The Weight of Memory
“The weather is nice today. Wilson, you look like you’re in a good mood, too. You’re rolling even better than yesterday.” : )
“Haha, you’re right. They say a person gets healthier if they exercise in the sunlight every day.” ( :
Wilson rolls around, answering me with that ever-present smiling face. I only get a brief moment to make eye contact with him, but it’s a face I never tire of seeing, no matter how many times I repeat the process.
“Huff, huff. That’s it. I finally made it.”
[You have cleared the 1st Floor ‘Tutorial’.]
[You have learned the skill Endurance.]
It’s been three days since I started with Wilson. I made the mistake of slipping two more times, but I finally succeeded in breaking through the first floor. My impatience, wanting to reach the goal right in front of my eyes, had been the problem. I learned that the best strategy is to stop and Endure for a moment whenever I feel my stamina waning. When I support him with my back, Wilson doesn’t roll away anywhere. He’s a reliable friend. Ever since I started believing that Wilson wouldn’t betray me, pushing him became much easier. I suppose you could say I finally got the hang of it.
“Phew, you should get some rest too.”
I propped Wilson against a boundary pole and took a well-deserved, sweet rest. My arms, legs, and waist—there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t ache, but the sense of accomplishment from having achieved something made me feel incredibly proud.
“It feels like I’m only just getting started, though.”
I turn my head to look up the mountain. The first floor was a dirt path with relatively good friction, so I could plant my feet and exert force, and Wilson felt stable. The second floor I just entered is covered in gravel and sand. It looks like it’ll take even more effort to roll or support Wilson. Above all, the number of obstacles has increased. Fallen trees and jagged rocks are scattered all over the slope, blocking my path.
“It’s okay. It’s not that different. I can definitely make it. Right, Wilson?” : )
“Hey, even if you are my friend, if you say it like that, it sounds like I don’t have any other friends. I was quite the popular guy back home, you know.”
Ever since I became a lord, I haven’t been able to go to public baths with friends or run around the marketplace. Come to think of it, that was quite a long time ago.
“Don’t be jealous, Wilson. I had a childhood friend I was even closer to than you. We were always stuck together.”
Wilson seems curious, so maybe I should tell him. I have to rest until my body recovers to challenge the next floor anyway.
“Her name is Clea. I’ve known her since I was five. Oh, you didn’t know she was a girl? Well, I thought she was a boy when I was very young, too. That’s why we became friends so quickly. Now…”
I smiled bitterly.
“Now, she’s a fiancée I don’t even share a single word with.”
“Sisyphus, I heard you got dumped by Glauke? I knew that would happen.”
I was about eleven. She found me while I was gloomily tending to the cows and gave me a wide, beaming smile.
“Dumped? Who got dumped? I just asked her to go to the temple with me, and she refused, that’s all.”
“How did she refuse? Did she run away crying?”
“I didn’t cry. …I did run, though.”
She seemed so satisfied with my answer that she clutched her stomach and laughed out loud. Her hair was a blonde so pale it was almost white, lacking the vibrancy of her personality. Her translucent blue eyes, as if dyed from that hair, were the exact opposite of my pitch-black ones. The girl, wearing a pure white dress that fluttered to prove her nobility, was named Anticlea. I called her Clea.
“You should have known your place. Glauke is the prettiest girl in your city. She probably already has five suitors.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. It’s not like I had other thoughts; my father said he needed help, and Glauke just happened to be nearby…”
“My brother stole my bread this morning. I’m sad, comfort me quickly.”
“Is my story already over?”
“We’re childhood friends, hurry up.”
Clea wrapped her arms around my back and rubbed her neck against me. Clea always used the excuse of being in a bad mood to act spoiled with me like that. She should have done that with her own family. Although we had known each other since we were young, Clea would hop across the river every single day as soon as the sun rose to play at our estate. That’s right. Clea was from a neighboring estate. She was the daughter of the cattle thief Autolycus and the granddaughter of Hermes. When I was young, I didn’t know about the relationship between my father and Autolycus. I just thought of her as a neighbor my age whom I could see often, so I hung out with her frequently. Even after I became aware of family affairs, I didn’t want to break my relationship with Clea, so I never turned her away.
“Sisyphus, you left two cows on the hill over there.”
“Really? Where. One, two, three…”
“You bunched them up in groups of four. There are twelve groups in total, so that’s forty-eight cows?”
“…You’re right, two are missing. You’re quick at math.”
“Hehe, dummy. If I did well, praise me.”
Clea never turned down praise. Whenever she did something well, she would push her head toward me and ask me to pat her. This was an era where mathematics was the exclusive property of intellectuals. Being able to do multiplication was considered quite a genius, even by adult standards. Since I didn’t know how to do mental arithmetic back then, Clea was even faster than me. I learned many things from Clea, not just numbers. How to run fast, how to find the north by looking at the night sky. We were always together.
“Run! Faster! If you’re late, you’ll miss it!”
“No, slow down a bit…”
“Dummy Sisyphus. If you’re that weak, how are you going to get married later?”
I wasn’t the type to have good stamina since I was young. I wasn’t big, either. It goes without saying that I was always lagging behind Clea in running.
“Look, it’s falling!”
The night we snuck out of the house and ran up the hill for a long time.
“It’s the Pleiades meteor shower. They say seven goddesses drop stars from above the clouds every ten years.”
The sight of the sky pouring down that we watched together was, well, quite impressive in its own way. She bowed her waist and picked something up from the ground, handing it to me. It was a strange stone that sparkled even at night.
“What is this?”
“It’s a piece of a meteor. I just found it, isn’t it amazing? If you want it, I can lend it to you.”
“…Hey, you’re lying. It didn’t fall over here.”
“I’m serious. Don’t you want it?”
Blinded by the strangely sparkling stone, I overlapped my hands with hers, and—whoosh. Before I knew it, she was hugging me tightly.
“What are you doing?”
“We used to do this often when we were little. We even went to the public bath together.”
“That was when we were kids.”
“Dummy Sisyphus.”
Clea said, without a hint of laughter in that moment.
“I’m going to be a hero.”
A hero. Those who wield mana as demigods, subjugate magical beasts, and complete the tasks of the gods. Clea had told me since she was young that she wanted to live the life of a hero, not a human. I found out later, but she inherited the blood of Hermes on her father’s side and Aphrodite on her mother’s side. She was fully qualified.
“I’ll become a cool hero and run across the Plataean plains. This meteor… give it back to me when that time comes.”
Making promises as she pleased, Clea wiggled her small fingers in my hand.
“But… there’s no rule that dreams must come true.”
Under the falling meteor shower, Clea said something funny to me.
“If both of us are stuck here until we’re thirty without a partner, shall we just get married?”
Well, Clea immediately added that it was a joke and that we should both try our best. But the conversation we had back then lost all meaning. Our relationship fell apart a few years later. It was because of the incident where her father, Autolycus, stole cows. Autolycus, caught in the act by me, promised at the temple of Hermes to pay double the value of the stolen cows, but his financial means were insufficient. So, the thing he sent along with the gold coins as interest was his daughter, Clea. He even attached her under the guise of being my wife. In ordinary human families, they sometimes pay a dowry to receive a wife from a hero’s family that carries the blood of the gods. He valued Clea at the price of that dowry. In other words, it was human trafficking.
Since it was a vow made before the gods, it couldn’t be canceled. I was suddenly placed in a position where I had to have a marriage of convenience with Clea. And Clea lost the life of a hero she had wanted so much. The expression on Clea’s face as she arrived at my house in a cart, dressed in her finery, was devastating.
“…Is this what you wanted?”
Naturally, I didn’t want it either, so I never held a wedding ceremony with Clea. In the first place, Hermes and a magical beast descended shortly after, so there was no time for that. Since Autolycus’s estate went bankrupt and he left shortly after, Clea was left at my house with the status of my fiancée. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other since then.
“Well, friends can drift apart due to things you never expected. You know what I mean, Wilson?” : |
Is it my imagination, or does Wilson’s expression look a bit sour? It must be my mood.
“Come to think of it, I left without saying a word to her when I was dragged here.”
I wonder if she’s not worried at all. She must have been hating me ever since that day. Since Autolycus sold Clea to me with a vow made to the gods, her fate is as good as being my wife. It’s a kind of unbreakable contract. The gods are always like that. They play with human fate as they please.
“Alright, shall we get going?”
My muscles have finally recovered, so I decided to try pushing Wilson up again. If I had known it would come to this, I would have built up my stamina more, just as Clea had said.
The second floor looks three times as long as the first. Countless stars are floating in the night sky. “Let’s go.” I started to put strength into the arms supporting Wilson.
[Strength has increased by 1.]
[Stamina has increased by 1.]
A quiet night where only the sound of the desolate wind can be heard.
The moonless sky is instead embroidered with countless stars, pointing the way to go.
Yet, still not knowing the path ahead,
The woman with platinum blonde hair stood alone on the hill.
“…Where did you go?”
The meteor shower we watched together that day showed no signs of falling.
“…Sisyphus, you idiot.”
Only the hair of Clea, now a grown woman, fluttered endlessly in the wind.