Emerald Eyes

A thin morning breeze slipped in through the window, left just a crack open.

In the little room of a one-room studio apartment, a man lay dead to the world on an old bed of brown wood. Little in that small, quiet room ever changed, no matter how much time passed. Whenever he breathed, the white blanket rose and settled with him, unhurried, while a digital clock turned its numbers over one by one, marking the flow of time.

It was a weekday morning. Anyone with a job would already be at the office, getting run ragged, and anyone still a student would be sitting through a teacher's lecture, or a professor's. They might, of course, be asleep with their face planted on a desk. This man, though, slept as deeply as if the moment itself were eternity.

Cool air—not cold, not lukewarm—brushed his hair. The hair was plastered flat, and it didn't so much as stir. In the end, the only things moving in the room were the blanket and the digital clock, and time simply went on flowing.

Was there truly nothing in the world that could wake him?

There was. Something else was changing after all. The quiet, sun-warmed herald of morning laid its light across his face, and as time passed, the sunlight only grew brighter.

Even with my eyes shut, everything in front of me was bright. I rolled over to get away from the glare.

Ugh. I don't want to get up.

Don't want to wash. Don't want to eat. I just want to keep sleeping.

I rolled across the bed for the sake of rolling. The white mattress creaked, and the blanket crumpled this way and that. I really, fiercely did not want to get up.

But I had no choice. Because I had to go to work? Because I'd be late for school? Nothing of the sort. I was a NEET.

Then why? Because the gunk in my eyes was bugging me.

"Nnngh…!"

I stretched my arms and legs out long, and the ache threaded through my whole body vanished as if I'd just been given a cool, thorough massage. I popped upright and headed for the bathroom.

A flick of the handle, and a cool stream poured from the faucet. I cupped my hands, caught the water, and brought it to my face. Splash, splash. Clear-headed now, I dried myself on a towel, and coming out of the bathroom I blinked a few times and rolled my shoulders forward and back, shaking the sleep loose.

A refreshing morning. The air was good, and my body felt clean. The finest possible start to a day.

Hah. Nice. Back to sleep, then?

Falling asleep with a clear head really is the absolute best. I slid in under the covers, and the soft blanket settled over all of me. The wicked sunlight could attack me no longer.

But there is always something above the thing above you. This time, it was my own mind that came for me.

Not working? Not studying? Not doing the housework? Not even washing?

On and on it went, throwing unblockable moves. As if I was going to fold. I fought back with everything I had.

Hah… I don't want to work. I don't want a job. I don't want to study. Ordinary life is exhausting, and it's a pain.

I want to rest forever. It might sound a little off, but I don't mean I want to give up on living. I wanted all of it: a life that didn't require work, looks that were loved without any upkeep, and ability that didn't require study. And if I was wishing anyway, I wanted to try living as a pretty woman, because a life as a man nobody wanted was far too sad.

I'd been burned by that life so badly that even if the next one offered to birth me as an ultra-handsome guy, I would have refused on the spot. Just let me be born a woman.

An absurd thought, sure, but I also wished someone would simply give me money, or that it would earn itself. An annuity lottery, something like that. In short, I just wanted to rest for the rest of my life.

If only I could live in the countryside, deep in a quiet forest, doing nothing but recuperating. Leaning against a tree, playing with a cute dog, a laptop set down beside me while I gamed. A happy life, even just to imagine.

Come to think of it, don't trees just sit still for thousands of years? For food they take whatever water and nutrients happen to be around, and they live on sunlight to begin with. I was a little jealous of that. I realized almost at once what a stupid thought it was.

Trees aren't just sitting there either. They spread their roots, push their trunks upward, shed their leaves and grow them again, fight the insects that chew those leaves, and busily commune with other trees. And through flowers and fruit, they reproduce. Diligently.

Huh? Reproduce?

Thinking about it—does the act feel good for them? Some kind of long-distance sex? Hah… even trees are having sex.

I want to have sex.

…Or maybe not? Without sensory nerves, maybe they can't feel a thing. Still, you'd think they'd at least know good from bad.

Lost in idle nonsense, I felt my awareness slowly going dim. One good sweet sleep, and then I'd get up and play some games. Had to grab the daily rewards in that RPG. I made the promise firm with myself, and before long I was asleep.

Sunlight pressed against my eyelids. Even with my eyes closed, the world in front of me grew brighter and brighter. I'd definitely gone to sleep with the blanket pulled up a little—had I tossed around until it all came undone? Morning must have passed. Afternoon, then.

Hm?

Something felt wrong. Really wrong. This was more than waking up groggy.

Why does it feel like I've been asleep for so long?

That was the moment. Something tangled itself into my memories, and information unlike anything I had known came pouring in. And I understood.

I had slept through an eternity of ages.

The trunk of a colossal tree reached high into the sky—so high that it pierced the clouds and climbed still farther. It was like a pillar bracing the heavens. Its girth, too, was abnormal for anything that could still be called a tree, wide enough that a whole palace might have fit inside. From up close, a person would see only a stretch of bark, and might not even realize they were looking at a rounded trunk.

Around the tree, an endless forest spread, a vast green world cloaked in leaves and embroidered beautifully across the land.

Beneath the shade of that gigantic tree, roots that had pushed up out of the earth were tangled into the shape of a modest little wooden chair. The roots of the ancient tree were split deep, as if they had endured ages beyond counting, and yet they had never given way. Only a faint sunlight fell across the chair, drawing out the savor of the forest.

And in the chair sat a woman.

Long pale-emerald hair covered her as gently as a blanket. On either side of her fine, beautiful face rose ears as long as an elf's, and snow-white skin followed graceful curves, making no secret of a full, voluptuous figure. Semi-transparent pale-green cloth and white fabric covered her body only just. Small green gemstones were set here and there among the garments, along with ornaments like plant stems and accessories ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shaped like leaves, and the soft cloth had spilled all the way down to the floor of earth and stone, where it simply stopped.

Before her, hundreds of fairy-like figures stood frozen like statues. The fairies were small, about the size of a woman's hand. At a glance they had human shapes, but they were not quite human; they looked like wooden figurines carved from ancient trees that had stood for tens of thousands of years. Ancient forest spirits, if one had to name them. Translucent wings were fixed to their backs, and every pair was a dull gray, as if it had lost the light of a fairy tale. They knelt in neat rows on one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knee, bodies turned toward the woman.

The woman in the chair held a long wooden staff in one hand, its lower end planted in the ground, and she did not move. Above the staff floated a beautifully worked pale-green gem the size of a woman's hand, like a single leaf that had bloomed from the wood itself. She and the fairies alike had their torsos and heads slightly bowed, eyes closed, stopped in that pose and left there.

The instant I came to, I understood.

I was her, and she was me. Her mind had merged with mine, and her body had become my body.

But if that was so, something was strange.

Why doesn't she have any memories at all?

I had clearly become one with her. Even the memories she carried had all become mine. And yet no past had flowed in from her. Memories ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from before she fell asleep did not exist—not one. Beneath the shade of the World Tree, she had simply slept in silence through a span of years too long to count, as if she had been waiting for this moment alone. From the very beginning to the very end.

Had she been waiting for me? Or had I been waiting for her?

All she possessed by way of memory was sensory knowledge: what power this body held, and what it could do. My eyes were closed, and still I felt everything in the forest. Every tree in that endless forest was my eyes, and my hands and feet. Hundreds of millions of kilometers away, a small butterfly flew between the trees. In another direction, hundreds of thousands of kilometers off, a deer was wetting its throat at a spring.

The gigantic tree at my back was a little different. I felt a depth that could not be measured, as if it were a vessel holding every life in the world, and it was the tree that felt the warmest—the sort that called up a picture of the quiet countryside, of resting easy against a trunk and reading a novel. That tree was me as well. All of this forest was me.

A quiet breeze passed. Shaa. Leaves brushed one another and made a pleasant sound, and from far off came the smell of soil and of water, and the scent of flowers I had no names for. My senses stretched without end, and yet they were not noisy in the least. Quite the opposite. The feeling of countless lives moving registered as a single, quiet breath. Just sitting still with my eyes closed, only watching the forest, my heart was at peace.

Even so, it was time to get up. I had slept more than enough.

When I breathed, my chest rose, ever so slightly, and in it I felt a weight nothing like before. Long hair that had spilled down over my shoulders tickled my arms and my waist. I moved my fingers only a little, and felt the chair beneath them—unworked, and yet not rough. Soft.

I lifted my eyelids by degrees, and the view ahead came into my eyes a little at a time. A warm forest. Trees growing at an easy distance from one another gave off a cool sense of openness, and before me the little fairies waited, perfectly still.

But their waiting was soon over. Their wings began to shine, and pattern and color differed from one to the next—pale pink, sky blue, soft green, yellow, violet—separate hues blooming from the small backs before me. It was never dizzying. They blended softly into the forest, a gathering of muted color like a watercolor, beautifully stitched. Their wings moved little by little, and in the silent space small ripples spread like the beat of a butterfly's wings.

Eyes that had slept through long ages opened, slowly. Through their eyes, I saw myself. Light returned to the woman's pretty emerald eyes, and her appearance was beautiful enough to soothe every lack I had ever carried.

I opened my eyes as Fairy Queen Ceres.