Chapter 314: Tell Them (8)
After crying for a long time, Daniel staggered aside and cleared my path. Had he definitively abandoned revenge, or merely postponed it? That was not yet clear.
“Can I believe the claim that you are a summoned soul?”
“Yes. Though regrettably, I have no tangible evidence with which to convince you.”
“…No. I believe you. I think your actions until now support the claim.”
“I see….”
I caught a glimpse of the skin around his eyes, chafed raw from crying so much. But as though we had agreed, neither of us acknowledged it. It was less an attempt to protect each other’s pride and closer to both of us being too overwhelmed by our own circumstances to mention it.
“We failed to keep watch at all.”
“…Indeed.”
Instead, we shifted slightly and leaned against the walls of the watchtower.
Beside each place where we sat was an opening through which we could observe the Demon Realm. We needed only turn our heads while seated to check it.
“…How did you end up that way?”
“If you are asking why I entered this body, there was no particular reason. The boy merely wished for someone capable of overcoming demons, and by coincidence, I met that condition.”
“Then why did you hide the fact when we first met?”
“This may be unpleasant for you to hear, but I did not know. More precisely, I had no memories. Exactly as I said at the time.”
We used our position to keep the watch the Young Lord had requested. Since each of us turned our head in the opposite direction, we did not look at one another in the slightest.
“It was the demon’s scheme. Unaware that I was a summoned soul, unaware even that I was not the only one inhabiting this body, I spent each day swayed by nothing but the memories the demon had left behind.”
“…The memories it left behind?”
“What happened to the owner of this body. Memories that were not mine.”
“…I see. Then have you recovered your memories now?”
“Yes.”
With half our vision filled by the watchtower and its walls and the other half by the desert, we slowly continued our conversation. Since I was repeating what I had told the Meister, producing each sentence was not particularly difficult for me.
[When you never lost them in the first place. You’re a deceiver too.]
That included Wrath slipping into the conversation. I ignored the bastard as smoothly as water flows. My mood was too low even to redden with embarrassment.
“Is there a way to undo the summoning?”
“If I endure nine years without falling into corruption, the demon will return to hell, and I will return to where I originally belonged.”
“And the original owner of the body will regain it?”
“Yes.”
Rustle. In the meantime, I heard the sound of fabric brushing skin, roughly as though someone had turned their head and body. Considering that I had not moved and that the sound came from behind me, Daniel had probably done so.
“…Earlier, you said you could see a boy. Then is the original owner of that body remaining beside you?”
“At present. It is not always so.”
“I cannot feel anything in particular… How strange.”
“He is on my right hand. Can you not feel him?”
“…No. He was there?”
I glanced at my right hand and then to my right. Faust and Wrath occupied those respective positions.
‘Explain.’
[…They are spiritual bodies. Naturally, there is nothing to sense. You can see us only because our souls are connected to that body.]
Ah, so that was how it worked. I had assumed they existed by using Mana, Demonic Energy, or something of the sort. No wonder no one else noticed them.
“…Is he still crying?”
While I extracted an explanation from Wrath, Daniel cautiously asked. Somewhere within his drained voice lay a mountain of emotions that had yet to disappear.
I understood them.
“Yes.”
「Hic.」
Faust, who was nearly in a state of total exhaustion, flinched and curled up.
His guilt being placed on the chopping block was burdensome. But he truly had done wrong, so he felt guilty, tormented, and sorry… He had to apologize, yet for some reason felt aggrieved and could only shrink in on himself. It was an archetypal reaction.
“Are you certain he is crying because he is sorry?”
「Hhk.」
An ordinary person probably would have become dehydrated by now. Spiritual bodies must be different.
Faust cried again. Personally, I was glad Daniel could not see it.
“…I don’t know. But in my opinion, if these were tears for himself rather than sobs born from remorse, it would be impossible for him to continue crying without pausing for even a moment.”
There was no helping it. The sight of a child crying inspired pity regardless of whether the child was right or wrong… and for someone in a position where he could not forgive that child, the pity only made his insides feel more ready to burst.
What right do you have to cry? What have you done to deserve tears? I am the one who truly wants to cry, so why are you…? Something like that.
“Do you pity him?”
“…Is that why you forgave him? From what I have heard, it does not seem you entered this situation by choice either.”
Meanwhile, Daniel conspicuously changed the subject. I could have seized upon that and interrogated him, but chose not to.
“It is true that I did not choose this.”
“Then…?”
“Who knows. Will you forgive him?”
Instead, just as he had, I avoided answering. I did not want to pressure Faust by repeating what I had already said, and more importantly, I did not want my answer to influence Daniel.
“…That….”
After all, forgiveness was clearly a right belonging only to the victim. No one could interfere with it. It must not be decided because of anyone else, and there was no need for anyone to be pushed and forced into it by another person’s choice.
“That….”
And so I wanted Daniel to reach a conclusion based solely on his own feelings, and that was what he did.
“I still cannot forgive him.”
The voice that spoke one syllable at a time, as though declaring it to himself, boiled with pain and heat.
“I know the child is not at fault, but even so, I cannot forgive him.”
“I see.”
“…Yes. So tell that child this: rather than hiding behind you and crying, one day he must come and stand proudly before me. Tell him he is to explain properly what happened then and offer a formal apology.”
But it was at least better than when Daniel had first encountered me. At that time, he had been swept away by anger without even knowing where that anger belonged. Now, at least, he knew where his resentment should be directed.
“Yes. I will be sure to tell him. Though I suspect he already heard you.”
“Is that so? Then that is enough.”
So even this problem eventually comes to an end. I looked at the boy visible only to me.
‘You heard him.’
The boy hid his eyes, so wet they looked entirely white, behind his eyelids. Drip. His head moved slightly along with the falling tears.
‘I earned you the opportunity to atone. You have to do the rest.’
「…Yes.」
Once everything ended, would the child be able to offer Daniel a proper apology? How would Daniel receive it?
I thought briefly, then reached only the answer that it was something I could not know. By the time the boy became able to apologize, I would already be home.
And so I withdrew my gaze from the boy silently sobbing and lowered my eyelids. I had done nothing, yet suddenly felt exhausted.
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Even after the conversation ended, Daniel glanced at the man several times. He could not tell whether the other party, utterly motionless, had fallen asleep or merely remained still while awake.
It resembled the things the man had said. Distinguishing whether he had truly spoken nothing but the truth or this too was a deception was exceedingly difficult. He was the most incomprehensible being in the world.
“…You should not force yourself to forgive either.”
Even so, the reason Daniel accepted his words was a kind of fatigue.
His hatred for something he could not even be certain was his enemy, and the confusion caused by that being happening to be unbearably heroic—these were ultimately emotions sustained by burning his own strength as fuel, and Daniel no longer wished to spend his energy on them.
“…Forgive what?”
“Everything surrounding you.”
After all, had this not dragged on for long enough? He had spent more than six years scraping together even the energy that should have been used for daily life and feeding it to the fire. Was it not time for him to grow tired?
“Being denied the chance to become an adult is certainly something worthy of sympathy, but that does not mean we must yield unconditionally.”
More than anything, Daniel did not want to doubt him.
Those eyes had only managed to retain their shape; in truth, they were nearly as worn away and broken as his own. The goodwill with which the man somehow suppressed resentment that had knotted so deeply inside him.
If Daniel had to doubt even that, then there would not be a single thing in the world he could trust.
“There is no reason to feel sorry for receiving a right that is naturally yours. Instead, you should lament that someone else was denied that natural right and hate what made it so.”
That was why. It was the sole reason he decided to believe that absurd story.
He did not want to regard even those things as belonging to a demon. He did not want to doubt someone with whom he had come to identify.
His lifelong faith and the conscience he had protected until now would not permit him to close his eyes and ears and simply hate.
“So, nameless penitent, do not blindly suppress your own emotions either.”
And so Daniel simply resigned himself. He sympathized that way.
“Trying to endure every hardship merely because your circumstances are better than another’s is also a kind of arrogance.”
He pitied the being who had entered a complete stranger’s body and suffered every imaginable hardship—the person who, had things gone differently, might even have borne the full weight of Daniel’s resentment.
Like ash left after everything burned away, the remaining resentment and attachment settled together with a lukewarm heat. All that remained now was shallow sympathy and a sense of kinship toward another.
“You may be angry with me. You can tell me, ‘I wasn’t the one who did it, so why are you giving me all this shit?’”
“…That does not seem right.”
“No. You are allowed. None of the abuse I hurled at you was something you should have had to hear.”
“…….”
“Or were you involved after all? Was everything you told me merely a lie to escape this situation?”
“That is not the case.”
“Then demand that I apologize. You have the right.”
Daniel watched the other party hesitate and look back at him. The mismatched eyes had narrowed as though the man could not begin to fathom Daniel’s intent.
“…An apology is not usually something one demands.”
“Ordinarily, no. But if I apologized now, are you confident you could truly release your resentment? No—in the first place, can you accurately gauge the wounds my words caused?”
Daniel found that slightly amusing and also sorrowful. Those who were too strong sometimes did not know how deeply they hurt. Even the largest lake in the world would ultimately reveal its bed if one kept drawing water from it without end.
“Organize your thoughts and tell me how much you hated the unjust abuse and treatment. I will offer the apology you deserve accordingly.”
“…Anyone overhearing us would think I was the one who needed to apologize.”
“Did that offend you? Then I will apologize for it at the time as well.”
“I have no desire to force an apology out of you. Forget it.”
Still, the faint smile on the other man’s face allowed Daniel to guess that his lake had not yet run dry.
In that respect, Daniel thought it slightly fortunate. Along with it came the thought that it would have been better if they had met under different circumstances, with the man as his true self.
“Reminds me of Seonbi….”
At that moment, the murmur that briefly lingered on the man’s lips was clearly meant for himself. Daniel did not know who Seonbi was, but the distant gaze alone made it clear the person was precious to him.
Daniel deliberately pretended not to hear and rose.
“Then I will go first.”
In truth, there was an unavoidable reason for that too.
“I left without reporting.”
Daniel was currently meeting the man after casting aside even his assignment.
In other words, he had done something close to desertion.
“…May fortune favor you in battle.”
“…Yes.”
Of course, he was not an official soldier here, and the person currently claiming to be his superior actually belonged to a different organization, so they would not be able to rebuke him too harshly. All the more so because he belonged to the Temple rather than the force dispatched to the city.
But a wrong did not disappear merely because he would not be disciplined. Prepared to offer a formal apology to the person who was, for the moment, his superior, Daniel descended the watchtower.
“…Old Geezer!”
At the entrance to the watchtower, he found a young man pacing anxiously. The youth was idle manpower whom no one could command because he belonged directly to the Hero’s party.
“…Please stop calling me that. I am begging you.”
“That depends on how you treated Sir.”
In any case, Daniel thought he could roughly guess why the young man was waiting here. Watching the gaze that kept shifting behind him, Daniel sighed softly.
“Go up. He is all right.”
“……! There’d better not be a single wound on Sir! If there is, I’m putting stones in your pillow later!”
It seemed Daniel would not sleep comfortably for the next few days. Watching the young man hurry past, he scratched his head for no reason. The back of it already seemed to ache.