The Name Revealed
My name. She’d found it out.
"Vice-Captain Crutes. So it really is you. If revealing your name is a weakness, then hanging a portrait on the wall that makes identifying you so easy is a foolish act."
The voice, which had been enjoying the thrill of shaking Pinocchia’s composure, changed abruptly. How could she possibly know who he was? He was just an old, forgotten bandit who had been stripped of the gang he’d raised for years by some nobody.
"Don't tell me... are you one of the Queen's subordinates too!"
"I was a subordinate. I never had any dealings with your guard unit, so it’s no surprise you don't know me."
"Then why are you getting in my way!"
Crutes, sounding aggrieved as if asking why they were fighting when they were on the same side, received a calm reply from Pinocchia.
"Because I'm not one anymore."
"Ughhh! Aren't you afraid!!"
"Well, even if what I’m feeling right now is fear for what’s to come, it would still be smaller than the fear you’re feeling right now."
Along with the scream-like sound of a frail old man suppressing his pain, the darkness around them gradually receded. Pinocchia stepped forward through the thinning shadows and reached out toward the captured Vice-Captain Crutes.
Pinocchia’s iron grip seized the scrawny neck of a pathetic man who had aged far beyond his years—a man who had hidden in the darkness of dreams after having everything he built in reality stolen from him. His thin, withered body was lifted into the air by his throat. With that, the illusion of the dream from which he could never wake was shattered.
"I have to go now."
"Where?"
The siblings, clad only in long gloves and stockings with a cow-print pattern, lay on the floor with expressions like they were high on narcotics, giggling, until a sudden realization wiped the smiles from their faces. One was lying in a well-decorated room, the other in a cold underground prison, but both spaces were splattered with a mess of white fluid. Despite the differences in viscosity or scent, the siblings stood up, stepping over the same white fluid in their respective places.
As they stood, Gretel questioned Hansel in one place, and Hansel questioned Gretel in the other.
"To reality."
"What are you talking about? This is a happy reality. Did you have some kind of weird dream?"
"No, this is just a happy dream. Dreams are supposed to be realized as dreams."
"Don't say such strange things!"
Hansel and Gretel, who until a moment ago had been having their white fluid squeezed out from their chests or legs, stretched and rose. It was a fun dream, in its own way. Being swept away by waves of pleasure while having an unrealistic amount of fluid drained was intoxicating. But a dream is just a dream. No matter how happy it is, remaining in a dream is merely escapism. While it isn't a sin for a poor soul exhausted by the despair of cold reality to fall into a happy dream and abandon the world, it is a sin to forcibly drag others who don't want to be there into that dream. Furthermore, if the one doing the dragging isn't motivated by some noble cause like a utopia for all, but is simply erasing perfectly fine people from reality, it is a horrific sin—nothing more than an ugly, spiteful ghost dragging others down with it.
Though isolated in similar yet different places, the two grasped the situation. A small world that was warm, comfortable, and happy, but ultimately nothing more than a delusion. No matter how cozy it is under the covers, one cannot stay in bed forever. They had enjoyed the brief dream, and now it was time to leave the cradle and return to reality.
"Goodbye, then."
A farewell to the half of themselves in the dream. Hansel smiled and waved goodbye to the Gretel in his dream. Gretel glanced back at the fake Hansel in her dream and looked forward again, cold and detached.
"Yeah, goodbye."
Fakes created to deceive people become laughingstocks if they are poorly made. The fake Hansel and Gretel, though fake, bid farewell just like the real ones. If the real Hansel and Gretel knew their existence was a shackle trapping the other, they would willingly give themselves up. The fakes were the same.
Cr-crack.
With every step they took, the two spaces—the clean house and the underground prison—slowly crumbled. After two steps, the walls began to split; after three, the ceiling shattered, and debris began to fall. By the fourth step, cracks appeared in the very air, revealing the innocent darkness beyond. And on the fifth step, everything shattered like a stone-struck window.
"Hansel? Hansel!"
"Mm, huh? Gretel."
At the touch and voice of Gretel shaking him awake, Hansel opened his eyes and looked around. This was the inn room at 'Somnus's Dream' where they had lain down earlier.
"Are you awake? No... did you return?"
He had fallen asleep without a word, and upon waking, he saw Pinocchia standing beside the bed, dressed in decent clothes, holding the neck of a scrawny, powerless old man and lifting him into the air.
"Is that the old geezer? Who is he?"
"Gack, g-gack!"
He was a man who had once possessed considerable strength, but he had long since given up on direct combat. He had no strength left to struggle against a combat-ready mechanical doll.
"Vice-Captain Crutes. The Queen used to employ a gang of about 40 bandits as a guard unit, and he was their leader who later became the vice-captain. I heard he retired after being crippled while fighting someone named Robin Hood, but he’s in better shape than I thought. Come to think of it, most of that bandit gang is dead, so he’s effectively a nobody."
"Ugh!"
At the words "effectively a nobody," Crutes thrashed his body wildly. Between his fading consciousness and vision, what appeared was the panorama of his past, known as a life flashing before one's eyes.