Chapter 386 |
An Adventure That Could Happen Anywhere (2)
For most beings, sleep is rest.
Even Transcendents, who have no real need for sleep, drift off from time to time, it has a way of clearing the mind. A head full of tangled thoughts often sorts itself out after a good night's rest.
Again, to be clear.
For most beings, sleep is rest.
But there are those who don't belong to that majority. Some fear falling asleep; for them, sleep offers no rest at all. One of those people was right beside Najin now.
"...Hic."
He heard her breathing. Muffled, uneven breaths. The sound of crying. The soft rustle of someone turning over in bed. Najin had been lying with his eyes shut, pretending to sleep, but he opened them and looked over at Merlin. A short distance away, she was curled in on herself, crying without making a sound.
Every night, it was the same.
She worked hard to keep it hidden. She always fell asleep after him and woke before him, spending those early morning minutes waiting for the redness at the corners of her eyes to fade.
Najin pretended not to notice.
She clearly wanted it that way.
'I was trying to keep that up.'
He sat up anyway. He moved to the side of Merlin's bed and settled onto the floor with his back against it. Some time passed like that. Then he felt movement stir behind him.
Ragged breathing.
Merlin had raised herself upright and was about to turn her head. Najin lifted one hand without a word, just to let her know he was there.
"......Oh."
The desperate gasping eased. Merlin breathed out, long and slow. A moment later, having pieced the situation together, she pulled the blanket up over her mouth and spoke in a voice that had shrunk to almost nothing.
"...What. Why are you sitting there?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"Because of me?"
"Not that."
Najin exhaled.
"We're heading to the Tonyachi region tomorrow, right?"
"...Yeah. There's a job nearby."
"Right, it's somewhere I've never been. I started wondering what it'd be like out there, imagined a few things, and then I couldn't fall asleep. That's all."
Losing sleep over a reason like that.
The transparent lie made Merlin laugh despite herself.
"Really?"
"Of course."
He said it so easily, and she liked that lightness in his voice. Reaching out, Merlin ran her fingers gently through his hair.
"Tonyachi is known for its seafood. Want to finish the job fast tomorrow and spend the rest of the day hunting for good restaurants?"
"That works. It's not a hard job."
"Hm, and who is it that always turns easy jobs into a whole ordeal?"
"And who was it that swore they could blast everything in one shot, only to miss and make the monsters angrier instead?"
No, that was you, then what about Merlin? Anyway.
The two of them traded remarks like that until, without warning, they both started laughing. Deep in the night, moonlight slipping through the cabin window, they let out a long shared breath.
"Hey, Najin."
"Yes, I'm listening."
"It's late. Time we should be sleeping. But."
Merlin paused for a moment, then opened her mouth.
"Would it be all right if Merlin the Grand Mage spoke for a little while, rather than Merlin the hopeless one?"
"Merlin has always been hopeless, so it doesn't make much of a difference."
"What are you on about."
"Do whatever feels right."
Silence. Short or long depending on how you measured it, and at the end of it her lips moved. Her voice had dropped low.
"I'm a Night Fairy, and in dreams I can make anything I want. Truly anything. What I create there is no different from reality."
If what separated dream from reality was sensation, her dreams were as real as the waking world. Pain, pleasure, every one of the five senses, all of it as vivid as life.
"I spent a thousand years dreaming."
"......"
"In all that time, I made just about everything you can imagine. But there was one thing I never made. What do you think it was?"
Najin offered a few guesses. Merlin shook her head each time. With a faint smile, she said, "The answer is," and kept running her fingers through his hair.
"You."
She whispered it to him.
"You were the one thing I never made."
"Me?"
"Yes. I could have. I had met you, and based on what you told me, I could have built a version of Najin. It was possible."
Rather than waiting for him, she could have conjured him in a dream and gone on any number of adventures at his side, a companion, a friend, a lover. Anything was possible in a dream.
"But I didn't."
"Why not?"
"Because if I had, I would never have woken up."
"......"
"Funny, isn't it? A fairy who lives in dreams, who shed the human part of herself long ago and became a full fairy, and yet I still long for the real world."
She tilted toward him.
"I told you I would wait in the future, a thousand years from now. I had to keep that promise. I couldn't still be asleep when you finally came."
"So what? Someone could have woken you."
"Ahaha, it's not that simple. A Night Fairy who no longer clings to the real world starts to die, slowly. A thousand years is more than enough time for that."
When a Night Fairy had experienced everything in dreams and lost all attachment, death came for her. For fairies who could live forever if they chose, the cause of death was almost always self-chosen.
"Even now that I've met you, even with this ordinary human body, I still have nightmares."
"What kind of nightmares?"
"That all of this is a dream."
"......"
"That I finally broke down and made you after all. That you're not really here in this adventure I'm living, and all of it is a dream. And the moment I realize that and wake up..."
Merlin's voice trembled.
"You won't be beside me. I'll be lying alone in a cabin, and all of this will have been a dream, and not a thousand years but not even a single day will have passed since I made that promise to you."
That's the nightmare I have.
That was what she said. It was why, every time she opened her eyes, she searched for Najin with something close to desperation.
"I'm right here."
"Yeah. Can I hold your hand?"
Najin raised his hand. Merlin gripped it tight. Like she didn't want to let go. Her fingers wriggled in between his.
"You know."
Pale fingers pressed firmly against the back of his hand.
"The reason I'm alive is you."
"You kept me alive when I was ready to die."
A scent like flowers drifted over.
"So......"
The rest never came. Whatever she had held back, Najin couldn't tell.
2.
"This is awful!"
Merlin bit into a piece of grilled fish from the Tonyachi region and immediately pulled a face. Najin watched her set it back down after one bite and tilted his head.
"It tastes fine to me."
"I think I just don't like fish."
"You'd never eaten fish before?"
"I only ever lived in the forest. And after I came out... hmm, in my time all the ponds and lakes had gone black. There was no fish to be had."
She had been curious what fish tasted like, and now she knew, and it was worse than expected. Mumbling that, Merlin stuck out her tongue.
"Isn't this outfit cute?"
The Tonyachi region was a coastal city spread along the shore, and the fashion here ran differently. Merlin had changed into a fluttery sundress and spun once in place. The white dress fanned out around her.
"It suits you."
"Hm, does it?"
She grinned, then reached up and dropped a straw hat onto Najin's head. Pressing an identical one down over her own, she laughed, shoulders bouncing.
"Let's go!"
She grabbed his hand and walked with him along the promenade that ran beside the shore. At one point she climbed up on a low wall and walked along it with her arms spread wide, then toppled sideways and faceplanted in the sand. A minor incident.
"I fell over. Oh! So I really can lose my balance and fall, can I?"
She was laughing with sand all over her. Najin gave her a helpless look and brushed it off her clothes.
They had come to the region for a job, but the two of them spent the rest of the day sightseeing until the sun went down. Not that anyone here would have said a word about it. It made sense, if you thought about it. The job was done, nothing was chasing them, and no obligations were pressing down on them.
That perfectly ordinary situation felt strange to both of them.
'For a greater cause, for a conviction, for a duty, to answer someone else's sacrifice, for a better tomorrow......'
Both of them had spent their lives being pushed forward by one thing or another. They didn't hate that kind of life, but living it long enough, you occasionally found yourself wanting to throw everything aside and take a holiday.
Somewhere in the middle of that holiday, a thought came to Najin. Not about the Merlin in front of him, but about Merlin as a person.
He found himself thinking again about how important a role she had played.
Even through the heavy, burdensome, often bleak journey they had shared, Merlin had always been there beside him chattering away, and because of that Najin had been able to breathe. Thinking of how she had made him rest when he needed it, a small smile crossed his face.
......And so the journey continued.
Najin and Merlin took on various jobs. They traveled through different regions, sometimes spending time just eating their way through one place, and sometimes calling it a short vacation and wandering off to some distant city before coming back.
"Here! What about going here?"
"That works. What about this tourist spot? Apparently you can sled down a snowy mountain on a shield."
"Sledding! That sounds great too!"
They went sledding on a snowy mountain and ended up plunging headfirst into a snowbank.
"Here, try a bite of this, Najin."
"What even is this? Let me just..."
"Ahaha, ahahahahaha!"
"Ugh."
"You can make that face? I had no idea. Well? Awful, right?"
"I think I'm going to be sick. Can I?"
"Pfhahahahaha!"
She fed him strange food and watched his expression curdle in real time.
"Hey."
"Yes, Merlin."
They attended a night festival in some city and stood watching fireworks shoot into the sky as the celebration wound to a close. She smiled.
"I think I'm happy. Right now."
Merlin rested her head on Najin's shoulder.
3.
Living day to day with Merlin in a fully human body, rather than the half-soul-body state she had been in before, brought a few changes to Najin's daily life.
The biggest was developing a habit of waking up about an hour later than her.
Merlin always rose about an hour ahead of him, washed her face, combed her hair, made herself presentable, and then woke Najin. He asked her about it once and she said, "Unlike my real body, this one needs maintenance," which he took at face value.
In truth, he had been awake from the moment she stirred each morning. He just pretended to sleep.
"Najin. Wake up."
When she called him like that, he would rub his eyes and get up, then split firewood and build a fire. A human body, not a Transcendent's, felt the cold. And it got hungry if it went too long without eating.
A kind of humanity he hadn't felt in a long time.
Annoying, he supposed, and yet not entirely unpleasant. Eating a breakfast of warmed soup and bread, he found himself thinking idle things like, 'We should pick up some ingredients today.'
"Well, look who it is. Our new recruits, now intermediate adventurers. So, how was last night? Warm enough?"
After breakfast they headed to the Guild. They slipped past the senior adventurers whistling and throwing out crude jokes, and picked up their next job.
Without noticing exactly when it happened, Merlin and Najin had become intermediate adventurers.
Senior adventurer rank was the next step.
They took jobs, completed them, laughed and argued over nothing in particular, and the days kept coming. Then one night, as they were getting ready for bed, Merlin clutched her pillow and glanced over at Najin.
"Hey."
She looked at him sideways.
"Can I sleep next to you?"
Her voice had gotten so small it was almost a murmur. Najin blinked and, without really thinking about it, answered lightly, "Sure, if you want." At those words, Merlin's eyes went wide. She jumped down from her bed, padded quickly across the room, and came to him.
Then, softly.
She settled in right beside him and lay down. Najin glanced over at her and frowned slightly. Seeing her lying there, right next to him, he felt something he didn't usually feel.
......It was some time after he had separated Excalibur from himself.
Najin noticed a change in his body. An emotion he rarely experienced before. A desire of the kind ordinary humans tended to carry gave a faint flutter against his chest. It was slight, but something inside him rippled, like the surface of water disturbed by a pebble.
He tilted his head without thinking.
"Hmm? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
But the ripple settled back down as quickly as it had come.
Probably nothing.
Najin pulled the blanket over himself and lay down without another thought.
