Chapter 369 |
Hero, Commoner, Nation (3)
Humans are creatures that dream.
And some dreams reach not toward the future but toward the past. There are those who dream not of a future where their goals are met and happiness awaits, but of a past already gone.
Kirchhoff was that kind of man.
He had always dreamed of the past.
The most brilliant period of his life. The things he held dear existed not in the present but in the past. The slums of Londinel where he was born and raised. The cities he had wandered through, calling himself a wandering knight. The lord and the teacher who had turned a fraud into a true knight.
Not a single day had passed in three hundred years without Kirchhoff longing for that time. He remembered the streets of Londinel he would never see again. He turned over and over in his mind the memories he had shared with the people who had given him so much, people he would never meet again.
"......"
Now the past stood before him. His dream had always been here, not in the future. Kirchhoff held his expression still. He could not show an unseemly face to the lord he had not seen in three hundred years.
Yuria looked at her knight and smiled gently. She did not rush him. She sipped her tea and spoke at an unhurried pace.
"How have the years treated you, Kirchhoff?"
"They were difficult."
"I imagine so. I asked a hard role of you."
"Yes. Very hard. There were days on end when even calling your face to mind was a struggle, when I had to knock my head and grope through my memories just to find it."
Kirchhoff smiled bitterly.
"I was a knight of Londinel, and a hero. A knight's duty is to protect their lord; a hero's duty is to defend the weak and save people."
"That's right."
"I failed to protect you. I failed to protect the nation, failed to protect the people, and could not save a single soul. I fulfilled neither a knight's duty nor a hero's obligation."
Without a word Kirchhoff looked down at his hands. A Constellation's body recovered from most injuries in moments, yet his hands were covered in calluses and scars.
Because he had not rested a single day in three hundred years.
Not one day without swinging his sword, swinging it again, and swinging it still. He had crossed countless battlefields crying out the name of Londinel. All to keep it from being forgotten. To make people know that a nation called Londinel had existed.
"I wanted to die."
"......"
"I lived because I could not die."
"Is that so."
"Yes. In a world where there was no one left who remembered me, I lived by holding on to the memory of your face. I endured by turning your last wish over and over in my mind."
The mask on Kirchhoff's face began to crack.
"Do you remember that wish?"
"How could I have forgotten?"
Yuria closed her eyes and spoke.
"My dear knight, Kirchhoff."
"You are Londinel. So live a life worthy of that name. As the knights of Londinel always have, raise your sword for the sake of humanity."
"And... if at all possible, I hope you do it with style."
"So that bards will have something to sing about. Come now, you're a fine-looking man, aren't you? A handsome knight who also fights beautifully, there's no better heroic tale than that."
Words exchanged in front of a Londinel already crumbling. The last conversation Kirchhoff and Yuria had ever shared.
"I laughed. I played the part of Kirchhoff, the dashing knight. I lied to myself, told myself I was a knight of a fallen nation, fighting on with resolve even after Londinel's destruction."
For three hundred years, Kirchhoff had worn a mask.
"Just as I had played the role of Wandering Knight Hope, I played the role of Kirchhoff, knight of a ruined nation."
That mask was crumbling now.
"I am not a hero. I am nothing more than a man who lost everything, his homeland, everything he had to protect."
What the crumbling mask revealed was the face of a man worn down to nothing.
"I endured three hundred years by repeating three names to myself. The Carnival King. The Star of Oblivion. Lancelot. The answer was never in sight. One worked in the shadows without ever showing a face, and the other two, I could not even find where they were."
Still, he had lived for revenge. Revenge alone had given his life its fuel. Every time he wanted to rest, hatred whipped him forward.
"And so I came here."
"......"
"To take my revenge, I must bring this place down. Beyond it lies the Star of Oblivion and Lancelot."
"I see."
"But I cannot bring myself to do it. Revenge was, in the end, always for you. For the knights of Londinel who died that day, and for the people."
Kirchhoff's expression twisted. He spread both arms wide, as if to say: look at this place.
"Londinel is real here. Everyone is here, alive and breathing. How could I possibly..."
His voice shook.
"Destroy them with my own hands? Kill you with my own hands? I cannot. This one thing... this one thing I cannot do."
"Kirchhoff."
"I cannot. Not this..."
"Kirchhoff."
His head dropped, eyes still averted. But the last queen of Londinel would not let him keep it lowered.
"Lift your head, Kirchhoff."
"......"
"Did I not say it? Lift your head and live with pride. You were more of a knight than anyone."
Yuria smiled a tired smile.
"Well. Let me tell you something amusing."
"......What might that be?"
"The truth is, I knew from the very beginning."
Kirchhoff raised his head.
Looking at him, Yuria spoke.
"I'm talking about the day we first met. You must have thought you had deceived me, but you shouldn't doubt the eye of Londinel's princess."
"Then......"
"I saw through you the moment we met. Ah, this man is no knight, I thought. For a knight, there were far too many things wrong with his etiquette. Centuries-old manners and current ones were all jumbled together."
She laughed, a quiet, amused sound.
"So at first I listened thinking I would tease you. Let's see how far this one goes, I thought, and I let you slip into the garden."
A small amusement for a spirited girl of a princess. At first she had listened to the tales of Wandering Knight Hope lightly, as nothing more than a passing diversion, but...
"After a day, then two, then a few weeks, I began to think something different."
At some point Yuria had changed.
She had listened closely to Hope's stories. She had seen a light in his eyes when he talked with such enthusiasm, and she had found beauty in the honor and pride he spoke of.
"Even if it was a lie, everything you actually did was true. You raised your sword for the weak. You had no idea what honor and pride even were, and yet... you lived more honorably and proudly than anyone."
More like a knight than any knight.
"The beginning was a performance, and it may have been a lie, but everything you achieved was real. There's no reason that wouldn't make you a knight."
She tapped the table with one finger.
"Do you remember what I said then?"
"......You said, then you are a knight."
"Same holds now."
Yuria smiled.
"You said you had only been playing the hero, that you were nothing but a man who had lost, but I think otherwise. You are a hero. A truly noble one who fought without rest for three hundred years. You're allowed to take pride in that."
And, it seems I am not the only one who thinks so.
She raised her hand.
With that raised finger she pointed behind Kirchhoff. In that moment he saw the past layered over her face. Memories from long ago flowed into his mind.
"Wandering Knight Hope."
Back when Kirchhoff would sneak into the garden and tell Yuria his heroic tales, he had once found himself in a very similar situation.
"I know you told falsehoods. I know you were not a knight, that you were only playing a part. But even knowing that, this is what I want to say."
That was what Yuria had said then, too.
"You raised your sword for the weak, you cried out for honor, you lived with pride. The start may have been a lie, but everything you accomplished is true."
"There is no reason that wouldn't make you a knight."
"I, Yuria, first princess of Londinel, declare."
"You are a knight."
"No one shall be permitted to doubt this. No one could possibly doubt it. For the most noble knight in Londinel shall vouch for it."
And so saying, she had pointed behind him.
"Isn't that right, Lord Linden?"
"Isn't that right, Lord Linden?"
The voice from memory and the voice of the present overlapped. Kirchhoff turned. He looked toward where Yuria's finger pointed.
"Your Highness speaks truly."
He was there.
The greatest knight Londinel had ever known stood in the same pose, with the same bearing, just as he had more than three hundred years ago.
"It has been a long time, Kirchhoff."
Blue Spear, Linden Valterhorn.
Kirchhoff's teacher stood there.
Clang, cla-ang, clang...
The Bell Chime went on ringing through the whole of the sanctuary of Oblivion.
2.
"I killed seventeen thousand people."
"I know. I killed about that many myself."
"Killing and killing and killing again, at some point my will wasn't in it anymore. I felt like I had faded as a person. Like I had become a precise machine that judged by the law and moved by the law."
"Ah, I know that feeling. You stop thinking much while killing people, and then one day even the saddest story doesn't make your heart move, and you start thinking things like that."
"......"
"What are you glaring at me for?"
"Don't interrupt."
"Ah, yes, fine."
A long exhale. Cigarette smoke coiled through the air.
"You are quite emotional."
"That's just how things turned out for me."
"Didn't you go through the exact same things I did? Emotions should have been the first thing worn away."
"Well, they were unnecessary. I suppose that's the reason."
"Yes. Emotions have no place in enforcing the law. Emotions get exploited. In that damned city, feelings were nothing but toys for Constellations to play with."
"That's how it was."
"So then, why is it that you..."
She looked at herself.
"Why is it that you are still human?"
"......"
"What was different between you and me? I am still trapped in the past, still dreaming that nightmare from that day, so why are you looking at tomorrow instead of yesterday?"
What on earth, she said.
"There is no difference between you and me."
"No difference, you say."
"Yes. I can imagine well enough how you lived. I am you, after all. And I very nearly lived the life you have lived, so I cannot not know."
Cigarette smoke rose.
"There would have been no one to trust. A secretary you had worked alongside for years becomes overnight a beast that kills people. A dependable guard is killing people behind your back. A place where you never know who might turn, or when, or how. There is simply no way to trust anyone."
"......"
"Someone came."
"Came? To the Sealed City?"
"Yes. Someone who did not exist in your world. That man, that person changed my life."
Yuel smiled. Just the thought of him was enough to make her smile.
"He never changed. He was simply always there. He saw me not as a warden but as a person, and he remembered me in my place, for the me who would forget everything."
"......"
"That person was there, and in your life they were not. That is the only difference. It isn't that your life was wrong or mistaken. Because you existed, the me I am now exists."
"That..."
"Yes. This is the possibility we once imagined, isn't it."
There had been a time Yuel thought about it. How nice it would be if someone would see me. If I could find one person I could trust in this city where there is no one to trust. With just one person like that, I feel like I could find the strength.
She had thought things like that.
Such a person had never appeared for the warden. But one had appeared for Yuel. That was the only difference.
"So that is why you were able to remain human?"
"Well, as you can see."
"You laugh often."
"I think I'll be able to laugh a little more going forward."
"Can you become free of the past? Can you live without being bound by it anymore? Can you bear the smell of blood that trembles through your body?"
"I'm not sure. I suppose I'll have to try. But someday it will be all right, won't it?"
"What do I look like right now? A doll with no emotions? A monster that takes pleasure in killing people?"
"You were born like that. But you are changing."
Changing, she said.
"You are feeling emotions again. Feeling joy, and occasionally sorrow, and sometimes regret or longing. Little by little, you are becoming a person."
"......"
"When you are whole, the boundary between me and her will disappear. In the end, I and you and she are all the same existence called Yuel."
She fell quiet.
"......I."
"Yes."
"I didn't want to live like this. I wanted to die. I wanted it all to end here. I thought that if it just ended like this, I could accept my end."
"I thought that too."
"But what was waiting for me wasn't death. It wasn't rest, either. I fell into this place and had to turn my past life over and over in my mind for hundreds of years. I can't even forget. There is no forgetting here."
"That must have been hell."
"I thought I was being punished. Did you think you could die in peace after killing seventeen thousand people? I thought a punishment was being handed out to me, but..."
She looked out at the city.
"The people I killed are here."
"......I had a feeling that might be the case. Yes. So?"
"They look at me and smile."
"......"
"They smile like they understand everything. Like they know it couldn't have been helped, and they pat my shoulder."
"Is that right."
"I told myself they were beasts, not people but dogs, and killed them. But the ones I met here are people."
She broke.
"I didn't kill seventeen thousand beasts. I killed people. So what is this terrible killer doing in the real world right now? Killing people. Killing, and killing, and killing."
"......"
"Thinking about that, I couldn't bear it. Seeing the smell of blood rolling off you the moment you stepped into this place, knowing my thoughts were right, I couldn't endure it."
But, she said.
"It's different now."
"It will be different."
"Can you say that with certainty?"
"Of course."
Yuel reached into the air.
The Code Written in Blood, the Sacred Object bearing the stars of the Star of Transmitted Knowledge and Inheritance, came into her hand. Yuel held it out to her past self.
"That damned old man prayed for us to live like human beings. It would hardly do to ignore that, now would it."
Clang, cla-ang, clang...
The Bell Chime rang out across the whole of the sanctuary of Oblivion.
3.
A constellation of ten stars.
A constellation of nine stars.
As the two Constellations clashed, a majestic Bell Chime rang out alongside the starlight. From the Peak of the Argo the tolling came without pause. The heroes' tower had become a bell tower, scattering its sound through the whole of the sanctuary.
The common people lifted their heads at the sound. The nations resonated with the spreading Bell Chime. The heroes layered their own stars onto it.
The Bell Chime rang louder still.
Gonng, gonnng...
Someone ran through the ringing. Trailing a cluster of stars, Najin swung his sword. He was blocked, pushed back by a shield, rolled across the ground, and righted himself. He kept charging in, hammering away at Galahad's shield without rest.
And so the Bell Chime did not stop.
Stars shone. Beneath those shining stars, Najin raised Excalibur. He leveled his blade at a remnant of the past. To prove something. And to surpass it.