The Beginning of Spring - 1
What the hell is this?
That was the first thought that hit me the moment I opened my eyes on a bed that was not my own.
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Erosion Rate: 10%
Semi-transparent letters and a progress bar shimmered in front of my eyes. Beyond them, the ceiling of the room—lavishly engraved in glittering gold—made it painfully clear that this was not the nest I had fallen asleep in.
Memories flickered and cut out like a bad connection. A thick fog seemed to hang over my sense of self; I could barely recognize who I was.
Watching that translucent window hover before me, I remembered the stupid things protagonists always did in the novels I had read as a kid.
Status window.
There was no way something like that actually existed in reality. Still, life had a habit of throwing curveballs, so I rationalized the idiotic impulse and opened my mouth.
What came out was a voice that leaked like air from a punctured tire, refusing to form properly.
"Ah… aah… uh."
Hearing that broken, paper-thin voice—as if I had shredded my throat the night before—I cursed my own low-spec brain for downing so much booze that my memories had simply blacked out.
The mysterious letters that had been floating in my vision, the ones that read Erosion Rate, had already vanished. I decided it must have been a hallucination and blamed the stupid decision to pour half a liquor store into my body the previous night.
I flung off the luxurious white blanket wrapped around me like I was taking out my frustration on it, then sat up in bed. With a soft rustle I pushed aside the thick white comforter that had been carefully draped over my legs and examined my body.
The skin was far paler than my own had ever been, and a hollow, empty sensation nagged at me. For some reason I was dressed in pure-white garments that looked expensive as hell. The lower half was completely open—exactly the kind of stylized nun’s habit that anime and manga used when they wanted to emphasize a feminine silhouette.
Some cult…?
Suspicious, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and looked down at the marble floor. The simple, low-heeled shoes waiting there looked almost like men’s dress shoes, but their tiny size was the only real clue that they were made for a woman. Without even checking my feet properly I jammed them on. Oddly enough, the shoes that had looked too small fit as if they had been made for me.
The first thing I did was look around.
My field of view is way too low.
Dragging this unfamiliar body along at a height far shorter than my original one, I surveyed the room. I figured the alcohol from last night must have wrecked my sense of balance, so I finished checking the corners I had missed.
A carpet of deep crimson cloth embroidered with beautiful gold thread told me the owner of this place had a lot more money than I had expected. Still scanning the room, I began searching for a bathroom. Washing my face first thing in the morning was one of the daily rules I had set for myself. I had turned those self-imposed rules into habits with almost obsessive discipline; as far as I was concerned I had lived a decently upright life that never gave anyone a reason to hold a grudge.
Two wooden doors stood inside the room. One had to lead outside, the other to a bathroom. After a moment’s hesitation I walked slowly toward the right-hand door—figuring, with zero evidence, that the less ornate door farther inside would be the bathroom.
As I walked I noticed my body felt lighter than usual. I carefully turned the doorknob—white marble with a striking gold rim—and stepped through.
The bathroom was larger than the entire apartment I used to live in. Step by step across the marble floor I approached the mirror.
What… the hell…
The reflection staring back at me was a beautiful girl with white hair and pale eyes, her complexion so ashen she looked half-dead. No matter how you looked at her, the impression of fragile illness was impossible to shake. The girl in the mirror could not hide the way her eyes trembled in panic.
The moment I realized the white cloth wrapped around this body was a nun’s habit, I also noticed the strange red stains on it. The marks had already taken on a brownish tint; I understood at once that they were blood.
Thoughts crashed through my head in chaotic waves until one faint memory from the distant past floated to the surface.
When I was very little I had begged my father for an old game. A perfectly ordinary kid from a dirt-poor household had thrown a tantrum until he got it. I had replayed that single game for months on end, and even though it was a childhood memory I could recall it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday—because it was the only game I had ever played in my entire life. Kids born into poverty usually only get one.
And the girl in the mirror was the Saintess who appeared in that game—the one you could never save no matter what you did.
Aphasia. She could not speak. As the story progressed her illness only worsened, and no medicine existed that could cure her. That was why, when I had jokingly tried to call up a “status window” this morning, only a leaking, wind-like sound had come out.
Now she was me.
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Erosion Rate: 20%
Inside the game?
At last I understood what the Erosion Rate I had seen the moment I first opened my eyes actually meant.
The game I had been so obsessed with was called Four Seasons. It began in a spring overflowing with flowers and ended in a winter of bare, skeletal branches. One of its peculiar mechanics was this: when a companion died, you could use a necromancy skill to force their soul into someone else’s corpse. The soul would gradually assimilate with the new body, eroding it. Health would steadily decline until the original self was lost, leaving behind neither the host nor the original soul—only a completely different third person. In the worst case you never even became that third person; you simply died.
Working backward from that fact, I was the soul, and the Saintess had somehow died before the game even began.
For a game marketed to children it was packed with tragic settings, fairly high-level content, and a story that left you reeling. Those elements had been more than enough to create a cult following among adults rather than kids.
If I wanted to survive, I had to play the part of the Saintess.
And while I played the Saintess, I must never become her.
The more I thought of myself as this girl, the closer I would come to disappearing.
Her name was Theas—the girl beloved by the stars, the girl hated by demons and beasts and the mud. I would avoid that miserable fate.
I would survive. And I would go back.
That day, one of the roadside trees planted throughout the Holy Kingdom unfurled its buds wide, announcing the beginning of spring.
The Hero opened his eyes in a familiar place.
The house where he had lived with his parents before the Holy Sword chose him. The same house where, less than a week after that choice, his parents had been found murdered.
He gripped an unknown clock in his hand and turned the hands backward. White light carried him into the past.
I can save them all.
I have to become perfect.
Cut down mistakes. Sever emotion. Walk only the optimal path. I will reach it.
Save the Saintess. Save my parents. Save my comrades. Kill the Demon King.
The commoner brushed the dust from his black hair against the familiar wooden floorboards. Born with the rare combination of black hair and black eyes, he had been despised—until the stars chose him.
They would choose him again this time.
Hoping that being chosen by the stars remained unchanged even after turning back time, he began laying plans to rewrite the past he had already lived once.
Not long after the Holy Sword selected him, the raid would come to his village. A Hero who had survived countless wars knew perfectly well that there was no profit in attacking a remote southern hamlet full of commoners no one cared about. He also knew they had come from the very beginning with the sole purpose of killing his parents.
He would do everything he could.
No—everything would not be enough.
Even if he had to destroy himself in the process, he would seize this second chance. There was no guarantee a third would ever come.
The Hero burst out of his room.
In the living room his parents sat across a shabby wooden table. Right there on the spot he cried like a child. His parents stared at their son in bewilderment, asking if something was wrong, if he was all right, and without waiting for answers simply pulled him into a tight embrace.
"I just… had a bad dream."
He made the excuse, sat down, bit into a piece of bread that had already gone cold and soggy, and forced a smile.
Today I will be chosen by the Holy Sword.
The Hero remembered the day of his selection with perfect clarity. It was the day a black-haired, black-eyed farmer’s son from the countryside had skyrocketed to greatness—and the day he had left the village behind.
He forced the damp, cold bread down his throat and replayed the old memories.
That day, in the village’s tiny kitchen garden, dandelions opened their yellow flowers.