Broken Past (4)
I hadn't expected Michel to come looking for me in the dead of night, but now that she was here, I had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to say.
Even so, the words didn't come easily.
Michel was being cautious, and so was I.
It's definitely not something to blab about out in the open, but...
Staying cooped up in this room wasn't going to get us anywhere either. I pulled on my coat without hesitation.
"...? Are we going somewhere?"
"My head's running a little hot. Figured it'd be better to talk with some cool night air to clear it."
"Mm... Let's do that, then."
The front door clicked shut behind us. We walked until we found a quiet bench to sit down.
"So, to put it simply, Aris didn't step down on her own accord?"
"...Yeah. She simply wasn't in any condition to lecture."
"Which is why they tested the waters with me and dumped the class on my plate. Hard to blame them, I suppose, if she abruptly vanished."
At that, Michel brought up the news about Aris with evident difficulty.
"Aris disappeared today. She only told the hospital staff she was stepping out for a brief walk."
"Hmm..."
Used a walk as an excuse to slip away somewhere else, then. Setting that aside for a moment—
"She's with Senia right now, but her condition hasn't improved at all. That's why..."
"You came to ask me, since I was the last person in contact with her before those symptoms showed up. Right?"
"Yes. Exactly."
She had knocked on my door hoping for answers, but truthfully, there wasn't all that much I knew myself.
"I don't know much either. I had my hands full trying to rescue the kids alongside her."
"So she wasn't like that during the battle?"
"Not at all. From retrieving the captured students to establishing our defensive line, there wasn't a single issue. In fact, if she hadn't pulled her weight, all of us might have died right there."
Of course, there was what happened before that—the moment Aris had broken down in tears and begged me for help—but that didn't hold much relevance right now. It was far too disconnected to explain such a sudden, drastic unraveling.
"If I had to pinpoint when she started acting strange, it was probably around the time the rest of you arrived. She was perfectly fine until then."
That had to be the only plausible window.
Even when I gripped her shoulder, she had winced in pain, but she hadn't shaken me off. The real shift happened right after, when she flinched away from my outstretched hand and retreated in sheer panic.
"Really? Hmm, what could it be... There has to be a reason."
"..."
A reason.
Could it have been the psychological shock of collapsing and calling herself utterly useless? Or had her mindset shifted while teaching those students?
No. There's no ground to stand on for either of those theories. None at all.
Her raw burst firepower was formidable enough to rival even Michel's; if anything, she had plenty of reason to hold her head high. And even if teaching had affected her, Aris—though stubborn and hot-tempered—possessed a natural charisma and warmth that would have fostered great rapport with her class.
Which meant the true cause lay somewhere entirely different.
I crossed my arms and combed through my memories, but nothing clicked into place.
At most, all I know is that she pushed past her limits and forced her mana out to save the kids...
In that kind of crisis, anyone would have done the exact same thing.
...Wait a second.
...Anyone would have done that?
When I chewed over that thought, the glaring contradiction finally hit me.
Given Aris's fiery personality, rushing ahead of everyone else wasn't out of character. Since it involved students from her own roadschool class, she would have received the news faster than anyone.
But in a dire situation like that, wouldn't an instructor's first instinct normally be to call for backup?
A sudden, sharp suspicion rose regarding Aris's contradictory behavior.
If that's what happened...
Then her reckless overexertion made sense. Breaking down in tears and tearing herself down made sense, too.
"Is there... anything else you can tell me? Even the smallest detail?"
...The smallest detail, huh.
Gulp, gulp.
I tipped back my water bottle, drained a long draft, and gave my answer with measured care.
"I think... Aris might be avoiding me."
"Avoiding you, Junon...? As in... some kind of trauma?"
"..."
While I couldn't lay out the full picture of what Aris was going through to Michel, the question struck remarkably close to home.
"Aris arrived at the Irov Basin before I did. She reached the students first."
"Before you... Right. But what about it?"
"Think about it. If you were confronted with a crisis you couldn't solve alone, and an ally suddenly showed up, what's the very first thing you'd do?"
"Well... ask for help, of course."
Exactly. That was the blind spot.
"At first... Aris tried to rescue those kids entirely on her own. Even at the cost of tearing her own body apart."
"Huh...?"
Under normal circumstances, anyone would have requested aid on the spot. You would share the status of the trapped students, explain what tactics you had already tried, and coordinate a plan to break through.
Even back in the past timeline when we hunted troublesome Named beasts, Aris strictly adhered to that fundamental rule. She used to boast about it, saying it was a survival habit drilled into her during her mercenary days.
Yet in this exact same predicament, she hadn't asked for help.
"Are you saying... she didn't want to ask you for help?"
"That's how it looked."
Yeah. Almost as if my help was the one thing in the world she refused to accept.
Take it a step further, and the pattern became unmistakable.
She had hesitated to accept my aid. The moment she caught sight of my hand, she recoiled in visceral terror. And then she abandoned the area altogether, fleeing straight back toward Revrant.
She was actively avoiding me. She couldn't bear the thought of being anywhere near me.
"But... why would Aris do that to you...? You only crossed paths during the Faction War. You barely even know each other..."
Michel stammered, thoroughly bewildered.
And that's why this is such a mess. Because there's a secret that you're the only one who doesn't know.
Unable to voice the thought, I bit my lip.
That trembling, terrified look on her face... I saw it recently.
Senia had worn that exact expression.
She had confessed that, through some inexplicable phenomenon, fragments of the past—memories that were supposed to belong solely to me—had begun resurfacing in her mind.
It was an absurd hypothesis, but what if Aris, just like Senia, had remembered a piece of her past?
Then her sudden, radical change in behavior made total sense.
Looking at the bigger picture, Charlotte weeping out on that street fit the very same mold.
In other words, after Charlotte and Senia, Aris was now undergoing the exact same torment.
—'…!'
The memory of Aris shrinking back in sheer panic, recoiling from my outstretched hand, remained vivid behind my eyelids.
If she stays in that state... it's going to turn into a serious disaster.
Explaining any of this to Michel, who was entirely in the dark, was out of the question.
I would have to go see Aris myself.
Tangled, disheveled pink hair drooped limply across her face, obscuring her vision.
The heavy dark circles carved beneath her eyes were no longer the result of pulling all-nighters clutching a pen. She simply couldn't sleep.
Aris had spent an entire day trapped in this hollow paralysis.
"I thought you finally managed to drift off for a bit... Are you awake already?"
Senia locked the door behind her and stepped inside, her voice laced with worry.
Aris didn't answer.
"I've explained everything to Michel, so let's get some food in you. Say 'ah.'"
"..."
A spoonful of thin rice porridge rose before her, steam curling softly from its surface. It was a gentle meal Senia had prepared so Aris could stomach something the moment she woke.
Yet Aris's lips remained tightly sealed.
Her hollow, unblinking eyes couldn't even hold a proper focus.
Clatter.
Watching the lifeless girl, Senia set the spoon back down. A deep, heavy sigh slipped past her lips.
A full day has passed, and she hasn't improved an inch. Time isn't going to fix this.
Senia made up her mind. It was time to force the issue.
Fwip.
She yanked aside the blanket that had been bundled tightly around Aris's trembling frame.
"Do you remember what I told you in the banquet hall back at the Schytz victory celebration?"
Aris remained silent, frozen in place.
"I told you to go to him and beg for forgiveness yourself. That it was the only right way forward."
Senia answered her own question, determined to hammer the conversation into Aris's ears whether she wanted it or not. When Aris instinctively moved to cover her ears, Senia grabbed both of her wrists, pinning them down.
"Aris. I was the exact same way."
Until now, she had only listened passively to Aris's guilt. If they were ever going to break through this wall, Senia had to lay bare her own ugliness.
"If you attacked Junon directly with magic... then I'm the one who buried him socially."
She had dumped a burden on him. A burden so colossal and crushing that no single man should have ever had to carry it.
"In the middle of a critical, desperate engagement, I defied direct orders and abandoned the battlefield. And to make it worse, I faked my own death to do it."
And Junon had been forced to shoulder the fallout entirely alone.
His own responsibilities, plus the wreckage left by everyone else. He had braced his shoulders beneath a weight heavy enough to crush him into dust on the spot.
"You can imagine the storm that hit him afterward, can't you? Junon was branded an incompetent commander who threw away a core pillar of his vanguard through a reckless operation."
And yet, what tore at Senia's heart until it bled was something else entirely.
"...Do you know what that idiot did? He had already figured out that I might desert. He prepared a fresh horse, tucked a map and a note into the saddlebag, and left it right along my escape path."
He had known. All along.
"..."
Finally, Aris's shoulders twitched.
Senia firmly gripped those trembling shoulders, looking straight into a face ruined by dried tears and raw anguish.
"I don't remember what happened after that either. What's done can't be undone, and those memories belong to Junon alone. But as far as I'm concerned, what I have to do now is clear."
The past was gone. It could never be rewritten.
But the future hadn't arrived yet. And right now, in the present, there was still plenty of time.
With absolute, unshakeable clarity, Senia made her vow.
"I will stop it, no matter what it takes. I will never let that hopelessly kind man—who still called someone like me a friend—walk that same tragic path again."
This time, she would stand in the way herself and ensure history never repeated its worst ending.
Senia raised the spoon to Aris's lips once more.
"Eat. How else are we supposed to change anything with our own two hands?"
"..."
"If you stay frozen like this, nothing changes! That guy remembers everything, Aris! The only reason he refused to rejoin Tembris was to keep from walking down that exact same road again!"
Junon had fought to rewrite destiny by his own power.
All so he would never have to face that bleak, suffocating nightmare a second time.
Those eyes, churning with a tempest of unspeakable emotions, slowly turned toward Senia. At long last, through the disheveled strands of pink hair, focus returned to her gaze.
Slowly, inching forward like a caterpillar, Aris dragged her body across the bed.
She stopped right in front of Senia.
Opening her mouth as wide as she could, she took the spoonful of porridge inside, chewing it thoroughly before forcing it down.
That's right. Going through that hell once was more than enough, Aris.
Whether Junon forgave them or not, they couldn't simply lean on his kindness to pretend their past sins never happened. But they would never pile more weight onto his shoulders again.
This was the end of it.
This was the very last time any of them would stumble down that broken path.
Tap.
A pair of human boots stepped onto the ancient flagstones of the ruins.
"They told me to come inspect the place, but what kind of divine judgment is this supposed to be?"
Could this place even truly be called a ruin?
Denise certainly didn't think so.
"I can't fathom why this is sitting here. Does this mean it's not just an ordinary ancient ruin after all?"
Not a single trace of human habitation remained.
Yet as she ventured deeper into the sanctum, unmistakable marks left behind by something entirely inhuman revealed themselves.
"...This."
The rat of pestilence. The shattered shield. The Calyx summoning circle.
And alongside them, the recorded existence of Alkaid, intertwined with the Clock Hands Magic Circle.
Every single motif carved into this sacred ground was something that should only have existed deep within the Grand Duchy Temple.
An oracle.
The spoken decree of an entity gazing down upon this mortal realm from an unfathomable height.
"A place touched by... divine power? Right here?"
And within the center of that sanctum, a pink clock hand shuddered, ticking counterclockwise once again.
Heavily fractured, covered in jagged cracks.