episode_0035

“What? What are you talking about!”

“Oh. You’re responding right away? You must have been worried. Well, I guess it’s natural since you like each other.”

“…What what what what what what???”

I reacted to the second statement even more than the first, when I almost grabbed him by the collar, my face turning bright red and I flailed my arms.

“Ah, no. That’s not it… I originally… originally…”

Snickers. I felt embarrassed when I heard the laughter. The guy seemed to enjoy my reaction. If I said something like, “He was a man,” the laughter would only double. In fact, I had almost given up.

Oh, isn’t there a mouse hole somewhere?

“Explain to me what that means…”

As she covered her face with both hands and mumbled, the man chuckled and said he understood, then continued speaking with a clear smile on his face.

“If you think about it, it’s nothing special. I made the Goddess of Libra almost die, so only then did I ward off evil spirits… I don’t know if I should say that. She must have been wary of the Demon King. So she must have felt the need for ‘control’.”

“Control… like the Libra goddess is doing now.”

“Yeah, it probably took quite a while. In fact, this is information that you would pay a fortune for somewhere, but there were supposed to be a total of 7 Demon Kings. It would have been best not to create any Demon Kings…”

That’s not good, that’s what I’m saying.

“That’s right. It would only end if you fulfill all seven sins. Where did you hear this? Wasn’t it constantly said in that damn temple? Beware of the seven deadly sins. The first is anger, the second is envy, the third is greed, the fourth is the devil being a woman, and lust. If this were a man, public opinion would fall… Ahem. It’s nothing. The fifth… My father is sloth, and I, well, I guess you could call it time rather than gluttony, but it’s gluttony, and the last seventh on your side is pride. ”

“Lucifer is so arrogant, the sin of challenging God…”

“Isn’t that unreasonable?”

I have never shook my head more vigorously than this, nodding like a dog shaking off the water after being in it.

“Anyway, that’s why I made an angel fall in love with a human on purpose, and created a half-heaven, half-human. I shaped the past, and made you his weakness. With that weakness, I wanted to make the Demon King quietly accept destruction without doing ‘something like me’. ”

“…”

“The last dam must disappear, carrying all the negativity with it, so that I can completely swallow up the cleansed land and transform it into the divine state as I originally planned. …without impurities.”

“Wait, wait.”

During the ongoing explanation, I raised my hand because there was something I didn’t understand from the beginning.

“What’s that damn thing from earlier? It comes up so many times, but I have no idea what it means.”

“?”

When I tackled him, the man’s eyes widened as if he thought I should know that, but then he seemed to realize that I had been reincarnated and that my memory was inaccurate. Of course, his expression didn’t change much even after that.

“Really… I guess I’ve lost a lot of my memories. I didn’t know that.”

“Is that it?”

I frowned at his reaction and tried to think, but when it came to exorcism, the only things that came to mind were Eastern sorcery or cursed dolls.

“Hmm… Rather than me doing it like this, I think it would be better to show you. Don’t you think that would be better?”

“Yeah. It’s a bit boring because the explanation just keeps going on… It’s also hard to understand.”

“I thought so. Then I’ll show you right away.”

The floor creaked, and the circle that had opened when I glimpsed Abel’s memories a while ago appeared on the ground I was standing on.

“The way to get out of memory is to stab the owner of the memory with a knife. When you go in, there will be a silver sword in your arms.”

“Huh? I went into Abel’s memories last time too, but I just came out right away.”

“He’s the master of his memories, so he can come and go as he pleases, and anyway, the triggers for escaping memories are different for each person, so there’s nothing we can do about it. The triggers are different depending on experience. Well, it won’t be that long. Well… Starting from this next episode, maybe 1 or 2 episodes? Saddam is up to here. ”

“Part 1? Part 2? What the… Hey, sleep- ewwaaah!! This fucking-”

Dduk.

The sound cut off.

The reason was clearly that Leah had fallen into a hole in the ground without any proper warning. Or, to explain it more, it was created by a man sitting alone at the table.

The man closed his eyes alone.

Soon the one who will put you to rest will crawl out of that hole again.

Holding a silver sword…

When sending a person into a memory, the trigger for sending them out again is always the same: watching the entire length of the memory that was supposed to be shown, or the owner of the memory expelling them out at will in the middle of it.

*****

The man confined himself to a space of his own making.

It wasn’t something that was done arbitrarily. But what if it was this way or that way? All that was left was a space where nothing but a white wall was visible, built by the time that had turned itself around.

All that was left for him was hatred for the gods.

No, can you say that he is alive?

The self is scattered. No, there is no longer even a self that will scatter.

During numerous regressions, to maintain my sanity, or because I could not overcome a great mental shock, or… because of some realization or problem… for various reasons, my mind was cut off or severed along with my soul.

There were hundreds of pieces, and all of them were ‘me’.

Isn’t it a good thing there aren’t any puddles or mirrors here, because if there were anything that reflected me, I would have gone crazy looking at all those reflections of myself.

How much of ‘me’ do I really have? Is there even such a thing, like the cheap snacks on the market floor of that empire that contain seafood?

As for the other ‘me’s’, no. They’re meaningless since we’ll never meet again anyway.

But then, does that mean anything to me?

…How many times have I had these worries?

“Hello? Are you the person who used to live here? Hmm, that’s difficult. It’s something that needs to be kept a secret…”

*

Well, it’s me.

Should I call you Noah? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, Noah or Leah, it’s me now.

*

As soon as a shadow fell across the room that had been pure white, a clear and crisp voice struck my ears, which had only experienced silence for thousands of years.

The first thought that came to my mind was that my ears felt like they were being torn apart.

My head was buzzing. What is that sound? Oh, I think I’m going crazy.

Funny enough, I’m not some kind of transcendent being, so I didn’t know how to stay sane for thousands of years without doing anything.

How did you say that?

Again, I wasn’t in the mood for jokes at the time. Funnily enough, I had been silent for so long that I had forgotten how to pronounce words.

“Huh, huh? Huh… ah.”

I thought I looked like an idiot practicing my vocalization, but fortunately, the blonde-haired woman seemed to think I was just flustered because someone had come to her hiding place, and she waited for me slowly.

“…um, ahem. Why did you come here.”

The adjustment was over quickly. Still, since I’ve lived countless hours in the Demon King’s shoes, it shouldn’t be difficult to fix this.

“Ah, that’s true- um.”

In fact, it was a question that didn’t even need to be asked. Behind the woman, there was a huge ship that looked like it was pulled by a girl on a cart.

The woman’s worries didn’t seem to last long. I wondered what the criteria were, but she seemed to have quickly decided to trust me.

“I needed a place to hide this. If it’s not rude, could you please help me?”

As she said that, the woman gave various examples… but none of them really mattered to me.

From the beginning, I was just waiting for the day to die, completely bored and without any desires, and I had no intention of leaving. I just sat there blankly every day.

The woman seemed quite embarrassed, as if she could see that he didn’t seem particularly interested.

“It doesn’t matter, just leave it.”

In this space that is nothing but white, wouldn’t it be okay to have a little change of pace?

I wanted the smell of freshly cut wood and its rough brown body more than the riches the woman promised.

“…! Thank you- Oh, no. Before that, I have something to tell you.”

The woman hesitated, as if she was about to say something, but she seemed to be hesitating for fear of missing the opportunity she had finally gotten. But in fact, that didn’t matter to me at all. It would have been okay if she had just said it.

“If you take this, it might be dangerous. Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

A total stranger, and from that woman’s perspective, wasn’t he just a savage? I couldn’t understand why she was so worried.

*

I don’t remember for sure, but maybe it was natural for me at the time?

*

“It doesn’t matter if the goddess comes, just leave it alone.”

Hehe, I laughed out loud. There was no way the goddess would come, but if she did, I could give her a piece of shit instead of the ending I couldn’t do properly, so that was good in its own way.

But I guess what I thought was just nonsense wasn’t true for her.

“Huh? Huh? How do you know? ”

The sight of him saying stupid things three times in a row reminded me of someone I loved who was naive and, to be honest, a little stupid.

It wasn’t because it looked overlapping or something stupid like that.

I just couldn’t remember that the person I loved and still couldn’t forget, who was holding on to the veil of fading memories, was a bit of a fool.

Just the reminder was more valuable than a thousand pieces of gold.

And, although I don’t know the details, I saw that what she was trying to do was to throw the Goddess of Libra, who was so arrogant and out of her mind because I couldn’t kill her properly at that time, into the abyss.

“So, what are you going to do with that ship?”

“It’s a long explanation… To make it as short as possible, it’s an escape ship. They say that this land will soon become something because of the goddess, and I want to save as many people as possible at that time. Especially Lucifer.”

Is it love?

Not a bad reason, after all.

At least it was a much better reason than me, who had given up on being connected to everything and just waited for the death of my ego while disconnected, since I couldn’t die.

Therefore, I decided to help that star that was still burning brightly.

Maybe what I felt back then was longing.

A longing for what is truly alive.