Ep.8 - The Truth
Ep.8 - The Truth
Human beings were truly strange.
They would call a liar vile and tear into them, yet in the end, they couldn't bear a heartbreaking truth without shedding tears.
Humans were like that. Sometimes infinitely strong, yet at other times, unbelievably weak.
The strong shed tears, the weak changed the world,
the wicked performed good deeds, and the good committed evil...
Neva was human.
Everyone described her as God's grace and blessing, but that did not change the fact that she was human.
Neva was outstanding, but she was a girl.
If she had been born in the world Delin lived in, she would probably have been a young student who shared silly jokes with friends.
She was good at studying and sports, but sometimes went to karaoke with friends, ate hamburgers,
cried after finishing all her homework only to leave it at home, fretted all day over a pimple,
secretly had a crush on someone, and fought with friends only to make up quickly...
"..."
No.
Would she have been a boy in Delin's world?
If so, she probably would have been popular with both men and women.
Tall and handsome,
precocious and mature,
yet hanging out with friends, playing soccer, playing games, and excelling at everything,
always adored, always envied, loved...
She would probably have lived a life like a protagonist.
Anyone would have wanted to stay by her side.
But even so, the fact remained that Neva was a young person who barely reached an adult's chest, I thought.
She was young.
Though young, everyone expected her to become an adult, and in the end, the child simply forced herself to grow up early to meet all those expectations.
She was superior, outstanding, and ahead of all her peers,
but Neva was still a child.
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The girl who freely wielded a sword and shield as heavy as her own body,
even with that excellent ability, could not lift the burden of her heart.
Her departed parents,
the younger sister she had driven away,
and the longing and guilt for those three who would never return—she could not bear it at all.
There was no way she could bear it.
Even if everyone praised her,
the three who were the only ones to treat her as family
no longer stayed by her side.
Neva could not bear it.
Even when she sat alone in the empty mansion, tearing at her disheveled hair,
even when she longed for her sister and planted flowers in the garden with clumsy, apologetic hands,
no one came back to her side.
"Eva, Eva, Eva..."
The emotions seeping into Neva began to alter her memories little by little.
To lessen the guilt, even a little, so as not to be crushed by the mental burden and suffocate,
her brain had to find a solution somehow.
"..."
Though the mansion was too vast and silent even for two, the lone knight lying on the large bed could hold onto nothing.
She was utterly alone.
She had long since driven away all servants,
and thoroughly chased off the useless nobles who visited the mansion,
so now only a knight who could not even shed tears remained there.
She had to change her memories.
To overcome the Sorrow that was far too great for a young girl to bear, she had to deceive herself.
"Ah, no. I'm not like that. No..."
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But the two beings Neva was embracing,
the young boy and girl living in the present,
inevitably drew out Neva's memories.
She had locked herself in her room,
locked herself in the mansion,
locked herself in her memories, and now guilt rushed in on her.
"S-sorry... Eonni is sorryyy..."
Neva spoke. The trembling resonance reached Delin, who was right beside her.
"Eonni did wrong. Eonni... Huh? Eonni... was too late..."
The girl, too young to bear it all, had barely locked everything deep inside her heart,
but the scent of Delin's skin and the weeping of her now fully grown younger sister inevitably drew out the guilt that had sunk beneath the surface.
"Eonni, eonni... Hic, hic..."
Eva cried. Just as when she had left Neva, she wailed for her sister as if the sky were falling.
Even the blue moon that bore Sorrow momentarily settled over the little witch's weeping.
Moonlight seeped into the small cave where they hid.
The moon resonated with the tears of the witch who lived by the moon's grace...
"No, no... I said no..."
Neva released Delin and Eva from her embrace and fought to stand her swaying body upright.
The cost of decades of suppressed sorrow seeped into her limbs.
"I didn't do anything wrong! Eva, if only you had come back sooner..."
A shock beyond bearing wrung Sorrow from her blue eyes.
Amid guilt too immense to accept everything as her own fault, Neva shouted.
"No! I said no!"
The always perfect knight screamed.
It was closer to a shriek.
"No..."
Her sturdy legs, forged through knightly training, finally buckled.
"I said no..."
The knight of Albator, who would never bow her head even in death, pressed her forehead to the ground before the two.
A trickle of blood ran from her fair forehead.
"Eva, I'm sorry... Eonni is sorry... Eonni, eonni..."
The knight who had defended the whole world but failed to protect her loved ones,
sobbed, discarding even her knightly pride and her sanity, even if all the world criticized her.
"It's not your fault... Eonni did wrong... I'm sorry..."
The strongest sword of the Albator Kingdom,
who held everyone's respect,
everyone's trust,
everyone's loyalty,
repented all her own wrongdoings.
"Eonni, eonni... abandoned you. I'm sorry... But eonni can't live without you..."
The silver-haired female knight,
who never once made a wrong decision,
who achieved everything with sword and shield,
who was the very best, knelt.
The truth was painful.
So most humans rejected the truth.
They dismissed information that didn't align with their own beliefs,
and tried to live in their own little worlds to preserve happiness.
People covered their own ears and gagged the mouths of others.
They preemptively cut off those who would cause them pain and ignored their opinions.
Even if it was the truth.
Their brains concealed the painful truth.
Without concealing it, humans could not be happy. The death of parents, the loss of property, even a past stained with violence...
Humans had to forget.
They had to forget, conceal, and block.
"Eonni, I'm sorry... Please forgive eonni, please..."
But truly ironically,
humans had to face the truth in order to move forward.
The only thing that truly changed everything was facing the truth and overcoming it.
"Eonni is bad! Eonni, eonni... Just die! I said die! Hic, hic..."
No matter how much they blocked and concealed, the truth eventually revealed itself.
We all ended up facing the truth.
No, that expression might not have been appropriate.
We all concealed the truth, and later, when we became able to bear it, we opened it again. That was the truth.
The sudden deep longing for departed parents,
the sudden rage and lamentation over one's past self,
the ordinary day that was always the same but made one especially angry today,
the explosion after believing one had endured well...
Ultimately, it was because the time had come for each of us to finally accept the truth we had endlessly postponed.
Facing all the truths we had desperately ignored,
we ended up paying back, with interest, the debt that our past selves had postponed.
"But still, hic... I like eonni... I said I like eonni..."
Eva cried. The little witch, with her pierced mouth, confessed the truth she had concealed all this time.
"I hate eonni so much, I despise her, but still I like eonni..."
The little girl, after being cast out from the mansion, had wandered unhappily from place to place,
and then, glimpsing the witch's talent awakened by Sorrow, had followed them.
"So please, don't do this... Pleeease..."
She couldn't return to the eonni who had coldly driven her away.
Because of that, she had no choice but to roll on the streets, beg, and hate her eonni.
"I said I like eonni..."
Nevertheless, Eva loved Neva.
The two sisters, with no one else in the world, loved each other.
The two girls, the only ones left in the world, needed each other,
and after a long, long detour, they finally embraced each other here and now.
The knight who had everything but lost her beloved family,
and the witch dropout who became a witch but remained endlessly weak because she couldn't forget her love for her eonni,
truly needed each other to take a step forward.
"..."
But still.
In this moment of the two sisters' emotional reunion and reconciliation.
"..."
What was Delin, still gagged tightly and silently observing the situation, supposed to do?
Neva and Eva just held each other and cried for a long time,
and watching that emotional moment, Delin thought,
'Well, whatever happened, it seems to be turning out well...?'
This situation clearly seemed to be heading in a good direction for him as well.
After all, Neva had shed her tears and shed her image as a crazy, obsessive psycho...
'What a relief, phew...'
Even though Eva had always been grumpy,
from Delin's perspective, wasn't she essentially the one who helped at a critical moment?
Soon the gag in his mouth would be removed,
and he would go back to the original save point...
"Delin."
As he was about to finish everything, Neva suddenly called Delin.
"Um... I have a request. If you Load like this, won't Eva's memories all disappear...?"
'Huh?'
Delin blinked and stared at Neva. Her face still held its usual beautiful spirit, but the message in her blue eyes was...
"Eva, I have something to say. This Delin here is the person your eonni promised her future to, but actually, he has a special ability."
"What does that mean...?"
The sisters, having finished their reconciliation, talked while holding each other's hands tightly.
"Eonni will explain in more detail. Don't worry. We have plenty of time."
It didn't take much time for him to grasp the meaning.
The truth was sometimes cruel,
and there were many cases where it was hard to accept...