Light (15)
If there was something I wished for—
I wanted to stand before people as my complete self, just as I was.
I wanted to greet the neighbors near my home, strike up conversations, grow close to them.
I dreamed of walking through bustling streets, sightseeing downtown, coming and going from so many places—an ordinary life like that.
I couldn't.
Of course not.
Everyone who saw me recoiled in horror and fled as fast as they could.
I was infamous in all the worst ways, and they were nothing more than good, powerless citizens.
The ones who faced me wore mage uniforms and drew brilliant weapons before me.
Contempt as if looking upon something evil, and fear, tension, dread—those always followed them.
If I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again, all those many things were already buried in the ground.
Magical beasts and monsters adorned the corpses' bodies, and the scent of life had vanished from the zone.
And I would collapse at the center of it all, screaming, howling, weeping desperately.
Blaming my own helplessness—stricken with mental illness, unable to do a thing.
Truly, truly like a pathetic wreck.
There were times I tried to die. I was stabbed by blades hundreds of millions of times, pierced through the heart. I twisted my body to throw myself into gunfire.
Nothing changed except my adaptation to pain.
Nothing at all.
In the cool night heading toward midnight, I grip the blade once more.
My eyes have long been bloodshot before the fate that comes crashing in.
Catching the scent of life, I hunt my prey like a beast.
"Hahk·····. Hhk— ufpht!"
A surge—and blood pours from my mouth.
Ragged breathing. A sticky pain ringing through my brain.
Can't you just let me go? I've been holding on in my own way, you know.
"Ueup—"
Yeah. Well. Of course not.
My pounding heartbeat nearly knocks me unconscious, and in the end even my gaze is seized by the man right in front of me.
My vision twists.
Thuk.
Scattered, luminous droplets fill the space—
"Sseuuu····, haah."
—and I greedily devour them like a beast, arriving at a fleeting stillness.
The thrill of reclaiming the warmth I had so longed for, the pleasure of escaping barren ground, crush down upon me.
And opposite that, a scream ringing out from hollow darkness.
Even that is converted into endless dopamine and dyes my brain.
All of that stimulus, all of that process, flashes past in a matter of seconds—
—and once more, the emotions plunging toward the abyss stain my scream.
"Ha, haha."
Resignation and helplessness, and a forced laugh, slip from my red mouth.
I lost my reason long ago inside the familiar crushing of the self.
It only grows worse when night falls, until I have no choice but to discharge every craving I gritted my teeth and endured through the day.
These trembling hands. This nausea that feels ready to heave up whatever is inside me at any moment.
All of it seems only to whittle away at the thing called me.
I shift my gaze for a moment and look at the countless walls hemming me in.
Bleak. Immense. Wherever I look, there is no exit—only the presence of colossal buildings.
"Hah."
With a sigh that bursts free, I spat out the blood filling my mouth.
Did I really need to bind myself with so many words?
Instinct. That one word was enough.
The wretched instinct rooted in the fate of my kind.
And within it, I who quietly obey like a slave am bound hand and foot in crimson chains.
Last week, a few days ago, yesterday, and even now. Not a single thing has changed.
I follow wherever the bloodflow commands, and in resignation I simply sink to the floor.
What do you even want from someone like me?
The red sea gave no answer.
"Hi, hihhk."
With hollow breaths I swing the blade again and again. This disgusting body pointedly avoids the man's vital points, delivering only a tenacious agony.
I seize this pitiful person—drenched in blood, barely able to breathe—and start to move, when my body reacts before I know it and I wrench my head aside as if twisting it off.
And through the space where my neck had been a heartbeat before, a massive spear tears past.
"Welcome."
"Let that person go. Right now."
Well then. Of course.
I quietly release my grip and kick away the man who has fallen free of me. Without so much as a glance back, I dust off my hands with a few light pats.
"You found me well."
I glance around for a moment and see a vast ring of bloodlight. I must have swung harder than usual—the afterimage of mana blankets the whole area.
And at its center stands a faded girl, sword in hand, staring straight at me.
"You were full of things I couldn't understand."
At that slightly stiff voice, I stop moving and look at her.
"Our first meeting, and again when the Gate opened—you could have killed me if you'd wanted to. You drove me into a dead end, and then, with some meaningless smile, you always let me go right there."
"·····."
"Just what is it for? Did you simply think of me as entertainment? A toy that was fun to play with?"
Interest.
It was something that had begun to take root in me toward Erika at some point.
Because she was different.
But even that feeling of mine ends today.
Today, she will be thoroughly broken.
She might even die.
I intend to use more strength than usual today.
I will wreck her until her body is in tatters, until she howls and moans that it hurts, until she clutches at me and collapses.
I have to do it that way for my own gain, and the result of that is plain as day.
At the end of being driven into a corner, she will be unable to resist the endless pain and moaning, and her throat will cry out.
Before overwhelming power, she must. Inevitably.
Yes.
Like them. And like me.
"Of course."
So I provoke her. I drag her emotions up and press down on her psyche.
"It was a kind of amusement."
I make her give everything she has, grant legitimacy to actions steeped in rage, and egg her on.
"You were quite a sight—glaring at me while covered in blood."
And then I drop her into the abyss again. I trample her thoroughly so that not even a shred of hope remains.
At last she will collapse. Of course she must. And that principle has never once changed.
"After seeing nothing but those things trembling and begging for their lives, clinging to my pant leg·····!"
"Orly!!"
Just as expected, twisted by rage, she was truly—
—beautiful.
The air currents shuddered and wind blew toward me. With a shock of impact Erika leapt from the ground and in a single breath raised her sword before me. I clenched a knife in my teeth and dropped low. The blade that had been tracing a curve split the empty air. Mana surged from behind, and the surrounding buildings shattered under the sword strike.
I rose into my stance and raked the knife across her chest. A massive scar was carved open and red blood filled the air.
A moan rang out and her posture crumbled. In one motion I spun and drove my foot into her abdomen. I pursued her as she bounced away and gathered the scattered droplets into a scythe. I swung it wide, and in that fleeting instant Erika's eyes snapped open and she raised her sword. The force was broken and the blade shattered.
I gripped the knife and took aim at her, and Erika clenched her hand. A single long current formed in the air, and I felt the wind. A colossal sword generated in the sky plummeted toward me at high speed, flashing.
I unfurled my wings and twisted my body. I barely slipped past the falling edge and beat my wings once more, soaring high into the sky. I floated the knife into the air and spun once. The knife, possessed of a will of its own, carved a great gash across my back. Blood erupted like a fountain and gathered together, taking the form of a demon gripping a scythe.
Erika, who had crashed into the ground in her fall, coughed and forced herself into a stance. When she stretched her arm back, a spear laden with mana flowed into her hand.
With a contorted face, coughing blood, she thrust her hand forward. The spear tore through space and charged straight at me.
The demon let out a metallic cry and swung its scythe in a great arc. The spear shattered to pieces along the curve the scythe drew. Empty air warped and a shockwave burst free. Erika was caught in the explosion and slammed into a building wall.
The demon scattered into blood once more and gathered into my hand. The crimson double-edged short sword that formed spun around me as I fell, locking onto her. It shot in on a diagonal and buried itself in Erika's chest. Relying on my speed as I dropped, I swung the knife.
The moment my feet touched the ground, a straight line was carved through the empty air. The building behind her split apart, warping the space.
A severed arm flew through the air.
Erika sank to her knees.
"Hhk, hahk, ueup— hheup."
From the thoroughly wrecked earth and cement, thick blood to match it gushes up from inside her.
"Ha, hahhhk·····, puhwaaak—"
A moan mixed with retching and pain circles through the air and fades. The fragrance of life grows gradually fainter, announcing death.
A thread of mana, thin as a breeze, somehow enters the stage of stanching, trying to stop the red waterfall of her arm.
Of course it is nowhere near a level that would work so easily.
Her abdomen has been butchered, severely ruined with the marks of blades. Across her chest a long scar has been carved, spreading poison toward every part of her body.
And she only twitches where she has fallen, unable to force out any word beyond her moans.
Of course.
This is the prescribed sequence.
When you hit your limit, nothing means anything anymore.
Conviction, will—all of it snaps, and only the instinct to live remains.
Fear and terror eat into the body.
You scream in a crawling, trembling voice, scrape the floor with your nails, and shed tears of blood.
"·····."
I had been interested, but I knew better than anyone that the result would come to this.
Overwhelming power beyond approach. A potent danger beyond any answer.
Everyone who stood before me ended up this way. And this girl would too.
So I could not understand.
The owner of this hand that caught me as I turned to leave.
The sight of this girl who, even while trembling like that, rises with her sword still in her grip.
A uniform a little too large for her frame flutters and wraps around her.
Her pale skin and clear, vivid eyes are unchanged.
Yes. It was those eyes.
Then, and now.
I could not understand that color that first flaunted its form before emotions steeped in black.
I wanted to seize her by the shoulders that very instant and ask.
You're afraid, aren't you. You're scared, aren't you. You want to give up and collapse, don't you.
Warning signals have long been screaming through her body. Passing out would have been kinder to both her mind and her flesh.
Of course. An unchanging principle.
And still she met my eyes.
What—just what—had made those faded eyes?
Wretched as I was, I could not understand. Ignorant as I was, I could not accept it.
"Why."
Just why.
"Why go that far."
"Hhhhk."
My voice was the one that trembled more. At the mysterious, dreamlike resonance of hers, I dropped the knife.
"It hurts, doesn't it? You want to live, don't you? It might be better to think you'd rather die. Crawl, then. Say you don't know anymore—that it hurts too much, that it's too agonizing and too sad—and beg me to do something about you."
My powerless voice echoed and vanished.
"·····How many times do I have to say it."
After a long stretch of moaning, that tone—as if murmuring, no, as if tossing the words away into empty air—was so beautiful it was almost frightening.
"·····I told you."
"What?"
"That I'd kill you·····. I told you."
Kill me? Me?
I stood there a long while, until the bloodwater spilled on the ground began to set. She toppled forward again after several seconds of silence, as if even the breath being forced into her lungs was too much.
I should have known. No—she must have known.
This was a fight that could never hold from the start. The gap was stark, and her defeat was an unavoidable fate, a predetermined result.
And still—why?
While blood-soaked questions ate into my mind one by one, she stood up yet again.
Only then was I permitted to open my trembling lips.
"Tell me."
"·····Ueup, haak."
"I said tell me."
I seized her shoulder and forced her face up.
"You fought even knowing you'd lose? Why? You didn't know? There's no way you didn't know. You knew. So why?"
Her tattered remaining arm swayed, and her hair drifted free.
"Why do you keep standing up? You're exhausted. You're tired. Your head hurts and your heart hurts. If you just stay still—if you just lie there embracing the floor—I might even heal you myself, you know?"
Nothing but questions. She has to fall. She must.
Because she is weak. For anyone who stands before something they cannot struggle against, that is the natural principle.
I have always been that way.
I always sank to my knees and always went under. At the far edge of the deep I never even grabbed for anything.
My body, steeped before instinct, quietly carried out slaughter without a gap left for resistance.
And then I fell into the abyss.
It wasn't only me.
The ones who opposed me, the ones who catered to my whims, and the people who feared me—all of them were the same.
So I was reassured. I consoled myself along with the emptiness. I laughed even as I wept and soaked my body in bloodwater.
"Ueup, hahk, hahk."
And yet—
And yet you did not.
Even with red blood wrapping and fouling your body, even with ruined breathing and scars and wounds that looked ready to tear open—
—you gripped that solid blade and began once more to straighten the knees that had been kneeling.
"·····My little sister."
Her posture rose straight, and her face slowly lifted.
Fine skin stained with wounds and blood was laid bare.
"·····I have to protect her."
Little sister.
Her finely trembling golden hair shone brilliantly.
White, lovely eyes like cut gemstones endlessly drew me in.
The greatsword was raised.
Beautiful.
How sublime is the sight of someone endlessly burning their body for the sake of holding onto something.
How exquisite are you, gripping that cold blade even while coughing blood.
You were different from me—who, before the mental illness battering my body, discarded the self and collapsed under the sway of instinct—
—different from me, who gave up, abandoned everything, and surrendered.
At our first meeting, before my blade, before the golem's fists, and even now.
Even inside a distant despair you poured out a radiant light and leveled that massive sword at me.
Dazzling. Enough to blind me.
Sweet and intoxicating. Enough to make me sick and heave it back up.
"·····Ah."
And as that flashing blade at last splits the empty air and comes for me—
—as it tears my clothes and pierces my skin, until it runs through my heart—
—I stand still in that place, gazing at you with a thrill, and swear.
On the day my life ends.
Without fail—
I will be killed by you.