Recollection (2)
“I have a great many questions I want to ask.”
“I imagine you do. Even I never expected things would unfold the way they did back then.”
“...Why did it have to be me?”
“...”
Seo-hyun fell silent.
She already understood perfectly well what Yeona was asking—and exactly what burden she herself had forced onto the other woman’s shoulders.
Even if her own memories were incomplete now.
“...I was only a soldier who happened to be a little better than average.”
“You were the last remaining general-grade officer left in Korea.”
“Even that rank was forced on me after my superior died. And besides, I...”
“I understand.”
"...!"
Seo-hyun set the pocket watch she had been holding onto the table.
“Before anything else, let me ask one thing. Did you use Deus Ex Machina on Maxwell?”
“...Yes.”
“Then this place must be the interior of the consciousness engraved inside Maxwell.”
“How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That this isn’t reality.”
“Is that what you’re curious about?”
“Ordinary beings can’t usually tell when they’re trapped inside an illusion. Especially not one this sophisticated...”
“I didn’t realize it at first either. Everything looked exactly like reality—how is a human supposed to notice something like that? Hell, even a god might not catch it.”
“Then how—”
“Your excuses are too clumsy. And the way you act as if you aren’t afraid of death. That’s rare in this world. Everyone who truly wasn’t afraid of dying is already dead. You know that better than anyone, don’t you? After spending years in a world that had already fallen.”
“...”
“There aren’t many who survive this long and still don’t fear death. The First Emperor, cursed with immortality so that dying is impossible for him. The Demon God and the Goddess, whose concept of death is nothing like ours. And a regressor who can turn back time the moment death draws near.”
“Whatever the answer is, none of those are traits a regular military officer should have. And of all of them, the only one that could reasonably belong to you is this.”
Seo-hyun stretched a fingertip toward the pocket watch resting on the table.
“Maxwell.”
In that instant Seo-hyun closed both eyes and opened them again.
The direction the watch’s hour hand had been pointing had changed in the blink of an eye.
“This one’s a fake too.”
She flicked her fingers, and the false pocket watch shattered into hundreds of butterflies that scattered in every direction.
“Your powers of observation are impressive.”
“Are they? I wonder if the old me would have noticed. Logically speaking I should have, of course... yet somehow I get the feeling it wouldn’t have been that easy.”
Having said that much, Seo-hyun blinked once more.
The pocket watch that had become a swarm of butterflies returned to its original form and lay quietly on the desk again.
“If that answers it, shall we move on to the next question?”
“...Very well.”
“You asked why I chose you, didn’t you? That one’s not so hard to answer.”
“Was there... some reason?”
How much suffering had this pocket watch already put her through?
She had been forced to understand a future that no longer even existed, to empathize against her will with other people’s agony, until her mind felt ready to collapse.
If only I didn’t have a unique ability like this...
Perfect Memory.
The unique ability she had possessed since the moment of her birth.
Utterly useless in combat—something that merely kept her from forgetting.
“The greatest power a regressor holds is information about the future.”
“Is that all?”
“...”
“Simply because I remember a little better than most people, you thought I would be able to make the fullest use of future information?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know the answer to that myself.”
“What?”
“Judging by your reaction, my future self must have handed Maxwell over to you. But the me of this moment never intended to give it to you. To put it precisely, you were only one of many ‘candidates.’”
“Candidates...”
“As for what grounds my future self used to decide you should be the one to regress—I can’t answer that right now. After all, I was planning to regress myself. There must have been some unavoidable circumstance.”
Seo-hyun rose from her seat and opened the bunker door.
Sand and dust from the ruined city drifted in through the gap.
In that same moment Yeona checked the clock hanging on one wall of the bunker.
It pointed exactly to 12:03.
It can’t be...
Yeona hurriedly caught hold of Seo-hyun, who was about to step outside.
“What’s wrong? Do you still have more questions?”
“W-wait a moment!”
12:03 p.m. The memory inside the bunker.
The vast library inside her mind pulled out the recollection of what had happened at 12:03 that day.
That day she had gone outside the bunker saying she would find a way, and then all contact had been lost.
When evening came and Seo-hyun still had not returned, Yeona went out to search for her.
If only the communication network were still functioning properly, contacting her would have been easy...
Regretting what no longer existed changed nothing.
Swallowing the anxiety that kept surging up, she walked through the ruins of Seoul, yet nowhere was there any trace of Seo-hyun.
After three hours of walking she suddenly found herself standing before the old headquarters of Leviathan rising in the middle of Seoul.
Would she be here?
No matter how skilled Seo-hyun was with firearms, her body was far from normal.
Darwin, who had been forcibly holding together Seo-hyun’s collapsing body, had already gone mad; the fact that she had lasted this long was a miracle in itself.
If she had not trained the power of the bloodstone to its absolute limit, she would already have left this world.
Yeona stepped carefully into the building...
“Stop! Stop! That’s enough! I already know more than enough!”
“...Yeona?”
“I-I’m sorry. Hah... hah... I-I just...”
Seo-hyun pulled the suffering Yeona into her arms.
Through the grime on her skin Yeona felt the warmth of living body heat, and her heart began to settle.
Even if this was nothing more than an illusion Maxwell had created, in this single moment it felt as though she were truly here.
“It’s all right. It’s all right...”
“I-I was wrong... so please, don’t leave...”
“...”
“I’ll regress. I’ll save the world too... so please don’t die...”
“...I’m not going to die.”
“Liar...”
“...”
“That’s a lie... If you go there you’ll die... I know it perfectly well...! I saw it with my own eyes...!”
“...It’s something that has to be done.”
“It isn’t your fault! You didn’t kill them...! You were only being controlled back then...! Why are you going this far?! You weren’t even from our world to begin with! Just go back to the world you came from! Whether this world falls or not is none of your business—just get out of here!”
Hic—!
Yeona clapped both hands over her own mouth.
What had she just said?
“I-I’m sorry. That was a slip of the tongue. I-I must have gone a little mad for a moment...”
“No. It’s fine. I’ve wondered about it a great deal myself—exactly what I’m fighting for, going this far.”
At first it had been for survival.
Next it had been to protect the people she held dear.
And later she had found herself fighting to protect a world that had never even been connected to her.
“I guess... this is just the kind of person I am. Saving the world, or standing against some invincible absolute evil... I seem to like that sort of thing...”
“...”
“Pretty childish, right? Absolute good and absolute evil don’t even exist. The Goddess everyone believed was absolute good turned out to be a totalitarian, and the Demon God everyone condemned as absolute evil is, of all things, a liberal.”
What a strange world.
A world overflowing with questions about what to believe and what to do.
And the only thing she could do there was to keep this fragile world standing a little longer.
“...I won’t let you go.”
“Yeona.”
“I won’t send you. Even if you force your way past me here it won’t matter. Once I return to the past I’ll stop you by any means necessary.”
Even if those means were a little extreme, she did not care.
Even if the world fell to the Demon God, she did not care.
The only thing that mattered to her was the simple fact that Seo-hyun was still alive.
“I’m fairly strong. No matter who you are, as long as Maxwell is with me you won’t be able to stop me.”
“...”
“When you saved me I swore I would protect you even if it cost me this life. And look at what it’s become. The person I meant to save is already dead, and all that’s left is her past—nothing more. My mind is falling apart piece by piece. I can barely hold on, and all you do is make me suffer.”
“Yeona...”
“I won’t let you do anything more. Trying to persuade me is useless. My resolve is already firm. Once I go back to the past, if I just keep you from getting into the Academy—”
“I’m sorry, but it’s already too late.”
Seo-hyun lifted the pocket watch that had been hanging at her waist.
It was only a half-broken thing whose core components had long since failed, yet it was more than enough to turn time back one hour—to before she had ever appeared in this world.
“Y-you can’t mean...”
“Forgive me. Just endure a little longer.”
“P-please...! I was wrong, so...!”
Even a Perfect Memory user could not remember a future that had never existed unless she herself had turned the world back.
Seo-hyun already knew that fact well enough.
“Please...”
“No...!”
Tick—
“I hope you’ll be happy.”
“Aaaaaaah—!”
Snap—!
Just before Yeona’s hand could reach the pocket watch, the second hand spun backward and rewound the world.