Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 15 - Chapter 1

1. The Nightmare Continues

Haruhiro decided to climb the stairs with Tasukete. Everyone else would wait in this room. It would be easier that way. That was the sense he got.

When he took one of the lamps off the shelves and climbed the stairs, there was another room up there.

It had a number of shelves, all of them packed with assorted things.

There were wooden boxes and barrels stuffed in between the shelves. Large jars, too.

A large table sat in the middle of the room. Several barrels placed around it looked like they would have worked just right as chairs.

There was an unlit lamp on the table, with what looked like sheaves of old paper, a piece of parchment or something, wooden cups, a pitcher for water, and various other sundry items lying scattered around.

In one corner of the room, there were stairs leading even further up. Why hadn’t he immediately noticed the person sitting about halfway up them?

Haruhiro backed away, pulling out one of his daggers at the same time. He was clearly right-handed, but had been holding the lamp in his left hand without realizing why.

Glancing over, he saw Tasukete had lowered his posture and was bracing himself. If he’d been carrying a weapon, Tasukete would likely have drawn it like Haruhiro had.

The man on the stairs turned to face them.

It was a man.

He didn’t look young, but it was hard to place his age. He wore a helmet and armor, with a sword at his hip.

The man on the stairs didn’t move anymore. He was silent, staring at Haruhiro and Tasukete.

“What is this? He’s scary...” Tasukete said in a quiet voice.

Haruhiro agreed. The man on the stairs had definitely moved, so he was alive. From all outward appearances, he was human. But was he really? Haruhiro couldn’t be sure.

Haruhiro made up his mind. “Hey...” he called out to the man.

The man on the stairs didn’t move a muscle. Though, looking closely, Haruhiro could see his shoulders rising and falling slightly. This might seem like an obvious thing, but he was breathing.

Haruhiro didn’t take his eyes off the man on the stairs as he called, “Tasukete-san,” in a whisper.

“...Huh? Yes?”

“I’m going to test something.”

“Test something? Huh? What...?”

“If anything happens, please tell the others.”

“You really shouldn’t...” Tasukete warned him in a weak voice.

Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t, Haruhiro thought, but he fully meant to do it. Was he actually pretty bold? Or just reckless? That wasn’t the sense he got. If anything, he thought he might be cautious. Not that he remembered.

Haruhiro approached the table, eyes still on the man on the stairs.

The man on the stairs was still not moving. No, his eyes were following Haruhiro.

Haruhiro laid the lamp down on the table. He tried picking up the parchment. It was apparently a map.

The man on the stairs continued scrutinizing Haruhiro.

Haruhiro took a deep breath. It took some courage, but he sheathed his dagger.

The man on the stairs showed no reaction.

Then how about this? Haruhiro rolled up the parchment map with both hands.

The man on the stairs still didn’t move.

“I’ll be borrowing this,” Haruhiro tried saying.

There was no response.

“I’m borrowing it,” he repeated, backing away with the map in his right hand and the lamp in his left.

Haruhiro passed the map to Tasukete.

“Could you hold this for me?”

“...Yeah, sure. You’ve got guts, man...”

“No, I don’t. Not really.”

Haruhiro drew his dagger again. He figured he was a coward.

This time he walked all the way around the table once. On the way, he got awfully close to the stairs, which naturally meant approaching the man, too, but nothing happened.

He took a quick look at the shelves. There was rope, something that looked like a musical instrument, dried plants, the hide of some small animal, what looked like animal parts, some kind of liquid in a bottle, a small jar, a little box, and some written materials. It looked like similar things had been sorted together, so these things weren’t just placed here at random; they were organized.

It wasn’t clear what was inside the barrels, but it was a liquid, likely alcohol, or oil, or something along those lines. That was the sort of smell they gave off. The ones being used in place of chairs were empty.

The wooden boxes were nailed shut. It wouldn’t have been impossible to open them if he tried, but Haruhiro decided against it for now.

The large jars were stuffed full of meat, fish, or pickled vegetables.

He hadn’t thought much of it before now, but the ceiling in this room was pretty high. There were poles stretching across the room at a height that he couldn’t reach, and there were sausages hanging from them, as well as smoked fish.

“Is this a warehouse or something?” Haruhiro said to himself. “You could live for a while with all of this...”

The man on the stairs remained unmoving, the same as ever. He just watched Haruhiro intently.

Haruhiro went back to where Tasukete was.

“...It looks like there’s more yet,” Tasukete said. “I wonder what’s here...”

“Who knows?” Haruhiro shook his head. “Let’s head back downstairs for now.”

Descending the stairs, they told everyone about what was on the upper floor.

As he spoke, Haruhiro sort of kept an eye on Hiyo’s reactions.

She would go “Wow,” and “Hmm,” and “Oh, hoh,” widening her eyes, pursing her lips, and puffing up her cheeks, busily changing her expression. She touched her hair, face, neck, and chest; she shook her head, she blinked repeatedly, she walked around, and she jumped up and down a little. Her gestures were frequent, and all of them were exaggerated.

That seemed suspicious to Haruhiro, but maybe his preconceived notions were just making it look more so.

Haruhiro was pretty suspicious of Hiyo, but it was hard to put those suspicions into clear words. He wasn’t sure if this was related or not, but he also had the sense that it would not be very good if she learned he had any suspicions about her.

In a word, this was a “hunch.”

“What should we do?” Haruhiro asked, looking to Kuzaku first.

“Me?” Kuzaku’s eyes widened. “...Nah, I dunno. Hmmm. What should we do...?”

He might not remember Kuzaku, but Haruhiro had figured that was about all he could expect from him.

Actually, it might not be the case that I don’t remember anything at all, Haruhiro was starting to think.

For instance, it looked like Shihoru was keeping her head down because she didn’t want to be asked for her opinion, but that probably wasn’t it; she was desperately trying to think through all this in her own way.

Setora seemed focused on the handle on the wall. She was sharp. Even if he didn’t remember that, he felt like he knew it.

“Well...” Merry said, lowering her eyes, then a moment later looking over to Hiyo.

Merry was suspicious of Hiyo, like he thought.

Though, there was one problem.

Merry was the only one who claimed to have memories right now.

If Merry said things were one way or another, Haruhiro and the rest, lacking memories, could only accept that was the way things were.

No one could contradict her and say, “That’s not right.”

What if Merry was lying to them?

Haruhiro felt like Kuzaku, Shihoru, Setora, Kiichi, and Merry might have been his comrades.

But he had no definitive proof of that.

Merry said they were volunteer soldiers, Setora was not, but was their comrade, and she didn’t even know whether Hiyo was a volunteer soldier or not. Haruhiro was starting to believe all of that.

But was it actually the truth?

Haruhiro thought Hiyo was dubious. But when it came to only remembering their own names, Haruhiro and the rest were no different from her.

Merry was the only one with memories.

Using those memories, she could provide information, telling Haruhiro and the others, “You are this type of person.”

Out of all of them, Merry was the only one who could do that.

It wasn’t impossible to imagine that maybe Merry was the suspicious one here.

However, Merry seemed aware of her position. If she set her mind to it, she could weaponize her memories and use them to induce Haruhiro and the rest into doing anything, but she wasn’t trying to.

Merry’s memories were a double-edged sword. They made a powerful weapon, but if she used them too freely she would make them all distrust her, and that would lead to her own downfall.

“I’m...” Suddenly, Io crouched down. “Hungry.”

“Yeah...” Kuzaku held his own stomach. “Me, too...”

There was an incredible grumble. That was Gomi’s stomach, apparently.

“Yeah. Seriously. I’m starvin’ here...”

“Well, yeeeeaaaah,” Hiyo said with a guffaw. “That happens when you’re alive. Your belly emptying, and empty bellies are inevitable. There’s food upstairs, riiiight?”

Come to think of it, Hiyo was the one who suggested they could go up those stairs in the first place, wasn’t she? Was she trying to lead Haruhiro and the others? He couldn’t decide. It was a subtle line.

“There’s someone there, though,” Haruhiro said.

“But, buuut.” Hiyo looked at them. “There’s soooo many of us. If they attack us, can’t we just beat the stuffing out of them? Eek! Oh, gosh, Hiyomuuu, you’re so violent!”

Shihoru cocked her head to the side.

“...Hiyomu?”

“Mew?” Hiyo blinked her eyes.

“Did I just say that? Did Hiyo just call herself Hiyomu? I wonder why. Is that a nickname? A moniker? A pseudonym? Those are all the same, or close enough, huh? Is that what it is? It could be. Hmmm...?”

The way she was talking a mile a minute suggested she was not, in fact, mystified by this, but trying to cover her mistake.

Merry looked down, her brow furrowing slightly.

“I don’t care what your name is.” Io stood up. “Food! We need food! It’s like the old saying, ‘You can’t wage war on an empty stomach!’”

Were they going to wage war? They were called volunteer soldiers, so did they have to fight? Even as he thought he wasn’t so sure about all of that, Haruhiro climbed the stairs once more. This time, it wasn’t just Tasukete. Everyone came with him.

“Huh?”

The room hadn’t changed from before, but the man on the stairs had vanished.

“Nobody’s here!” Io said in an accusatory tone.

“No, there was before. Really. ...There was, right?”

When Haruhiro looked to him for agreement, Tasukete shook his head diagonally, seemingly unsure.

“...I feel like there was. Or maybe... there wasn’t...”

“Maybe he went upstairs?” Merry offered helpfully.

Haruhiro nodded.

“That’s it.”

Yeah, he really couldn’t doubt Merry.

“Well, whatever the case,” Kuzaku said in a reassuring tone, “Isn’t it better not having some weirdo around? It looks like there’s stuff to eat here, too.”

They spread the map out on the table and looked through the sheaves of paper as they all chewed on sausages and dried fish.

They tried opening a barrel, and at least one of them was alcohol. They poured it into cups, and everyone who wanted to drink some did. Haruhiro tried just a sip, but it was strong stuff, and he’d get drunk off it in no time, so he left it at that.

“This is...” Merry said as she looked at the map. “A map of Grimgar, maybe?”

“Grimgar?”

It sounded like he had heard that name, or maybe not, but it sounded not entirely unfamiliar.

“This is Alterna,” Merry said, pointing to the lower part of the map. “North of here is the Quickwind Plains. Then there’s the Shadow Forest where the elves live... and far to the east, there’s the sea. Here. This is where the free city of Vele is.”

“Alterna... Elves... Vele... Free city...”

He didn’t know any of these words. Yet, at the same time, he felt like he’d heard them before.

If they were people, he might see them from behind and think he knew them. But he couldn’t see their faces, so he couldn’t be absolutely sure they were people he knew.

They weren’t completely unknown to him. He did know them. Or he had, and he’d forgotten. But for something he’d forgotten...

The more he thought about it, the more his head hurt. It was an unpleasant pain, too.

Where was this pain coming from? Probably deep inside his head.

It wasn’t a stabbing pain, or a throbbing one. It was a little like an itch, but it felt unbearably itchy.

“We set out from Vele...” Merry pointed to a spot on the map. She moved her finger to the left. “We were heading to Alterna, but along the way we ran into... a camp... right, it was Ainrand Leslie’s camp — the Leslie Camp.”

“...It’s no good.” Setora crossed her arms and frowned. “I can’t remember it at all.”

“Oh!” Kuzaku still had a sausage in his mouth. “Was this including me, too? I was listening like it was about someone else...”

Io had a look on her face that was difficult to read.

“The Leslie Camp...?”

“What is thaaat?” Hiyo asked with a smile. “This, ummmm? Wrestling champ, was it?”

Merry looked Hiyo in the eye.

Hiyo’s expression tensed a little. That’s how it looked to Haruhiro.

“From there,” Merry continued without responding to Hiyo’s question, “We wandered into another world. It was like a really bad dream had become reality...”

Hiyo stroked her chin. “Hmmm.” Her eyes went up and to the right. “Y’know, if it was like a bad dream, that makes me think that maaaaybe it really was a dream? Oh, not that I’m doubting you or anythiiiing.”

“You could be right.” Merry looked down at the map. “It might all have been a dream I saw. Even now, I’m sort of wondering if the dream just hasn’t ended yet.”

“That’s not it,” Haruhiro said definitively. He’d said it without meaning to.

Merry, Hiyo, and everyone else looked at Haruhiro.

Haruhiro scratched his head and looked to the side.

“...I don’t think that’s how it is. If I were just a character in Merry’s dream, I dunno... I wouldn’t be able to think for myself or act alone, right? Probably not. But I am. I am... Or at least I’m trying to.

“Me too. Me too,” Kuzaku said with a chuckle.

“Don’t imitate me...”

“No, I’m not imitating you. I’m saying I think you’re right!”

“Like! I! Said!” Hiyo put her hands on her hips and puffed up her cheeks. “It’s not like I’m doubting you or anythiiiing.”

“Merry...-san, if your memories are right...” Shihoru leaned in, looking closely at the map. “Where would we be now...?”

Haruhiro looked around the room. This room and the one below had no windows. It went without saying that they were in a building, but what was it like outside? Like Shihoru was asking, where exactly were they?

“The handle...” Tasukete said in a small voice.

It immediately occurred to Haruhiro that he meant the handle on the wall downstairs.

That handle had caught his attention the moment he saw it. If Hiyo hadn’t suggested they could go up the stairs, Haruhiro might have tried pulling that handle like a lever first.

“I’m going back downstairs. I’m going to try that handle. It might do something.”

When Haruhiro made that declaration, Hiyo looked somewhat unamused, then let out a sigh. Haruhiro was almost certain.

Hiyo was a liar.

The question was what she was lying about, and why.