A Plea for Salvation - 2
"You know, there was something I'd been wanting to say to you. I suppose now is the time to say it."
I shook my head at the voice drifting faintly into my ears.
A voice I had forgotten — yet never managed to forget. There had been a moment when I gathered that limp, strengthless body into my arms and did everything I could to mend a breath that kept breaking. My face, as my hands wandered over flesh already going cold, had been full of tears. And even as my chest heaved with ragged, surging breaths, there had been the moment I caught the hand reaching for my face and forced myself to smile.
...That moment had been mine.
"It's all right, it's all right. You can say it — just... please, live."
The thirty-fifth life — five more after thirty deaths had passed. Perhaps this was one of the few memories in which I remembered even the exact numbering of my cycles.
I had smiled through a face that wanted to sob. I pulled the corners of my mouth taut to hide the fact that I was crying, but the tears refused to be held back, and my face was already soaked through.
My body had been carved open and was spilling blood; my mind was so dim it seemed it would drift away at any moment. Even so, my gaze rested on one woman alone.
A woman who should never have died — the one woman who, among all my countless lives, must never have died. And she lay in my arms, pouring out blood. I could see the sword buried in her chest. I hadn't even managed to pull it free; I could only writhe in helpless agony — and she, watching me do it, smiled faintly.
I never did learn how such a situation had come to pass. I only thought that everything had gone awry. I had been certain it was all unfolding smoothly, succeeding, one piece clicking into the next — and yet the variable had erupted from a place I never thought to look.
No. That wasn't it. It wasn't that I hadn't known. I had known — the shock was simply so abrupt that my mind went white and blank. The one person I'd believed safer than anyone had been ambushed; how was anyone to hold onto composure in that moment? But to me, who had lived thirty lives, that was nothing but an excuse. I could have been calm. Had I lived even a little more earnestly in the lives before — had I resolved, even once, to try living for my own sake — I would have met that moment as it needed to be met.
"I should have said this back when we first met, but things kept going wrong, and I never could. So... ah."
"You don't have to say it. You can tell me later— just... you don't have to say anything at all. Focusing on your breathing is enough. That's all that matters."
"No. If I can't say it now, I know I'll regret it terribly."
Even as I felt her strength ebbing away, bit by bit, I did not let go of hope. I believed she could live — and so her death was not fate's decree, but the wages of my believing.
But hadn't fate already been twisted beyond mending? Even now, I don't know what I was hoping for.
I had been weak. The reason the twenty lives that followed were squandered to madness was, I suspect, that I had finally seen my own weakness for what it was.
I closed my eyes before the voice that lingered, still so vivid. What I had heard that day — the memory of first swearing to take up the sword. I dragged a hand down my haggard face and let the memory drain away with a sigh. I had thought I'd cast off every last attachment, and yet I seemed still to be living inside that memory.
"I... you, Robert..."
The final night of the thirty-fifth life — the only life in which Mirajene ever died — when the full moon hung swollen and cloudless, and the night itself was pale.
The certainty never came, even now. Even if I died a dozen times more and repeated my regressions — even if my mind warped once again and I let go of everything—
Could I ever forget this memory completely?
The moonlight piercing the thin curtain was cold. For a moment it tinged the dark room a pale blue, and I watched the light fade away again along with the shadows.
Why I had woken in the dead of night, I couldn't begin to say. The anxiety that had flared up unbidden was so abrupt that a few blinks were all it took for even the last of my drowsiness to scatter.
I didn't know why this memory had stirred back to life. If the cause was the news that Mirajene had gone to the Northwestern Region... then perhaps this unease was understandable enough.
The Northwest — hadn't I heard that several barbarian bands roamed there? I had told her to watch herself, and I trusted she would be careful without being told, but that changed nothing about the worry.
She could have just stayed quietly tucked away in the Imperial Palace. If she was going to be like this anyway, I should have held my tongue about the mine until after she'd been to the North and back. Left like this, it did nothing but gnaw at me. What I had just recalled was a memory from long ago.
An event burned so fiercely into me that it overturned, in an instant, the whole way I thought about my regressions: the death of Mirajene in the thirty-fifth life. And after that — hadn't I died at the hands of the Mirajene of the fifty-fifth?
And so, at last, the madness had ended. I had taken my own life over and over, and only when I seized the sword and climbed to the very summit — only by dying at Mirajene's hands did I win back a whole and sound mind.
That much was certain: it was a memory I did not want to revisit. I let out a small sigh and rubbed my eyes, forcibly scattering the recollection. I was a man who lived inside the past, but I knew well enough how to disperse feelings like these.
I rose from where I sat and took up my sword. In moments like these, it was better to do something. To empty my head completely and work the stagnation out of my chest however I could — that was the wiser course. Otherwise, I would go mad. And so I began walking into the pre-dawn dark. Until the sun rose, I would move without rest.
By the time I stopped, my whole body was drenched in sweat, and the runoff had soaked the earth around me through. I stared quietly at the ground dyed jet-black where the snow had melted. Around me, the snow had thawed entirely, ringing me in a perfect circle. At some point the risen sun had begun to glint off my sweat; I swept my hair back and lowered my sword.
I had been at it since before dawn — a good few hours, by rough count. My stamina was already driven to its limit; merely standing was precarious. But this was the only way to build it, so there was nothing to be done. Sustained use of mana was a crucial factor — if I didn't forge my endurance like this, there was a good chance it would crush me later.
My purpose, after all, was treason. And treason was a race against time; it was best to be ready to see everything through within twenty-four hours at the least. If I drew on mana now, I could probably move for an hour, perhaps. And that was counting only simple movement — a dismal state of affairs by any measure. That was only for now, of course. Give it a year or so, I thought, and the problem of stamina would resolve itself. The climates and terrain of the North and the South were brutal enough that, moving under the pretext of the barbarian subjugation, my endurance would grow naturally enough.
I sheathed the sword and was still gulping down breath when I felt a presence nearby. I turned toward the stare fixed blankly on me and found a massive frame.
"...Good morning."
"You always train like that?"
"Pardon?"
"Asked if you always train like that. So, uh — I'm not pressing you or anything. Just curious."
Perhaps his own gruffness had pricked at him; Bunta scratched his cheek and asked again, carefully this time. No one here had a mean bone in him — as I'd expected. Training, though. It was closer to a means of emptying my head than any training. If I didn't move my body like this and clear my mind, I would be buried beneath the memories that came flooding in, hard-pressed to keep my sanity.
I deliberated a moment, then nodded — yes, more or less. I would do well to keep moving like this from here on; the time I had to build up my lacking stamina was rather short. At that, Bunta stared at me, looking faintly taken aback. He had probably been turning his loss to me over and over in his head. That must be why he'd come all this way to find me.
"You're welcome to join me. We're fellow adjutants now, aren't we?"
"...Really? Figured a noble would mind the difference in station."
We already spoke casually to one another — station, of all things. The North was, in any case, a place far different from the Central region. Unless you had come from the Imperial family, you stood beneath the Grand Duke, did you not? Even the most formidable noble's title rang hollow here, so the fact that I was heir to a ducal house was of precious little use.
"I've already told the Grand Duke as much — here, I am simply Robert. What does station matter between two adjutants?"
"Now that's an answer I like."
"Well then, I'll be off. I ought to wash up soon. We have a subjugation to prepare for, don't we?"
Bunta broke into a grin, came over, and thumped my back soundly with his enormous hand — a habit of his whenever he took a liking to someone. "Kuhahaha!" he bellowed, and spoke on, his eyes brimming with goodwill; my words must have landed squarely in his heart.
"And here I took you for nothing but an ill-mannered young lord — turns out you're a more straightforward man than I gave you credit for. Good! So I'll be seeing you every morning, then?"
"I'll be out around dawn most days. I've never been one for sleeping much."
"Very good!"
I had worried, briefly, that he might harbor some other feeling about yesterday's affair, but it was as I'd expected. Bunta's reactions were always precisely what I predicted. They never changed, and I had been half at ease because of it; now, it seemed, I could set my mind fully at rest. With that, Bunta left me and vanished toward the training grounds, and only then, alone at last, could I go and wash.
I let the warm water run over my head and emptied myself of thought. Erasing thought was the single most important element of my composure — a habit I had picked up at some point during the endless regressions, perhaps, my body simply reacting on its own. Had I lived on with my thoughts tangled, the madness would surely have flared again before long.
Truthfully, the memories of that time were not so vivid. It was a period when I took my own life over and over; there was hardly any need to remember all of it. What remained with me was the single cycle in which I took up the sword. Thank goodness I did, I often thought. Had I stayed ignorant of the blade, I would never have found even the slenderest thread binding me to the North.
If I searched for the place where I could live most at ease, it would be the North. Bad memories were fewest here — sometimes I even forgot everything, and laughed freely.
I shook the water from my skin and pulled on a pair of trousers found at hand. Towel-drying my hair as I walked the corridor, I suddenly sensed someone ahead of me. I lifted my head — and there stood a woman, staring straight at me. Adele, her hair gathered into a single tie, unlike her usual style.
"...What is the meaning of this?"
"I just washed up. I was on my way to my room."
I answered with perfect composure, seeing no problem in it — but Adele's eyes were visibly wavering. I tilted my head, wondering what the trouble was, and then it dawned on me: I was wearing nothing above the waist. So that was what had her eyes wandering. Fortunately, I had never neglected conditioning my body, so there was no excess flesh to be found — but the scars scattered across it were another matter. Burn scars courtesy of Yuria, marks left by blades — hardly the body of a young lord. I draped the towel over myself in rough cover, and her wandering eyes at last found their place again.
"Ahem."
The tips of Adele's ears had gone faintly red. Then, shooting me a sidelong glance, she muttered in a voice made deliberately cool.
"Didn't know you were prone to indecent exposure. Aren't you cold?"
"A layer of mana keeps the chill off. And I will be... more mindful of my clothes."
"Don't forget there's a woman present. I find it no less embarrassing, I'll have you know."
Were most adjutants not men, after all? The remark struck me as a little odd, but I nodded and answered readily. A woman — a fact one might all too easily forget in Adele's company. Yet no one was more conscious of it than I. For all the way she carried herself outwardly, she was, in truth, a rather delicate soul.
"You've tied your hair up today."
"No idea why you're bringing that up out of nowhere."
I asked with a small smile, and Adele fixed me with a hard stare. Displeasure was written plainly in that look — likely on account of my half-dressed state. Mending Adele's mood was a simple matter. Resolving situations like this had always fallen to me, so I answered her remark once more. Offhandedly — as though it were merely a thing said in passing.
"I think it suits you."
For an instant, Adele's eyes went still. I may have imagined it — but at the very least, that was how it felt. Just as the unbroken silence made me wonder whether she hadn't cared for it after all, Adele — who had been boring holes into me — replied with perfect naturalness.
"...Is that so? In any case, come to my room once you're dressed."
"Understood."
Adele answered as though nothing had happened, then turned her head with an expression of perfect indifference. It was the reaction I had expected. From the old days, no matter how I praised her, she had always responded dryly. Having said her piece, she withdrew the gaze that had rested on me and passed me by once more. I watched her back as it disappeared from view. If anything differed from before, it was that her steps seemed just a touch lighter. Her mood, I suspected, had well and truly mended.