People Who Walk Atop Time (4)
The exhibition was designed for walking while viewing — barricades curved in a gentle arc, so that following their shape felt like tracing a path rather than simply strolling past displays.
Footprint shapes painted on the floor confirmed it. Follow those, and you would not go wrong.
She thought as much while scanning the ground — and then noticed a particularly large footprint right where she was standing.
"Huh? Why is this spot marked so heavily?"
It felt almost like an instruction: look at the piece from here.
Others seemed to have reached the same conclusion. No one moved on just yet; they clustered together and began studying the work.
But why guide people to view it from the side rather than head-on?
The question still hung in her mind when she took a step forward.
The painting warped. It split strangely down its length and twisted into something else entirely — as if two separate images had been cut apart and shuffled together. Startled, she froze mid-stride.
"What…? So it wasn't just an ordinary painting?"
Her heart, quiet until that moment, began to hammer. Unease flooded in. The footprints and scattered props she had barely noticed before suddenly leapt into focus.
At the start they looked fresh and green, almost newly made. The farther she walked, the more deliberately aged they became — stained by long years, worn down on purpose.
It felt as though time itself were racing past in lockstep with her own footsteps. The whole gallery was shaped to create that illusion: walking atop accelerated time. Speechless, she followed the trail of footprints.
Before she knew it, her gaze had left the artwork and fixed on the floor, where the passage of years was written in paint. When she finally came back to herself, that time had already run its course. She stood on another oversized footprint — the same shape as before, but now far more weathered and old.
"…Ugh."
She had expected something like this. Even so, the moment she saw the result, a sigh of pure dismay escaped before she could stop it.
The warm little family of three that had been there only moments ago was gone. It was unmistakably the same painting — yet after that walk, the story it told had become something else entirely.
Those few steps made time feel cruelly short.
"The orc…"
An elf and a half-blood stood before an orc's grave, holding their grief in check. The image burned past her eyes and into her mind. Emotion surged up so hard her whole body trembled.
They were only characters in a comic. Yet her heart ached as if someone she actually knew had died.
She turned to leave on reluctant feet — then noticed how spacious the final viewing spot was. A thought struck her. Without even collecting the reserved copy she had come for, she slipped out of the gallery, bought something, and came straight back.
…May this sorrow I feel reach the artist — and beyond that, the characters inside the work itself.
She prayed it silently, gathered every drop of what she felt, and set it down on the cold, empty floor.
"Still, I was a little surprised. The book's not even out yet, and Cali already showed us the whole thing."
"…There's a reason for that."
Our school was not exactly an easy place to leave whenever you felt like it. That meant none of us could attend the advance exhibition that came with pre-ordering The Elf Who Dreams of Mating with an Orc Is Still Frustrated Tomorrow.
So after talking it over, we decided to host the same exhibition here on campus. The catch was manpower. For the first few days we would have to run it ourselves.
We're already short-handed just handing out reserved copies. Until things settle, there's no one else who can manage the show.
And to manage it properly, we needed to see the work before anyone spoiled it for us. That was why Cali had shown it early.
Still, she held up better than I expected at the final scene.
I had worried Orca might not be able to handle it. Compared with what her own father had been through, though, the event in the comic was milder. Aside from a faintly sad look, she got through the reading without trouble.
The real problem was the exhibition we were about to walk through together.
I had chosen this ending because I believed it was the strongest possible close the piece could have. That judgment, however, belonged to me as the artist. For Orca — who lived something uncomfortably close to it — the same ending could hit like a hammer.
And yet she had been singing with excitement about seeing it. How was I supposed to stop her?
"Orca, take my hand."
"Hm? Okay!"
She smiled so brightly, without a shred of suspicion, that something twisted sharply in my chest. Just in case, I laced my fingers tightly through hers and led her inside.
Orca, still completely unaware, looked at the first painting and grinned, saying the half-blood really did look like her.
"Huh…?"
"……"
Once she started walking, though, something felt off. Her chatter dwindled. By the time we reached the point where the image fully transformed, she had gone silent, staring at the piece as if she could burn a hole through it.
Then her grip on my hand tightened, and she spoke in a voice that was almost pleading.
"Cali… it isn't, right? This…"
"I'm sorry."
"…Hic. Hh—… A-ah… hic…"
She knew it was only a story, that it had nothing to do with her own family. Even so, it was more than enough to drag the future she had already glimpsed after the last incident back into the light. In the end she could not hold the tears.
"Waaaaah…!"
"Orca…"
I had known this might happen. Watching her break down still hurt. I loved the work itself, and the flow fit the concept perfectly — yet knowing what it would do to her and doing it anyway left me sick with self-reproach.
"I'm sorry, Orca. I'm so sorry."
"Don't apologize. Don't… You didn't do anything wrong, Cali. It's just… something that can't be helped…"
The fact that it could not be helped was exactly what made it hurt more.
If I had known, maybe I should never have drawn this ending at all. But from the moment the idea appeared, no other ending would come. Even if I had postponed it, I suspected the story would have closed in much the same way.
When it came to comics, I was the kind of idiot who did not know how to compromise.
"Hey, Orca. Want to try walking the other way for a bit?"
"…Huh?"
"Come on. This way."
We retraced the path we had just taken, returning to the image from before the orc's death. I pulled Orca into a firm hug and told her she was still here — that there was a long way left before that moment, so she did not need to start worrying yet.
"What you'll go through will come a little sooner than it does for most families. But in the end, every family faces it."
"…Yeah."
It was a story that worked even without elves and orcs. Their different lifespans only made the gap more visible. Parents and children born into different stretches of time would all meet this someday.
Regret and grief were inevitable. But if this could ease those feelings even a little — if it could give people who had not yet reached that hour a chance to turn around and walk back — then maybe thinking of it that way would make the weight a bit lighter.
"Couldn't we look at it like that?"
"That I still have time…"
"Yeah. So when break comes, go play with your dad until you're sick of it. Pile up as many memories as you can."
My own relationship with my father was probably beyond repair after all the fights over my future. But Orca still got along with hers. So maybe it was possible.
"…Okay."
Only then did she smile again.
Truthfully, the whole speech had been pieced together in advance — a plan for how to comfort her if the piece made her cry, independent of the work itself. Still, it seemed to help.
"If it's too hard, the three of us can handle the exhibition. You don't have to come."
"No. I want to see it. I want to see how everyone reacts."
"All right."
And so, while we ran the show, we watched students of every kind respond to the piece in real time.
Some got angry and cursed the artist who had drawn it. Some wept openly, grieving the orc's fate alongside the characters. Some simply stood in silent pain.
The sheer number of people who felt it and hurt for it turned out to be a real comfort for Orca. The more reactions she saw, the more her brightness returned.
And I, the one who had drawn it, was deeply satisfied as well.
"…Huh? What's that flower?"
"A flower? Wait—"
At first I thought someone had dropped it by accident. But the spot was exactly where visitors viewed the painting's second form — the place that showed the orc was dead. And this world, like Earth, had a culture of offering flowers in mourning.
"Flowers… Somehow, smelling them like this, I feel a little comforted."
"Maybe that's why they left it."
Around then, the school gallery finally had enough staff that the work left our hands. Only after we went outside and visited the public exhibition did we realize this was not happening at our school alone.
A whole corner of the gallery was heaped with flowers. Staff even told us they were constantly clearing them just to keep the pile under control. Nearly everyone who came, they said, went back out, bought flowers, and returned.
"…The gallery didn't set this up or anything, right?"
"No. One day someone simply set a flower down. After that, people started bringing them on their own, one after another…"
And when I heard that the wave of floral mourning was spreading not only through the capital but to exhibition halls across the entire country, a strange, hard-to-name feeling settled over me — subtle, complicated, and quietly overwhelming.