Secret History (2)
Crunch. Crunch.
Fine grains of sand slipped beneath his feet with a soft, tickling scrape. A strange sea stretched out before him, without so much as a breath of wind. He found himself wondering whether it even deserved to be called a sea at all.
Beside him walked a red-haired woman, keeping a quiet silence. With her veil removed, her golden eyes seemed almost to glow with a soft, moonlit radiance.
She had said she would tell him everything as they walked — yet the story still had not begun, and they simply kept walking. He could not say whether it was only him, but the awkward silence was starting to tighten around his throat.
"…My name is—"
"Ah, yes!"
The woman began speaking without warning. He had been stealing glances at her face and hurriedly snapped his eyes forward again as he answered. He may have spoken a little too loudly, but she probably hadn't noticed… right?
"Kenelm. My name is Kenelm."
"Ah, right. Miss Kenelm? My name is—"
"I already know it."
"Huh? How…?"
Crunch. Crunch.
Even when he asked how she knew his name, Kenelm offered no answer, only lengthening her stride a little as she walked on.
"I know your name, yet how could I dare address you by it? Therefore, I shall call you the Great One. I humbly ask that you permit this."
"Excuse me? Me? Why?"
"Because you are truly great."
"…Do you really have to call me that?"
Kenelm silently bent at the waist, preparing to drop to her knees once more. Her skirt rode up as she moved, baring a flash of white thigh.
"No! Why are you doing that again all of a sudden?! Get up — hurry, get up!"
"How could I dare speak the Great One's true name aloud? Please, do not force me into such discourtesy."
"That is exactly what I don't understand! Ugh. Fine, fine — just get up already!"
"Then… you grant me leave to address you as the Great One?"
"Yes, yes… call me whatever you want."
Only after that half-hearted permission did Kenelm lift her forehead from the sand. This woman… was not normal. Outwardly she was a peerless beauty, but something was seriously off on the inside.
Kenelm rose and began walking slowly along the shore once more, then opened her mouth.
"Where should I begin… Ah, yes. Great One — do you enjoy games?"
"Games?"
The question came so far out of nowhere that he turned to look at her. Kenelm wore a faintly bitter smile. Because she was so beautiful, even that expression looked like a painting.
"Yes. Games. Mere diversions. Amusements meant for simple pleasure. But what if those games were as real as living things? What if the creatures that live and die inside a game were, in truth, living and dying for real… What would you think then?"
"What are you talking about…?"
"Great One. You are currently playing a game."
"Well… yeah, I am."
"Have you never found that game strange? For a game, its structure is crude, its difficulty bizarre, its monetization wildly unbalanced… and then there are those peculiar dreams you have sometimes experienced."
"How do you…?"
He could see his own face reflected in Kenelm's golden eyes — a ridiculous, blank expression, the look of someone who could not begin to grasp what was happening.
"The dwarves and heroes, the residents and monsters that appear in that game. If all of them were, in fact, real — if everything you do there were happening exactly as you perform it in another world… How would that sit with you?"
"…What?"
The words were so extreme that his mind refused to take them in, and a stupid, reflexive question slipped from his mouth. What was Kenelm even saying? That the game he was playing was not a game at all, but reality? And another world, at that?
Kenelm looked at him and smiled — bitterly, almost sorrowfully.
"Please look at this."
Shaaaa—
Kenelm gestured from below to above, and the black seawater heaved, rose into the air, flattened itself like a television screen, and began to display something. The image felt strangely familiar. Looking closer, he recognized buildings he knew well.
"The temple and the mine? Those are my workers."
"You recognized them at a glance. Yes, that is correct."
Kenelm slowly moved her hand, and the mirror floating in midair drifted closer until it hung before him. It felt like staring at a giant screen. On a hunch he waved his hands this way and that, and the view shifted to match.
There, sitting alone on a patch of grass, was the Frost Egg. It writhed madly, trying to shake off the dwarves clinging to it.
He was staring blankly at the scene when Kenelm took his hand and gently guided it toward the image.
"Wh— whoa?"
The surface of the screen rippled hard for an instant — and then, as if by magic, his hand passed straight through it, slowly reaching toward the Frost Egg. How was he supposed to describe this bizarre sensation? Like a magician sticking his hand into a television and plucking something out?
Squirm, squirm—
The Frost Egg, still wriggling furiously, emerged in the palm of the hand that had come back out of the screen. The cold, solid weight of it told him, beyond any doubt, that this was real.
"Wh-what the hell is this…?"
Was his game truly connected to another world?
"I had judged the time premature and kept this hidden, but to conceal it any longer would be a discourtesy to the Great One. That is why I speak of it now."
Kenelm dropped to one knee before him with a resolute expression, clasping her hands before her chest in a posture of prayer. Her ample bosom pressed between her arms in a way that made it difficult to know where to look.
"O Great One, our world is ravaged by demons, and the powerless cry out in suffering. We beseech you — save our world, and reclaim the glory and honor that are rightfully yours. Let your glory and light be sung for all eternity, and shine so that heroes may never fall to the darkness."
"Hah…"
"O Great One. Look upon us with favor, and for the sake of your glory—"
Kenelm stretched a hand toward him.
"—take your seat upon the sixth throne."
The Frost Egg in his grip gave a sharp thrash, as if urging him to answer.
Kenis stood in the chill night wind, staring blankly up at the moon. The hidden stories Demonic had poured out to her that day had been a tremendous shock.
Rofinus's madness and the horrific ritual meant to create a god. The Pantheon that had joined him in it. The failure of the rite, the corruption of the Star-light, and the assault of the demons that followed.
Not a single part of it was a light matter.
Demonic walked slowly along a winding alley and looked at Kenis.
"Do not resent the Pantheon too bitterly. After that incident, countless people either fell to the executioner's blade or took their own lives out of guilt. They were… simply exhausted. When the long waiting and the empty promises had worn them down, Rofinus's words must have sounded very sweet indeed."
Kenis clenched her fists hard at Demonic's words.
She could not accept it. That the Pantheon had sacrificed her and her mother over a madman's ravings — and that the Pantheon had covered up such a monstrous crime — was beyond her understanding.
"I cannot understand it… Why would the Pantheon do that to me and Mother!! And why hide something so terrible?"
"I made a bargain with the Pantheon. In exchange for agreeing to bury the incident, they would look after you — and protect me."
"…What?"
Protect Demonic? Kenis's head snapped around to stare at him. Demonic met her gaze with a bitter smile.
"Behind that bastard Rofinus stood a demon. It had fattened itself by devouring the corrupted Star-light, and it even set its sights on my soul. I managed to hold it off on the spot, but…"
Demonic pulled open his upper garments, baring his chest. It was packed with scars of every kind — gashes, splits, and the marks of branding irons. Roughly half of them he had carved into himself, a desperate struggle to break free of the demon's temptation.
They were a silent cry of everything he had endured through the years.
And at the center of those scars lay a faded, snake-shaped wound.
"This is the mark the demon left on me. Or rather, the mark it once was. A kind of declaration that it would track my soul and devour it."
"That's…"
The scar of a snake coiled with its jaws wide open ran so deep that even after all these years it had never properly healed.
"The Pantheon wanted the incident buried. I needed to protect you and hide from the demon. So I left you at an orphanage, far from me, and the Pantheon regularly provided me with anti-demonic talismans to keep me hidden from it."
"…"
"And that, in the end, is how it came to be."
No one was truly at fault. We were all simply played by a demon's schemes.
Demonic murmured the words under his breath and held out the locket hanging from his neck. It clicked open to reveal a portrait of a woman — red hair, golden eyes curved into crescent moons as she smiled.
"I give this to you. Ria would like that better as well."
With trembling hands, Kenis accepted the locket and carefully brushed her fingers across the portrait.
Ria. Her mother.
The bright smile on her face was happier than Kenis had ever seen. Perhaps it was from their newlywed days. Dressed in pure white, Ria was breathtakingly beautiful.
Like fleeting white snow. Like a pure white snowflake.
Demonic gently took Kenis's hand and led her forward.
"I am sorry, Kenis. I should have told you much sooner. I was too lacking… too much of a coward… and so it came to this."
The words were thick with self-reproach and bitter self-mockery. Kenis could only guess how thoroughly the years behind him had been stained with regret.
"Father…"
Walking on in silence through the dark night, Demonic's back looked a little smaller — and, perhaps, deeply, deeply tired.