Chapter 83: What's Your Name?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 83: What's Your Name?
The impromptu interrogation was swift and simple. As Tyr feigned ignorance and looked away, Shei dragged over a desk and chair. She sat across from him, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on them.
“Alright. First things first. I haven't had a chance to ask you this until now.”
Faced with Shei's sharp glare, the man glanced nervously at Tyr, but she merely kept her lips sealed and lowered her parasol to hide her eyes.
Now that they were face to face, Shei stared him down and asked.
“Your name?”
Pressured by Shei's intimidating presence, he glanced around nervously before finally managing an answer.
“Tyr.”
“Hm? Did you call me?”
Tyr lifted her parasol slightly. Shei waved a dismissive hand.
“No. I think you misunderstood my question.”
Shei glared at him again and asked, enunciating more clearly.
“No, your name.”
“Tyr….”
Once might have been a mistake, but twice was a pattern. Hearing him introduce himself as Tyr for the second time, Tyr approached, puzzled.
“Do you have the same name as me? Tyr? What a remarkable coincidence.”
“I doubt it. He's probably just confused because he just heard the name Tyr. Hold on.”
Shei gripped Chun-aeng, held it upright, and turned the flat of the blade toward him.
Skyblade Art, Heavenly Mirror.
A mirage is the shadow of the earth reflected in the sky. Uneven air stretched over a great distance bends light in all directions.
Chun-aeng, a compressed space in itself, refracted the light, perfectly reflecting his face. Shei pointed at his reflection in the blade and said.
“Here. Look! Not Tyr, this person! The one in the mirror, you!”
“Me…. My, name.”
His eyes shot open. It was the first drastic change in his expression. He clutched his face, which was now contorted in pain, and gasped sharply.
Shei didn't rush him, simply watching in silence. Unable to bear it, Tyr stepped forward.
“Let's stop here for now. It seems we were too hasty. If we have questions, we should take our time and find the answers slowly.”
But Shei shook her head firmly.
“Wait. He'll remember. Even if you lose your sense of self, you don't easily forget information as old and frequently used as your name. If he'd forgotten the name he's had his whole life, he would have forgotten how to speak, too.”
“But….”
“Besides, asking for his name is necessary to recover his other memories. A name is the most crucial component of one's identity.”
Knowledge brings conviction, and conviction builds confidence.
Because Shei's words were surprisingly logical and confident, Tyr couldn't say anything and stepped back. Instead, she simply clasped her hands together and worried, praying for his well-being.
A long time passed. His ragged groans continued, and Tyr's heart felt like a fuse burning down to its end.
Breaking the long silence, he managed to force out a single word.
“…Hu.”
The two of them couldn't tell if it was a word spoken after much thought or just another groan. Realizing his groans had stopped after that, Tyr asked again.
“Did you say, Hu?”
He nodded. Belatedly realizing it was a name, Shei looked puzzled.
“Hu? Is that your name?”
Another nod. Shei studied his face for a moment, lost in thought.
‘No last name? Ah, right, he said he was an orphan. Still, high-ranking officials in the Military State usually create a surname for themselves... Though, last names lost much of their meaning after the kingdom fell. Maybe he has no attachment to it because he made it up himself?’
As Shei fell silent in thought, Tyr cautiously approached and called his name.
“Hu?”
At the sound of his name, he turned his head toward the source. He had responded to his name.
Tyr responded with a warm smile.
“Hu, so that's your name. I'm sorry it took so long to learn. Had I known sooner, I would have called you by it more often.”
Unlike Tyr, who accepted it without a shred of doubt, Shei couldn't shake her suspicion.
‘Seeing how he reacts, it seems to be his real name. It's not an alias, is it? No. If I start thinking like that, there'll be no end to it.’
Shei furrowed her brow and mulled over the name, trying to find anything similar in the memories of her regressions.
“Hu. Hu. Hu, you say….”
“Do you know the name?”
“Hold on. Humanist, heuristic, Hu... No way.”
“No way?”
After thinking for a long while, Shei finally shook her head.
“Never heard of it. I can't find any similar names, either.”
Tyr replied, her voice deflated.
“Then why did you drag it out so long? If you didn't know, you should have just said so from the start.”
“That just makes it more suspicious. A name I don't know? If he were a person of any importance, especially a State instructor, I should know almost all of them….”
From Shei's perspective, it was a valid point.
Having already gone through thirteen regressions, half of which involved conflict with the Military State, she remembered most of the famous State personnel. If an instructor with such incredible abilities existed, there was no way she wouldn't remember him.
‘Unless he died an unknown death in the Abyss, that is….’
However, hearing Shei's muttering, Tyr glanced around nervously. She knew from the golem's statement that he wasn't an instructor.
Tyr herself didn't care about it at all, but unsure if she should tell Shei, she forced a change of subject.
“The world is a vast place. There must be plenty of people you don't know. Now, more importantly.”
Tyr closed her parasol and came closer with small, quick steps.
“Hu.”
He turned his head to look at Tyr. She called his name again, sounding delighted.
“Hu.”
“Yes.”
“Hu.”
Twice she called his name with no particular reason. Once in a slightly higher tone, once in a slightly lower one.
As she called his name as if singing a song, he tilted his head and called her name in return.
“…Tyr.”
“Hehe. So this is your name, Hu.”
Tyr seemed satisfied just knowing his name and was completely absorbed in calling it. Left to her own devices, it seemed she would spend the entire day just repeating his name.
But Shei couldn't wait for the tireless Tyr to have her fill. She stopped Tyr just as she was about to call his name again and asked.
“Alright, Hu? I don't know if that's your real name, but at least I know what to call you. So, what's your rank?”
The question made Tyr's smile vanish as she glanced around nervously. Hearing Shei's question, he wore a clueless expression.
“Ra…nk?”
“If you're really an instructor, you must have a rank.”
“Uh….”
As he hesitated, unable to answer, Tyr quickly jumped in to defend him.
“Rank? Is something so trivial important? It's just confusing and not important at all.”
“But there's nothing more important than rank for figuring out his position in the Military State.”
“Ranks can change, can't they? He might have forgotten such an unstable memory. Let's move on to something else. Hu?”
Quickly changing the subject, Tyr called to him before Shei could ask again. However, she hadn't thought of a question beforehand, so she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Do you have a favorite food?”
The world is relative, and for some, this might be a very important question, but it was certainly not one of Shei's concerns. She expressed her dissatisfaction.
“What kind of question is that? You said rank wasn't important, but that's an even more useless question.”
“You're not the only one asking questions.”
“Hey, if you think about it, I haven't asked much besides his name….”
“Your chattering is noisy. Are you going to nitpick everything your master does?”
“Only in times like this are you my master….”
After forcing Shei into silence, Tyr quietly waited for his answer. He thought for a long moment before uttering a single word.
“Beans.”
“Beans?”
Beans meant the canned food piled up in the cafeteria. Tyr was delighted. At least she could make him plenty of the food he liked.
Just then, a question popped up from an unexpected place.
“No matter how I think about it, it's weird!”
“What is?”
“That he likes beans! It makes no sense!”
“That's strange. Why is liking beans a problem?”
To Tyr's knowledge, beans were a very useful crop.
But Shei spoke as if it were common sense that everyone in the world hated those beans.
“The raw ingredient for the State's canned beans is one of the Seven Major Inventions of the Military State, a planting fertilizer called 'Chimera Beans.' You plant them in fallow fields, and just one planting enriches the soil so much that you get a bountiful harvest for the next two years.”
“A bountiful harvest? Then that's a wonderful thing, isn't it?”
“Right. As a fertilizer, it's great. But those beans are not. Absolutely not as food.”
As if just the thought of it gave her goosebumps, Shei shuddered and exclaimed.
“The fertilizer itself might be better food. When you plant Chimera Beans, huge beans grow all over the field, but for their size, they taste disgusting. They have a texture like mud, a fishy, acrid smell, and they stick to your tongue so much you can't even swallow them without water. It's so bad they say even a cow that's starved for three days would refuse them!”
And yet, despite being something a starving cow would refuse, the cafeteria was piled high with cans of them.
Tyr tilted her head.
“Despite that, everyone seems to eat the beans from the cans quite often.”
“That's because the Military State collects the enormous harvest of Chimera Beans and rations them out! The fact that they're canned makes them a hundred times better. If not for that, the State would have been overthrown several times by now. It's a great invention, but as food, it's torture!”
“…So is that why you're the only one who hasn't been eating the canned beans?”
“Huh? Well, yes.”
Tyr sighed deeply and chided Shei.
“I didn't know either, so I'm not one to talk... but hearing this, I think you've gone too far. Shei, did you not share your food with others?”
“Huh?”
In other words, she was accusing Shei of eating delicious food by herself while everyone else ate beans.
Blinking, Shei waved her hands defensively.
“No! I told Azzy we should eat together many times! It's just that my items are heavily spiced and salted, so they weren't suitable for her!”
“Then you never once offered any to Hu.”
“Uh? Yes….”
Shei gave a timid nod. Tyr's gaze grew even colder. Shei flinched and shrank back.
Sighing softly, Tyr set down her parasol and stood before him.
“Let's stop. Prying answers from someone who is hurting... We shouldn't have done this in the first place.”
“Huh? But we haven't even finished asking about his abilities….”
“Have you forgotten the contents of the note? Didn't it stress that we shouldn't bother him if he started acting strangely? You were distant enough not to even share food with him; by what right do you expect an answer?”
“It did, but do we really need to follow that….”
“It's a matter of trust. If you won't even follow the note placed in your own hands, how can you face him? Are you going to keep facing him with a mask on?”
Tyr's words were sound logic. So perfect there was no need to point out any flaws.
However, Shei had something to say, too. For once, she raised her voice at Tyr.
“He's the one wearing a mask!”
As the man, suddenly singled out, blinked in confusion, Shei shouted, her eyes blazing as if she were vomiting out the words.
“Has he ever once opened up and told us anything properly? I didn't even know his name until he said it today! Tell me honestly. If we're supposed to face each other without masks, like you said, shouldn't he have told us that from the beginning?”
“Shei.”
“On top of that, he's hiding something right now! I feel like I'd be more at ease if we could just figure it out! When I get curious, he pushes me away. When I ask, he says it's a secret. And now that I'm trying to dig a little deeper, he's lost his memory. How can I not be suspicious?!”
Shei didn't want to suspect him, either.
They had argued a few times, been teased by him, and even fought alongside him.
Through it all, though she didn't want to admit it, she had grown rather fond of him.
But for one who had seen the future, one who had peeked beyond the veil... the present was a powder keg, filled with fuses everywhere, ready to explode at any moment.
Because he was an instructor of the Military State, Shei always had to be on her guard around him. He could be the very person who corrupted all these Fragments of the Apocalypse.
“If he doesn't want to be suspected, he should have been honest from the start! He's the one who's done all sorts of suspicious things...! I... I want to trust him, too!”
“If you want to trust him, shouldn't you try to earn his trust by approaching him slowly, rather than interrogating him like this?”
“It's meaningless! Because anyway...!”
‘It'll all be reset anyway.’
Shei swallowed the rest of her words.
Tyr looked at Shei anew. Although her appearance wasn't much different from Tyr's... her body was that of someone much younger.
She had thought of her as young several times, but Shei was young, both objectively and subjectively.
Calming herself, Tyr admonished Shei in a much more composed manner.
“Everyone has at least one thing that's hard to talk about. Judging by the note, he didn't want his identity revealed. Can't you wait a little longer?”
“…Hmph. Forget it. None of what we found out now is reliable anyway. First, he calls himself Tyr, then he says his favorite food is beans.”
Shei spun around.
“I'm leaving. You handle the rest.”
Shei's form disappeared into the other room. The door slammed shut with a loud thud. The firmly closed door showed no sign of opening.
All they had learned was a single name, 'Hu.' And, incidentally, the fact that he liked beans.
Tyr was satisfied enough with just that... but an unresolved question still lingered in a corner of her mind.
“Hu. Why did you tell such a lie at the beginning?”
Tyr asked 'Hu'.
Of course, he couldn't answer.