442 - Camille's Perspective - A Certain Boy from Some Time Ago
After the man who called himself Jin and his little sister left, the cave felt a bit quieter. It had only returned to the same state as before the two came, but oddly enough, it felt lonely. Still, I will probably get used to this loneliness soon enough. This is just returning to how things were. It is stranger that I feel lonely at all.
...Come to think of it.
Now that it is quiet, I have remembered something. I was confident in my memory, but strangely enough, I could not recall it while Jin was here. I have heard old people get forgetful, but I was a little impressed that such a phenomenon could happen to me too. Perhaps because my memory is too good, aside from the memories of my original world that distinguish me as a reincarnator, I have memories of several lives I was born into in this world. And buried within that vast memory of mine, there is definitely a face similar to Jin's.
...Well, it was not as far back as the twenty years Ren mentioned, though.
Jin asked if I might have met him around twenty years ago, but I saw a face similar to his quite recently. Recently, well, to be precise, about five or six years ago. On a night with a beautiful moon, I met a boy who looked like what you would get if you made Jin about twenty years younger. It does not match Jin's story, so when he asked, I thought it was just my imagination, but the more I remember, the more the boy's face and Jin's face look alike.
...I do not think it could actually be him, though.
I cannot believe that boy could have become Jin in just five or six years. I cannot believe it, but Jin is a man who can draw out the power of Spirit Crystals. There is no doubt he is favored by spirits.
Being favored by spirits also means there is a possibility of being taken by spirits.
There are strange tales that exist in this world, of a man who, after being taken by spirits, returned to the roof of his hometown home with only one arm left, or a man who went missing in the forest at the foot of the Erath Mountain Range and was found in the forest near the Divine Kingdom of Quebia. In this world, beings called spirits truly live and breathe. Things that would be common sense in my original world, phenomena that cannot be scientifically proven, can very well happen here.
Besides, in my original world, there was also the word "spirited away." I have heard stories that sound like lies, children who went missing and returned decades later looking the same age, or conversely, people who became white-haired elders after being missing for just a few days. In my original world, I would have dismissed those as unprovable tall tales, but in this world, it is different. They are possible stories that might even be provable.
...No, that is not it.
I try thinking about it using this world's unique logic, that it might be possible, but I cannot convince myself somehow. It should not be impossible, but maybe my head is just too stiff. I have taken up researching how to draw out the power of spirits using Spirit Crystals, but to put this research into practice, it would be difficult unless I myself am favored by spirits first. For Jin, the Spirit Crystal worked properly, but for me, it did not work at all. I want to turn Spirit Crystals into a clean power source anyone can use, but that "anyone can use" part is the difficulty. Even Jin, who seems to be favored by spirits, could not always make them work. I suppose I still need more research to make Spirit Crystals function as a power source.
...There were other people caught up in strange events on that moonlit night, though.
I lost sight of the boy who looked like Jin. I saw several other people that night too, but they were found as corpses in unexpected places, or found in a deranged state. If they were taken by spirits, then the boy who looked like Jin was probably sent somewhere as well. Being "spirited away" by spirits, you cannot predict where they will emerge or how far they will travel. If he was sent outside the country, there would be no way for me to gather information.
"Oh? An intruder? That is rare."
I was holed up in my room comparing formulas and blueprints when I received this report from the guard soldiers. Someone was approaching the vicinity of the Dawn Tower.
Approaching the Dawn Tower is forbidden by the Emperor. Approaching without permission means execution for treason, and there is probably no citizen of the Zugall Empire who does not know that. His Majesty the Emperor's power is overwhelming. The people of the Zugall Empire have had their heads held down by this pressure for over two hundred years now. The people harbor enough dissatisfaction that it might explode with just a little push, but it is not something that could change overnight. Even if the people came to investigate because the Dawn Tower held some secret, it would not be now.
So then, who was it that approached the Dawn Tower?
I was curious, so I suggested we catch them. When I did, a report came back before dinner that the intruder had been captured. There are various mechanisms installed not only inside the cave but also around the Dawn Tower. The Dawn Tower is far less hospitable to intruders than even the Imperial Castle. The intruder seemed to have been caught off guard by an unexpected mechanism and was captured without much fuss.
"What the hell is this!?"
"I like fish."
So I carpeted it with fish plush toys, I replied to the man's question as he was caught in a jail cell built at the bottom of a pitfall. The eye-patched man swinging around a large fish plush toy seemed quite indignant, shouting, "That is not what I am asking!"
"Umm... Well then, I laid down the plush toys so you would not get hurt when you fell into the pitfall?"
"That is not what I am talking about either!"
When I tilted my head wondering what else there could be, the eye-patched man told me the answer. Apparently, he was bothered by how, on a seemingly blank snowfield, someone had thrown snowballs with perfect accuracy, as if they knew exactly where he was. He stepped into the pitfall guided by the snowballs and ended up thrown into this jail cell. I can certainly understand why he would find that strange.
"Outside, I have installed sensors that detect heat sources. I did manage to make surveillance cameras too, but with that blizzard, right? Even if they caught something, it would just be the blizzard, and they would get buried in snow right away. Beyond that, the soldiers just shot snowballs at the heat source to guide him in."
When I looked at the eye-patched man to see if this answered his question, he seemed satisfied enough. He had his mouth hanging open in surprise, but at least he did not deny that this was the answer.
"...Huh?"
As I observed the man in the cage, I felt a strange sense of incongruity. He was dressed like a bandit, not what you would call well-groomed by any stretch, but he was not a bandit, was he? His bearing was somehow refined. His movements looked less like those of a ruffian or a starving villager who had turned to banditry, and more like a trained soldier. The way he swung around a fish plush toy was ridiculous, but there was no carelessness in his posture. A man with a similar impression had been close at hand until just recently.
"Could it be, you have come to pick up Teach?"
"Who the hell's that?"
"If you mean Jin's little sister, her name's Tina, old man."
"Ah, right. Tico."
Perhaps because I have lived an excessively long life, I just cannot seem to remember people's names. There are too many different people with the same names, too many people I have met. I can remember their faces, but I cannot hold onto their names. I got the name of Tina, who was in the cave until just a little while ago, wrong, and the guide soldier corrected me without missing a beat. Thanks to that, it seemed the correct name got through to the eye-patched man. He latched on, asking if I knew the Tina kid.
"Since he seems to be Nako's friend, I will let him out."
"It is Tina, Camille old man. And, he is still an intruder, so..."
"But if he is an acquaintance of those two, he is surely not a bad kid."
When I repeated that I would let him out, the guide soldier reluctantly unlocked the cage. The eye-patched man who came out of the cage gave his name as Chuck and thanked me.
"Lucky me, an old man who can reason. ...So, where is the Tina kid?"
"You are a bit late to pick her up. Those two left the cave a little while ago on a carriage they called from outside."
"Tch. Missed 'em."
He said he was heading to the meeting place where his comrades were waiting, so I told him that if he really was their comrade, he would know where that was. If he was just saying that and was actually a pursuer of some kind rather than someone coming to pick them up, then this information would not let him follow them. And if he really was their comrade, he should be heading to Augun territory.
"I see. If Jin Boss headed to the meeting place, then it was not a complete waste of a trip. Thanks, old man."
He also asked about Tina's condition, so I answered as best I could. From my perspective, she looked like a girl of eleven or twelve. I thought she seemed a bit young, but Jin said Tina was fifteen years old. As for her behavior being too childish, an answer came from Tina herself. She seemed to think of herself as about nine years old. That is far off from both her real age and her apparent age. Jasper supposedly took Tina because she was a reincarnator who could read Japanese, but if she is a reincarnator, her inner self should be influenced by the age she was at death. I would think Tina being more mature than her actual age would be the normal state, but she seemed completely the opposite.
"Gion's opinion was that something inside her seemed to be missing."
"...Our boss is Jin, y'know."
"Right, right, of course. So, you came to pick up Tina. Do you also know about Jasper?"
"It is the Tina kid, I said. Old man cannot remember people's names worth a damn. ...Huh? You remember Jasper."
He asked what my relationship with Jasper was, so I answered honestly. There was no need to hide it. I was looking after something precious to Jasper, and in return, he occasionally did me favors as a sort of storage fee. We have known each other a long time, so there is some attachment, but that is really all there is to it.
"Jasper, huh... He wanted to look after the Tina kid for a long time too, but did he not feel a damn thing about it?"
Chuck spat out that despite being so attached to him, Jasper had betrayed Tina so easily. Everything he told me about Jasper when he was in the Kingdom of Ivizia was things I was hearing for the first time.
...It sounded to me like he was having a pretty good time, though?
The Jasper that Chuck described sounded difficult to get along with, but like he was having a reasonably enjoyable time. Truly, if only he had not found that reincarnator, Tina, he probably would have lived a fairly happy life. It was just bad luck.
"What the hell was that guy? He knew about secret passages in the Imperial Castle, seemed to have all kinds of weird knowledge."
"What was he? Nothing at all, just an ordinary man. A lovable fool who staked his life to try and bring back his dead childhood friend."
"It is not like I hate that kind of idiot. But his methods were the worst."
Kidnapping a child who was attached to you, that is the worst, Chuck said. I had heard a bit from Jin too, but it seemed Jasper had abandoned all consideration for those around him when he took Tina away.
...I cannot do anything about the dead, but I wonder if I could at least cure the blindness?
If either Tina or Jin were here, the Spirit Crystal might work as intended. When I used it on Jin, the magical mittens known as "Healing Hands-chan Mark 3" worked properly.
"If you are going to chase after those kids, could I ask you to deliver a message?"
"A message? Well, I guess I can do that much..."
For Chuck, who said I should write it down if it was long, I briefly summarized what I had remembered about Jin's face.
I do not know about twenty years ago, but about five or six years ago, I met a child who looked like you from twenty years ago. That child seemed to have been attacked by wolves, his shoulder and arm were nearly torn off. Even if he could escape the wolves with an injury like that, I do not think he could have survived.
"...Just tell him to ask if he was attacked by wolves when he was a child."
If he was, then that boy I met might have been Jin. I have started to slightly entertain such an absurd idea.
Now then, for those who have already figured out Leonardo's true identity, please keep it a secret until Tina notices in the story (laughs).
Will fix typos and errors at a later date.