Chapter 20

“When someone dies, someone is born. When someone is born, someone dies.”

Moving her finger left and right, she utters incomprehensible words.

‘Time’ said she wanted to make a deal, but suddenly started talking nonsense.

The light that had been showing the book-making process in sequence now illuminates one place.

The amusement ride there was a Viking ship.

The dwarves positioned relatively higher were pale, while those positioned lower had relieved expressions.

“When someone is unhappy, someone becomes happy, and when someone is happy, someone becomes unhappy.”

In the amusement park mixed with screams and laughter, her words sound significant.

“That’s too forced.”

“Does it seem forced? But this is the truth. Happiness is close and unhappiness is far, so you just don’t notice. Or it could be the opposite.”

She says, tilting her head.

“Nothing runs without a price. If you haven’t paid any price, it’s because someone else has paid the price in an unseen place.”

She spreads her arms and smiles brightly.

“Now, what can you offer to turn back time? Give your most valuable possession and get what you desire most.”

Then, as if changing masks, she suddenly makes a serious expression and says,

“Before that, let me tell you about causality. Causality is like that. It’s like a tangled ball of thread, making it impossible to even know where the starting point is.”

She was unraveling a red ball of thread from an unknown source, thread by thread.

The heavily tangled ball of thread wouldn’t unravel properly, and it was impossible to recognize what its original form was.

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg? A famous question. What do you think came first?”

I started to seriously consider that question.

Is it the chicken first?

A chicken needs to lay an egg, and an egg needs to hatch into a chicken, so isn’t the chicken first?

From the beginning, the word “egg” is established because a chicken exists, isn’t it? A chicken can exist as a single word, but an egg can only be formed with the word chicken.

But to say that, we face the problem of where the first chicken was born.

Is it the egg after all? Doesn’t a chicken hatch from an egg?

Then is the egg first in the end?

My head is complicated. It’s hard to recklessly give an answer.

On the side, ‘Time’ is playing cat’s cradle with a new thread.

She repeatedly makes chicken shapes, then egg shapes.

It was difficult to concentrate with that distracting sight.

“I don’t know.”

“Wow, that’s the correct answer. Applause~!”

She claps as if she’s not mocking people, saying I got the correct answer.

What was more absurd was that the working dwarves also turned in unison and clapped.

“In a cycle, there is neither beginning nor end.”

The cup-shaped amusement ride spinning round and round, the Ferris wheel going up and down, the carousel turning around the center pillar.

Just as we can’t find the starting point of a circle, we can’t find the starting point of a cycle.

“The concept of ‘front’ is not defined in a circular form. It only exists in linearly flowing concepts.”

Maybe this is why the phrase “beginning is the end, end is the beginning” doesn’t sound awkward.

“Causality is the same. It’s hard to distinguish which is the front and which is the back.”

The girl, spinning her neck round and round, is saying things like “where is the front?”

Now she’s even turning her body.

Her neck starts to turn left and her body to the right.

“Indeed, which is the cause and which is the effect?”

It was hard to take my eyes off that sight, which should rightfully be dizzying and bizarre.

On the other hand, it felt like the graceful wing flapping of a swan.

“To cut the thread called causality, you eventually need to figure out the cause. Because you have to cut it before the result comes out.”

But the thread I need to cut is not just one. It’s a ball of thread where many are tangled together.

The cause I need to cut is ultimately the result of something.

Again, the result cannot be cut.

“You’re saying it can’t be solved unless you find the fundamental cause.”

“Correct.”

Once again, the sound of dwarves clapping.

It’s a sound that’s scary enough to appear in dreams. I might get neurosis.

“As expected, you know a lot about time.”

“Because I’ve researched a lot.”

“Oh my. How embarrassing.”

She covers her body and blushes.

Seeing her doing that with a mannequin-like body only makes me angry.

Even the blushing doesn’t look like a human face turning red, but rather like a light turning on, which was only unpleasant.

Dong dong dong dong. The sound of the clock tower’s bell is heard, and the brightly shining lights of the amusement park turn off one by one.

The music box sound that had been playing as background music gradually subsides.

Like office workers going home, the dwarves line up and exit.

They seem strangely faster than when they appeared. Is it just my feeling?

A lonely silence descends on the amusement park with the lights off.

Thorny vines coming down again like a curtain falling on a performance.

I can see the girl sitting properly as if nothing had happened.

It was doubtful whether she was the same person who was running wild like a clown earlier.

“Time is the flow of numerous causalities. You could say it’s similar to a clock.”

Like mechanical parts and gears meshing together to make a clock work, time also flows with numerous causalities meshing together.

“I can’t control that flow. I just flow along.”

Rather than can’t do it, it would be more accurate to say she doesn’t do it.

She could intervene but chooses not to.

“I just record. Like a river flowing, I wake up when it stops at some point and no longer flows, and I record the world.”

Observing the world and recording what is observed.

That was the role of ‘Time’.

“At first, I actively intervened in the world. So that one cause would yield one effect. It’s clear, right?”

She says, bringing her fingers together and then separating them.

She wiggles her fingers and continues.

“But doing that became boring. It’s not fun. Because there are no variables!”

She speaks quietly and then suddenly shouts loudly.

“Whoa! You scared me.”

“Hehehe. Were you very surprised?”

“No? Not really?”

She smiles unpleasantly and continues her explanation.

“So I let go. Then various results came out. The types of causality diversified. Individuals started to develop something called individuality.”

She laughs as if recalling that time with pleasure.

“But even that became boring as time passed. The content ahead started to become clear. It’s prediction based on experience, but because the accumulated experience was so vast, it became similar to foresight.”

She rests her chin and makes an expressionless face as if bored.

“Cliché, is that what they call it? I lost interest in such obvious behavioral patterns. Of course, there were occasionally well-made masterpieces among them, but literally just occasionally.”

She sighs while looking at the books printed by the dwarves.

“Stories that flow the same way are not interesting. I want to see stories with unique characteristics. Can you show me such a story?”

“Is that the condition?”

“Oh, no way. This is just my wish. It’s like a bit of encouragement hoping you’ll break free from causality? Because I should be thorough with business and personal matters.”

The girl snaps her finger with a click, and a large scale descends beside her.

“Now let’s talk properly about the deal. First, let me place it.”

She says, juggling three weights as if juggling.

“There are largely three points to which time can be turned back. When the Tower was newly built, after the death of those you call your disciples, and the present.”

“Obviously the first one.”

“Well, I suppose so? As you know, that weighs more.”

With a thud, the weight rises and the scale tilts.

On the opposite scale, the conditions I desire have been placed. Now I need to place the value I can offer on my side.

Actually, this first step is the hardest. Because a vast amount of time needs to be turned back.

But I had something called a wish token.

When I first heard about it, I wondered what it was….

I placed the wish token, which I obtained while having my climbing qualification revoked, on the scale.

A scrap of paper scribbled with a pencil holds equal value to an enormous amount of time.

“Thinking about it, I wonder if climbing has that much meaning.”

“It does. After all, it’s like preventing even the possibility from blooming.”

“I thought saving my life was enough.”

“The moment you belong to the Tower, your life is no longer yours alone. Because the fate of the world depends on it.”

Lightly tapping the scale, ‘Time’ continued.

“Among them, you were the human with the highest possibility. You were predicted to have the highest chance of successfully climbing the Tower.”

“In the end, it’s just a possibility. It withered without even blooming, so I don’t understand what value it has.”

“Originally, the box you couldn’t open is the most regrettable and most valuable.”

She utters incomprehensible words.

Lightly tapping her lips, she says,

“Gacha, or what they call pulls, have the highest value just before they’re opened.”

People attempt gacha looking at the 0.01% possibility, but in the end, what comes out are mostly duds.

“The anticipation, excitement before opening the box, these are also included in the value.”

And

“Because you could have been the protagonist of that ridiculous probability. In the end, nothing can be determined for sure before observation.”