Alice in Wonderland (Part 4)
Demons can read human memories. That is why they can always offer precisely what their target desires most.
And what one truly desires is rarely something one understands oneself.
Which was why the journey leading here, and this very moment, felt all the more bitter.
"Yohan Damus," Mephistopheles said. "You are an incorrigible liar."
It was a brief sentence, yet it pierced my chest like a dagger.
"Everyone fails. Your failure simply happened to be more fatal than most. Even so, you strived and overcame countless obstacles. That, at least, no one can deny."
"...What are you trying to say?"
"Yet moments of failure accumulate. Deep within your heart, unknown even to you, the lingering trauma of that failure festered into an illness, driving you to wrap yourself in constant lies."
Mephistopheles was a demon. Every single word spilling from his lips was nothing more than a snare designed to lure me in.
"And so, concerning the person you remember vividly to this day, you repeatedly told yourself that you couldn't even recall her face."
"I never said that."
"You did. You muttered it to yourself time and time again—as if making an excuse."
"..."
"I pity you, Yohan Damus. For that was the only recourse you had."
I felt stripped bare. Something surged from the depths of my chest, churning my stomach in sickening waves.
"Helpless as you were, you had no choice but to lie in that manner. After all, the things you could actually change were pitifully few."
I was powerless. I didn't need a demon to tell me that.
"Not all effort is rewarded. At times, striving only breeds a more disastrous outcome."
Before I even realized it, Mephistopheles had resumed his usual puppy-like appearance. I hadn't even perceived the shift. A great demon in the shape of a little dog. Yet between the transcendent entity I had just been facing and the small pup I now looked down upon, there was no difference whatsoever.
"No matter how much you regret it, the past will never return. People say they glean lessons from the past, but is that truly so?"
And finally, I realized why Mephistopheles had taken such a form.
"No amount of struggle can turn back time. No matter how desperately you try to piece things back together, what's done cannot be undone. Even if you glue a broken cup back together, the cracks remain."
The demon hadn't adopted this shape merely for convenience.
"Therefore, you need not struggle any further."
That shape was me. It was a mirror reflecting my own helpless, pathetic self.
"Therefore, you no longer have to lie to yourself."
My stomach churned. It felt as though my heart was gradually swaying under the demon's insidious bullshit.
Cunningly, he didn't tempt me with what I desired; instead, he pinpointed the wound that brought me the greatest agony. Reaching for what one desires is a conscious choice, but fleeing from what one fears is pure instinct.
And all of that temptation...
"You are permitted to be happier than you are now. You have earned the right to be selfish."
...sounded almost like solace.
"So, accept the contract."
I didn't answer. Instead, I surveyed the frozen world around us. Lost in sentiment, I took careful, deliberate steps forward.
Mephistopheles simply wagged his tail side to side and padded alongside me, watching without rushing me.
Then, when a faint fragrance tickled my nose and brought my feet to a halt, I spotted them: rosemary blossoms.
"I thought of Alice more as a friend than a fiancée. No... perhaps I thought of her as a hero."
She loved adventure and threw herself passionately into everything. I was always dragged along by the hand, and time after time, she showed me a brand-new world. We once climbed a mountain in the dead of night just to try and get closer to the stars. We plucked stalks of wheat and barley from the fields, trying to craft something together with our own hands.
"Looking back now, though, that wasn't it at all."
"What was she, then?" the demon asked, gazing toward the orientation of my soul as if thoroughly intrigued.
"Maybe she was just a coward, like me."
I was always led along by her hand. I received so much. And like a fool, I took that love and devotion for granted. Yet now that I knew her life had been hanging by a thread, I saw things differently. She was simply making the greatest proof of her existence within the shortest amount of time. Stacking up as many memories as possible so that I would never forget her.
"Every day, she'd throw bizarre riddles at me, delighting in the sight of me clutching my head in agony. One day, irritated by her teasing, I threw a riddle back at her."
"What kind of riddle was it?"
"What color rosemary blossoms were."
It had been an entirely spontaneous question. Just a random thought blurted out while we were sharing herbal tea. Because of that, I didn't know the answer either. I had merely passed off the first thought that popped into my head as a grand riddle. So when Alice pondered it for ages and asked for the answer, I couldn't give her one.
"And then Alice told me to look with my own eyes and tell her later."
"Yet you were never able to tell her."
"Yeah."
Though it depends on the variety, most rosemary takes at least a year to bloom. We poured time into cultivating it, but Alice never lived to see the rosemary bloom. If only I had known that beforehand, I would have traveled far and wide to bring her one. That small, lingering regret remained wedged deep inside my heart.
"In the end, I basically murdered the precious little time Alice had left."
I fiddled with the hat perched upon my head. The Mad Hatter, indeed. Now I understood why that role had been assigned to me. The Mad Hatter was a lunatic and a pathetic coward. A prisoner condemned for having murdered time.
"Yet if you so desire, you could tell her the answer this time."
"Perhaps."
"That sounds like a refusal."
"Well... before I give my answer, there's one thing I want to ask."
"I am listening."
"Did you create this world? And did you decide the roles as well?"
"I created the world, but it was you who determined the roles. More precisely, your subconscious decided them."
"I see."
A few discrepancies had been bothering me. The only role genuinely prepared for this stage was likely the Queen of Hearts. The other characters merely manifested in forms fitting their innate roles. Ariel and Yuna, who had been swept into this world, were the same. They had received roles tied to how I perceived them in my subconscious.
"Mephistopheles."
"..."
"You made a single mistake."
The roles were determined by my subconscious. Had he not uttered those words, I might have accepted the contract. No, had Mephistopheles chosen the roles himself from the start, things wouldn't have turned out this way to begin with.
"The Red Queen isn't a character from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
Alice's tale doesn't conclude in Wonderland. The Red Queen belongs to its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass.
"Lobelia is the protagonist racing toward the end of the story."
She symbolizes the future. She is the one who cuts through every trial blocking her path to reach the conclusion. That is why she became the Red Queen from the Looking-Glass world, rather than a resident of Wonderland. Because she belongs beyond this moment—not within the past.
What about the others, then?
"Yuna and Ariel were originally meant to remain in the past."
Originally, Ariel was fated to die without ever being cured of Transcendence Sickness. That was why she had become the White Rabbit. Yuna was also a character meant to exit the stage after defeating a mid-boss. That was why she had become the Cheshire Cat. Regardless of how things stood now, in my original perception, both were figures buried in the past.
The only one who could reach the end of the story was Lobelia. So what was I, then? I was the anchor of this world.
"And I was the one trapped in the past."
I was still standing still in the past. Standing before the flower bed where we planted rosemary that day, I was still waiting. All so I could tell Alice what color the blossoms were.
"Yet Alice escapes Wonderland and eventually journeys into the Looking-Glass world. Because she doesn't belong to just one story."
Of course, that was merely the tale. Alice was already dead. Even so, what she left behind lived on in my memory.
"When we planted the rosemary that day, I didn't know the answer to the riddle."
Now, however, was different. With the passage of time, accumulated experience, and having seen it come to fruition, I knew.
"I'll continue to learn things like that in the future. I can't keep standing frozen in the past."
"So that is your answer."
"Still, thanks to you, I got to revisit those memories. Thank you."
"A pity."
Mephistopheles bowed his head. Then, as if melting away, he began to fade into the darkness.
"This round is my loss, Yohan Damus. Next time, I shall return with an offer you cannot refuse."
"You really don't know when to quit."
"We are hardly such noble creatures, after all. Is not shameless persistence the true virtue of a demon?"
With those words, the frozen time began to flow once more. Starlight-like magic shook heaven and earth, shattering the false world to pieces. And the Alice who had been casting magic vanished along with the disintegrating world.
It was time to wake from the dream.
When I opened my eyes that morning, I was lying in bed. Beside my pillow lay a faded book—one of Lemegeton's Books.
"...Well, it would have been impossible for a demon without an established contract to create an entire world from scratch."
He had merely woven a fabricated world using a dream as a medium. Even though it had been remarkably close to reality, that feat couldn't have been accomplished by Mephistopheles's power alone.
"Perhaps Tillis intervened in this as well."
He must have absorbed the power of the Lemegeton Librarians who had pursued us until we reached the county. After all, I had never quite confirmed where the black currents I saw had vanished to. They weren't contracted with real demons anyway; they were Librarians granted temporary authority by Tillis. For a Great Demon like Mephistopheles, intercepting that power would have been child's play. Or perhaps Tillis had simply turned a blind eye, allowing him to take it.
"...Every little thing really is snowballing out of control."
Sighing, I stashed the drained, faded grimoire out of sight and stepped out of the room.
"Oh, Yohan. You're up early."
I ran right into Lobelia, who was returning from her morning workout. Clad in comfortable athletic wear, she wore a rather sullen expression as she spoke.
"Good work."
"I only did what had to be done."
Apparently, I wasn't the only one who remembered what happened in the dream. Since Lobelia had already figured out Alice's true identity, she surely knew this entire incident had occurred because of me.
"May I ask one thing?"
"By all means."
"Are you still running background checks on me?"
Ariel hadn't known the slightest thing about Alice. Considering how she'd previously concocted an entire tragic melodrama about my past all on her own, the sheer gap in information was glaring. Why did Lobelia know who Alice was the second she heard the name, while Ariel had remained completely in the dark? Huh? Seriously, how the hell did she know?
"For both our sakes, I believe it best I leave that unanswered. In exchange, I shall pretend this entire incident never took place."
"..."
Was that a threat? It seemed Lobelia had deduced that this mess was also connected to a demon—and that the demon was targeting me. The creeping realization that she held yet another piece of leverage over me sent a chill down my spine.
"Ah, Yohan, I was just heading down to eat. Care to join me?"
"No, thank you."
"There's no need to feel pressured."
"It's not that. There's something else I need to take care of first."
"Something else?"
"..."
I glanced through the hallway window down into the backyard. Between the tangled vines, clusters of delicate purple blossoms caught my eye.
"I'm going to tend to the flowerbed."
It was time to finally bid farewell to the past.