Eternal Regret (3)
The night Erinn opened her eyes.
“Still, it’s a relief that Erinn woke up.”
“Man, I really thought we were in for it.”
“Getting her consciousness back was the real problem. Once the wounds close up, we should be able to set out again.”
The party members were celebrating Erinn’s recovery with a light meal and some drinks.
“……?”
The Thief glanced around. Allen was nowhere to be seen. Ser-Aria had definitely called him down earlier.
Ser-Aria had suggested they needed to smooth things over with Allen after everything that had happened, and even Freya and Letisia—who had been the angriest with him—had agreed.
This casual little drinking party was meant to celebrate Erinn waking up and, at the same time, to make peace with Allen. When he still hadn’t shown, the Thief found it strange and rose from her seat.
“Thief? Where are you going?”
“……Just up to the room for a second.”
“Hm? …Oh, while you’re at it, bring Allen down too. Aria called him earlier, but he never came.”
“…Guess he’s still feeling awkward.”
“If he doesn’t want to come down, leave it. Thief, don’t force him if he says he’d rather stay put.”
The Thief nodded and headed upstairs. She gave a light knock on the door to Allen’s room. When there was no answer, she tilted her head.
“……Allen?”
She knocked again and called his name, but once more there was no response.
The Thief hesitated a moment, then decided it would be better to fetch him anyway—even if it meant being a little pushy.
Letisia and Freya both wanted to clear the air after the harsh things they’d said to him. If they missed this chance, who knew when the next one would come.
With practiced hands she forced the locked door open. A faint, strange odor drifted through the crack. The Thief wrinkled her nose, then dismissed it and pushed the door fully open.
“……Ah?”
And right there, the Thief’s legs gave out. She had no choice. Allen hadn’t been quiet because he was sleeping. He was trying to slip into an eternal sleep.
Allen hung from the ceiling with no support, dangling limply. The Thief’s mouth hung open; she had no idea what to do.
“……A-Allen….”
All she could manage was to whisper his name.
Abandoned by her parents as a small child and left to scrape by in the back alleys alone, the Thief had grown familiar with death. But the death of someone close was always a sorrow, and those moments stayed as painful memories.
Seeing Allen like that dragged the old trauma up, and she froze. Her mind screamed that she had to cut him down, yet her body wouldn’t move.
Then, when she called his name once more, she saw his fingers twitch—just barely. He wasn’t completely gone yet.
The Thief, who could read even the smallest human movements, caught it even in the dark. She snapped back to herself and swiftly severed the rope around his neck.
“……Wh-what do I….”
Her mind blank, she started to go for Freya. But there was no need for her to go downstairs. The heavy thud of Allen hitting the floor must have carried; the rest of the party came rushing up to see what had happened.
“……Allen?”
“Wh-what is this?!”
“Freya, forget that—heal him first…!”
There was no way to keep that night’s chaos secret. It had happened in an inn full of other guests, and the party had been far too frantic to control the information.
And of course the news reached—
“Allen!!”
—Erinn’s ears as she lay in her own bed. She forced her still-unhealed body up and came running. The party members couldn’t even meet her eyes, guilt written all over them.
“Erinn….”
“I’m sorry. We found him too late….”
Erinn brushed past Letisia and Ser-Aria who tried to greet her.
“……I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
In the corner of the room the Thief sat crumpled, repeating nothing but apologies while Freya tried to soothe her, but Erinn had no attention left for them.
And then she saw him. Allen, lying on the sickbed just as she herself had not long ago, eyes closed and unmoving.
Erinn went rigid where she stood. At last she managed to open her mouth and ask Freya,
“……What happened?”
“…He tried to take his own life. The Thief found him just in time… so we managed to save him.”
Freya continued,
“But whether he’ll ever properly wake up… his breathing was cut off for far too long.”
Freya, Saintess of the God of Life Vita. She could see a person’s thread of life. Just as she had once seen through Erinn’s true nature in her second life, she could do the same for anyone else.
“The life thread is still there, but it has no curves at all.”
Most humans, living through all sorts of events, end up with a life thread full of bends rather than a straight line. Whether the events are good or bad, something always leaves a mark on a life.
But Allen’s was different. His life thread appeared as a perfectly straight line with no undulations whatsoever. Freya interpreted the meaning and delivered it.
“…His soul has already left.”
She knew the words would hurt Erinn, but there was no helping it. Better this than letting her cling to empty hope that he might one day wake.
Hearing the full story, Erinn looked down at the unconscious Allen with eyes that simply could not understand.
“…Why?”
She, the victim of everything that had happened, had already forgiven him. Why would he make such an extreme choice? So she asked the man who could no longer hear her.
“…I clearly forgave you. I told you it was all right, that you just had to do better from now on.”
Erinn poured her feelings out. Remembering everything Allen had done across the two lives she had lived only made it worse.
“You could have just started over from here.”
Because she had once imagined a future with him, the emotions surged even harder.
In her first life he had been life itself to her, and those memories had never faded through her second life or her third.
That was why, even after living through his sins, she hadn’t been able to cast him aside. Once again she had foolishly wanted to believe in him. He was still so precious that she would have thrown her own body in the way to protect him.
So she had forgiven him.
So she had wanted to give him one last chance.
And this was the result. Staring at the face that wouldn’t even open its eyes, Erinn ignored the throbbing in her back and cried out alone,
“Did you really have to give up like this…!!”
Once more she regretted not cutting him off this time. Softening at his words, failing to drive him away—that had been the mistake.
“…It’s my fault. I never should have brought you along. If I hadn’t… you could have lived quietly somewhere else.”
“….”
Faced with words that were little more than Erinn talking to herself, the party members could only keep silent.
“……I’m such a fool.”
Erinn soon had to return to her own sickbed. She had moved around freely while her wounds were still raw, and the emotional upheaval had reopened them.
The throbbing she had felt wasn’t just from her feelings—it was real pain from the wounds tearing open again. As a result she got an earful from Left General Salisius and was forced back onto the bed.
“…….”
But lying down didn’t mean she could rest. No matter how many times she was told to sleep deeply, she couldn’t. Her mind was a tangled snarl of thread, and her chest felt as if it were rotting from the pain.
“One more time… start over….”
She was driven far enough to mutter even that aloud.
It was an extremely dangerous choice. In this life she had, thankfully, gathered every party member safely the way she hadn’t in the last one—but there was no guarantee she could do the same in a new life.
And the next life might twist even worse than this one. There was no way of knowing how many more lives Erinn would even be allowed.
This one might already be the last. With her thoughts in turmoil, Erinn began searching for any way—any way at all—to bring Allen back from this state.
She used every connection she had.
“You’re really going to go that far for that bastard?”
“While I was bedridden, it seems all of you put quite a bit of pressure on Allen yourselves.”
“That’s….”
“If you feel even a little guilt, then help me. If you want me to remain the Hero of the Dern Empire.”
She leveraged the military and begged the party members to put out feelers for her.
But no one existed who could take a man who was little more than a breathing corpse and make him whole again. Hope seemed to be slipping further away by the day.
Then it happened.
“…Not a cure, but another method, you say?”
“That is correct.”
A mage came to see Erinn. Had anyone else introduced him she might have been suspicious, but this was someone the Emperor of the Dern Empire himself had sought out for her.
“It’s an old magic that was eradicated long ago because of the dangers if it were ever misused….”
“What is it?!”
“…I honestly can’t recommend it, so I’m reluctant to even speak of it, but hear me out first.”
What he described was a magic that swapped souls.
It consumed an enormous amount of mana, so he himself could not cast it for her—but Erinn, who possessed the most vast mana of any current Hero, should be able to make it work.
“…Then someone else’s soul would go into the body. What would be the point of that?”
At Erinn’s question the mage shook his head.
“You simply bring him from another time.”
“…Another time?”
“Yes. Place the soul of Allen from a different timeline into the body that exists in this one. His memories may differ somewhat, but it would still be the same person.”
The mage’s proposal was extremely tempting to Erinn. And yet….
“That said, I have never performed it myself. I am only telling you it is theoretically possible. If you find it unreliable, you are free to keep searching for other methods….”
There were certainly points of unease. What if some completely random soul ended up coming through instead?
“…Give me a little more time. I’ll keep looking for other ways, and if nothing else works….”
“Understood. However, I myself do not have unlimited time. If you want my help, I would prefer you decide as quickly as possible.”
But no matter how much more time she spent, no other method appeared. There simply was no ordinary way to revive Allen from a state that was death in all but name.
So there was no choice. Erinn decided to go through with the mage’s plan. She sought the party’s agreement as well.
“If that’s possible….”
“…Vita wouldn’t take offense. It doesn’t affect the life thread itself.”
“Trying it wouldn’t be so bad.”
None of the party members wanted Allen to simply die like that, and the thought left them all unsettled. They consented to Erinn’s decision, and she learned every detail of the method from the mage without missing a single point.
And then Erinn—
“…Wake up, you idiot.”
—drove the Holy Sword into Allen’s chest.