I Remember
The shopkeeper and Dohesi stared at me with narrowed eyes.
“You’re buying every last bit of gray moss? Noriel, have you lost your mind?”
“Seriously, this stuff isn’t even good for kindling.”
Gray moss. Just as the name suggested, it was one of those dark, foul-smelling varieties of moss that no one ever found a use for. It was famous for gathering dust in the corner of general stores, completely ignored.
“Just give it to me. I’ll need it later.”
“Hmm, well, it clears out my storage, so that works for me. I’ll sell it to you at half price. Take the whole sack.”
Oh, jackpot.
“Dohesi, keep an eye on Noriel for me. They say there’s only a fine line between genius and madness. I’m starting to worry he’s crossed it.”
“Got it! I’ll tie him up and look after him properly.”
“Tie him up…?”
I handed over the bundle of silver coins at the counter and slung the pitch-black sack over my shoulder. The weight pressing down on my body felt like money itself, so my steps were light. But Dohesi, trailing behind me, still wore that suspicious look.
“Noriel, that thing stinks. Why did you really buy it?”
“Just watch. In a few days, it’ll be selling for a fortune as a precious remedy.”
“Ah, what am I going to do with you? Maybe I should buy some thick rope first.”
She grumbled as if she couldn’t understand me at all. Heh, of course you wouldn’t. In a few days, a plague would begin spreading through the northern provinces, and this herb would skyrocket in value. Even so, it wasn’t a plague that posed any real threat. Just a minor incident. So the plan was simple: head to the neighboring village, sell at the perfect moment for a nice profit. And if it helped cure the disease faster, well, that was a win-win, wasn’t it?
This was how I carefully nudged the original story along while pocketing reasonable gains. The only downside was my less-than-ample wallet. An orphan couldn’t exactly have a massive startup fund. Still, someday I’d be able to make a real gamble. There was hope I might one day be called a wealthy upstart in the territory.
Starting today, I should look into buying some land.
I puffed out my chest with swelling hope, and by chance, one corner of the sky caught my eye.
“…Huh?”
The midday sun greeted me with its usual warmth. But beside it, something alien pierced my vision.
“Hey, Noriel. What are you looking at?”
“…Ah, it just feels like it’s staring harder today.”
The Eye of the World. Floating high in this world’s sky was a colossal eye, rivaling the sun and moon in size. It was the thing that had shocked me most when I first arrived here. The first time I saw it, I’d even screamed like a newborn. The original story had never mentioned anything like it.
When I asked the locals, they told me it was called the Eye of the World. Every time I looked at it, I felt an overwhelming presence that simply could not be ignored. And yet, the people around me paid the bizarre thing almost no attention. After all, it simply floated there in the sky without affecting anything.
But for me, it was different.
“That story again? Why do you keep saying the eye is looking at you?”
“I’m telling you, it really is.”
It was clearly watching me.
“Then how does it look to you, Dohesi?”
“? The Eye of the World is just an eye. What else would it be?”
“Does it look like it’s staring at something specific?”
“Hmm, if I had to say… beyond the horizon?”
At the word “horizon,” I turned to look at the distant mountain range. Then I looked back up at the sky.
Just as I thought. That enormous pupil was staring directly at me.
I took a few experimental steps to the left. The eye embedded in the sky followed me. This time I sprinted quickly to the right. The gaze tracked me perfectly.
No, it really is looking at me.
“What are you doing by yourself? You look like an idiot.”
“…Yeah, maybe I really have gone crazy.”
I should probably stop paying attention to it. Every time I complained about the thing, people treated me like the weird one.
“Sigh. I’m heading back. Hanging around you always makes my mouth hurt.”
“Are you going to help your mom?”
“That too, and we’re having dinner at our house for the first time in a while. I need to get ready.”
“…Ah.”
Hiko was Dohesi’s mother. She was also the benefactor who had taken me in when I had nowhere else to go. Now that I was an adult, though, I lived separately. It would have been shameless to keep freeloading off a woman who was already playing the role of both mother and father. Besides, living under the same roof as a girl my own age just didn’t look proper.
“Alright. I’ll drop this off at home and head over.”
“…Noriel, wait.”
As I turned down a different path, she called out to me.
“It’s fine if you’re going to sell that stuff, but please stop poking your nose into things you can’t handle. You did that before and you almost—”
“This time I’m only going to the next village. Why are you bringing up old stories?”
Huh. I was copying the exact tone Jack had used with me earlier. I guess I was starting to resemble the old man.
Dohesi fell silent for a moment at my excuse, then let out a deep sigh and puffed out her cheeks.
“Even if you are a guy, it pisses me off when you wander around charming people.”
“??? When have I ever done that??”
“…Your face does it for you.”
What. A personal attack out of nowhere.
“Hey, that’s completely—”
“Don’t be late.”
Before I could finish, she turned on her heel and disappeared down the road.
What was that? Just a random tantrum? I didn’t remember doing anything to annoy her.
…Hmm.
Or maybe it was her own way of worrying. After all, I really had almost died once.
I had tried exactly once to change the future with everything I had.
It was probably because I hadn’t been in this world very long. Looking back now, it had been incredibly reckless.
“Please! Just listen to me! Do you really want to burn to death?!”
“What the hell? This kid’s already lost his mind?”
A massacre. It was one of the unnecessarily dark pieces of backstory the original story had crammed in. There was a town a short distance from Olpia Village that, according to the original flow, was supposed to be destroyed by a foreign army. I had rushed out alone to stop it, shouting desperately in my still-young voice. In short, I had been all momentum and no plan.
“You don’t have to believe me! Just stay out of the village for one day…!”
“Little one, where is your guardian? We’ll need to question you.”
“…!?”
Of course they hadn’t believed me. I vaguely remembered a similar story in some scripture I’d read before, but anyway.
What happened after that?
The future had changed a little. In the worst possible way for me.
The town suffered the exact horrific massacre from the original story and was ultimately wiped from existence. I was captured by the foreign army that had carried out the atrocity and interrogated about how I had known their plans. I had been barely ten years old. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience for a child that age.
Creak.
“…W-who is it?”
“…Damn bastards. There are things you do to a kid and things you don’t.”
The person who had saved me then was Jack. He’d told me he used to be a mercenary. He was a character who hadn’t appeared in the original story at all. I later learned that when I didn’t return, Dohesi had cried and screamed until the adults were alerted. But even so, rushing in alone meant it was hard to come back unscathed.
“Mister, your stomach… are you okay?”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. A man needs scars like this so he has something to brag about when he’s drinking.”
Jack’s scar. Or rather, the evidence of my own arrogance.
After that incident, I gave up on directly interfering with the original story’s flow. I absolutely hated the idea of my hasty choices hurting someone else. The one thing I had realized was that these kinds of merchant tricks had only minimal impact.
….
Yeah. For now, I’d just keep doing things like this.
Choices belonged to those who had power. And there was a saying that giving up was the insight of those who reflected on the past.
“Haa.”
Before I knew it, the sun had dipped a little lower. As I approached the house with the sack on my back, I heard the voices of the elders.
“They say there’s a festival in the next village. Are you going this year?”
“Well… before my body gets any worse, I’d like to visit the capital.”
They were staring peacefully at the sky, letting out wistful sighs. Among their words, one in particular caught my ear.
“The capital, huh…”
Sia Del. The heart of the Allied Kingdom where I now lived. The place where every event and every piece of history in the original story began. When I first fell into this world, I had thought many times about going there. If you asked whether I wanted to go, I’d probably say I wanted to run there right this second.
But there was one thing that held me back, so I had given up on the idea. There were excuses like the long distance and not wanting to get caught up in trouble like before, but the real reason was the protagonist.
What if that character actually existed and I ended up entangled in their trajectory?
…No way.
It was a pointless worry. I, the player, was here breathing and living. How could a character I hadn’t even created exist on their own?
Even so, the anxiety remained. If I got swept up in that whirlwind of a story, things would become far more dangerous than they were now. I kept an ear out for any news that trickled in, but it was only ever about people who would become famous much later.
That’s right. She couldn’t possibly exist.
‘Hmm, if I had to choose, would silver hair be better? Clear blue eyes, and an upright personality?’
“Mmm…”
Come to think of it, what had I named that character in the original story? Was it Asera?