What Are You Doing, Sis? (12)
What Are You Doing, Sis? (12)
The girl was dressed in anachronistic clothing.
She was wearing the same white dress shirt I was, but instead of a brooch she had a black necktie.
In place of a mage's robe she wore a black trench coat. Between the hem that reached her feet I caught a glimpse of matching slacks.
The outfit was thoroughly modern. You could drop her in the middle of a subway station and she wouldn't look out of place.
Maybe it was the wavy black hair that matched mine, but her whole atmosphere was identical. Unlike the time with Akasha, this really did feel like a doppelganger standing right in front of me.
[This is your grave.]
"Grave...?"
[It is also my grave. This is the place where your soul rests, and the place where it will rest.]
The words were cryptic. I frowned and asked.
"...Who are you?"
[Who else? You.]
The jet-black girl waved her arms like an orchestra conductor and continued the Flame Speech.
[Of course, you and I were once different people. We inhabited different worlds, had different genders, our species were—well, never mind. Call them different. In summary, every initial condition was distinct: eye color, lived environment, everything. By all rights, we were two strangers who could never have been entangled.]
It was an explanation so elaborate it was genuinely hard to follow.
Yet something felt off. A sense of déjà vu and a sense of dissonance settled over me at the same time.
[And yet the personalities that formed were practically identical. Same temperament, same behavioral patterns, same perspective on the world—we even liked and disliked the exact same things. Down to what we placed our trust in and what made us feel betrayed.]
I'd once heard from Vermel that the original owner of this body and I had similar personalities.
But that didn't make the girl's words any easier to follow. What on earth was she talking about?
[Now that two bodies that could not have been more different have been gathered into one, it's fair to say that I am you, and you are I.]
"That's sophistry."
[For now, it will be.]
My head was starting to hurt. A migraine was slowly climbing up from my temples.
The girl rose from the throne and snapped her fingers. The illumination brightened, softly lighting a radius of about ten meters. Under the pool of light, which spread as broad as a rice cake, a table and four chairs had appeared without a sound.
[I already know you looked into the Mirror of the Inner Self. I was sitting right here watching.]
I couldn't find my voice.
[Well, take a seat anywhere.]
Stay calm. This was a mental world. No one dies in real life from getting stabbed in a dream. Right? Wait—was that true?
Instead, my mental strength stat was depleting in real time. Just standing in front of the girl made my head throb.
The pain wasn't meaningless, though. Information trickled into my mind, very slowly, like dye spreading through water. Most of it consisted of memories that were sad or maddening, but an extremely small fraction were happy experiences.
[Ah, my apologies. I seem to be feeding you useless memories.]
-Snap
A single click of her fingers and the headache vanished. At the same time, the wave of information that had been seeping in went still.
[I've been through it myself, so I understand. Other people are impossible to trust. Even so, I decided to ignore my disillusionment and give everyone one more chance. I didn't shine the Lantern of the Dead on myself for nothing.]
"...You're saying you used yourself as the test subject."
[Exactly. Mercy must be distributed impartially. The self is no exception.]
The fragments of memory that had clawed through my head were so filthy and repulsive I couldn't bring myself to put them into words.
Over more than a thousand years, this girl had been backstabbed and betrayed over a hundred times. Naturally, my own experiences couldn't begin to compare. Under those circumstances, no one could blame her for suffering from total distrust of humanity....
And yet now, at the very end, she was trying one last test.
[I have been betrayed by those I trusted nine hundred and ninety-nine times. If someone shatters my trust again—which is to say, your trust—this time, then the experiment ends. There would be no further value in the trial.]
Aether took off her coat and settled into a chair.
[...On reflection, now isn't the time for this. It's been so long since I've spoken with anyone that I ended up pouring out old grievances. Let's set this topic aside for now.]
"No, it's fine."
[What, are you sympathizing with me?]
"You came all this way on your own. The least I can do is play along a little."
[I like that kind of honesty.]
The girl's expressionless face relaxed slightly. That meant she was satisfied in her own way. I knew because I'd worn that exact expression myself.
My understanding of "me" was roughly complete. Aether was not a malevolent being. She was just the type who became uncontrollable when angry.
[You catch on fast. Actually, I don't have any particular agenda here. If you have business, speak. If not, that's fine too.]
This was the crucial moment. I had to talk "me" around and steer this world toward a happy ending. If Aether was declaring neutrality, then wouldn't it be better to have her side with humans rather than with the demons? The reason was simple: I had originally been human.
I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.
"Then grant me one request."
[A request? Hah. I think I know what you want before you even say it.]
"Then this conversation will be over quickly."
[No need to hurry. Time passes very slowly in here.]
"There's creamy pasta on the lunch menu today. I need to go before the meal tickets sell out."
[...Tch.]
There. I'd seized control of the conversation.
One more thing. I now understood that the girl in front of me even shared the minor quirk of liking noodle dishes—exactly like me. It was too early to admit it, but this was evidence that our mental states were essentially identical.
No, judging by everything she'd said and done so far, she might even be the exact same being. Was the only difference between us our "save files"?
If I asked Aether for her help here, I would probably recover all my memories. But if that happened, there would be no way to know what had become of the existing me.
So I pushed that option back as far as possible. Instead, I told her my original objective.
"I want to receive your knowledge. Excluding your private memories."
[You are utterly mad for research.]
"You're exactly the same. You wouldn't show the slightest interest even if I laid out my entire life story."
[You do know me. I also prefer magic research to old stories.]
The moment she answered with a nuance of "acquiring immediate knowledge matters more than petty past history," it became clear that Aether had already turned her back on the Demon King's army.
"You saw it in my head, so you know, right? Rosemary banned the use of the Flare Scroll. I need to miniaturize it and supply it to the chairman, but like this, I can't make any progress on the research. Is there some other way?"
The silence didn't last long. Aether gave an answer that casually twisted common sense.
[Then just use something other than the Flare.]
What kind of thinking was that?
"Without the Flare, I can't do laser fusion, I can't do anything. It's essential. I can't manage without it."
[Fusion, hmm. So that's what you call it in your world.]
The corner of Aether's mouth curled up. It looked like derision.
Or was it? Was she pleased? She was me, but reading her expression was genuinely difficult.
[At least on the Arens Continent, 'Black Day' is a Unique Magic Art possessed by me alone—even the Demon King cannot handle it. The Flare is not strictly essential to its completion.]
"Really? Then let's get a little help from you."
[Trying to gobble up knowledge and run—it feels a bit like a petty thief.]
"You want compensation?"
[Compensation, compensation....]
Aether fell into thought for a moment. She chewed on her lip like someone mulling over a taste and furrowed her brow.
[I don't need anything else. I'll give you the knowledge for free. For now, I'll also leave you in control of the body.]
"Oh."
[However, if we reach a life-or-death crisis and every last person tries to betray the faith they placed in you—when that time comes, I will personally purify this defiled world that is stained with betrayal.]
"Ah."
A troublesome penalty had attached itself.
It meant that if anyone backstabbed me just once and made her snap, the world would be destroyed on the spot.
[You don't need to worry too much. Not every human will do that. I believe in people.]
"Saying that when you're a demon."
[...Watch your mouth. I am not a demon.]
-Snap!
At those last words, which carried a note of real displeasure, Aether snapped her fingers. Her face receded into the pitch-black darkness alongside the light.
There in the settling dark, I was wracked by a horrific scream and then flung straight out of the mirror.
"......Ugh."
My entire body ached as if I'd caught a bad cold.
How much time had passed? I checked my watch. At least five to ten minutes had gone by.
The hell? She'd said time passed very slowly.
[Did you have a good trip?]
"Aack!"
At the voice from right behind me I jumped like a startled frog.
[What's wrong? Why are you so terrified all of a sudden?]
"...Took ten years off my life. You startled me, talking out of nowhere."
[Ah.... Wait, judging by the way you talk, it's the usual you, Master. I take it you didn't recall any memories?]
Memories? If we were talking about memories, I'd brought back a whole bundle. They were all research-related knowledge, though.
My head felt as packed as a rush-hour subway car. It seemed I could now proceed with my research without a single roadblock.
One look in a mirror and the effect was this dramatic. I involuntarily let out a sigh of admiration as I rushed out of the museum.
"Well, I guess pasta can wait."
I was still going to the cafeteria. But before that, I had to drop off the bundle of magic stones and stop by the dormitory.
I set the magic stone bundle down in the club room, then dashed for the dorm. With fleet-footed strides that wouldn't have looked out of place on a kangaroo, I bounded up the stairs several steps at a time. I opened my room door and walked up to my desk. The desk drawer had five locks attached.
I undid the locks one by one. As the metallic clacks rang out in succession, my heart hammered as if I'd been injected with steroids.
[That's....]
They say the darkest place is under the candlestick.
How had I forgotten about this?
[Scroll Classification : ]
[Legendary-Grade Unique Magic Art — White Night (Incomplete)]
I stuffed the White Night scroll, which I'd preserved under an iron plate so it couldn't be appraised with Scope Magic, into a large specialized backpack. From now on, this bag would accompany me as an objective correlative of my emotional investment. I also declared that this bag and I were one and the same.
"I'm going to kill them all."
I tossed out a line of nonsense for Blueberry, who might very well be monitoring me.
Good. Now it was time to go eat.