Thank You
After Sapi's teacher left, I stared down at my sword.
"What am I supposed to do to make it my sword?"
Right! If anyone could help me figure that out, it was Sapi. I set off for wherever Sapi was.
"Sapi."
He stirred at my call.
"What's up?"
"You said you thought I'd create a new sword art of my own."
"Mm... I did think that."
"Why did you think that?"
Sapi turned the words over for a moment, his eyes resting on me. Then he answered, perfectly matter-of-fact.
"Because I believed you were someone who wouldn't follow the roads that already exist. You'd go carve out new ones."
"Uh...?"
"You've always blazed new trails."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You may not realize it, but you've never once failed to show me a new path."
I couldn't get a single word out. But Sapi kept going.
"The Master's sword is the same way."
"..."
"The Master's principle can be learned. The Master's sword cannot be made."
"Why not?"
Sapi answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Because that sword was forged by the Master's whole life."
"Then what about mine?"
"That..."
He gave my shoulder a light tap.
"You make it out of your life. Out of the life of you—the one who carves new paths."
"..."
"That's as far as I go. The rest is yours to realize on your own."
Sapi walked off into the distance, moving farther and farther from me.
Slowly, I looked down at my sword. For the first time, it didn't look like a weapon. It looked like my life itself.
I had always thought only about how to kill my enemies.
I had always thought only about how to kill my enemies.
Faster.
Stronger.
More efficient.
But not once, not ever, had I asked myself why I was holding a sword at all.
I had always swung my sword for revenge. Was that... really all there was to it?
The regret of failing to protect my family.
The lingering ache of failing to save people.
The guilt of failing to trust Sapi.
And... the me of every past loop, dying over and over and over.
"..."
Every last piece of it had made me who I am now. I tightened my grip on the sword.
I am not like everyone else. Other people live a single life. Just one.
So a person's regret, their lingering ache, their guilt—there's only ever one of each.
But I'm different. I can die countless times. I can fail countless times. And I have regretted more times than I could count.
And the me of right now stands atop every single one of those deaths.
When I regress, the past vanishes. But... does it, really?
Do the mes who died in those loops truly become things that never existed?
No. They don't.
Those deaths existed. Every one of them.
The pain too. The despair. The fear. All of it...
Then what I have to accept isn't just the regrets of this one life.
It's every pain the mes of my past loops left behind.
Sapi's teacher's principle says: kill yesterday's self, and accept the pain.
But I... am not going to kill yesterday's me.
I won't forget a single one of the mes who died. I won't discard them, either. Not even the pain of my past loops.
This isn't some arrogant fantasy about shouldering everything for everyone.
It's me, choosing to move forward on my own pains. I'll learn to understand other people's suffering too.
But the pain I have to understand all the way to the end is the pain of the mes who died.
I won't throw them away. I won't erase them, pretend they never happened. I'll keep carrying them, living on.
Because every one of those deaths built the me standing here. And I will turn those deaths into the next step I take forward.
That is my sword.
I raised the sword, slow and steady. My fingertips were still trembling. My stomach was hollow with hunger, my arms drained of strength.
But this time, the sword wasn't heavy.
What lay in my hand wasn't a lump of steel.
It was all the time I had lived. I closed my eyes, slowly.
My family, smiling. People dying to the monsters. Sapi—dead, because I couldn't bring myself to trust him.
And my own deaths, repeating without end.
This time, I didn't push the memories away. I didn't boil them down into nothing but fuel for revenge.
I simply... embraced them all.
Exhaling slowly, I took hold of the sword. And cut through the empty air.
The wind split apart.
But what reached my ears wasn't the sound of wind.
It was the sound of my hand closing around a hilt—in every one of those countless moments of dying.
"Hoh.... So my disciple.... you were right after all."
Living as long as I have... I have known many pains.
Hunger above all—felt since I was small. The regret and lingering ache it bred. And the guilt.
So I killed yesterday's foolish self, and tried to walk forward bearing only that pain.
But this child—just as my disciple said—took my principle in, and forged a sword all her own.
The sword that little one swung was thick with countless deaths. Not regrets or lingering aches born of suffering, the way yesterday's me had them—nothing like that.
Real deaths.
Burning alive. Being hacked and stabbed to death by every weapon under the sun. Starving to death.
I could see all of it. These were true deaths.
Swing a sword burdened like that, and the blade should have turned heavy and sluggish. The heart should have crumbled, fragile as glass.
And yet this child... all those deaths... all those other selves were gripping the sword alongside her, swinging it together.
"Disciple... back then and now alike, you never stop astonishing me."
"Well, my eye for people has always been good, Master."
"Then pass it on to the child for me, will ya. Tell her it's time to finish her sword."
Before I knew it, I couldn't stop this smile.
Sapi came walking over to me.
"What, you watched the whole thing?"
"Yeah. All of it."
"... Doesn't feel like anything got finished, though."
"Looks that way. But we succeeded at the part that matters—your sword got made."
"?"
When I gave him a baffled look, Sapi went on, watching me.
"What I mean is, our purpose here is done."
"So that's it? We're finished here?"
"Yep. Now let's go get something to eat."
"That's not the point... my sword isn't finished yet—"
"It's fine. We'll build it together. You and me."
Sapi held out his hand.
But was I allowed to take it? Me—the one who'd done nothing but take, nothing but whine and fuss... this hand...
I bowed my head and asked.
"Is it... really okay for me to come with you?"
"?"
"You're... too good for me. It feels like more than I deserve."
"What are you even saying, Lebetri."
I slowly lifted my head.
"None of this would have been possible without you."
"..."
"So come on. Let's go together."
"...Thank you."
A thin tear slipped from my eyes and slid down my cheek.
Inside the silent warehouse.
Only the reek of blood pulsed through the air.
A man with grotesquely overdeveloped muscles lay sprawled across the floor. And seated atop him, using his body as a chair, was a man with purple skin.
"■■■■... Where the hell are you..."
"You lay a hand on our Blue Heaven... and Boss Red Jade will come for revenge..."
"Shut up. I'm on a roll right now..."
The purple-skinned man hammered his fist down again and again, until the muscular man's skull gave way.
"Thinking back... even a stray dog on the road— what was it again? Wasn't that you?"
He was talking to a man whose shattered skull had left him capable of nothing at all.
"Ah... the more I think, the more it pisses me off. Salvatio..."
"You do remember our mission is to kill Lebetri, not find ■■■■?"
"?"
The woman who seemed to be part of the purple man's crew was reminding him of their objective, but the man only tilted his head, signalling he hadn't the faintest idea.
A moment later, though, his eyes went wide, as if it had just clicked.
"Oh! I know! We kill the Lebekri, and they tell us where the Salvatio Boss is!"
"It's not 'Lebekri'... no... eh, whatever."
"Yeah, doesn't matter."
"..."
"Just hunt down the rabbit, and we're done."
The two who had torn the organization called Blue Heaven apart were waiting there, biding their time to kill Lebetri.
"So how do we get out of the Domain?"
I asked about the escape method I'd been wondering about this whole time. Hearing me out, Sapi straightened up like a man preparing a lecture.
"You know a Domain forms when monsters cluster together, right?"
"I know."
"And the monsters chain into each other, tail to tail, in an endless cycle—but there's always gunk that never makes it into the loop."
"..."
"That gunk is what stays behind inside the Domain."
Sapi pulled something out from inside his coat.
"Wait—that's—?!"
It was the thing I'd shoved into the old man's hands the day I went to get my prosthetic arm repaired—bribery to make him hurry up.
"This is Domain Residue. Your way out of here."
"So Residue is the only way to escape?"
"Not the only way. There are proper exits, normally—but they're hard to find, or tucked away in nasty spots. This stuff lets you ignore every one of those conditions and just leave."
Too long. He lost me halfway through.
Still, the gist came through fine: as long as you had Domain Residue, even a Domain couldn't keep you prisoner.
"Then couldn't you just pick this stuff up in any old Domain? Why did the old man make such a fuss about it back then?"
At my question, Sapi shook his head.
"It's not that easy."
"Why not?"
"One Domain coughs up one or two pieces of residue. Tops."
".."
Suddenly, the residue in Sapi's hand looked different to me.
"And people tend to nearly die hunting for the stuff."
"..."
"That's why the old man was so delighted."
"But..."
I asked, careful.
"We really have to spend something this precious?"
"If not now, when would we ever use it?"
"Well... fair."
"Alright. Let's put it to use."
Sapi laid the Domain Residue on his palm and squeezed.
—Crunch.
The Domain Residue shattered.
In that instant, the whole forest shuddered as if drawing in one great breath. The trees seemed to tremble in unison.
And the light of the countless moons watching us from above warped and twisted.
From somewhere deep underground, a sound like a colossal heartbeat rolled through the earth. The space before my eyes tore slowly open, and beyond it I saw something new.
"..."
"..."
Sapi stepped through first.
"Let's go."
I looked back one last time. The place where I'd starved to the edge of death for days. Where I'd come within a breath of being cut down.
The Domain.
But even as I looked back at it, the Domain didn't look like something that had never existed.
Quietly, I gripped my sword and followed Sapi through.
This time, with my new sword at my side.
And with every past me of every loop, walking alongside.