Star of Forgetting was looking at Yuel pretty affectionately, you know? Every star has sothing it treasures. And when soone ruins what it treasures..."
She did not finish the sentence.
He knew what she ant.
If they had executed Yuel on the spot, the Star of Forgetting would have moved in a completely different way. Najin did not even want to imagine what that would have been.
Then what if they had expelled Yuel from the imperial army?
That future did not seem good either. If the Star of Forgetting erased Yuel's mories and left her a blank slate... there was soone close by who would gladly pour paint all over that blank space.
Najin chose neither.
After thinking it over, he gave a completely different answer. Even he was fairly satisfied with it, so he nodded and let out a long breath.
Thud.
Najin sat down beside the grave.
He had been thrown out, but...
The grave still had not disappeared. The reason was simple. The protagonist of that stage was still continuing her story. He did not know how long it would take, but it likely would not take very long. Ti flowed differently inside and outside.
"......"
Najin waited for her in silence.
The reason was simple.
He had promised.
Tap.
How much ti had passed? Footsteps sounded from sowhere. As they drew closer, the blood-stained code grew hazy.
Tap.
It ant the Star's Tomb was nearing its end. Soon, with a brittle crack, the Star's Tomb collapsed. The one who stepped out of the crumbling grave was her.
"Ah."
Yuel.
Almost nothing had changed from when she entered the grave. She still wore clothes marked with the emblem of the Starblood Sect, she was still expressionless by default, and she still looked faintly detached from emotion.
Not much had changed.
But one thing had definitely changed.
The mont her blank face turned toward Najin, it began to shift. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. Then, with eyes half-open, half-lidded, she...
"Finally."
She smiled.
"Finally, I t you."
It was not a smile that suited a woman called a killer. It was not a smile that suited soone called a doll for seeming emotionless. If anyone saw her now, they would tilt their head at those titles.
"......Ah?"
And even Yuel herself did.
She blinked.
The smile that had lingered on her lips for a mont disappeared. Returning to her usual expressionless face, she touched her lips with her fingers, as if she could not understand why she had smiled like that, or why she had murmured, Finally, I t you.
"Hm. Mm."
Yuel's expression turned complicated.
When she looked at Najin, it grew even more so.
"Najin, do you rember what happened inside the grave? I rember nothing."
"Are you curious?"
"No. I'm not curious. I don't know why, but it seems my past self erased those mories in satisfaction. Whatever it was, I have no reason to chase it."
That answer was different from before.
"But..."
"But?"
"Th-that, it's strange."
Yuel pressed her chest with her hand.
"Sothing is... mm, strange."
She herself did not know what felt strange. She had lived nearly two hundred years without emotion. Emotions were unknown territory to her. She looked flustered by feelings she had suddenly gotten back.
How should she describe this feeling?
As she wondered, her tongue suddenly started moving on its own, as if pronouncing words soaked into it over many years.
"Fucking... no, that's not it."
Yuel shut her mouth. To be exact, it did not feel fucking awful. It was the opposite. She was just embarrassed to explain this situation, so she had almost thrown out a curse by reflex.
Embarrassed?
Yuel tilted her head.
That feeling was new to her too.
"Mmmmm."
It seed she needed a little ti.
The change had only just begun.
2.
This was hardly the right setting for after-story chatter, but once a story ended, people still needed a mont to catch their breath.
First.
"No, how is this possible...?"
Cipria Gachevskaya, the Platinum Tower Master, blinked as she looked up at the sky. About a day had passed since Najin took Yuel and leaped into the Star's Tomb. Thousands of rolling eyes in the sky slowly closed.
Then they lted into the air and vanished.
The last thing those eyes saw was Yuel stepping out of the grave and smiling brightly at Najin. The instant the Star of Forgetting confird that she was smiling at the present, without yearning for the past, it disappeared without a trace.
While Cipria was still blinking,
Gerd, who had stood atop the cliff preparing to cut the sky, quietly slid his sword into its scabbard. Click. Blade and sheath locked together.
"......"
Without a word, he ca down the cliff and t Najin, who was walking back toward the camp. No long conversation was needed. Gerd patted Najin on the shoulder twice and spoke briefly.
"Good work."
The incident was over. As the imperial army finally let out held breaths, several Transcendents also had to wipe cold sweat from their foreheads. For the first ti, they had faced a fragnt of the Star of Forgetting, and they could not avoid one question.
Was that thing really a Transcendent like them?
Like ordinary people looking at a Sword Seeker and wondering, Is that really human like , they asked the sa while facing the Star of Forgetting's fragnt.
The level felt different.
The pressure felt like sothing from the stars of the Round Table hanging at the far edge of the Outland, pressure from an entirely different class.
"The Carnival King, the Star of Forgetting, are those really Transcendents like us?"
"Well, the Carnival King's star count is different from ours from the start. Isn't that demon at eleven stars?"
"Even taking that into account... whew."
Just as ordinary humans felt a wall before Transcendents, so Transcendents felt hollow before those great stars that reduced them to re humans.
Not everyone reacted that way.
One laughed and said that star looked worth cutting down.
Another marveled that there was an even higher realm.
No one needed to ask which side Najin belonged to. His goal already lay above the Star of Forgetting. And long ago, alongside the na Carnival King, the Star of Forgetting had already been added to Najin's list.
His list, in other words, his kill list.
Najin had seen many people ruined by the Star of Forgetting. Even if the Carnival King had borrowed that Authority, the Star of Forgetting itself had done plenty as well.
So it was a being he would have to bring down soday.
"But..."
Najin let out a long breath.
"rlin."
"......"
"rlin?"
"I'm listening."
Ever since the kiss incident with Yuel at the end of the Star's Tomb, rlin had been oddly sulky. Watching her mood, Najin asked his question.
"About the Star of Forgetting."
He recalled the end of the Star's Tomb. Najin had turned his eyes away from the Star of Forgetting's True Body, but he could still roughly tell what Yuel and the Star had discussed.
That conversation had confused him.
He was about to speak when rlin raised an index finger to her lips and shook her head.
"Don't recall it. Don't think about it too deeply either."
"......"
"It's too early. Right now your target is the Carnival King. You can think about the Star of Forgetting after that. Right?"
As if saying that even recalling it could alert the Star of Forgetting, rlin held his gaze. Najin nodded.
"Ah, but rlin."
"Yeah?"
"It looked like you saw it. Are you okay with that?"
When Najin had turned away from the Star of Forgetting's True Body, rlin had still been looking at it. From her earlier comnt that the Star of Forgetting had looked at Yuel with tenderness, she must have seen everything.
"Ah, that?"
rlin answered as if it were nothing.
"I already know what the Star of Forgetting looks like."
"...What?"
"I'm fuzzy on things like how many stars it has and its true na, but I at least know what it looks like."
She had t it a few tis.
rlin offered no more than that. She only said he would naturally co to know in ti.
That made two.
Last ca three, the protagonist of this story, and the one with the most to say. Maybe calling what she was about to say an epilogue was not quite right.
An opening act. Or a prologue.
Those words might fit better, because only now could she finally begin her life again.
"Hmm."
Unlike usual, she hesitated, lingered, and thought, then...
Tap.
She took a step.
"......"
Her steps naturally turned toward him. Just as they had long ago, one hundred years ago, one hundred and fifty years ago. She walked toward soone she had searched for over a very long ti.
The walk was short, but it felt long.
A low cliff.
He sat there on a ledge where tough weeds, surviving even in the Outland, grew here and there. She approached without a word and sat beside him.
The wind blew.
Through hair swaying in the wind, she gave a faint smile. For so reason, she could smile easily when she was beside him.
In front of others, nothing had changed. She could stay expressionless and emotionless as always. But in front of this man, she could not do that at all.
She did not know why.
Yuel Razian thought that change was not bad.
3.
"This feels strange."
"Strange? What do you an?"
"Najin, I have traveled with you a few tis, but only a few. In my life of over one hundred and fifty years, the portion occupied by you is only a few weeks, maybe a few months."
But why?
Murmuring that, Yuel looked at Najin.
"Even so, I feel as if I have been with you for far longer than that. Why is that?"
Najin shrugged. Yuel was not really asking for an answer. Facing the wind, she continued.
"And one more thing."
Yuel placed a hand on her chest.
"Originally, I could only feel alive when I killed people. Killing soone, hearing screams, being soaked in blood, that pounding heart made feel alive."
That was why she had enjoyed killing.
"But now..."
She glanced at Najin.
"Just being beside you makes my heart race. I can feel life. This is the first ti I have felt this."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, and it is not bad. Very much so."
It was far from calm.
A racing pulse, tingling, a beating heart, slight tension, and a smile that kept slipping out. These were feelings Yuel had never known before.
"Should I call it... good?"
She tilted her head.
"Yes. I think it is good."
Watching her, Najin could tell. She was finding the self she had lost. That was far from the Yuel he had known disappearing.
Yuel as a person was simply changing a little.
Nothing was changing drastically. But she would keep changing. She herself felt that the change was good.
"My past self..."
She raised her hand.
"Back then, I felt relieved, as if this was enough. Because even if I forgot, I believed soone else would rember for ."
It was fine if she forgot.
It was fine if everything was erased.
"Soone would rember , and recognize when we t. That was enough. It seems my past self thought that. And..."
Yuel stretched out the hand she had raised. Without thinking, she grabbed Najin's hand. She did not know why she did it. She just wanted to hold it.
She was honest with her desire.
She no longer needed to restrain herself.
Sliding her fingers between his and interlacing them, she gave a shy smile.
"Ah, so it was you after all."
For the Yuel of now, it was a first.
For Najin, it was a familiar smile. He looked down at her wrist without thinking. A bracelet there jingled softly.
"What is this, Yuel?"
"What do you an, what is it? Do you not have eyes? Anyone can tell it's a bracelet."
It was a familiar bracelet to Najin.
The Yuel of the past had worn it often.
"So why a bracelet?"
She was far from soone who liked luxury. Even as a City Lord, she did not decorate herself. She only did basic self-care. Yet from one day on, she had started wearing that bracelet.
It was probably from when Najin started living with her.
Whenever he asked about it, Yuel would curse for no reason and trail off. It looked like there was writing engraved on the inside, but Yuel refused to show the inside of that bracelet to Najin no matter what.
"So what, did you write a curse word on it? What did you write?"
"Fuck, you do not need to know!"
He could have forced a look if he wanted, but then he would have had to listen to Yuel cursing at him for days. So Najin never checked the inside.
"Hm."
"What are you staring at? Want to die, seriously?"
And with an ordinary person's visual acuity, it would have been hard to read the phrase flashing by whenever the bracelet jingled anyway.
But right now.
His body had returned close to Transcendent level, and his visual acuity suddenly caught the phrase through the gaps of that swaying bracelet, against his own intention.
And then.
"Ah."
Najin ended up laughing out loud.
When Yuel asked why he was laughing, Najin shook his head. She definitely had a reason to be embarrassed. These were words Najin should not have read first. They were probably words she had ant to say herself one day.
Najin erased the phrase from his mory.
It would be rude to know in advance.
Whatever was written inside aside, that bracelet was a Star Relic. Even with Najin's help, Yuel had been the one who truly cleared the Star's Tomb, and she had been given one Star Relic.
Seriously.
Najin felt he could guess what function that Star Relic had.
What obsession.
The habit of flipping a Transcendent off at the end of life did not disappear easily. Looking at the bracelet that had created a loophole in the contract, Najin laughed again.
After her contract with the Star of Forgetting ended,
and when the Star of Omniscience eventually set,
if she wished for it, she would regain her mories. The mories that should have vanished from this world had been preserved in full inside that Star Relic.
And when that day ca...
Najin would hear the words engraved inside that bracelet from her own mouth.
"Ahem, fuck! Won't you move your eyes? I'll stab you, seriously. I'll stab you, fuck!"
"I didn't look. I had no intention of looking."
Probably, no, definitely.
Along with curses blurted out to hide her embarrassnt.
User Comments
0 comments from readers