If This Is Life (1)
Nathan rose to his feet, muttering under his breath. Finally. The elbow pierced by an arrow twitched violently. Yet the motion he took the instant he stood looked far too strenuous for a body in that condition. Leaning against the wall, the knight suddenly spread both arms wide. As if inviting the final blow. It was the attitude of someone who had, for all intents and purposes, given up on life.
But Morbi remained coldly composed to the end. Instead of drawing his blade and closing in, the Protector Lord continued reloading the magazine of his repeating crossbow—then froze as a chilling sensation crept over him.
The human was staring straight at him. The twitching of his eyes beneath the armor looked exactly like someone fighting back a smirk. There was something fundamentally unnatural about the sight. How to describe it? It was like a child draped in a pelt, pretending to be an animal.
“Who the hell are you?”
Nathan watched from within his mind.
Entranced. Or perhaps terrified.
“What did you just do?”
⟨ I erased it. I painted over it. No—I rewound the canvas to before it was ever drawn and made it never happen. I am the one and only being who can do that. ⟩
The lights went out. Then they came back on. Different scenes swept across the stage. Every moment he had labeled failure, every hardship he had never wanted to endure. In this version, Nathan’s collarbone was never gouged open by Mornid the demon’s claws. Instead, he gave a gift to Mornid as the creature fell, skewered from mouth to back of the skull. He pulled an igniter from his pocket and set the bastard’s body ablaze. The demon who had been leisurely preparing to reveal its true form screamed. In a panic, Nathan sliced open its skull and neatly peeled away the heavenly brand. Then he leaped down into the river.
The instant Nathan slipped out through the sewer passage, Mornid and his subordinates were struck by lightning and died. Let Nilly die? That whining elf could drop dead for all he cared. If he needed her later, he could always come back and resurrect her.
Nathan never had his wrists cut off. Kada Sakano, foaming with rage as he ordered the amputation, spun around in terror at the screams of the guards behind him. Nathan laughed and smashed his face in. Why on earth would he surrender his wrists when he could pick the shackle lock with a key stolen from a guard’s pocket? Or seduce the secretary into loosening them?
Nathan was not a masochist. Though against this fat elf, he could certainly play the sadist. Humming a little tune, he pressed a saw against the fallen bastard.
Nathan felt no guilt. The moment he opened his eyes in the hospital, he confessed his love to Benny, the benefactor who had saved him. Benny, who had been depressed because Nathan already had someone he loved, accepted him with half disbelief. He indulged in every pleasure Benny could give. The moment the ecstatic Benny looked at him and felt a flicker of suspicion and fear, Nathan rewound reality and returned to the previous moment. He had enjoyed himself enough.
Before ascending to the Heavens, when he opened his eyes on the surface, he confessed his love to Aspen as she delivered the reconnaissance mission orders for the Unclaimed Highlands.
Nathan collapsed, retching. But a shadow forced him back to his feet. A hand gripped his head tightly. Dozens of overlapping eyes stared directly down at him. Within those layered pupils, every possible life he could have lived played out.
Yes, everything was there. For example, the stage where Aspen Peres could not bring herself to end their relationship without explanation and instead wept, clinging to him. Nathan, magnanimously forgiving the kneeling Aspen.
A Nathan who had not spent a bloody childhood under a father whose identity he did not even know, but who had instead been adopted into a wealthy, happy noble family.
[Stop? This is nothing. You know that. I can literally give you everything.]
A Nathan recognized far and wide as a genius swordsman of the noble knight order, not a gladiator slave unjustly thrown into the arena, nor a Lion Wing knight on the verge of collapse from combat fatigue. A boy who had not been injected with nothing but evil and struggle throughout his growth. Not an armored attack dog who knew only how to fight. A human of the highest grade—socially refined, dignified, acknowledged by anyone.
The street-tough kid was nowhere to be found. On the day of the grand succession ceremony where he was formally recognized and inherited the position of family head, he knelt before the invited guest Aspen and produced a ring. The perfect moment completed by birdsong and warm sunlight—
[I am you. Every version of you that you did not choose.]
Everything you wished for while awake, everything you desired in dreams. Every deficiency your conscious and unconscious mind ever felt. Every possibility except the proposition “Nathan Maia does not want to live like this.”
[Everything you could not have.]
It felt like cotton had been stuffed into his lungs. Unable to inhale or exhale, Nathan trembled as he collapsed. Every component that made up his body was covered in rust. The name of that damp moisture was misery. The canvas of his life was stained with dead possibilities and wrong choices. Only when the light beyond revealed those stains did he finally confront the bloodstains on the ceiling.
A painful ecstasy. A mole seeing light for the first time and going blind.
[It meant nothing. Why would anyone choose a life like this when it can be rewritten as many times as you want?]
Am I the first to receive this offer?
[As if. You’re not the first to keep refusing and dragging it out. They all ended up satisfied in the end.]
Was there no one who suspected such a priceless gift could not possibly be free?
[Oh, come on. Are you scared I’ll demand something you can’t afford? What does it matter what I ask you to repay me with? You won’t lose anything. You can earn as much as you want. You’ll become the richest person in the world.]
Rewind. Truly an asset no one else possessed. The world was full of people who would pay billions just to turn back time. The price truly did not matter. What mattered was what you gained. Asking for conditions on an offer you could not refuse was pointless.
Why didn’t you try to persuade me like this before?
[You’re the weird one. Most people fold with far less bait. Do you need power? Take my hand. Done. A handshake. Much simpler, right? By the way…]
The shadow’s eyes drew closer and closer. Dozens of layered smirks. Dozens of layered smiles.
[Judging by the way you’re talking, it finally caught your interest?]
Nathan staggered and dropped to one knee. Then he reached both hands toward the shadow as if in worship. The light in both hands gradually dimmed. The light was leaving him. It seemed the human called Nathan Maia had been born with his bones upside down.
[Why?]
Because.
“Even after hearing all that…” The outstretched hand seized the shadow by the throat. “The only thought that comes to mind is that it’s fucking pathetic.”
Even as the grip threatened to crush its neck, the shadow wore a languid smile.
[So that’s how you want to play it.]
“Who are you?” the Protector Lord asked dryly. On one level, he was hoping for the answer Nathan Maia.
Nathan Maia did not say that.
[That’s none of your business.]
“You son of a bitch. What the hell are you trying to say? That I’m broken?”
Where the hand touched, the flesh burned. No—only faint smoke rose as if it were being singed. The power of the Miracle was growing thinner in this deep place.
[Yes. I knew it would come to this. The fact that you never accepted before now meant you were never normal. My learning ability must have been lacking. Is this the fifth rejection? Or the sixth?]
“Who the hell are you to decide that!”
[You know the truth the closer you get, yet you still cling to foolish attachment. A pathetic dog chasing after the tail of trash that scatters forever in the wind, without even knowing what it wants.]
The shadow swelled enormously in an instant. Flesh bulged around the throttled throat, shoving Nathan’s hand away. The last thing the tumbling Nathan saw was a gigantic maw about to swallow him whole.
[A shame, but it’s time to change ships. It was fun while it lasted, ‘dog’.]
[My name? We already introduced ourselves enough. Your only interest is whether I can be killed. So kill me.]
“Kill you? Are you really saying you won’t resist, so please kill me?”
The calm vanished from the Protector Lord’s expression. Water melted from Aspen’s form soaked the clearing. The Protector Lord discovered his own face reflected in that puddle. Rage. His own rage, witnessed after so long. Morbi, caught in his own bewilderment, asked again.
“I will ask once more. Who are you?”
[Why do you keep asking when you already know?]
“I am not on particularly close terms with the man called Nathan Maia. We differ in race, origin—everything. We have not spoken long enough to understand each other.”
Morbi removed the magazine from his crossbow, wondering why he was angry in the first place.
“Yet the man I know is not the sort who would quietly accept death. He has the courage to risk his life and the spirit of sacrifice to stand in front of others. But never like this. Until a moment ago, he was the kind of man who would even use an attitude of surrender as bait for a counterattack.”
Precisely, he was pondering why rage burned for that Sapiens.
“Come to think of it, the question was wrong. Let me ask again. If I kill him, what do you gain from it?”
The being wearing Nathan Maia’s shell smiled, pressing its lips together as if suppressing explosive laughter.
[You have good insight, son of the crybaby Grendel.]
Nathan pulled the arrow from his elbow as if it were nothing. His body shuddered at the stimulus, but his actions did not stop.
[Do you know what’s truly difficult when inside the body of an idiot? Imitating that dullness is unbearably exhausting.]
“The quality of art is ultimately judged within the range of the artist’s wisdom. Do you blame the materials while holding your own level in high regard?”
Nathan, who had been poking a finger into the hole in his elbow, suddenly stopped.
[Didn’t Alde call you a coward?]
The Protector Lord blinked, then drew his longsword again. Its surface glowed red. Mythril that had drunk its fill of the living’s blood emitted an eerie light.
“That remark is unforgivable.”
[Will words alone kill me? Show some courage. The same courage you had on the day you made your own father a cuckold would be enough.]
A being that knew the Protector Lord’s secrets cackled through Nathan’s mouth. It spewed things Nathan could never have known.
[If even half the fighting spirit you held that day had remained the next, wouldn’t Alde have survived? What about that daughter of his?]
The Protector Lord’s breath caught for a moment. Even now, centuries later, it felt vividly real. Exactly where that wound had been carved into his chest.
[Coooooooward.]
“Yes, I will summon my courage.” The Protector Lord seemed to thrust his blade forward—only to rest it on his shoulder instead. “And show mercy to the wretch who uttered such profane words. That is my own way of refusing to forgive you.”
[What?]
“I have lived too many years to be swayed by such words. Getting worked up over insults is a privilege of the young.”
The Protector Lord, whose appearance alone was youthful, smiled like an old man burdened by time.
“Alde. Alde, they called her. In truth, my younger siblings said similar things countless times. Not as vulgar as yours, of course. Usually when they pointed their blades at me and growled, they would always sneer while slipping her name in.”
Nathan, who had been staring blankly at the Protector Lord, twisted his mouth in fury.
[Kill me now. Or you will regret it very, very much.]
“Regret is part of life. Can a statement like ‘you will breathe a great deal’ even count as a threat?”
[I will bury everyone you love together with you.]
“If you had that kind of power, you would have stabbed yourself already. Do you lack even that much courage? Or is it impossible? Perhaps you cannot move that freely?”
The Protector Lord spoke with a faint smile. His voice was quiet, almost goading.
“You said it just now. Kill me right now. Could it be that if you do not cut off Nathan’s head this instant, something disadvantageous will happen to you?”
No answer came. The being that had taken over Nathan’s body broke into a cold sweat and chewed its lip.
[This can’t be happening.]
“He might not understand your ‘this can’t be happening.’”
[This can’t be happening—! Nathan Maia, you stupid son of a bitch—!]
Deep breath. Stretch of the wrist. He lowered the sword from his shoulder once more. Then he tried to forget the pain in his forearm with several blinks. The Protector Lord prepared for battle with total concentration. Out of respect for the opponent who was returning to the battlefield.
“He never seemed to understand the meaning of the word inevitable.”
'Nathan.'
Nathan de Blua turned around. He shook his head with a displeased expression. No way.
At the sound of his father’s hurried footsteps, the two-year-old child woke up. The toddler reached out toward Nathan with a bright laugh. The arms were too short to reach. The child immediately burst into tears.
Aspen hurried over to soothe the baby and approached Nathan’s side.
“Are you serious? You have quite the variety of ways to wake a baby.”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, you should be sorry. Who was it that made me retire from the knight order?”
Aspen, brushing back her red hair, smiled faintly and kissed Nathan’s cheek. The faint scent of rose powder. The child, who had grabbed his father’s sleeve as desired, let out a joyful cheer. In the distance, the painter sketching the family grumbled as if complaining.
The golden fields where the honey of Blua grew. The sunset gradually ripening from petal-like pink to deep blood-red. The background was perfect, but the figures refused to cooperate. They were simply too restless. The painter’s grumbling, assuming it would not be heard. An artist had every right to be angry. After all, once something was painted, it could not be painted over.
That was right. Nathan was the restless type. As far as he could remember, he probably always had been. Even now, he could not fully concentrate on this blessed moment.
'Wake up, Nathan—!'
“So I was having this perverted delusion.”
Aspen, who had been soothing the child and humming a lullaby, looked up.
“Delusion? Of what?”
“It’s so vivid that I’m starting to hate myself. I’m truly sorry, Aspen. You probably wouldn’t understand even if I told you.”
“Oh. Calling me by name? How romantic. Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
“A long time ago, you told me that if I had worries, I should not hide them but speak openly. Yet when I spoke honestly a few hours ago, you cried. So I have to hide this one. The truth is, I’m scared to even imagine how you would react.”
Recognizing deception was so simple. This was not life. Life had never been this kind to Nathan.
The real Aspen’s scream came from outside. Nathan knew exactly where he was supposed to be. Therefore, Nathan Maia twisted the collar of the weak Nathan de Blua. With only a slight application of force, he snapped the neck. The light that had faded from his grip blazed once more like steel in a furnace.
The instant the pathetic illusion shattered, sleet struck his cheek. The moment he opened his eyes, the violent agony in his left arm made Nathan grit his teeth. Quite the intense greeting from the hallucination. If the thing called fate ever took human form and came for him, Nathan was ready to greet it with open arms anytime. First he would kick both its legs out from under it, strangle its neck, and ask: What the hell were you thinking when you shaped my life into this mess?
“Have you rested enough?”
A gentle voice. How kind of it to pretend to care even though it had turned him into a bloody mess. The creature really did share far too many traits with his father. Thanks for not killing me while I was unconscious. What a generous heart.
“Yeah. Slept well. Had such a sweet dream I didn’t want to wake up.”
This was Nathan’s reality. Red flesh lay exposed all over his body like sliced ham, and a large hole had been punched through his arm. The woman he loved was frozen solid, he had no plan, he held nothing of value in his hands, and death was this close. He had probably just kicked away the opportunity of a lifetime and a happiness that would never come again. For the fifth time.
But Nathan Maia still had something he could do. It was something he was very good at, and one of the few things he knew how to do. For the human called Nathan, it was the only way to fight against the villain called life.
Nathan crossed both arms and raised his two-handed sword. The tip of the blade pointed at the enemy. The Protector Lord nodded and assumed the same stance.
“Then let’s finish what we started.”