The Performer, Violet (4)
They walked the rain-soaked streets.
Past the half-melted ramparts left by Ladon’s breath, into the kingdom, across the square, through the market, and along a deserted stretch of road where no one remained. The soft splash of a puddle underfoot echoed low.
“The Kingdom of Kassel must have fallen.”
“······.”
“I appreciate the consideration, but you don’t have to. I know now. It feels like an impossibly distant past, but I still remember it, faintly.”
Splash.
“I think it was only after he’d swallowed about a third of the kingdom that I dropped a star and made this tomb. So of course it fell. It was already hanging by a thread.”
Violet walked ahead with her back to Najin. He could not see her expression.
“I wasn’t the hero who saved the country. I was the calamity that destroyed it.”
He could only tell that her voice was trembling a little. Najin’s lips parted. He searched for the right words.
It wasn’t your fault. Ladon was the one who swallowed you. More than that, the very structure of Kassel that tried to lean on you alone······.
Countless sentences rose and fell. None of them felt right. She did not seem to want excuses or comfort. In the affair surrounding the Kingdom of Kassel, Najin was a complete outsider. He felt he had no standing to pass judgment on any of it.
“So the me of that time must have been trying to punish myself. Whether this punishment is enough, I don’t know.”
Violet looked up at the sky.
The rain kept falling. Endlessly.
“Twelve thousand times.”
She murmured.
“I think I repeated that final month about twelve thousand times. How much time passed outside?”
“About five hundred sixty years.”
“Then I must have spent roughly twice that in here.”
Time moved differently from the outside world. Subjectively, Violet had spent more than a thousand years within. She tasted that span and smiled bitterly.
“So much time has passed that I don’t really remember what I was thinking when I made this tomb. It must have been me, yet she feels like a stranger.”
“A thousand years will do that.”
“Right? Still, if I had to guess··· the reason I chose to repeat, without end, this final month where I didn’t know who I was or what I was becoming, where I knew nothing at all—”
She turned.
Violet looked back at Najin.
“I think, almost certainly, I wanted myself to overcome it. To make a different ending from the self that had been broken and devoured by Ladon.”
Every month, the memories vanished.
Back to the beginning, memory wiped clean, performing again from the start—Da capo. To the question of how long, the Viola Oldina of a thousand years ago had answered:
Until you, who are no hero, become a true one.
Until, in the same circumstances,
you seize an entirely different ending.
Viola Oldina had always been that sort of person. Someone whose standard for what made a “hero” sat impossibly high. Someone who believed only a perfect, flawless being could be called one. And so Viola had given Violet both punishment and trial at once.
“How was that supposed to be easy?”
Resenting her past self, Violet laughed as if it were absurd. How could that make sense? Losing your memory and repeating it would only lead to the same ending.
Unlike Viola, Violet was fragile.
She had wished for someone else to save her. She had desperately wished for someone to smash this nightmare in her place. That was why Violet’s tomb had never barred outsiders. She left the entrance open and waited for a hero.
“Viola Oldina wanted me to break this dream myself. Violet wanted someone else to break it for her.”
Violet pointed at Najin.
Then she gave a bitter smile.
“In the end, it was Violet’s wish that came true, not Viola’s. You appeared and saved me. You killed Ladon and shattered this dream.”
In the end, Violet breathed out.
“I never overcame it, did I? Even after a thousand years, I’m still······.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“······What?”
Najin cut her off. In the middle of the pouring rain, he looked straight at Violet.
“In the final moment, didn’t you stand before Ladon of your own will? No one pushed you from behind.”
“That—”
“At that moment you had no duty, no compulsion, no responsibility, did you?”
Najin had taken Viola Oldina’s place. Even if she had not stepped forward, no one would have died. The compulsion that had lived in Viola—if I don’t do it, people will die—had no room to enter there.
“And still you appeared. In that place.”
“······.”
“And when I asked what I should call you, you answered like this.”
Does it matter which?
Either way, it’s me, isn’t it?
“I didn’t push you into it. I didn’t lead you to that answer. You thought it, so you said it.”
Najin smiled.
“I only built the stage. Jumping onto it and becoming a hero was your choice. So in the end, didn’t you overcome it?”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you helped me.”
“Does a hero have to overcome everything alone? Even the great King Arthur accepted the help of the Round Table.”
“Then······.”
“Yes.”
Najin nodded.
“You were a hero.”
At that answer, Violet’s eyes grew hazy.
She pressed the corner of her eye hard and spoke in a voice that still shook a little.
“Honestly.”
She let out a long breath, then looked at Najin and smiled.
“Maybe I just wanted to hear it from someone else’s mouth. Because I couldn’t be sure of it myself, couldn’t believe it······ maybe I just wanted someone truly heroic to acknowledge me.”
You were a hero.
You have the right to be called one.
That Violet and Viola Oldina were not different people at all, that they were the same person, and that they had been heroes.
“Yes.”
Violet—Viola Oldina—exhaled as if something inside her had finally cleared.
“That’s true. It really is.”
Najin had granted Violet’s wish. By saving her he had given the first crack that would shatter the dream. The wish of the Violet who had longed for someone’s help had been fulfilled.
Likewise, Viola Oldina’s wish had been fulfilled as well. She had received Najin’s help, yet Violet had wrestled with herself and arrived at an answer, and that answer was one even the hero Viola Oldina could look upon with satisfaction.
Both wishes had come true.
The lingering regret of the constellation who, five hundred sixty years ago, had wished for her own death was resolved. The dream that had repeated for a thousand years reached its end.
Shatter.
Somewhere, the sound of glass breaking rang out.
2.
Shatter—and a crack raced across the sky.
It was not only the sky. Cracks began to spread across the entire Kingdom of Kassel. It was different from being swallowed by the Viola who had been consumed by Ladon. Unlike that clamorous time, the collapse proceeded in silence.
And unlike then, when it had spread from the center outward,
this collapse began at the edges and closed in toward the center.
The dream woven by the Fallen Star began to come apart, slowly. Her world grew narrower, slowly yet with absolute certainty. Watching the world fracture into pieces, she murmured,
“I’ve thought about what I’d do if I stopped being a hero. Not just once. A lot. An awful lot.”
A world drawing toward its end.
“What would I want to do? If I were free of everything, if I could do anything at all······.”
Her voice was calm.
Even as the world shattered around her, she spoke at an unhurried pace.
“Maybe read novels. Touring good restaurants wouldn’t be bad either. I’ve wanted to travel somewhere far away, and I’ve thought about visiting a city where famous musicians gather. I’ve even made plans. I never told anyone, though.”
She smiled.
It was a faint smile, as if she might vanish at any moment. Without thinking, Najin took her hand. Looking at the hand that held hers, Violet nodded.
“There are so many things I’d like to try, but if I had to choose only one······ it would have to be that.”
Then she clasped Najin’s hand in both of hers.
“Najin.”
A world drawing toward its end.
Violet smiled brightly and pulled on his arm.
“Let’s play together. One last time, from the beginning!”
Holding his arm, Violet ran. The two of them ran through the rainy streets. They ran with everything they had through a world webbed with cracks. The place they burst into was the shabby tavern that had been her final refuge.
She sat in the chair before the piano.
Steadying her breath, she struck the keys with force.
And so the performance began. To the melody she created, Najin raised his violin; Merlin, who had followed in silence, let out a sigh and, as if she had no choice, took up the cello.
The sound of pouring rain.
The sound of glass breaking.
The sound of a world collapsing.
Even those sounds became part of the performance and wove into harmony. Violet sweat as she struck the keys with a concentration greater than any she had ever known. Her eyes shone.
“Ah—ah, ha!”
She raced toward the end.
From the beginning again—Da capo.
The mark that had always stood at the end of this dream. But in this moment, a new mark appeared beside it.
The end of the performance—Al fine.
Read together, the two marks mean “from the beginning again, toward the end of the performance”—Da capo al fine. And so the performance that had repeated a full twelve thousand times at last raced toward its close.
The end of a performance that had seemed as if it would never end was approaching.
“Ah······.”
Violet pressed the final key with all her strength. A deep, resonant note settled, and she bowed her head. A tear fell onto the keys with a soft tap.
“I wanted to play a little longer. Just a little longer.”
Tap. Tap.
“I wanted to talk with you a little longer.”
Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“I’m sad that it ends here. Ah, if only I’d held on a little more. If only I hadn’t made that choice. If I’d just endured, maybe a chance would have come someday··· Why did I choose that?”
Regret. Remorse. Sorrow.
“Still.”
Violet lifted her head.
Still, she murmured, and rubbed her face with her sleeve. She wiped away the tears, managed a smile, and looked at Najin.
“Still, the ending is something I can accept. If this is how it ends, I think I can take it.”
She came toward him. Shatter by shatter, the cracks that had been spreading finally reached her last refuge. Even as the tavern itself began to break apart, Violet untied the ribbon that bound her hair.
“Najin.”
Held in his arms, Violet whispered against his ear. She reached behind his head.
“Thank you. Truly. Until the very end.”
She undid the tie that had bound Najin’s hair, then used the ribbon that had held her own to bind his. Then she took a step back.
“My hero.”
Violet smiled through her tears.
“Remember me.”
As if answering the question carved on the gravestone—Who am I?—Violet smiled radiantly.
“Remember the hero Viola Oldina. And—”
She laid a hand over her own heart.
“the performer, Violet.”
⟨ Al Fine ⟩
Shatter—
and at last the world split completely apart.
In a world cracking like glass, fissures began to run across Violet’s body. She who had isolated herself from the world, who had lived a life belonging nowhere, was, in this final moment alone, allowed to belong to reality.
Even if this was a dream, it did not matter.
To her, it had been real.
The Fallen Star refused to remain fallen. By denying her own star, the Fallen Star met her death. Not a fall, not a corruption—an intact, complete death enfolded her.
Tightly.
Najin gripped the hand of the Violet who was shattering into pieces. Toward the crumbling woman he spoke. The sound of a world breaking and falling buried his words, yet Violet alone heard them clearly.
I will remember you.
In her last moment Violet smiled. Not in a false repose, but in a true one, she closed her eyes. And as she closed them she thought:
That the ending, at least, had been all right.
And therefore, that her life had not been a bad one.
3.
Whoosh—Najin’s hand cut through empty air.
Violet, whom he had been holding only a moment ago, was no longer there. When he blinked, what lay before him was a thicket of overgrown grass, the gravestone set among it, and the ruins of the Kingdom of Kassel.
Viola Oldina’s dream had broken.
Everything felt like illusion, like a dream, yet one thing remained to prove it had been real. Najin touched his hair. The ribbon binding it. Six stars were set into that ribbon.
It was the Star Relic left by Viola Oldina, and at the same time the keepsake that proved Violet had existed.
Tightly.
Najin clenched the ribbon she had left him.
—······.
Having returned from the dream into Najin’s inner world once more, Merlin knew what he was feeling and kept her silence. Only after a long while did Najin let out a long breath.
“······.”
Najin looked at the gravestone before him.
Hero of the Kingdom of Kassel, Viola Oldina.
She protected the nation from the evil dragon,
and fought bravely to the last as a knight.
He lowered his gaze
to the line written beneath.
Who am I?
Najin stretched out a finger. With the starlight of his own star—now touched by the star of the Fallen Star—he carved letters into the stone. The name that perhaps only he would ever know.
The Performer, Violet.
To the question no one had answered for five hundred sixty years—the question she had asked for a thousand years inside the dream—Najin gave an answer.
And so the names “Hero Viola Oldina” and “Performer Violet” came to coexist upon the stone.
There was no difference between them.
Both were her name.
In the moment he set that final period upon the gravestone, a star glittered high above.
The Funeral Star.
Najin obtained his fifth star.