What She Desired (4)
During the time he spent in the Closed City, after long and careful deliberation, Najin reached a single conclusion. It concerned the Tomb of Stars constructed from Yuel’s past—and it concerned the Revelry Emperor as well.
The Revelry Emperor had not chosen to stay out of it.
That demon had simply been unable to intervene.
While he remained in the Closed City, Najin had scoured every corner of it for any trace of the Revelry Emperor, turning the place upside down as if hunting vermin. Even constrained by an ordinary human body, Najin’s essence was still that of a being who stood endlessly close to the transcendent.
A presence of that magnitude had spent years investigating a single city.
And still no sign of the Revelry Emperor had surfaced.
At that point Najin drew his conclusion: nothing existed in this city that the Revelry Emperor could inhabit. Which meant, put another way, that she could not interfere with whatever unfolded inside the Closed City.
No matter how mighty a constellation the Revelry Emperor might be—
Even she, when she sought to insert herself into someone’s story and twist it, always claimed for herself “some role” on that first attempt.
Just as she had taken the role of Lady Dulcinea in the tale of the Star of Chatter, Don Quixote.
Once she occupied a specific part, she seeped in from the smallest of places and distorted the narrative—like dye dissolving into water. The approach was careful, clandestine, and stretched across long years.
But Yuel’s story held nothing of the kind.
The Closed City bore no trace of the Revelry Emperor.
So the moment the Revelry Emperor made contact with the Yuel of the past was not inside the Closed City.
He had more or less already guessed as much. There had been a clue. Before entering the Tomb of Stars, he recalled the conversation he had shared with Yuel.
“Yes. Only the part of my memory where I faced the true form of the Star of Oblivion at the end of the dream remains clear. I can’t recall the other scenes. All I feel is a vague fear.”
A sense of dissonance.
Why focus only on that final stretch?
If the Revelry Emperor had intervened from the Closed City onward, she would never have stopped at merely drawing in the Star of Oblivion. She could have touched Yuel’s mind and turned her into a monster outright.
A perfect Calamity Star might truly have been born.
There was no way the Revelry Emperor would let such a chance slip. Yet she had never touched that point. Yuel had not become a monster; she was not markedly different from the Yuel of ordinary days.
“My past self was afraid. What was I so afraid of? What was so terrifying? I never even questioned the fact itself.”
She had simply goaded Yuel’s emotions in that final moment and given her a shove from behind. Why? The answer was simple. She had no other choice.
She could not touch the larger frame of the story.
Because in Yuel’s past the Revelry Emperor had never held a major role. In this tale her original part had probably been no more than that of an observer.
Yet one thing was certain.
At this point in the past, the Revelry Emperor had unquestionably existed. It was not difficult to guess at what moment she had been present, and at what moment she would reach out toward Yuel.
————Sightings of the Revelry Emperor were rare.
But in most of the situations where she was reliably recorded as having appeared—
she had arrived in the company of a certain constellation.
The Star of Oblivion.
Wherever the Star of Oblivion appeared, the Revelry Emperor accompanied it.
The Revelry Emperor opened her eyes.
At this point in the past, in this very moment, she had been present here. Because she had a contract with a certain star that she was obliged to keep.
The instant that star moved—
the Revelry Emperor was bound to accompany it. To spread the black curtain she so trusted, to veil the eyes of every witness with paint and conceal the true form of “that star”—that was the contract she had struck with it.
In return for the contract, the Revelry Emperor could borrow that star’s authority. A bargain with no loss and only gain.
This moment was no different.
Following the star that had suddenly stirred, the Revelry Emperor had moved. And there she had witnessed it: the moment the Star of Omniscience sought to complete a Calamity Star, and the moment that completed Calamity Star immediately began to collapse.
On that day, in that instant, she herself had stood in this place.
Having entered the body of her past self, the Revelry Emperor looked down at the ground. She could see it—the Calamity Star struggling to rise while warping the laws of the world—and she could hear the wish that Calamity Star was praying for.
Goo-woong.
And as if answering the wish, a star began to move.
“Ah…”
The Revelry Emperor sighed. How fine it would be if she could make that Calamity Star her own. Yet the parts of this story she could interfere with were few.
Even if this was only a reenactment of the past—
touching the constellations that would appear in this place carried too great a burden. Distortion of a tale in which both the Star of Omniscience and the Star of Oblivion had intervened was no simple matter.
Just one step.
To abandon the role that had originally been hers in the past—“conceal the true form of the Star of Oblivion”—and instead plant lingering attachment in the girl who was prepared to cast her past away without a shred of regret. To turn that attachment into curiosity.
A small but fatal move.
That alone had been enough to shatter the imperial army. And contrary to her expectations, the man had thrown himself into this Tomb of Stars in an attempt to block even that single move.
The Revelry Emperor’s eyes narrowed.
At the existence who had stepped onto the stage as if determined to rewrite the story she had so carefully nudged, the script she herself had written, she let out a mocking laugh.
Go on. Try all you like.
Did he realize? This was simply handing her one more opportunity. Should she let those emotions run completely wild this time and wreck the plan? Touching a story once already touched was all too easy.
The Revelry Emperor moved her hand.
Paint sloshed. Her authority flared. In the instant the paint that erased, rewrote, and distorted the sentences of the story sought to invade the stage—
Shhhreeeeeek—!
Something tore through the air.
Thud.
It skimmed past the Revelry Emperor’s side.
In a single heartbeat it pierced the paint she had raised.
“……”
Her eyes narrowed further. As if it had pinpointed the exact location where she hid, the spearhead that had punched through the paint was embedded right beside her.
She knew that spear as well.
The Spear of the Cross Star.
The loathsome emblem of the Golden Horn Knights.
One hand pressed to her throbbing heart, the Revelry Emperor’s eyes thinned a fraction more.
Tak.
And then came the sound of footsteps.
“So you were here after all.”
When she turned her head to look, the man was walking toward her. Nothing rested in his hands—yet that lasted only a moment.
Clench.
The instant he seized empty air, starlight flooded forth. A holy sword so overwhelming that even the stage expanded for the appearance of transcendent beings could scarcely endure it—one that made the very space of the Tomb of Stars groan—was drawn into his grip.
“Revelry Emperor.”
Excalibur.
And the human who held Excalibur.
“Ah.”
The Revelry Emperor smiled.
“It’s you again.”
Two people who originally should never have existed in this story—two beings from the future—looked at each other. Their gazes crossed.
“Do you mean to interfere with me again?”
“Do I need words for that?”
Excalibur leveled at the Revelry Emperor.
Her paint sloshed and pooled across the floor.
“This meeting is earlier than I expected. I would have preferred not to see you if I could help it. Even if we don’t rush into it like this, we’ll meet soon enough, won’t we?”
“Is that so? Funny. I wanted to meet you even one second sooner.”
“My. Is that a confession?”
A loathsome smile. Words neither meant.
They laughed at each other.
At this point in time the Revelry Emperor held nine stars. As nine stars rose behind her back, Najin kicked off the ground.
Excalibur flashed.
The sword of stars engraved with the Dawn Star blazed with light.
As he charged the Revelry Emperor, Najin murmured to himself. He was not the protagonist of this stage. And for the sake of the stage on which the protagonist would shine, a supporting player sometimes threw himself forward without hesitation. Toward the overflowing paint, Najin cast his body.
To buy time.
And to shove it in the face of that damned demon.
2.
Beyond the collapsed Closed City, the outside world was revealed.
It was a ruin that stretched all the way past the horizon. In the middle of that ruin Yuel opened her eyes and turned her gaze. Buried here were countless cities.
And countless experimental grounds as well.
Cities that had existed even before the Closed City. And the countless experiments that had been attempted even before the Closed City. The traces of those experiments remained here intact. To Yuel’s eyes they looked like a vast graveyard.
“Ugh…”
Yuel staggered. Confusion flooded her. Her body would not move as she willed.
Her head ached.
Breathing was hard.
Her eyes throbbed.
Her mind was chaos. It felt as though a great wave was battering her body. With every crash of the water she felt she would be swept under and drown. Her vision swayed; a ringing filled her ears.
She had skipped every prescribed stage and stepped straight into transcendence—and by an abnormal method at that. The human mind was never designed to endure transcendence. A rift had opened between her soul and spirit, forcibly sublimated.
Worse, her star was a black-crimson Calamity Star.
A Calamity Star that polluted the mind, twisted the soul, and dyed everything black-crimson. No human mind could possibly withstand a Calamity Star.
The moment she released the rope—
the moment she was swept away by the wave—
she would become a beast. Transcendence was eroding Yuel’s mind with every passing second. The time left to her would not be long. And so Yuel immediately tried to carry out the resolve she had already made.
But in that instant—
Splash.
Something blocked Yuel’s sight. Multicolored paint wrapped around her body. The moment she was stained by the paint, every kind of voice echoed in her ears.
Is that really what you want?
Aren’t you afraid?
You’ll lose yourself. That’s no different from death. Why should you have to do this?
A sweet voice melted her eardrums. Before her eyes countless illusions unfolded. They were the happy futures she had once imagined. A future spent with that man. A future of ordinary days that simply continued forever. Or a future in which she might once again pursue the mathematics she had loved so much.
Humble dreams brushed past her.
Dreams she would have to abandon.
The voice whispered in Yuel’s ear. Your will is strong, isn’t it? If you endured so many years in the Closed City, can’t you resist this madness as well? Is there any need to make this choice? Won’t you regret it?
Thoughts she herself had turned over again and again.
Those voices swelled into a great wave and, together with the Calamity Star, were about to sweep her away—
Clench.
Someone—
“You told me not to let go of your hand.”
—seized Yuel’s hand. Amid the wave that threatened to drag her under, he became an anchor that held her fast.
Then, with a sharp pull—
he hauled her out beyond the paint.
“What am I supposed to do if you let go?”