Chapter 97. Short-Lived Races and Long-Lived Races (1)
Chapter 97. Short-Lived Races and Long-Lived Races (1)
When did it begin?
The moment I became aware that I existed, the moment I first felt truly alive in this world.
It certainly wasn't when I was newly born.
No matter how hard I try, I can't recall who gave birth to me, or where. Not a single memory remains.
I imagine it's the same for most people.
Just as it was for me, if someone asks you to remember the moment your life began, only a hazy impression surfaces from some point long after its actual start.
What was that moment, then...? Yes. Back then, I was huddled beneath a tree that stood atop a hill.
Watching the leaves quiver in the chilly breeze, breathing in the scent of grass they carried...
I used to feel droplets of moisture threading through the air between them, and whenever I drank in that sensation, a shiver would ripple through my body.
The feeling of those tiny, invisible droplets settling onto my skin...
Looking back, I know now that it was something called humidity, but without that knowledge at the time, I could only feel it with my body and come to understand it, one small realization at a time.
I would observe everything my eyes fell upon, ponder what each thing might be, and define it in my own way...
Seeing, reflecting, and repeating that process over and over, I gradually came to understand the laws that governed the world I lived in.
The world, I realized, was composed of things I could perceive, and things I could not.
Yet if I looked deeply enough, even the imperceptible would reveal its presence. And at some point, even when I could no longer feel it, I grew certain it was still there, roughly where it should be.
Ever since I learned that this was called 'familiarity,' I felt the time it took to understand my surroundings dwindle sharply.
Even if I encountered something for the first time, if it sparked a sense of familiarity, I need only fill in the unknown parts. That was all.
If I repeated that process enough times, would I eventually come to understand everything about the place I lived?
"What are you doing out there? It's dangerous!"
Whenever I was absorbed in such thoughts, sitting on the hill and gazing at the world, a voice would call up to me from below.
A figure completely enshrouded in a black cloak...
A being who looked nothing like the countless insects and beasts that roamed this forest.
"What if you run into a wild beast alone out here? I told you to stay quietly at home, didn't I!?"
He always got angry whenever I strayed from the place I was meant to be.
Like a predator baring its fangs just before it pounces. But that was only how it looked on the surface; I could tell that beneath that anger, there was a subtle tremor, flickering through his emotions.
"Why are you just sitting there? Say something... Wait, are you hurt?"
When I fixed my gaze on that tremor, the anger I sensed from him would eventually fade, and the emotion causing the tremor would grow clearer.
Now, when I look back on it, I know that emotion was worry. But at the time, I had no idea what it meant.
And not knowing, I simply stared at him in curiosity.
"...Ah."
Drawing from the knowledge I had gathered by observing my surroundings.
"Mom?"
I placed that word—the term that seemed to fit—onto my lips.
"......Mom?"
But had I been mistaken?
He furrowed his brow at the title I had used and answered me in a sharp voice.
"Were you calling me that?"
It was an expression he wore whenever he was displeased.
He usually reacted that way when I stared at my bowl instead of eating, or when I grew too talkative while exploring the house.
"Should I... not call you Mom?"
"Are you asking because you truly don't know?"
"I don't know."
I asked again because I genuinely didn't know.
There was so much I didn't know back then.
"You're not Mom?"
Because I knew nothing.
I had simply plucked a suitable word from those I'd picked up while traveling with him and put it forward.
"...No."
"Then, what should I call you?"
"What?"
The man echoed the question back at me, as if he didn't understand.
Even thinking about it now, I still don't fully grasp why he returned that answer.
Perhaps he hadn't expected me to say something like that.
Or maybe he simply hated the idea of being called by a clearly defined name.
"Tree."
But whatever the reason, if I didn't understand, I only had to make myself clear.
Having learned that much at his side, I promptly pointed at the thing I was leaning against and spoke.
"......What about the tree?"
"Last time I asked what this was, that's what you called it."
"I did."
"And that's a flower, that's a bush, a leaf...."
One by one.
I carefully cataloged every encounter we had shared and recited the words he had given each thing.
With each repetition, I felt it more keenly.
A name you can call out is the surest way to evoke 'familiarity'—it condenses everything you've ever felt and thought on your own, making observation that much easier.
"It's convenient when you give names to the things you see."
When I spoke that conclusion aloud, he lifted a finger to the space between his furrowed brows, wearing a bewildered expression.
"Right, it's remarkable that you figured that out on your own... But why did you call me Mom?"
"Last time, when we saw a bear caring for its cub, you said it. You called it a mama bear."
"So?"
"But you're not a bear. So, you're just Mom."
"......."
"...Not Mom?"
"Don't call me Mom."
So, the one who takes care of you wasn't 'Mom.'
I see. Then, unlike that bear cub, I didn't have a Mom.
"Then what should I call you?"
But that was just something else I hadn't learned yet.
Even back then, I understood that not everything in the world was the same, and that a subtle difference could completely change the name you used for something.
So perhaps there was a different word, one meant specifically for calling him.
Since we were going to be together, I needed to know it. I stared at him and asked. He fell silent for a moment, as if pondering, then let out a sigh and answered.
"...Call me Hay."
Good. I finally had a word to call him by.
"Okay, Heira."
The dazed expression he wore when I spoke that name aloud is still vivid in my memory.
"......What?"
"You said to call you 'Heira.' So, Heira."
"I said call me 'Hay.' Not Heira."
It was the most trivial of misunderstandings.
But it was that very trivial misunderstanding that became the catalyst, the starting point of the first memory I can summon so clearly.
"It's different?"
"Yes, it's different. First of all, a name and a form of address are completely different categories which... Damn it, you've gotten me all tangled up again."
A familiar reaction.
Whenever he taught me something, he always got annoyed like that.
But he taught me everything I needed to know, so I kept on asking him afterward.
"...Well, while we're at it, it might be a good idea for you to have a name to be called by, too."
Yet of all the memories I have of him teaching me, the reason that day remains especially vivid is that what he did didn't stop at a simple lesson.
"Let's go home, Heira."
Heira.
A name born from a small slip of the tongue, one I would be called for the rest of my life.
"......."
"Heira. I was calling you."
"...Me, Heira?"
At the time, I couldn't quite feel the reality of it, so I asked him again.
Just like the countless 'trees' scattered throughout this forest, or the 'grasses' and 'flowers' hidden beneath them...
Had I, too, been given a name that could define me?
"Yes. From now on, your name is Heira."
Hay, who emphasized it once more as if to drive the point home, treated that moment of revelation as nothing special and turned his back to me.
"When I call you Heira, you answer, and you come right to my side."
"That's what I have to do?"
"Yes, that's what you have to do. If you understand, follow me right now. We need to dress today's catch quickly."
With those words, Hay took the lead and began walking through the forest.
His steps continued for a while before stopping abruptly. He turned to look back at me again.
"Heira! Are you going to stay there forever!?"
Heira.
The moment I heard that name, I immediately rose from my spot and began to follow after him.
Because he told me to.
"Yes, I'm coming, Hay."
I obeyed his command entirely, and repeated it to myself.
Heira.
This is my name. Even when this moment fades away, it will someday serve as the catalyst that brings this memory back.
That when he calls my name, I run to his side...
A practice now only meant for reminiscing upon a time that can no longer be.
***
Yes, Hay was a person I could never forget for the rest of my life.
Even now, as I look back on that moment, I still don't know the full details of who he was.
I don't even know how long I had been with him.
I only came to understand that at some point, he had taken me in and raised me, and that if I stayed by his side, there was so much I could learn.
And I believed that time would continue on forever.
Because ever since I became aware of my own existence, he had been with me. Time flowed, but as long as we kept living, I believed I could stay with him.
Just as he'd taught me, I learned that everything in the world had a name. I learned how to hold a bow. I learned the habits of beasts and how to hunt my prey...
And even things I wouldn't put to immediate use, like how to handle money or how to read maps of the lands beyond the forest—I learned all of it.
"Hay."
As time went on, I began to feel an increasing urgency in his actions. But back then, I didn't understand what it meant. I could only absorb whatever he set before me.
Because I thought those days would last forever...
"What is it? Why do you call?"
"Can I call you Dad?"
It was an unusually cold day.
The kind of chill you could feel even with a campfire burning inside the cabin we stayed in.
This isn't really related, but the firewood I had kindled that day was gathered by me, not Hay.
Because at some point, even moving his body had become a struggle for Hay.
"Dad? Are you talking about me?"
"......Yes. Hay took care of me, and you said... the opposite of Mom is Dad."
When had he ended up like this?
I turned my mind back, but no clear day surfaced.
Even though I remember every moment we shared...
There was no memory of him ever breaking a bone tumbling down a mountain, or ever being visibly injured by a wild beast.
"Did I... say something like that?"
"Yes. Forty-five years ago."
It was only natural.
Because he had been slowly crumbling all the while he cared for me.
It was just that the process was so achingly slow that I noticed the changes in his body far too late.
"Back then, you said it just like that."
But even without noticing, you come to realize it eventually.
That the face I first recognized as his and the face before me now were far too different.
"...A lesson from forty-five years ago, and you've chosen only now to address me by it?"
"Yes."
But now that I had realized it, what would change?
Time only flows forward and can never be turned back.
"So... should I not call you that?"
Which is why I had to call him it before it was too late.
I thought that the one who raised me—though he could never be my Mom—might be someone like the Dad who had partnered with her.
"If you want to call me that, then do."
Accepting my request, he let his wrinkled, withered hand droop down beneath the bed.
A hand that no longer had the strength to even rest upon his own body.
"Dad."
I clasped that hand in both of mine and asked him.
"Does it hurt a lot?"
Once, once I had recognized the sense of wrongness in his body, I had asked him about it.
Why he had ended up in such a state without any visible injury.
"That's what aging is."
Hay...
The one I had come to think of as my father answered me quietly.
He said that when you reach his age, your body begins to ache all over, your skin wrinkles, and your hair turns pure white.
"......Aging?"
"Heh. It must be a concept that doesn't quite resonate with you. No matter how long you live, if you've never learned it, it can't be helped."
My father, who did not stop his words to me even as he gasped for breath with great effort.
That breathing seemed more precarious than the ragged, whistling breaths of an animal with an arrow lodged in its side.
But those beasts at least had the will to live.
The emotion present in the being before me was what I would call resignation—the look one wears when they are ready to let everything go.
"......Heira."
And what stood out more than that was an emotion called lingering attachment.
I might not have known much else, but that emotion, I understood all too well.
Whenever I would stare vacantly at something, my curiosity wholly unresolved, he would often tell me, 'Let it go, don't leave any lingering attachments behind.'
I knew all too well that lingering attachment was an obsession with what is left behind. And so, I could also understand why he wore that expression.
"My daughter... Come here."
It was soon.
Just like all the beasts we had hunted while living together, the time for him to fade from this world had come.
"There is something I must confess to you."
With that moment at his door, he kept me close and told me a story he had hidden all along.
"In my past, I was a slave hunter—someone who stalked and captured the different races."
The secret of my birth, which he had kept hidden for half a century.
"......A slave?"
"Yes, I...."
A thing I had never once concerned myself with.
"In truth, I am not a person who deserves to be called your father. Raising you was, in the end, nothing more than an act of atonement."
About who I had been, in memories that still refuse to surface even now.
And how it was that I had come to be taken into his hands.