55. Aftermath of the Great Undertaking
55. Aftermath of the Great Undertaking
-Cheep!
My mind surfaced slowly from sleep, drawn upward by the chirping of birds.
Pulled along by the sound, I propped myself upright in bed and stared silently out the window at a tree that had grown all the way up to the second floor.
Cheep-cheep. The birds chirped at each other, brushing their bodies together as they played.
A little higher up, one was stretching its wings and swaying its hips — not all that different from what I'd been doing in bed last night.
Er, you know.
-Cheep! Cheep!
Right. Cheep's. Multiple cheeps, so cheepss...
"Are you awake?"
A voice broke through my ridiculous train of thought as I stared blankly out the window, and my gaze gradually shifted toward her.
A woman in a red cloak, her braided hair hanging down over one shoulder.
On top of that, she was holding her luggage in hand — the absolute picture of someone fully ready to depart.
The contrast with last night's fierce passion and dishevelment was so stark it made my head spin. She'd been waiting for me to wake up before she left.
"Ah, yes. Good morning."
Damn it. Just seeing her face brings last night rushing back and sets my cheeks burning.
Is this how it always feels after you sleep with someone?
"By the way, Miss Airi? About, well, last night..."
"Yes, we did it."
The answer came flying back the moment I tried to broach the subject while hiding how I really felt.
Her reply left me momentarily blank-faced, and in that instant I caught a glimpse of the fatigue on her own face.
Yeah, we'd definitely been moving our bodies until we both completely ran out of energy and collapsed.
"Uh..."
"Don't apologize."
So I really did it. I was about to say I was sorry.
But she cut me off first, her correction so matter-of-fact that my mouth clamped shut before I knew it.
"You don't have to bow your head. You've done nothing wrong."
No, how does she even know I was about to throw myself at her feet in apology...
Oh, right. She's a prophet.
"What happened last night wasn't your fault, Hyosung. It was simply the result of you being toyed with by a vampire you happened to meet, and..."
"Uh, no, but still."
"Even if you could have held back had you tried, you never once forced yourself on me. Even in a moment of confusion, I was the one who accepted it. So it can be said that I, too, share responsibility for what happened last night."
"Yes, that's true, but it was still more than I ever thought..."
"Nor do I think it was anything rough."
Well, that's a relief, but could you maybe let me finish a sentence?
I keep feeling like I'm hitting a speed bump because I know nothing.
"In fact, you were gentler than I expected, and also..."
Despite my inner feelings, Airi kept answering me ahead of time, foreseeing the future again.
Yet even that didn't last long. Soon her gaze began to drift away from me bit by bit.
Then, her lips barely parting, she spoke.
"... Asking you to do it more... was because it felt good, too."
"Pardon?"
"Ahem!"
Airi covered up the words that followed with a fake cough.
After that, she returned to her earlier demeanor, kept her composure, and finished what she had to say to me.
From her own lips.
"Hyosung. According to the future I have designated for you, you will soon come to consult me about what lies ahead."
"Consult... me?"
"Are you not troubled, in many ways? People you've given your heart to are leaving your side one by one. You feel that powerlessness, and you can't even get a handle on what to do about the future..."
Saying that, she pointed a finger at a table placed in one corner of the room.
My eyes fell upon a few small, folded notes left there as if waiting to greet me.
"I've jotted down summarized answers for that on the notes on the table. You can check them one by one as you need them. However, knowing the future alone can introduce variables, so if at all possible, only open them at the most decisive moments... You understand what I mean, right?"
"Y-yes. I'll follow whatever's written on the stationery."
I had no choice but to agree immediately.
Even that time I almost died on my first mission, the only reason I avoided that future was thanks to her help.
Those notes would surely help me resolve most coming dangers and solve my troubles.
"Now that I've said my piece, I shall take my leave."
"What? Take your leave? W-wait a minute."
To just up and leave after our bodies were so intertwined.
Was she really planning to end our meetings as of today?
Did I mess something up last night? Had she grown sick of being around me and decided not to see me anymore?
"What exactly is... this relationship between us? When will we meet again...?"
"Do not worry, Hyosung."
As if she'd foreseen even this outpouring of anxiety, she stood in the doorway and spoke to me quietly.
"If we do nothing at all, then we are already destined to be connected in the future."
"Connected...?"
"Yes. Even without making a firm promise, all you need to do is wait for time to pass."
Slowly, Airi turned half around and met my eyes.
Her face, haggard with fatigue as if she hadn't slept properly, was still tinged with red even as she kept her composure.
"So when that time comes to pass... we will have a more proper relationship than we do now... Yes."
"... When that time comes, I will be in your care once again."
"Ah, yes. I-I'll be in your care as well."
After exchanging such parting words, Airi clicked the door open and left the room.
I stared blankly at the empty space she left behind before flopping spread-eagle onto the bed of the now lonely hotel room and staring vacantly up at the ceiling.
Inevitably, the moment of post-coital clarity arrived right on cue, draining me of all energy and making the earlier storm of passion feel like a lie.
Only once the haze lifted and I'd regained my senses did I seriously start to think about a future with her.
"So, what does this make us?"
We said we'd meet again, but no clear statement like "let's start going out" ever came back to me.
Sure, our bodies intertwined and we graduated from being each other's first, but if one roll in the hay makes you lovers, then wouldn't prostitutes basically be the wives of all their clients?
On top of that, I felt uneasy about this opaque relationship that was so hard to define with a single word...
'We are already destined to be connected in the future.'
Right. She drove that point home—this wasn't our final meeting.
I didn't know if it meant we'd eventually go as far as being life partners, but either way, she made a vow to me.
That must clearly mean I'd have another opportunity to do what we did last night.
So, in other words... there'd be a chance to form an even more proper relationship than when we first exchanged our firsts...
'Ah, ahh, haah~♡'
'Hyosung. Hyosung~♡'
'Does it... feel good?'
'Yes. D-do it one more time...♥'
"......."
Hmm. Yeah.
Let's take a step back and think about this for now.
****
After leaving the hotel, Airi went back to the tent she'd pitched in a back alley.
Naturally, the tent hadn't been dismantled or broken into. She always chose her sleeping spots by selecting only areas that guards or ruffians never passed through.
Of course, patrols would eventually come here too, so she'd need to leave in a hurry.
-Thump.
While organizing her things, the crystal ball rolled off and hit the floor with a thud, but Airi couldn't bring herself to pick it up.
Normally, she would have treated it with utmost care since it was a tool for prophecy, but right now she was too distraught to spare it even that much attention.
'Wha- wha- what on earth did I do...'
'Even if it felt way better than I ever imagined, this was still my first time... how could I keep asking him to do it over and over like that...'
Sure, the atmosphere swept her up, but to make such intense demands starting from the very first act?
At this rate, wasn't she just a magnificent pervert, exactly like the version of herself she'd foreseen in the future?
'His tongue... went into Hyosung's mouth... and then, like this... that sticky...'
The moment their saliva mingled.
The instant that warmth filled her mouth and slipped down her throat—all of it came rushing back vividly now.
"Wah, wahwaah, waaaah...!!"
Unable to bear the fact that she had accomplished all of that with her own two hands, Airi soon collapsed right where she stood.
Yet no matter how much she tried to deny it, what happened had happened.
Before she knew it, he had gone beyond deeply engraving himself inside her heart—she couldn't deny that the pleasure from that single encounter still lingered deep within her body.
'That's right... because it really felt good.'
Because she hadn't been able to forget him all this time.
The first impression that started with a sense of liking grew into a destined bond in the future, and because she hadn't been able to forget it, because it kept coming back to her, it even made her wonder if the fate where she would end up with him wasn't actually true after all.
"If I end up falling for you..."
But being honest about those feelings was exactly what she couldn't afford to do right now.
"Then it won't work... Airi."
Only now, when everything was already over, did Airi recall her mission. Anxiety began to creep into her heart, gradually smothering her earlier embarrassment.
She was supposed to prevent the future where this world marched toward destruction and revive the Haven clan. How could she, swayed this much by circumstances, give her heart to someone like this?
In this state, how on earth could she remain faithful to her mission when the appointed time came later?
If only there existed a future where she could coexist with him, it would be nice—but such narrow-minded thinking was taboo for a prophet.
'Now what am I supposed to...'
Lost in thought with no idea what to do, she soon sensed a presence coming up from behind her.
"Are you Miss Airi Heven?"
A customer?
No, impossible.
When she'd done her prophecy this morning, there had been no such event.
"You are...?"
"I've come to deliver a letter from an anonymous sender. Here you are."
"Excuse me? An anonymous acquaintance..."
"I was merely told to deliver it at a set time to a set location... I have a backlog of work, so I'll take my leave now."
So saying, the man departed.
The mark embroidered on his uniform, the bag slung over his shoulder—everything about him screamed "postman," the sort who ran around the empire delivering mail.
Just in case, she hazily read into his past, but his past deeds only showed the identity of an ordinary postman.
"... This wasn't in the prophecy I did this morning."
But the letter he handed over was potentially a different story.
This was not only something impossible for her, a prophet, to predict—it was a situation where she couldn't even feel the future suddenly changing, the way it did when Transcendents threw a tantrum...
Usually, such things happened when 'another prophet like herself' intervened in her fate.
Yes, the one who sent this letter was most likely a prophet just like herself.
"... Po."
But the identity of the letter's sender far surpassed even that expectation.
"Pochun... Heibun?"
Pochun Heibun.
The first descendant of the God of Destruction who descended upon this land long ago, joined with a man, and ascended. A demigod, and the one who founded the first generation of the Haven clan.
The moment she realized that a figure from thousands of years in the past had sent a letter addressed to her, Airi's expression slowly hardened.
"The one who sent this letter is the Ancestor...?"
For someone thousands of years in the past to send her a letter—how was that possible unless you could predict everything that would happen in the future?
But the letter really did seem like an ancient artifact, yellowed all over and riddled with signs of age.
The characters inside were in an ancient language she couldn't even read, and its condition was so precarious that it seemed ready to crumble if she mishandled it even a little.
It was an object requiring archaeological interpretation and restoration to read properly.
That would obviously demand a fair amount of time and investment, but for her, a member of the Haven clan, it wouldn't be much of a problem.
"... Stars, show me the result of my interpretation of this letter."
What appeared in the crystal ball infused with her power was an image of herself from some time later—finding an archaeologist, and eventually succeeding in fully deciphering the letter's contents.
It would only take time. Entrusting the answer to a clearly decipherable code to her future self was an interpretation method passed down for generations in the Haven clan.
[To my distant descendant, the child of my mother. To the final successor of the Haven.]
Through the act of her future self reading the letter, the contents were revealed to her in the present.
[You, reading this letter, have probably followed the future I foresaw and arrived in the Empire, and are now feeling anxiety about a savior you don't know when—or if—you will ever find.]
The moment she saw that the preamble showed a generally accurate grasp of her current situation, even though the writer was from thousands of years ago,
She is indeed a prophet who foresaw the destruction, Airi convinced herself, and began to digest the sentences that followed.
Contents that might just be the answer to the troubles she was now feeling.
[But, my child, do not be anxious. The savior I prophesied may not be something you must find that exists, but rather something you must create with your own hands—something that may not yet exist.]
"... Create?"
To create a savior with her own hands?
As Airi struggled to comprehend the meaning of those words, the presence of someone suddenly surfaced in her mind.
"I... turn Hyosung into the savior?"
Woo Hyosung.
The man who could not be forgotten for a single moment, the one fated to be her partner.