Who Am I? (6)
The rain Merlin had conjured was no natural thing. The downpour she wrought through magic came without the accompaniment of storm clouds. Thick sheets of rain poured from a clear sky — a bizarre phenomenon.
Yet the moment the rain began to fall, something even stranger started to unfold.
Dark clouds gathered all at once overhead. It was not that the clouds formed and then the rain followed; the rain came first, and only afterward did the clouds gather. Merlin had nothing to do with it. The world itself had simply begun to move that way.
The voices that had filled the streets vanished in an instant. The merchant selling bread in the market, the peddlers, the customers haggling with them — every last one of them disappeared in a single breath. Shop doors that had stood wide open closed without a sound.
In the space of a heartbeat, the streets fell silent.
On days when it rains, people vanish from the streets, the bells do not toll, and Ladon does not appear.
That was the rule of this dream Najin had uncovered.
Why such a rule existed, he did not know. He could only guess that on some rainy day long ago Ladon had failed to appear, and that landscape had burned itself deep into Viola Oldina’s memory.
Najin turned that rule against the dream.
If he artificially created the precondition — “a day of rain” — the result would follow. His prediction proved correct. In the end this was not reality but a dream. Depending on how its master felt, the world could change however it pleased.
“Well? Do I look a little more magnificent now?”
Merlin swept her rain-soaked hair back and smiled with pure confidence. Najin snorted a quiet laugh and nodded.
“Of course you do. And what do you mean, ‘now’? Merlin has always been magnificent.”
Merlin’s shoulders gave a little jolt.
She stood there muttering, “Always…?” and smiled in that sly, damp way of hers. Najin half-shrugged out of his coat, held it up like an umbrella, and beckoned her closer.
“Let’s go, Merlin.”
“Hm? Y-yeah!”
Through streets drowned in the downpour, the two of them ran with the coat for cover. The rain roared, yet a sound the rain could not drown still rang through the streets.
On rainy days Ladon does not appear.
And on the days Ladon does not appear—
She plays the piano in the old tavern.
Before the dream had looped back to its starting point, their meeting had been chance. This time it was not.
Creak.
They pushed open the door of the shabby tavern and stepped inside. A woman sat before the piano. Her hair was not yet fully black — half white, half black.
She finished her piece as if she had not noticed Najin and Merlin at all, and only turned her head when the sound of applause reached her.
“Oh, I had guests?”
Then she made the same offer as before.
Would they listen to her play?
Would they stay with her until the rain stopped?
“Listening would be nice enough,” Najin said.
And this time he gave a different answer.
“But if we’re going to do this, why not play together?”
He walked forward. Instruments lay scattered about the old tavern. Najin picked one up and brushed the dust from it.
2.
On the day they had first heard her play, Merlin had said:
“Leconte’s Concerto No. 7, right?”
You’re playing a concerto, aren’t you?
Najin knew little about music, but even he understood that a concerto was not something one person could perform alone.
A concerto: a piece meant for many voices in harmony.
Why, then, had this woman who called herself “Violet” been playing a concerto here by herself? Why leave a solo piece that she could complete alone and choose this instead? Only after the loop had Najin found the answer to that question.
“She—”
“That is to say, the one who was once my older sister—she loved the piano. Concertos most of all. Because when we were small she used to play them with Mother.”
Viola Oldina’s blood sister, Mirentz.
The woman who had shared Viola’s childhood before Viola was adopted into the Oldina family. Unlike the unaging Viola, she had become an old woman. Najin had sought her out and listened to her stories of Viola.
“Mother played the cello. I can still see her — black hair pinned up neatly, bowing the strings. My sister struck the piano, and I played the violin.”
“I remember. It was a shabby little shop. There was a piano there. My sister loved that tavern. Whenever she played she would smile so brightly.”
“Now it’s something I dare not even recall. She is no longer my sister; she is the hero who holds this kingdom together.”
The instrument Najin had lifted was a violin.
“Would I play for you?”
“Well… it was so long ago I hardly remember. And these fingers aren’t what they used to be. What good would an old woman’s playing do you?”
“If you insist that much…”
Reluctantly the old woman had played the violin.
Najin fixed that performance in his eyes.
Then he sought out several other violinists and burned the way they played into his sight as well — how they held the instrument, how they moved the bow, the angles, the moment of the breath, the way the strings were made to vibrate.
He saw it all.
Having seen it, imitation was not difficult.
Najin settled the violin under his chin and drew the bow. The first notes, and the ones that followed, were clumsy, but he found the feel almost at once and began to play with growing skill.
He shot Merlin a look.
Merlin dusted off a cello, took her seat, and raised the bow. She was even clumsier than Najin, who had picked up a violin for the first time that day; the sight made him burst out laughing.
“What? You said you knew how to handle instruments. You said you were good at the cello.”
“Th-that was more than a thousand years ago!”
Merlin squawked, yet little by little she began to tune her notes. Her claim of knowing the cello had not been a lie; groping through memory, she gradually found her footing.
And Violet—
She stared blankly at Najin and Merlin. She listened to the notes they were stacking one upon another.
Leconte’s Concerto No. 7.
The piece she had once played with her mother and her little sister.
This was its opening. And it was the piece she had been about to play herself. Violet’s eyes wavered for a moment; then she let out a short breath and set her fingers on the keys.
The notes Najin and Merlin had built became a staircase prepared for her. Violet’s playing began to climb it.
Piano, violin, and cello each began to speak in their own way. It was a clumsy performance — closer to three separate solos than true harmony. Yet because they played together, it was just barely worthy of the name concerto.
“Tch. Merlin…”
“Hey, you’re the weird one! Who plays like that after watching once?! I-I can do better too if I just practice a little more!”
When Najin shot her a look, Merlin yelled right back. Watching them, Violet finally could not hold her laughter. She covered her mouth with one hand, ducked her head, shoulders shaking, and at last the laugh broke free.
“Ah—ahaha!”
It was neither the gloomy expression Viola Oldina always wore nor the faint, aching smile Violet sometimes showed. It was a light, easy laugh — the kind that made the people who heard it feel at ease themselves.
Najin and Merlin shrugged off their bickering and took up their instruments again.
“I’m Najin. And this one is Merlin.”
Najin asked her the question.
“What’s your name?”
“Violet. It’s Violet.”
Violet smiled.
“Would the two of you keep company with my playing? Until the rain stops… no, one day won’t be enough.”
An offer different from last time.
She held out her hand toward Najin and Merlin.
“Whenever it rains, would you come find me here?”
Najin took the hand she offered.
It did not show on the surface, but the moment he clasped it he knew. Violet’s fingers were covered in wounds, raw and callused. These were not the injuries left by striking piano keys.
They were the marks left on someone who grips a sword and swings it.
Traces of repetition so relentless that scars had formed even on the flesh of a transcendent, where scars should not remain. Up close, things became visible that had been hidden before.
It’s not only her fingers.
Najin’s eyes could see past the veil of starlight Violet had drawn over herself. He saw the tattered transcendent body beneath — nothing left whole, shredded and worn. The constellation ground down by sixty-seven years of attrition. For a moment Najin was silent.
Then he answered her shortly.
“We will.”
It was no difficult request.
3.
If this had been Merlin’s true body, she could have made it rain three hundred sixty-five days a year without pause. But the Merlin of now had been reduced to roughly Najin’s level.
Making it rain every day was impossible. Once a week was the absolute limit. On top of that, rain fell on the Kassel Kingdom about once a week of its own accord.
Thus they created two free days out of every seven.
Najin devoted those two days entirely to Violet. On rainy days she would be perched on the piano bench waiting for Najin and Merlin, and whenever Najin opened the door she would light up and welcome them.
“Welcome, Najin!”
Method books and sheet music she had stockpiled from somewhere were piled in a corner of the tavern, and chairs she had wiped clean for them stood ready.
“Here it’s better if you press the bow like this. Like so. When you’re playing solo that’s fine, but this is a concerto, isn’t it? In cases like this you lower the pitch just a little…”
She offered Najin advice, and when he immediately took it and adjusted his playing she clapped her hands like a seal. “Yes, that’s it!” she would exclaim, and from that Violet Najin sometimes felt a strange dissonance.
Had she always been this expressive?
It was hard to believe she was the same person as the “Viola” who sat slumped in the great temple with the gloomiest face in the world. Perhaps, he thought, this side was closer to her true nature.
“Hey.”
On a day without rain, walking the streets, Merlin asked a question.
“Is this going to be enough?”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t hard. Well, making it rain is incredibly hard, but… all we’re doing is joining her for a little music every time it rains. That’s it.”
“That’s right.”
“Is something like this really going to change anything?”
“Yes.”
Najin answered.
“It will change. Without a doubt.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because it did for me.”
Najin shrugged and looked at Merlin.
“You know what? When you’re just trying to get through a single day — just trying to endure one more day — you don’t need some grand, magnificent goal.”
As they walked the streets he spoke.
“Back when I lived in the underground city… life there was pure garbage, you know? And I was a collector, so I got mixed up with a lot of absolute trash.”
Trash people.
Streets where actual trash rolled around.
A city where the future was invisible and you could become as cruel as you needed just to eat that day.
“Six days out of the week were so hard and so miserable I’d want to quit right then, wish the whole place would just disappear… and yet the thing that let me endure that everyday life was something ridiculously small.”
“What was it?”
“On weekends Ivan always took me to a tavern. He’d drink and tell me stories about the upper town. Brag about what he’d done, what he’d done.”
Najin gave a small laugh.
“It was fun. Just listening was enough to dilute a little of the garbage of the previous six days. Before long I found myself hanging on just so I could wait for that day.”
No matter how wretched, no matter how hard — if you could imagine one enjoyable day, you could endure. Something trivial. Just talking and laughing in a tavern. That trivial thing had given Najin the strength to get through one more day.
“Grand goals and ambitions let you look far ahead and keep moving… but to live through tomorrow? A small pleasure like that is enough.”
That’s how it is, Najin said, letting out a long breath.
“About that constellation, Viola Oldina — I think I understand why she became the way she did.”
To other constellations, Viola Oldina’s corruption might look laughable. Compared with the countless heroes written into history, the reason for her fall might seem trivial.
The knight in the helmet who endured a hundred fifty years of erosion.
The silent knight who simply wished to keep going, endlessly.
The knight of holy flame bound by duty for long ages.
Next to their lives, Viola’s had been peaceful. Even so, Najin had not the slightest intention of dismissing her life as light or contemptible.
Because she is a different kind of person from them.
Not everyone in the world can become a hero. Not everyone can live by will and conviction as strong as theirs. Most people compromise, surrender, and sometimes lie to themselves just to keep living.
Viola Oldina was the same.
She had never wanted to be a hero. She had never thought of herself as one. Yet she had been forced to become one. The kingdom had half-compelled her into the role of hero, and she herself had welcomed none of it.
“So she split herself off.”
“Split herself?”
“Into the hero people wanted — ‘Viola Oldina’ — and the self she believed she was — ‘Violet.’”
She had never regarded herself as a hero. Viola Oldina could never be her true self. Therefore she treated “the hero Viola Oldina” as a separate existence detached from herself.
I am not the hero Viola Oldina.
I am the pianist Violet.
To her, Viola Oldina was nothing but an empty shell. Her real self was not there. To her, the self was the modest musician who, on rainy days, pounded the piano in an old tavern and was content with that.
“And so, when she could no longer play—”
When, worn down and worn down again in the fight against Ladon, her fingers had rotted until she could no longer strike the keys—
When she could no longer maintain the self called “the pianist Violet”—
The moment her one remaining sanctuary was torn away—
“She became hollow.”
While investigating the human called Viola Oldina, Najin had learned something. Her true name was not Viola Oldina. The name Viola had been given to her when the Oldina family, recognizing her talent, adopted her.
The name Viola meant nothing to her.
She did not consider it her own. Therefore the name “Viola” might as well not have existed. Erase Viola and what remained was the family name Oldina.
Glory to Oldina.
Honor to Oldina.
Oldina was a great house that had existed since the founding of the Kassel Kingdom — a glorious lineage that had produced countless knights and heroes. From ages past, every person who bore the name Oldina had become a knight or a hero.
To her, the name “Oldina” was the essence that forced her to be a hero — her nature as a hero.
But the longer the battle with Ladon continued, the more the erosion accumulated, the fainter her own self became. Until at last it vanished completely.
From Oldina the “I” disappeared.
One who has lost the self collapses. The moment the center of existence is gone, the things that make a person up come undone. By rights she should have crumbled into an undead right then… yet she was not even granted the chance to go mad.
Ladon seized the empty shell she had become.
It rearranged the pieces that composed her.
It took the letters of Oldina with the “I” removed — Oldna — and rearranged them into its own name: Ladon.
That was the truth of this dream.
“In that case the solution is simple too.”
Najin stopped walking.
“We just put weight on Violet’s side instead of Oldina’s. So she can hold on to herself. We tip the unbalanced scale back — no, we tip it all the way over to this side…”
Right on cue the bells began to toll. Cracks raced across the sky, glass shattered, and Ladon appeared. Pointing at the dragon, Najin spoke.
“Ladon will weaken on its own.”
The Ladon that had broken through the heavens was unmistakably smaller than the first time they had seen it.