504 - Leonardo's Perspective: Teo's Trajectory
...Hm?
I was struck by lightning. By the time I thought that, I was in a different place. Until a moment ago, I should have been in a stone room that seemed to be inside the Dawn Tower, but beneath my feet is a ground of white cobblestones. And there are no walls around me. I thought it might be a street corner somewhere, but that also seems slightly off. It is a town, but this is likely a ruin. The houses remain, but the walls have peeled away and the roofs have completely fallen. There was no house anywhere that people could live in right now. For that matter, the architectural style also seems slightly different from the present. If anything, I feel the construction is closer to the temples I saw in the Divine Domain of the Divine King's Domain Quebia.
"Where is this...?"
Where on earth is this? Where did Christina, who was right next to me, go? As I began to worry about my surroundings, things I had forgotten came back to me one after another. The first thing I remembered was a pain in my arm, as if it were being torn apart.
"Gah... what!?"
Wondering what had happened, I looked at my dominant arm, and my dominant arm was glowing gold. Thinking about the obvious question of why my arm was glowing, I remembered belatedly.
This arm is apparently not my arm. According to the spirit, the arm I thought was mine belonged to the Divine King.
I chose to return that arm and destroy the remains of the Divine King.
"...I see. If the Spirit's Seat is destroyed, the remains of the Divine King also disappear."
The reason my arm is glowing is likely because the Divine King's arm is there. This arm is about to vanish.
"What will really happen to me?"
There is pain, but it is not unbearable pain. The only problem is whether I can return to Christina's side after this pain vanishes and the Divine King's arm disappears. It would be fine if I just lost one arm, but it would be troublesome if my body itself vanished. If I have no body, I will be unable to return to Christina.
"I have to get back to Tina as quickly as possible."
"That might be a bit difficult."
I had assumed I was alone, but it seems there was someone else. Surprised by the voice that suddenly sounded, I turned my face toward the direction of the voice, and a man I did not recognize was standing there. I did not recognize him, but he was a man who resembled someone I knew slightly.
"...Who are you?"
"In fairy tales, it seems I'm given nice names like the Guardian of Children or something like that..."
There are nice names, but he is likely not such a nice existence. While using a phrasing that subtly denied his own statement, the black-haired man approached me. At his feet, a white cat and a black cat were walking along, rubbing against each other affectionately.
"I've met the child you've cherished as a younger sister once before. Previously, she wandered into this world."
The man laughs, saying that while his job is to return children who wander into this world to their original worlds, this is the first time he has seen such a large child. That face, though I have never seen it smile, strangely felt like it resembled the Divine King.
"...The Guardian of Children, so that story. They say he appears before orphans who have just lost their parents at that age."
The spirit that first kidnapped Christina. Just by recalling a few fairy tales, descriptions of the man float into my head.
This is because the Guardian of Children is an existence who returns orphans who have wandered into the procession of the dead to their original world if they have a home to return to, and if they have no home, he lets them line up in the procession of the dead as they are. Furthermore, he does not protect adults. His job is to ruthlessly punish adults (things) who disrupt the procession heading toward the Land of the Dead, or adults who refuse to accept death and try to return to the world of the living, and make them line up in the procession again. From another perspective, he was also the gatekeeper of the procession of the dead.
The fact that such a man is before my eyes means—
"...I have to return to Tina alive."
Whether he is the gatekeeper of the procession of the dead or whatever, if he interferes with my return to Christina, I have no choice but to eliminate him. Now, how should I launch an attack? First, until the pain in my arm subsides, I might be at a slight disadvantage.
As I think of such dangerous things, the man laughs without malice. He says there is no need to take a stance. He did not come to collect me.
"It seems you've already figured it out, but this is the place where the procession leading to the Land of the Dead begins."
However, the man says that the one for whom this place is the beginning is the Divine King, not me. If I were to die, the place where the procession begins would be the place where I died, in the era I died. No wonder the surrounding buildings are old. This place is likely the place where the Divine King died, in the era when the Divine King was alive.
"I will remove the Divine King's arm that is entangled with you here. Since it seems to be entangled quite complexly, just as you've been able to behave naturally as a human until now... it will be quite painful and take time."
If I can endure the pain of the Divine King's arm being severed, I should be able to return to the original world alive. Told by the man that if I cannot endure it, I will die just like this, I finally felt a little relieved. I wonder about the content of what he's saying, but I was able to clearly know that there is a possibility of returning to Christina alive. With this, there is nothing left for me to fear.
"By the way, who does my face look like to you?"
"...A man I don't know. I think he looks a bit like the Divine King."
"That... you are seeing me with the eyes of the Divine King. That is why my face is being seen correctly."
It seems that not seeing the man's face correctly is the normal human reaction. Normally, the man's face is said to look like the face of a family member in the home they should return to. When Christina came here, the man's face apparently looked like Alfred, and while he thought she was a child who couldn't return home, as they spoke, she apparently began to say that he started to look like my face. That is how Christina returned to me.
"A home to return to... in my case, would it be fine if he looks like Tina?"
Facing a man who is clearly past adulthood, I worry if he will really look like Christina. However, since he says that unless the man looks like Christina, I cannot return to Christina, I have no choice but to keep talking to him until the man looks like Christina. Just as I was about to feel faint wondering what kind of torture that would be, the man brings up the name of another person. If not Christina, he says the face of my father would likely appear.
"Otherwise, perhaps a younger sister?"
"Younger sister... does that mean that Mirshe was indeed my younger sister Mirshe?"
I try asking the man what on earth is happening to my body. There is no way an answer would come back even if I asked this man, but I could not help but ask. My body is a bit strange. To be precise, as Alf says, it is as if only my time has progressed slightly. Thinking that my time must have been twisted somewhere, the answer was before my eyes.
Within me is a mysterious power, the arm of the Divine King, and I don't even know when I obtained it. Since I possessed such a mysterious thing, it might not be unnatural at all if a small mystery occurred in my own body.
"I will also undo that twist in time, so it will take time to sever the Divine King's arm."
In exchange, the man says the possibility of returning alive is great. Because he will remove it carefully and cautiously, the load on my body will be small. He says that while it will be accompanied by pain, I should not vanish along with the Divine King's arm as it is annihilated.
"If I can meet Tina once more, I'll endure a bit of pain."
Adding that I haven't trained for nothing, I suddenly wonder. Which 'Tina' is the one I just thought I wanted to meet? The 'Tina' who is Leonardo's younger sister, or the 'Tina' who is Teo's childhood friend? I suddenly stopped knowing.
From the shoulder toward the fingertips, the golden light seems to be peeling away. There is a constant tearing pain, but perhaps because of the pain, I have begun to remember things I had forgotten until now.
What I could be certain of is that it is because of this arm that I am still alive now. If I didn't have this Divine King's arm, I would have died that night when I was made food for wolves.
That night, I, who had been put in a slave trader's carriage, was used as decoy bait to let the carriage surrounded by wolves escape. I was attacked by wolves, my skin torn by fangs, yet I fled because I didn't want to die, was chased by wolves again, and after running who knows where, I burst into a slightly open area of the forest, where I bumped into a large crystal. It was an accident precisely because I had no room to look ahead properly. Thinking about it now, that large crystal I bumped into then was the Spirit's Seat. It seems there was a person nearby, as I heard an old man's voice, and that must have been Camille. Camille was kind to the child who suddenly burst out. Camille was the one who told me my condition, asking if I was okay, if I had hit something, and if I wasn't covered in blood. Hearing this, I thought I was going to die. And I also thought that I didn't want to die.
A few days ago, I had a fight with a girl I love. Out of a bit of mischief, I made her cry, and I hadn't been able to apologize and say sorry for making her cry. The girl also said cruel things to me, but the girl's older brother got angry about this immediately. The girl also seemed to think she had said too much immediately, and a look of reflection appeared on her face, but I was unable to make up with the girl. The girl got angry at her brother's way of speaking and dashed away from the spot. I also left it as it was, thinking I could just apologize the next time I met her at the Menhishumi Church.
And then I was sold. The 'next' opportunity, which I had postponed thinking I could just apologize the next time I met her, was lost.
I cannot die, I thought. While listening to the sound of blood pulsing out from my arm. Because that girl will surely apologize, I have to be the one to forgive her.
It is fine that I regret not being able to apologize. It is my own fault for postponing it. But I hate the idea of that girl regretting that she couldn't apologize to me. So that it doesn't become that girl's regret, I thought that I must live and go meet that girl. In order to forgive her.
The emotion of 'in order to forgive' was likely the trigger.
From the Divine King's arm leaving me, I feel something like that will.
I want to forgive someone. To the me who strongly wished that I cannot die here for that purpose, the heart of the Divine King sleeping within the Spirit's Seat must have been moved.
This was when I took in the Divine King's arm.
The Divine King kept me alive, me who wished to live for the sake of someone I wanted to forgive. The god who managed time was surprised by the change in the Divine King's arm, who had continued to live from the age of myth by stopping time. Something that should have been stopped had started moving on its own. It might have been natural that he moved to grasp the cause in surprise.
As a result, I was severed from the flow of time, and when the god of time, who had grasped the cause of the time anomaly, was satisfied and I was returned to the flow of time, for some reason time had gone back slightly. I wonder why I was put out to nearly twenty years ago, but the god of time likely sent me to that time in an attempt to return me to the original time out of goodwill. For a human (me), twenty years is a great amount of time, but for a god who has existed since even before the myths, a human's twenty years is nothing more than a margin of error. With this, the consistency of the hypothesis Alf mentioned fits.
My time was twisted once here.
And that distortion is about to be corrected.
"...Wait. What happens when time is corrected? Will I stay here until 'Teo' becomes my current age, or will I become 'Teo's' age, as in 'correcting' it?"
"The latter, I think. That has the least impact on the surroundings."
The man says that if I return to the correct time, the nine years I spent with Christina as 'Leonardo' will be lost. To put it more accurately, the time I spent as 'Leonardo' will be lost only by the amount of time wound back to my original age. Since my birthday hasn't come yet this year, if I go back, I'll be sixteen. Sixteen-year-old me was already calling himself 'Leonardo'. I had also met Alfred and Alf. I was doted on by Siegwalt, and Christoph looked after me in various ways.
What is lost from me as time winds back is only the time with Christina. And this is precisely the time I cannot let go of the most.
"Wait. What are you doing, forgetting Tina? I said I would go pick her up. If I forget Tina, I can't go pick her up."
"Even so, you are the one who will go pick her up."
The man laughs, saying it's okay even if the time spent with Christina is lost. Even if the memories of 'Leonardo' vanish from me, 'Teo' has already met Christina. He has met Christina and keeps her in his heart as a precious girl. It is simply a matter of me, as myself, going to pick up the girl of my first love.
"You'll be fine. You don't make mistakes to an infuriating degree, and you're persistent to a staggering degree. Even if you lose your current memories, you will definitely find that girl."
The man laughs, saying that since you found her even after being thrown into the wrong time by the god of time, it can only be staggering. Certainly, now that he mentions it, I found Christina before 'Teo' met Christina. It was a mere coincidence, but I properly reached Christina. I just have to do the same thing as before, once more.
"Really, you hit the correct answer to a surprising degree."
It seems using the Divine King's power for the gun that uses the spirit power Camille created as bullets was the correct answer. Because a part of the Divine King within me transferred to the gun there, the load I feel now seems to have decreased. Giving the Divine King's blood to the nursery spirit has also helped the Divine King leave me. Thanks to these, the possibility of returning to Christina's side alive has apparently increased.
—Ah, really.
I'm envious, the man's voice suddenly grows distant. The voice lamenting that he is completely different from me overlapped into two.
...Who is it?
Wondering who increased, I glare at the vision that began to haze. Before I knew it, the human figures had increased to two.
One was the man I had been talking to, who resembled the Divine King. The other was the Divine King, who resembled the man I had been talking to.