A Light in the Darkness
It was pitch black. And vast.
Those were the only words that came to mind.
A black pillar. The scenery inside it was brutally simple.
Dark. Darker. Nothing but darkness.
My breathing felt labored, as if I’d walked into a humid sauna wearing a mask. My body was like it had been submerged in a pit of sticky mud—simply twitching a finger brought on an absurd wave of exhaustion.
Suddenly, a faint sense of déjà vu washed over me.
And that was the exact moment when the hazy premonition inside me hardened into certainty, then twisted into uneasy doubt.
Just as I thought. This place…
“It looks a lot like the Audience Chamber….”
To compare a dungeon that was practically the root of all evil to the sanctuary where the Saintess rested— I was well aware that such blasphemy deserved divine punishment.
But there was no one here to hear it anyway. And if this really was the final moment of my life, I figured I could at least be honest with myself.
So today, I decided not to hold back my words.
“Hero… where are you…?”
A sinister space that allowed not even a single ray of light. A place so dark that I couldn’t even tell if I was standing or lying down. Was there anything more hopeless than searching for someone in a void like this?
I almost thought it would be easier to look for a needle in a desert. At least the desert had some light to see by.
“If only there was even a little light…”
The moment those words left my lips, the brilliant patterns engraved on my arm gathered together and drew power as if in perfect agreement.
That sacred stirring soon gave birth to light in a world without a sun.
“O-ohhh…”
The brightness was enough to put any ordinary flashlight to shame.
The instant I mentioned needing fire, it produced light. Did this pattern have some kind of voice recognition function?
I had no idea how it worked or what principles governed it, but at the very least, I could now be certain that this power was quite friendly toward me.
A tiny sprout of relief had just begun to bloom in my previously gloomy heart when—
“This is…!”
The light that had spread all the way to my feet resonated with something hidden in the dark floor.
It was just like those scenes in mystery novels where detectives use fluorescent sticks to reveal bloodstains. Luminol reaction, or something like that. Anyway, exactly like that.
When I directed the glowing light from my arm toward the floor, the traces of whoever had passed through here were revealed in full.
Footprints.
Pure white footprints that looked as if someone had dripped droplets of white paint one by one onto a pitch-black sketchbook.
The needle in the desert I’d been desperately searching for.
The signpost pointing to its location was guiding this lost soul forward, just like the breadcrumbs in the story of Hansel and Gretel.
“Wow… I owe you one, Saintess. I’ll pet you plenty later…!”
And so, with sincere gratitude toward the greatest contributor who was probably skipping breakfast right about now, I followed the pure white trail laid out before me.
It was a phrase so common you could pick up any bestseller at a nearby bookstore and find it.
Don’t chase the past. Don’t cling to the past. Don’t be bound by the past.
Look toward the future.
Every time I saw such a line, I couldn’t help but think: people who would frown all day just from stepping on dog poop while walking down the street sure liked to write those kinds of things.
My personal belief— no, the lesson I had learned through bitter experience—was that the past isn’t something you can simply turn away from just because you want to.
“It really was Uncle who came!”
The reason I stopped in my tracks was simple.
The familiar yet alien figures of a pair of siblings had suddenly appeared before me, binding me, clinging to me, and luring me in.
Hallucination. Mirage. Daydream.
None of those words could properly categorize the bizarre vision before me.
It was as if someone had taken grayscale characters straight out of a black-and-white film and forcibly inserted them into a vibrant color movie.
Just like that moment when the suspicious box that once called itself a god had shown me a video record of the priest from the light novel’s past.
Surrounded by gray noise, a young Hero and a young Victim were reenacting their own past, blocking my path.
“Sister! It was just like you said! Uncle really did come find us and heal us before he left!”
“N-no… That can’t be… It couldn’t have been…”
Unlike the young Victim, who was hopping up and down with uncontainable excitement as if Santa Claus had truly visited, the young Hero simply sat there like a puppet with its strings cut, blankly muttering hazy nonsense.
“What do you mean it couldn’t be?! Look at our bodies! We’re completely healed!”
“No…”
“Just like you said, Sister! It must be a reward for waiting nicely! Uncle came himself!”
“I said no…”
“I’m telling you it is! I’m sure Uncle also—”
“I SAID NO—!!!”
It was like a thunderbolt had struck.
Perhaps because it was the first time I had ever seen the sister’s face twisted with such murderous rage.
The young Victim quickly curled into himself, fearfully watching the Hero’s expression.
“S-sorry… Sister…”
“Haa… Haa…”
Just as the young Hero was slowly steadying her ragged breathing—whether from anger or grief—the dim light of dawn gradually filled the dark room. Victim’s eyes widened in horror as he noticed the red bloodstains smeared across various parts of his sister’s body.
“Sister… you’re… hurt…?”
“Hic!”
The Hero seemed to realize only then that her hands were covered in blood. Her body trembled violently as she frantically scrubbed at her clothes, trying to wipe it away.
“Ugh! Hng! Hng!”
“S-Sister… does it hurt a lot…?”
Her actual condition was perfectly fine—the blood wasn’t even hers. The curse and plague had been completely cured. But it made sense that Victim would react that way.
“No. It can’t be. That person couldn’t have been Uncle. It couldn’t have been Uncle. No. No, it couldn’t. Really, it wasn’t. It can’t be. It mustn’t be.”
She looked like someone dangling from the edge of a cliff.
Her desperate, ceaseless pleas—denying something she couldn’t even clearly name—were the very picture of a human writhing in agony.
And then it happened.
The vision before me flipped like a television changing channels.
As my momentarily bleached-white vision slowly recovered, like a camera flash fading, I saw the Hero—now in cleaner clothes—pressing a knife to the orphanage director’s throat, demanding something from him.
“Here! It’s here! I-I’ll give it to you! Just take it! Here it is! Right here! The documents with that bastard’s photo and name! Take it and go!”
With trembling hands, the Hero accepted the papers. She stared at the front of them for a long time.
“A… aaah… Aaaaaah…!”
Soon, her agitation became so intense that the paper crumpled in her grip. She raised the knife she had been holding to the director’s throat and thrust it toward the ceiling.
“Hiiik!”
“S-Sister!”
The orphanage director fainted on the spot from the shock of her terrifying movements, but her blade had never been aimed at him in the first place.
“Why?! Why did you do it?! Why?! Why?! Why?! Why?! Why?!”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
How many times did that gruesome sound echo—the sound of hard metal plunging into soft flesh?
The Hero’s self-mutilation, as she violently stabbed her own hand as if it were her worst enemy, did not stop for a long while despite Victim’s desperate pleas as he clung tightly to her waist.
“Sister! Hic… hic… S-stop! Please don’t!”
Tears and blood. Rage and sobs. The narrow room was filled to the brim with them.
Clatter.
The bloodstained paring knife fell to the floor in a pathetic heap.
A pitifully small number of teardrops fell from her eyes, nowhere near enough to wash away the blood.
“Hic… hic… What am I supposed to do… What do I do, Victim…”
Right after that, something pure white slipped from her pocket and fluttered down to the floor like a falling leaf.
It was a small, worn piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn to shreds and hastily glued back together.
Happy Birthday
Those crooked letters read:
Happy Birthday
It was the half-hearted note I had enclosed without much thought—simply as a way to kill time, part of a casual gesture—when she boldly demanded a birthday present.
Seeing her carefully pick up that meaningless scrap of paper as if it were a holy relic, making sure not to stain it with her blood, I couldn’t help but squeeze my eyes shut.
“Uncle… Uncle…”
Even though time was of the essence, I collapsed right there on the spot.
Because I had to keep telling myself, endlessly, ceaselessly:
This tragic scene unfolding before me couldn’t possibly be real. It couldn’t be the past. It couldn’t be reality.