Cecilia's Past
Whoosh!
A sword cut fiercely through the empty air.
In the dead of night, while everyone else slept, Cecilia stood alone on the deserted hospital rooftop and swung her blade again and again.
No matter how often the choice was kill or be killed, the moment she took a life she always found herself remembering her first murder—and the days that had led to it.
Fifteen years ago, in a tiny village whose name she could no longer recall, the Great War began.
She had been twelve years old.
Being blind had felt like despair, yet it turned out to be the perfect condition for the power she awakened.
The trigger was simple: her vision had to be blocked. Whether she closed her eyes or covered them with cloth, the moment sight was denied she could feel the future.
Born without sight, she could keep the ability active whenever she wished—and she almost always did.
It took endless trial and error. Half a year just to learn how far ahead those futures reached when she left the power running freely. More than a year after that to grow used to living with it constantly switched on.
Without that adaptation the gift was useless.
She could feel herself about to fall and dodge the tumble—yet she still felt the full pain of the fall. She could sense her parents about to strike her and avoid the blow—yet she must not avoid it, so she endured the same agony twice. She had to learn to separate the sounds of two seconds from now from the sounds of the present. She had to endure twice the strength of every foul smell because she smelled it two seconds early.
But humans are creatures of adaptation, and somehow Cecilia adapted.
Once she had completely mastered using the ability on herself, she discovered she could use it on others as well.
So she tried it on her parents.
The world she saw through their eyes was nothing like the beautiful place she had imagined.
Green liquor bottles rolling carelessly in dark corners. A house filthy enough to pass for a garbage dump.
She had long known her parents hated her. Still, the discovery that they never once looked at her—not even a glance—hit her like a physical blow.
Because she was blind they forbade her from ever leaving the house alone. Because the house was a wreck, no one ever visited. The only people whose eyes she could borrow were the parents who ignored her existence.
Even after she gained the power to see the world through other people’s sight, more than two years passed before she learned what she herself looked like.
Yet she never gave up.
The reek of stale cigarettes and the sharp alcohol stench leaking from toppled bottles tormented her, but one fragile hope remained.
Outside.
Whenever her parents returned and she slipped into their vision, the first thing she always saw was the wretched house. Yet somewhere at the edge of their sight there was always a window, and beyond it a blue sky.
At first she thought it was one of those “pictures” people talked about. Only when she watched the pure white fluff keep moving did she realize those were clouds, and that the frame was a window, not a painting.
That was the day she first planned to go outside alone.
She waited until her parents left, groped through the wardrobe for the few clean clothes she owned, and dressed herself carefully. Then she forced open a door she had never opened by herself and stepped into the world.
It was cool.
The mildew of damp blankets, the chemical smell of half-applied medicine on bruises, the stench of liquor and tobacco—all of it scattered on the wind and vanished.
She felt light. And empty.
She had never imagined escape could be this easy. Her parents’ absolute ban had made her believe terrifying monsters must live beyond the walls.
Of course no such monsters existed.
For the first time in her life Cecilia felt truly refreshed, and she laughed like a fool.
She found a rock where the breeze was gentle and simply sat, listening. Birdsong she had never heard inside the dark house. The shouts of children at play. Everything was new and wonderful.
She borrowed the eyes of passers-by and looked at the world.
Blue sky. White clouds. Green grass and trees. Children with hair of every bright color.
Color flooded a life that had always been dark and monochrome.
Sometimes curious children approached and spoke to her. Sometimes they tried to tease her. Once a shy boy hesitantly offered her a letter. She could not read it, but she kept every letter she received as a treasure.
To a girl who had never properly spoken with another human being, every one of those moments was precious and joyful.
Through those children she finally learned what she looked like.
She was surprisingly pretty.
Most people would have fretted, If only I could see… Cecilia did not. She was content with who she was.
Those happy days lasted several months. Every time her parents went out she slipped away. She chatted with an old woman she met on the road. A boy she had never seen before confessed his feelings to her.
Then one day her parents caught her sneaking out and beat her until her whole body was a mass of purple bruises.
She still could not understand why.
She simply curled up in the mildewed blankets and sobbed as quietly as she could.
Only a few days later the Great War erupted.
Lying in the corner of her room, aching from the beating, Cecilia reached through the window with her power and slipped into the eyes of the people running outside.
That day she became the old woman who had once given her a cinnamon candy after a conversation—and she died. She became the boy who had once confessed to her and felt every second of his horrific death. She became a woman who burned alive the little children who used to play mean tricks on her.
In the middle of all that dying and killing she saw her parents as well. To the very end they shoved others aside in their desperate flight, only to have their throats cut.
They had made her suffer her entire life. Still—were the people who gave birth to her still her parents?
When she came back to herself she was already racing through the kitchen, an old kitchen knife clenched in her hand.
Even now she does not understand why she did it.
She ran and ran until she found a man about to kill a girl she had glimpsed a few times before. Without hesitation she drove the knife into his throat.
Perhaps it was because she had already felt the deaths of people she knew through so many borrowed bodies. Strangely, committing murder herself produced no feeling at all. No guilt. No thrill. Simply nothing.
After killing the man she fought his comrades.
That was the first time she realized her power could be used in battle.
She experienced the future of being struck, clenched her teeth against the pain, and dodged. Sometimes she borrowed the eyes of the girl she had saved. A few times she looked through the eyes of the men trying to kill her and watched herself charge at them with gritted teeth.
In that moment she thought the blood-soaked pretty girl—herself, eyes closed, kitchen knife raised—did not look so bad.
But it was her first real fight with the ability, so she made many mistakes. Her frail body could not always dodge cleanly; by the time she finished the last man she was covered in wounds. When she drove the knife into one man’s eye she was still looking through his future, and she felt every wet, grinding sensation of the blade gouging out his eyeball.
In the end Cecilia killed the men and survived. As a bonus she saved the nameless little girl she had only seen a few times.
Perhaps, when she felt her parents die, she had intended to die fighting as well.
But in that battle she felt countless things she still cannot put into words. For the sake of those things she chose to live.
She thought of better ways to use her power and trained like a madwoman. She took up a real sword and swung it until her hands bled.
She never set out to eradicate evil. She simply wanted to survive, and she wanted to grow strong enough that no more children like that little girl would ever appear.
The girl who had slaughtered countless people through futures she felt, who had died countless times herself, eventually joined the Great War in person, purged countless villains, and became a hero.
That achievement earned her a teaching post at the Academy.
Whoooosh!
The sword she had carried for so many years once again sliced empty air. Moonlight flashed along the blade.
But this time?
She had done nothing.
She had killed many enemies, yes—but that was all. She was still only a weakling who could not protect the people who mattered. A pathetic teacher forced to watch her own student bleed while she stood helpless on the sidelines.
“You don’t think so?”
Cecilia murmured the words as if speaking to herself.
Someone answered the question that should have been private.
“Huh? Think what?”
Elysia.
Shameless, incomprehensible, and somehow still adorable. The student who had lately occupied more of her thoughts than anyone else—in every possible sense—tilted her head and asked again.
“…Nothing. Let’s go inside.”
“Okaaay~.”
Elysia trotted over, casually slipped her arm through Cecilia’s, and cheerfully led the way toward the stairs that left the rooftop.
Cecilia asked the question that had been nagging her for a while.
“How long have you been up here, anyway?”
“Se~cret~.”
Faced with her shameless student’s insistence on secrecy, Cecilia could not help a small, helpless smile.