Ch.7272. A Favor.

72.

When we lose someone precious like parents or friends.

They say the most painful moment for those left behind isn’t when they hear about the death, but when they feel that person’s absence in their daily lives.

The daily routine that hasn’t changed much. Time that flows the same as always.

The sudden hole in a life that has become too familiar can’t be erased no matter how hard you try, and can’t be forgotten no matter how much you want to.

Still, humans are ultimately creatures that adapt, so after enough time passes, they can cover the pain of separation with new memories.

But that’s only becoming accustomed to the absence and finding new happiness. It’s impossible to completely forget the shock of happiness that was taken for granted disappearing in an instant and the emotions felt at that time.

“It’s strange. These are just ordinary photos of people I don’t know and have no connection to. But seeing them smiling… seeing them together like this makes me feel like I could cry.”

I miss them. I feel lonely. It’s especially true because I know the happiness of being with someone precious.

The past that I thought I’d gotten used to and was fine with—just the small trigger of seeing photos of strangers whose faces I don’t even know brought it all back, making my eyes wet. It’s like being under a curse where the happier your past was, the more painful it becomes.

[Don’t be sad. For every difficult thing that happens, something good will happen too.]

At that moment, a message appeared before my eyes.

It was clearly a message meant for “me” right now.

“You all are… really interesting. Some days you say things I can’t understand at all, and then at times like this, you hit the core of what I’m thinking at the most unexpected moments.”

If something difficult happens, something good will happen too. Such warm and kind words.

“Well… if it were the me from before, I would have just smiled and said thank you for those words, but honestly, I’m not sure now.”

The boy who used to smile foolishly can no longer smile that way as he learns the truth.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve realized that the possibility of the future I want existing in this world full of despair is incredibly small.

They say everything is a matter of interpretation, but now I find it suspicious that messages come quickly and frequently only in situations like this. It feels like someone is constantly placing a small hope in my hand to prevent me from giving up on life.

A person with nothing in their hands has no hesitation to act, but a person with something precious in their hands, no matter how small, cannot act rashly for fear of losing everything.

“The more I look at the photos here, the more pathetic my current self seems. There are cool robots and cool vehicles. I’m living a somewhat happy… day, but in the end, I was happiest when I had precious people beside me, like in these photos.”

I place my hand on a warm photo of a child with parents. But my hand passes through the photo and falls below. Disappointed, I reach out again, but the photo never fully comes into my hand.

“Still… it’s nice to see evidence that so many people lived in this world.”

The only way for a human living in the present to prove they existed in the distant future is to record this very moment.

Humans, who could live just fine as long as they can eat delicious food and sleep in a warm place, have been leaving records of their current appearance and emotions through writing and drawings even before cameras were invented. Perhaps it was because they wanted someone in the distant future to remember they existed.

Maybe among the various desires that can’t be separated from humans, like hunger and sleep, there is a desire to prove one’s existence.

“Mori, please have something to drink.”

“Ah… thank you.”

While I was sad because of the photos, yet unable to take my eyes off the people in them, the robot handed me a water bottle.

I must have been completely lost in thought. Only when I drank did I realize how dry my lips were. I took a sip of water while studying the robot’s expression.

“You don’t seem affected at all.”

Unlike me, showing various emotions while looking at the photos, the robot’s expression was just peaceful.

While it showed a worried expression when looking at my tired self, as soon as it turned its head slightly, it returned to an ordinary smile.

“No. After all, these are just photos.”

Even a robot with emotions similar to humans can’t feel the happiness that humans feel when they’re with other humans and the lingering feelings that come with it?

I felt a bit awkward at how it simply declared that photos were just photos, as if they had nothing to do with itself.

“By the way, looking at the quantity of photos, it seems they didn’t just collect photos taken at this photo studio.”

“I guess so. There are too many for them to have been taken at a remote place like this, and the backgrounds in the photos are all different.”

I selected one of the scattered photos and enlarged it.

The old black and white photo clearly showed an old battlefield.

“Seeing that there are photos like this, not just happy ones… whoever built this place must have enjoyed not only taking photos but also collecting various photos.”

From photos that seemed to be taken in the distant past to ones that looked like they were taken in this Ark.

Looking through this gallery that spanned across eras, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

—Could it be that all the photos that have ever existed in the world are here?

…No, that can’t be.

No matter how advanced the computers of this era are, they couldn’t store all the photos humanity has taken.

It might be possible with a quantum computer connected by thousands or tens of thousands of wires, but what’s here is just an ordinary computer, the kind that was plentiful in the superstore.

It’s probably just a gallery collected by the computer’s owner based on personal taste—a gallery full of their preferences.

“A battlefield and a crashed airplane. And this looks like an earthquake site. Whoever collected these has quite a unique taste, putting such terrifying photos behind happy and warm ones.”

Perhaps because I drank water, my mind was calmer now, and I noticed things I hadn’t seen before because I was too focused on the people in the photos.

From disasters created by humans like wars and mechanical accidents.

To disasters that humans couldn’t fully prevent with their power alone, like earthquakes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions.

And photos documenting the sites of such disasters along with their locations and years.

“What did the person who was here want to leave behind…?”

It seemed too intense to be just a hobby or preference, showing a dedication that rivaled that of a professional.

While it’s important to document the numerous incidents and accidents that occurred on Earth, that’s not something you’d expect to find in a photo studio like this.

I kept scrolling through the photos. Since I don’t know much about history, I had only one thought while looking at the numerous photos.

So many things happened until human civilization stopped. There were many conflicts and many fights.

We stained our hands with too much blood for our own happiness.

If we simply calculate human lives in numbers, natural disasters that occurred over thousands of years of history probably caused more damage.

But the places where disasters passed through, however desolate they might be, were not as horrific and miserable as the sight of people killing other living beings who breathe and think just like them because they couldn’t compromise on their ideals, and the aftermath of such actions.

A son who lost his body in war and parents crying while embracing such a son. A young woman collapsed in front of a grave with only a faded medal left, and crying children.

“Did the people in these photos also go to places to kill others because of their own greed, only to meet such an end? Or were they dragged out against their will simply because they were ordered to by those above them, never to return to their homeland?”

They say everything that happens in this world has cause and effect, and all incidents and accidents involve complex interests between different groups.

But while an individual can represent the characteristics of a group, a group cannot represent the characteristics of each individual, can it?

“Above all, the most terrible thing is…”

“That despite recording such history, similar history kept repeating, right?”

People forget many things, and because of that forgetting, they commit the same sins.

Knowing this, we’ve recorded many things to avoid repeating the same mistakes, but it seems mere records couldn’t suppress human greed.

“Listen. I know this sounds absurd. Just listen to me rambling again.”

After looking through numerous war photos and photos of what appeared to be a giant meteorite, I muttered quietly with my back to the drone.

“If, just if, you’re living in a time before me… I hope there isn’t as much fighting in your future. Of course, I know the world is so complex that ordinary people like me can’t fully understand it, and sometimes there are times when you need to argue and fight. But still, I think there must be ways to resolve things more gently.”

I bowed my head. Not to kill each other, but to mourn the many people who had to take up weapons to survive.

And when I raised my head, I encountered a ‘photo that shouldn’t exist.’

“…What is this.”

In the photo, which I didn’t know how long it had been there, was a very familiar sight.

A photo taken from above of me looking at numerous photos in a room identical to this one.

That photo had the number “2024” written on it.

My pupils shook violently, and my head spun. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

The feeling of realizing the ‘reality’ I had dismissed as a nightmare through a photo recording the ‘present.’

Indeed, it could only be expressed with the word despair.