Memories Become Thorns (4)
Erzena spoke in a cold voice.
"Elaine is the princess of a nation."
"She is."
As if anyone could forget that.
"And by royal command, no less, her person was entrusted into your hands."
"That is correct."
"Then surely you, standing close beside her to protect the princess, must take every care that nothing untoward happens."
"Those are words of wisdom, but..."
Why was she telling me this now?
Reciting facts so obvious a child could recite them, Erzena only made me feel something was off.
"Were the two of you fighting, by any chance?"
The answer came back instantly.
"No?"
"No?"
No? What do you mean, no?
Divine power and telekinesis have been leaking out of the meeting room in streams. If you two actually put your strength into it, this entire building is coming down.
"Waaahhh..."
Having witnessed the whole affair from start to finish, the Taste Officer was sniffling, doing an excellent job of proving that answer a lie.
Neither of them looks willing to talk about it.
One glance at their faces told me as much. Erzena's expression said something had grated on her terribly — no, more than that... she seemed almost wary of something. And Elaine had gone rigid with shock and confusion, her whole posture defensive.
What on earth happened in there?
What could they have done to reach this state in less than an hour? I swept my eyes quickly around the room. When in doubt, look for clues.
And there they were — the word cards laid out on the desk.
"Friend... and, a man."
Ah.
I could roughly see how things had unfolded.
"You were talking about me, then."
Both women flinched at the same instant.
"No — Nathan, it's not like that, this is..."
"I know, Erzena. His Excellency entrusted the Princess to you so suddenly — of course it would unsettle you. Besides, yesterday was only your first meeting."
I said it with a wry smile.
"But I could think of no one else. The situation was so desperate that you were the only person I could turn to."
At those last words, the tension drained from Erzena's face.
"Someone to rely on..."
At the same time, her divine power slowly died down.
Then I turned my head.
"And Elaine."
"...Uhm."
"As I said before, Erzena is no longer one of the Order's people. You needn't guard against her so fiercely. It seems there was some small misunderstanding — isn't that right?"
The two were still awkward with each other. Naturally, they would have talked about the things they both knew of me — and something in that overlap must have gone wrong.
"...You're right. I was the one who misunderstood."
Erzena finally conceded.
"A friend who happens to be a man. That is all there is to it. Isn't that right, Elaine?"
She asked again, as if to confirm it. At the sight, Elaine quietly reeled in her telekinesis and nodded.
"...Uhm."
The situation barely settled.
I'll have to hear the whole story from each of them later.
But that could wait. There was something more important now.
"Elaine. Erzena."
I called to the two women.
"Would you come with me for a moment?"
We climbed the castle wall, and there it was — the vast plain stretching out before us, and beyond the horizon a red sunset sinking slowly from view. The western sky was stained crimson, as if the sun were spitting out the last flames of its life, while in the east a purple night was quietly settling in.
Along the wall, the row of statues stood utterly motionless, their backs to those two opposing skies, sending nothing but indifferent gazes out beyond the border.
"Wow..."
Erzena, who had followed me up, breathed out a gasp of wonder. The princess, too, said nothing — but her eyes sparkled.
"Elaine."
At my call, she tore her gaze from the sunset.
"Do you see that rock embedded in the middle of the plain?"
With the tip of my finger, I pointed to a single boulder jutting up near the horizon.
"That is one of the projectiles the Holy Church loaded onto their trebuchets fifteen years ago, during the Great Cathedral incident, to force their way across our border. They declared they would smash the wall to pieces if we did not clear the way."
And in answer, King Rio had woken from their long slumber the golems contracted by our ancestors, setting them as the guardians of the frontier.
It was a trifling tale of the past now, but its trace remained just there, slowly sinking back into the earth. All that showed above the surface was the barest fraction of it. I looked at that rock, heavy with history, and said:
"Pull it out. Without leaving a single scratch."
An utterly abrupt request.
"...That rock?"
"Yes."
It was a strange thing to ask, but Elaine silently stretched both hands toward the boulder.
A grinding groan. The moment she exerted her strength, the exposed portion of the rock trembled.
But before long —
Crack!
The top sheared clean off, like a block of tofu splitting. At the same moment came her ragged breathing.
"Haa... haa..."
I spoke without a flicker of expression.
"Take it out whole. Without a scratch."
"I... can't."
A bead of sweat slid down her forehead.
"I can break things... but taking something out whole, I've never once..."
She stared at me, uncomprehending.
"Why are you suddenly making me do this?"
"..."
I held my silence for a long moment before answering.
"When you use that power — what does it feel like?"
She hesitated.
"It hurts."
As though stabbed by an invisible knife, Elaine pressed a hand to her chest and winced.
"Every time I reach out my hands... it throbs, right here."
That was it. The Princess's power was rooted in emotion — the more her feelings boiled, the more violently it erupted.
And that is why the Queen Mother crushed her down.
Trying to erase her emotions altogether, driving her mind to the very brink — even enlisting divine power to do it. Because of that twisted method, the only emotions Elaine had learned in fifteen years were pain and sorrow.
That had been her only way of speaking to the world.
"Elaine, you have lived a life far too cruel. That is why, when you reach for your power, all you can recall are the sad memories."
When the very root of a thing has never been healed, no matter how she looked at the world from here, it would never, ever feel bright.
She was given the wrong start.
This was the thing that had to come first.
Not hating her own power.
Emotions come, for the most part, from memory and expectation. What you felt in the past, and what you think will come — mixed together, they take shape. The Academy president's words held the answer.
Elaine was captive to her past — to the tragic past, precisely. And even having broken free of the Queen Mother, those memories were still lodged in her like thorns that would not come out.
And I imagine they never will.
Then she had to find something within them.
Happiness, buried inside the tragedy.
I had to draw out the feelings she had never yet learned to know.
Having settled it, I spoke.
"This time... will you try it while recalling a happy memory?"
A happy memory.
At the unfamiliar words, Elaine blinked and looked up at the Central Officer. Could such a thing even exist?
But Nathan said nothing more.
"..."
An attempt she had never once made. She stretched out her hands again, toward the boulder with its broken top.
A sharp crack. Fissures spread the instant her power flowed. Elaine snatched her hands back at once.
How am I supposed to...
Simply crushing, simply destroying — that was easy. It didn't matter how deep that rock was buried, or how large it was. All she had to do was gather the pain she felt into her hand and clench. She could turn the whole thing to powder without a trace.
But to draw it out whole, without a single scratch — that was a method she had never once managed.
Did I ever even have a happy memory?
She traced her thoughts backward. In the days of the royal castle, there had been nothing like that. She didn't even like remembering them. And yet, every time she used this power, they forced their way up — that cruel, inescapable association.
Then...
She reached for the more recent past.
Hannah.
Her maid, her friend — the precious one who had stayed by her side to the very end. She pictured that red-haired girl's bright, unguarded smile. What had she felt, the day Hannah came back to her, refusing to be driven off even by her mother's persecution?
The one warmth she had kept through days like winter.
A low grind. The boulder shifted — just barely, ever so slightly.
Elaine's memory crept a little closer to the present.
The Central Officer...
Her friend, and her one and only kindred spirit. The first person who had looked on her with pity — he, too, having lost someone just as precious. She recalled the letters they had exchanged, and the relief that had flooded her when she saw this man who had run all the way to the royal castle for her sake.
A warmth dazzling as fierce sunlight, and yet strangely, gently drawing her in.
A deep rumble. The boulder began to vibrate.
"Ah...!"
Elaine gasped at the sight.
It's working!
But that was all it did. It groaned and shook with a ponderous sound, and did not come free.
"Ah..."
So close. Just a little, a very little short. Elaine gathered her courage and began digging deeper into her memories.
The happiest days of her life. When had they been?
Did I even have days like that?
Before she met these two, there had been nothing in her but aching memories.
For her, memory had been screaming.
"If only you'd never been born with that ability...!"
"No — don't. Lassen. LASSEN!!"
"Look at her... she killed her own brother..."
"Shh. Listen. Quiet, now."
Screams brimming with resentment, and whispers soaked in fear.
In the royal castle, those had been the only two kinds of voices. For fifteen whole years.
No matter how deep she dug, there was nothing else.
This isn't it either.
And in that moment, someone's voice brushed faintly across her mind.
"Elaine, look, look! A flower crown! I think it would suit you so well."
"It's all right. With that power or without it, you're my little sister. That will never change."
And with the words, a boy's face flickered before her eyes.
...Big brother.
Lassen Castor.
The days when he had lived. Those days pushed past the aching memories at last, and surfaced.
Remember the hand he held out to you in the castle courtyard.
Her brother's hand — warm, and gentle, and guiding her firmly forward. The endearing, boyish voice that read her fairy tales every night in her mother's place. The flower crown he set upon her head, and the scent of the flowers she breathed in from it.
He had been nothing more than a boy, and yet no one had ever stood up for her the way he did.
Yes. There had been.
The happiest days of her life.
"Ahh..."
Her vision slowly blurred. Something hot slid down her cheek. Elaine closed her eyes.
To remember it more vividly still.
Then, slowly, she reached one hand out before her. In the hazy memory, her brother's hand — and the Elaine of now took hold of it.
A tight, solid clench. The boulder's trembling stopped.
As if it had been firmly seized by something.
"Lassen..."
She spoke the name. The one she had loved without end — her only one, her first kindred spirit. The one who had been at her side from the very beginning, who had always, always affirmed her.
The sun.
Lassen meant sun in the ancient tongue.
My... sun...
She turned the meaning over in her heart once more. And the memories that had been lodged like thorns, sharp and stinging, gradually caught — and blazed into warm flame.
A grinding, shuddering roar!!! The boulder, unable to withstand the force, began to heave and thrash.
But something was different now.
A deep, rolling rumble... Instead of being crushed beneath overwhelming power, the rock was being drawn — slowly — up out of the earth.
"...!!!"
"G-Good heavens..."
Gasps of astonishment rose from around them. But it did not stop there.
Her clenched hand opened. And then, as if stroking a cheek, she smoothed the empty air with the gentlest of touches.
The way Lassen had touched her cheek, in that final moment.
A soft, pouring rain of soil. Everything that had clung to the boulder like a tumor sloughed away, all of it at once.
The great rock, floating in the air, blotted out the sunset. And then — softly, quietly — it began to drift toward the wall.
A long, low hiss. The statues watched it come. The Central Officer and Erzena watched it. The sunset watched it.
"I..."
"You are not a monster, Elaine. You are my precious, adorable little sister."
Memory becomes a thorn, and lodges itself in the chest. But those stinging wounds also light the road that lies ahead. They hold you up, so that you may never bend again — never break again.
"You are not a monster, Elaine. You are this office's friend."
The small happiness found inside a tragedy is beyond all price.
The power itself was never the wrong thing. Only the way it was used mattered.
Suppress it, and one day it detonates like a bomb. Abandon it, and it rages like a storm. But if she could find her path between the two — between sorrow and happiness — then it would become a strength mightier than anything in the world.
"I..."
With both eyes closed and one hand extended before her, Elaine drew out the thing that had hidden in the deepest chamber of her heart.
The words her brother had given her.
The words Nathan had given her.
The words she had wanted most in the world to hear, offered by her two kindred spirits.
She said it with her own lips.
A soft exhale. And then, at last, she felt it — the cold, rough texture against her palm.
Elaine opened her eyes.
Eight meters tall — a boulder the size of the castle wall itself stood before her. A fragment of an intimidating past, buried in the earth for ages beyond counting, hung in the air and touched her hand without a word.
Not so much as a shard fallen away. Whole, exactly as it had always been.
"Ha... haha..."
For the first time, Elaine laughed.
What was this heavy, full feeling? This was a power she had used only ever to smash, to tear apart, to destroy.
Elaine slowly turned her head.
There stood the Central Officer, smiling faintly — the smile of a man genuinely proud of her.
"So the day you smile has come at last."
There was nothing false in that smile.
The sight of Elaine smiling for the very first time, drenched in the fading light of the sunset, was a color almost too beautiful to bear. And so I added a word of my own.
"That artifact those mercenaries meant to use, I hear, was an explosive. An explosive quite powerful enough to bring down the entire Immigration Office building, they say."
Both women started and whipped their heads toward me.
"...!!"
"Elaine — you protected this office. You saved the Taste Officer, and the countless people crossing our border. With your own power, precisely as it is."
Violent it may have been — but she had used it. Not to shatter and destroy something, but to protect something precious.
I bowed my head slowly.
"Thank you."
These were the words that should have come first. Not an apology — an affirmation of what she had done. The first time anyone had ever declared aloud that Elaine had done something right.
"So for all the days we are to spend together from here on — I beg of you. Will you protect this office?"
And with that, I gave her a reason to remain here. Just as I would shield you from the royal castle, you would shield me from danger. I would not place the expectation on one side alone.
"As your friend — I ask this of you."
"..."
The princess stared at me in silence for a long while. And then, before anyone could have stopped her —
She leapt into my arms.
"...!!! E-Elaine!"
"Princess!?!?"
Erzena and I cried out in shock, but she only pulled her arms tighter around my waist.
"Thank you."
A short murmur — and yet a few words that carried so very much.
A tight, solid clench.
"Thank you, Nathan... thank you..."
She had called me by my name.
And at the same time, my chest was slowly growing damp.
The sunset spat its last, most searing light, and sank below the horizon.
And I felt it. I could hear it.
Elaine's heart, beating — thump, thump.
That fierce pulse, crying out once more its will to live.
Ah. Something rose hot in my throat.
"...Let us begin again."
Forcing down the thickness in my voice, I gently patted Elaine's back.
"So that your life may become a comedy — not a tragedy."
Let it begin anew, here. So that it can be set right, even now.