A Story Hoped to Be Recorded
Stories don't always unfold as they're meant to. At best, they're legends pieced together by words, novels scratched out in ink. They're tales that shift with a single person's words or deeds. A narrative crafted by one hand can unravel at the toss of another's casual remark or action.
He was a boy untouched by the world's grime—not out of purity, but because he was anything but. She was a girl who had lived her life that way, numb to whatever the world hurled her way.
The boy, small as he was, didn't help the girl with the mindless innocence of a child. He watched her always with those appraising eyes. Yet it was precisely that twist in him that made the natural flow of events falter and forget its course.
And so, the girl waiting only for death in that alley began to await days of life after meeting that one boy.
The boy was a child, yet not quite—he knew the weight of money, the value of secrets. Once a month, that long interval, he would visit her, leave only what she needed, and go. His face was always expressionless. Before her, he hid his feelings well. He knew that innocence, so prized in ordinary worlds, meant stupidity in this one.
If anyone questioned whether he truly cared, the boy answered not with words but actions. He swung his fists at the kids who tormented her, blocked the hero's greatsword with his own body. He brought food and medicine every time, washed the filthy, reeking girl himself. For the girl with no roof, he built a crude shelter. He would deny it all as mere calculation, but to her, it was the only affection she could claim.
And so, when the girl first began to learn words...
"Heh...llo...?"
"Tha...nks..."
Her clumsy words, so unlike his fluent ones, made her hesitate a little, but she eagerly mimicked what he recited.
"Eph...rin, Em...pire..."
"Capi...tal, Pre...lion..."
She learned the basics one by one, pushing even toward the harder ones. Deep down, it was because she wanted to voice some unknown emotion stirring inside her. It poked at her chest, making her shrink back, but that only bottled it up tighter until it spilled out again.
When the girl focused and repeated after him, his gaze fixed wholly on her, his calm voice brushing her ear. She would end up staring blankly at his face, then puff out a tiny breath.
The girl pointed at him right away.
"Na...me..."
She carefully recited the word she'd just learned, whispering that she wanted his name.
"..."
"No...?"
The boy's name was the letters for the emotions she'd harbored all along. And since it hadn't been given to her, she longed for it all the more desperately.
Even as he hesitated a bit, he eventually shook his head and let the words slip out—words she vowed to remember clearly.
"Ain."
"..."
Ain. She gazed at his face with eyes grown a little wider, tucking the name into her chest.
"...Yeah, that's my name."
"A...in."
It was the name of the one who saved her.
"Yeah."
"...Ain."
It was something precious she must never forget.
"..."
"Ain."
To the girl, it was a special word that drew out her feelings.
And so she repeated it over and over, again and again.
Ain. Ain. Ain. Ain.
The girl never forgot it. She wanted to say it right, no matter what, so even after the boy left, she kept murmuring just that name.
Time flowed on like that. New things added themselves to the girl's routine, one by one, coloring her days more vividly.
The girl, who had never known emotions...
"Ain."
Would murmur it alone, staring at the sky.
"Ain."
She'd suck on one of the candies he'd given her, chewing slowly until the sweetness dazed her, then recite it again.
And as such days came once, twice, stretching on and on, her heart swelled. The faint emotion bloomed slowly, leaving her dazed and fluffy whenever she thought of the boy. Her world, once empty and solitary, began filling with the boy named Ain.
Days of spacing out, waiting only for Ain to come, dragged on. She chewed the food he brought each day, applied the medicine he gave.
"Ain."
Murmuring his name like that, a month slipped by before she knew it.
Her speech was still halting, but she could say his name normally now.
"Ain."
She was confident she said it better than anyone.
"Ain."
Missing that boy so fiercely, time flowed unnoticed.
Of course, a month was long, and waiting that whole stretch to see him once didn't sit right. But the girl never showed it. When that dark urge tried to creep out, she shoved it deep down, out of sight.
She remembered what Ain had told her: be a good girl. Those words lingered near her ear. She didn't fully grasp what a "good girl" meant, but she knew letting gloomy thoughts bubble up wasn't it.
She didn't know what a good girl was, exactly—but Ain was a good person. Even a glimpse of him showed he was nothing like her. So she thought she had to follow his path.
Ain was the light shining only on her, so she had to walk toward it.
"Ain."
Even though that light had already gone too far ahead, flickering as if it might vanish with one misstep.
"...Ain."
She had to become a good girl fast, so he wouldn't drift farther away. She must never do anything he'd hate.
"Ain."
Each murmur of his name made her emotions bloom, but she had to be a good girl to avoid being abandoned.
"Ain... mmph."
She'd let her feelings leak, then startle and cork them tight like a good girl. She'd clap her hands over her mouth to stop saying his name more.
Otherwise, she'd have murmured it till dawn broke.
But it had swollen to its limit. Every word and deed from the boy who cared for her had inflated it, turning it into a bomb on the verge of bursting.
Each tiny moment piled up, and these bloated emotions would one day pour toward the boy at the slightest trigger.
And so, the day when her complete feelings—feelings even greater than complete—would pop and explode drew near swiftly.
And those thoughts lingered even as the little girl slowly became a young woman.
Even when the time came, her faint emotions sharpened, and the power she'd held only as a curse began to awaken, wrapping around her.
Screaming in agony, the woman thought only of that.
Ain.
And the good girl he wanted.
Her swollen emotions bubbled with near-bursting joy, the drifting ash swirled furiously like rage, yet she wished only for that.
She didn't want the precious thing she held taken away.
"Ain."
So even as her eyes opened, she called his name.
"...Ain."
Then startled, she spat out the words flooding her mind, lest they sweep him away.
"Beyond the horizon."
"The sea's breath."
"I conceal them."
⟨ Instinctive Chant ⟩
It was the first instinctive spell the woman, who hadn't understood its meaning, uttered upon gaining power. In this life, not a spell to kill, but one for the boy.
She chanted it hoping to stay by his side, to kill her own emotions. She didn't want to lose their daily life together, so she tried to be a good girl this way.
Of course, gray emotions, no matter how forcibly plugged...
Would eventually pop and pour out.
But for now, she sighed in relief at being able to gaze blankly at Ain with her old numb face.