Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 19 - Chapter 1

0104A660. In Crushing Solitude

How did it come to this?

Haruhiro looked at the onrushing black things.

Why did it end up this way?

He wasn’t frightened. No, for whatever reason, he wasn’t scared at all.

Black.

Why were they black?

The sekaishu.

Black.

Black masses.

Black.

Black waves.

Dark.

Black.

What was the sekaishu?

Haruhiro didn’t know. How could he have?

Black. Dark. Sekaishu. Endlessly black. Black. Was that a color? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was a lack of color. They weren’t glossy. Just black. The sekaishu reflected no light. That was why they were black. Why they looked black.

“What are you smiling like an idiot for?!”

Someone grabbed his arm. His right arm. Near the elbow. It hurt.

Ow, that hurts, man.

Haruhiro didn’t say it aloud. He simply thought it. It hurts. It really hurts. Yeah, of course it hurt. How could it not? After all, look at his wrist. Not just his right wrist, but his left one too.

That guy. The one from Forgan. One-eyed Takasagi. He’d stabbed Haruhiro’s wrists with his katana. Yeah, that’s right.

That’s what had happened. He’d been defeated. His wrists, stabbed by that guy. Both of them. Just awful. What a cruel thing to do.

He’d been taken down with a katana. Impaled. That man, he’d used his katana to do it. These weren’t shallow wounds. They were pretty serious. After all, he’d had his wrists—both wrists, left and right—pierced through. Because of his wounds, his hands were sort of limp.

The wounds.

Man, they hurt.

And when someone’s rough with me like this, they hurt even more.

“We’re getting out of here!”

So, please, don’t pull like that. It hurts.

It hurts more than I can bear.

Maybe Haruhiro should have said something. Made sure the other guy knew. Why didn’t he speak up? That said, the other guy was Ranta. He’d just ignore Haruhiro anyway.

But still...“smiling like an idiot”?

As Ranta pulled Haruhiro along, that was what bothered the thief the most. Smiling like an idiot. Him? Was he really? That couldn’t be right. There was no way he’d do that. He couldn’t smile in this situation.

“Guhyahgh! Oh hee ahee!”

Kuzaku was laughing, though.

“Nee gee hyah! Gohyuk! Rehyuk! Ahyuk! Hyuk! Hyuk!”

He was laughing like an imbecile.

Still, it wasn’t like Kuzaku was laughing because he thought something was funny.

It wasn’t funny, no.

That wasn’t it.

He’d gone crazy.

And Setora was walking in circles like a broken doll.

Everything had gone crazy.

“Get it together, you dolt!” Ranta shouted right in his face.

Right after that, Haruhiro felt a powerful impact and stumbled. Apparently, someone had whacked him. In the left cheek. With a closed fist.

Haruhiro was staggering. Yet he stayed on his feet somehow.

He didn’t get it. None of this made sense to him. Why was he steadying himself so he wouldn’t fall? Was there some reason he shouldn’t let himself collapse? It all seemed so silly. He gave up and tried to fall to the ground, but Ranta yanked on his arm again.

“Dude, come on!”

I told you not to pull me like that. Didn’t you hear me when I said it hurt?

Oh, I guess I didn’t.

Right.

It was true, Haruhiro hadn’t said anything.

He couldn’t say a thing.

He didn’t want to talk.

It was meaningless.

What good would come of him saying it?

None. Nothing he could say would change anything. He couldn’t change anything. That was beyond Haruhiro’s capabilities.

I’ve had enough.

That was how Haruhiro truly felt.

It’s fine. I give up. Just leave me and go. Do I have to spell it out for you? Why can’t you just understand?

Haruhiro didn’t want to have to say it. He wanted Ranta to understand without being told. They’d known each other for no short amount of time, so it didn’t seem like too much to expect that of him.

Why?

Hey.

Why don’t you get it?

Normally, you ought to be able to.

Figure that much out on your own, okay?

Oh, right. Yeah, that’s right. You never were normal, Ranta. For better or for worse. So maybe you don’t get it. I mean, you’re Ranta, so can I really blame you? But, seriously, just this once, figure it out, would you?

I’m at my limit here.

No, not just at it, I’m long since past it.

I mean, come on.

This is crazy, okay?

It’s all messed up.

It’s screwy, right?

Right?

It’s insane.

Absolutely insane.

This is all insane.

Haruhiro looked for her and found her in no time. Of course. It wasn’t that she was gone. She was right here. Turning her head slowly, surveying the area. Her chin slightly raised, and her eyes downturned.

No matter how I look at it, it’s her.

Merry.

Oh.

It’s Merry.

That’s Merry.

In form.

But it’s not her.

If she were Merry, he could swear, she’d never look at things that way. Those weren’t Merry’s eyes. But—he could swear? To what? What in this world was worth swearing on? He didn’t know. Haruhiro didn’t know anymore.

Anyway, she was different. The way she acted was nothing like Merry.

Despite her being Merry.

Even though she was Merry?

She was, and yet she wasn’t.

She wasn’t.

No matter how he thought about it, she was different. She really wasn’t Merry.

Haruhiro didn’t want to acknowledge that fact. He couldn’t accept it and couldn’t bear it. But Haruhiro already knew. He knew, and so he couldn’t act like he didn’t know.

He was there.

Inside Merry.

The No-Life King.

It was me, Haruhiro couldn’t help but think.

“Aghhhh!”

It was me that did it.

It’s my fault.

All my fault.

I caused all of this.

“No—”

It wasn’t me, he wanted to think.

It wasn’t.

I mean, what else could I have done? There was no other choice, right?

There hadn’t been. Or, there ought not to have been, at least. Anyone, not just Haruhiro, would have done the same. So it wasn’t his fault. Haruhiro was thinking this to himself, forcefully, as if praying it were true. He wanted to deny the reality before him somehow. Prove that “it wasn’t me.” It wasn’t. No way, no how. He didn’t have to believe he was in the wrong or that everything was on him.

Right?

It’s not like that, is it?

Everyone would agree, wouldn’t they?

Of course, that was just what Haruhiro wanted to think. He knew that. Knew it so keenly it hurt. He probably knew it better than anyone else.

It wasn’t his fault, but it was.

He’d made the decision. Haruhiro had made the decision.

Haruhiro couldn’t have let Merry die back then. And this was the result. That decision had put him inside of Merry. It was Haruhiro who had put him inside of her.

He had never thought it would turn out like this. Not being God, Haruhiro couldn’t possibly have predicted it.

But Jessie had warned him.

“She can come back to life, like me, who already died once.”

“But there is a price to pay.”

“This isn’t normal.”

“It’s common sense that people can’t come back to life, and that’s a fact.”

It was a contradiction. People couldn’t come back to life. And yet Merry had. Weird.

But it wasn’t like Jessie had been lying to trick Haruhiro. And in no way had he forced the thief into it.

In the end, it was all Haruhiro. Haruhiro had made the decision.

“There’s several people in there.”

“It’s multiple people. I’m sure they were all individuals at one point.”

That was what Merry had said.

Basically, before Jessie, there had been others like him.

Those men and women had taken him, the No-Life King, inside of them.

You might say he was a parasite of sorts.

The No-Life King was said to have died over a century ago. A strange story, that. Could he die? Despite being an undying king? If he could die like other living creatures, then he wasn’t undying. If he was undying, then he shouldn’t have died.

Well, he hadn’t.

The No-Life King had never died at all.

How had those like Jessie or Merry, who had lost their lives, managed to come back from the brink of death? How had they been able to move around as if they’d been revived?

It was the No-Life King.

The No-Life King had been inside them.

His power was the key.

“Moron-piro!” Ranta shoved him from behind. “Cut it out! Run like you mean it! I said run, dumbass!”

If he tripped, Ranta pulled him to his feet. If he pitched forward, Ranta sent him flying with a boot to the ass. Why? Haruhiro couldn’t comprehend it in the slightest.

Why wouldn’t Ranta give up? How was his psyche structured? What was going on inside Ranta’s head? Haruhiro knew the guy was stubborn to the core. There were a lot of things he was indifferent about, but once he fixated on something, he just would not let it go. Still, there had to be limits. At the very least, Haruhiro didn’t think Ranta was the one who ought to be saying “cut it out.” That was the thief’s line.

In the end, maybe Haruhiro had proved to be the less stubborn of the two.

“Hey! It’s this way!”

“Parupiro!”

“Argh!”

“You absolute moron!”

Haruhiro raced along the mountain roads, going wherever he heard Ranta’s voice. No, these weren’t roads or anything like that. They were in the middle of the sea of trees that spread out across the slopes of the Kurogane Mountain Range. The ground was slanted, and roots crawled across it, intertwining, bulging up in some places, dropping down to form depressions in others. The footing was incredibly bad, and those black things, the sekaishu, were in every direction, so the two of them could almost never move in a straight line.

Is this the right way? That was a thought that only rarely occurred to him. He was already winded. His throat and lungs ached. But his throbbing wrists, stabbed by Takasagi, bothered him far more. The arteries were probably fine, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t think straight and had no time to collect himself, but what was the point of thinking about things at all?

It’s hopeless. We can’t possibly get away. Sooner or later, the black wave of sekaishu will either catch up to us or cut off our path. It’ll happen any time now.

He wasn’t afraid. If anything, Haruhiro was waiting eagerly for that moment. Let it end. I hope it all ends. If that was what he was hoping for, then he could stop. Just shut up and stay put.

Why didn’t Haruhiro do that?

“The hell’s that?!”

The next thing he knew, Ranta had stopped four or five meters ahead of him. He turned to look back, not at Haruhiro, but at something behind him. Is it going to end? Haruhiro thought automatically. Is it finally over?

He turned, feeling a kind of relief, and saw there was a massive pitch-black globular body towering over him. From the right angle, it might have resembled a massive tree. But, obviously, it was no tree. It was too black, and if there were a tree that stupidly massive around here, he’d have noticed it before now.

It wasn’t a tree. Black. It was a huge black tree-like mass.

“Sekaishu...”

He had briefly forgotten that they were being chased by the sekaishu. He’d been convinced they’d get caught in short order. And yet, here he was, unharmed.

Haruhiro looked around as if in a daze. He didn’t see any of the black things nearby. Did that mean the sekaishu weren’t after Haruhiro and the party? Maybe they’d never even noticed the group in the first place.

“The No-Life King?” Haruhiro mumbled to himself.

What about him?

How was he relevant to this?

“The world hates me.”

That was what the No-Life King had said. With her face. With her voice.

That...wasn’t true of Haruhiro. The world didn’t hate him. He wasn’t worthy of its hate. He was insignificant. Whether he was there or not made no difference to the world.

Haruhiro wasn’t even worth taking into consideration.