Chapter 11
It was a long time before we managed to calm Emma’s father.
Since the saintess was absent, Leto and I explained the general situation in her place. With every word we spoke, Emma’s father crumbled further.
To watch a human being collapse, to see him sink to the floor with a shattered expression, as though he could never rise again.
It was harder to endure than I could have imagined. In the end, Leto and I had to avert our gazes with pained expressions.
Though, in any case, he was only staring blankly at the floor.
He could not even enter the intensive care unit. It was a matter of hygiene.
A commoner could not maintain cleanliness as easily as a noble. Even washing and drying oneself cost money, and someone with grime streaming from his body could not simply be admitted to the intensive care unit.
As a result, he could not even see his daughter’s face. I could only hope that hearing the high priests were doing everything in their power to treat her would offer him some comfort.
They were people whom a commoner would normally have difficulty even seeing. Emma’s father could not let go of his last thread of hope, as though they were incarnations of the Heavenly God Arus himself.
It had only been possible because Emma had enrolled in the academy.
A messenger had been dispatched before a day had passed to deliver the news that Emma was critically ill, and Emma’s father had been able to reach the academy in an instant by taking an expensive warp gate.
But that was the extent of the consideration the academy could offer. Matters of life and death were governed solely by the Heavenly God.
Emma’s father murmured memories of his daughter like a lament. It was the only thing he could do.
“Emma was different from other children from the time she was little… She didn’t seem like a child born to a fool like me.”
That must have been why she had been able to enroll in the academy. Leto and I could not say a word, merely letting out faint groans.
I felt like a criminal. As the saintess had said, no one was truly to blame, but that did not change how the people involved felt.
At the very least, I felt responsible for Emma’s injuries. I had no choice but to feel that way.
Because I alone had been in a position to stop her at the end.
Regardless of my own anguish, Emma’s father continued his lament.
“When I was young, I lost her mother to a wolf when she came with me to gather herbs. Even so, Emma was so bright and well-mannered that you’d never have guessed she’d grown up without a mother. She was especially good at remembering the characteristics of herbs… I thought I’d teach her to read, just in case, and she learned in an instant.”
“She was a good daughter.”
Perhaps unable to endure the heavy silence, Leto offered that response.
It was a word of sympathy anyone could have offered, but the countryman’s eyes reddened. He nodded vigorously.
“Yes, of course. She was a good daughter. From then on, there was no work I wouldn’t do to pay for her books. It was hard, but seeing her master those difficult books without anyone teaching her… I was so proud. Then one day, she suddenly passed the academy entrance exam.”
In the end, the countryman sniffled and burst into tears. He was a middle-aged man with a thick, shaggy beard, but faced with the death of his beloved daughter, he could only weep like a child.
Sobs he had been unable to force out slipped from within him like groans. My head lowered of its own accord.
I toyed with the potion inside my coat. Emma’s final legacy.
It must have been something she had made for her father. Each time that long, solid sensation pressed against my palm, I felt unbearably miserable.
“If I’d known it would turn out like this… If I’d known, I would have raised her quietly as an herbalist… Hic… This father, this useless father, got greedy…”
“Sir.”
Before his sorrowful wailing could continue, I called out to him in a low voice.
His tear-filled eyes turned toward me. Without a word, I took the potion from inside my coat and placed it in his large, rough hand.
I hesitated, unable to bring myself to speak, but I somehow managed to open my mouth, thinking that there was something I still had to tell him.
“Emma bragged to me yesterday. She said she had developed a potion that concealed one’s presence… I don’t know much about the principles behind it, but creating a new potion is an incredible achievement for an alchemist.”
The herbalist stared down at the potion without saying anything, as though he could not even begin to imagine how immense the devotion and effort Emma had poured into that tiny bottle had been.
I conveyed Emma’s final words to him, hoping this would not become the last gift she had left her father.
“She said this potion could prevent many herbalists and hunters from being injured or killed… Please, sir, accept it.”
Tears surged into the countryman’s eyes once more. Drops rolled down the man’s cheeks. Even so, he shook his head to the very end.
He pushed the potion back toward me. Seeing my bewildered expression, Emma’s father said,
“Please use it, young master… This country bumpkin doesn’t care whether he lives or dies anymore.”
I had been about to ask how he could possibly say such a thing, but when I met his eyes, I felt my breath catch.
He was sincere. Despair and pain were embedded in his sunken eyes like shards of broken glass.
“Please, young master… Hic, please use it… Remember Emma, hic, remember my daughter… This useless fool will never be able to forget his daughter for the rest of his life anyway… Waaah…”
Once the man’s sobbing finally burst forth, it continued for a long time.
It continued until he fainted, collapsed, and was carried away to his lodgings.
I absentmindedly slipped Emma’s potion back inside my coat.
I felt dizzy. It was as though a knot had formed in my chest.
Leto remained silent for a long while before speaking.
“……Ian, let’s head back soon.”
There was no reply. My lips remained tightly shut.
Leto let out a deep sigh.
“It’s already been hours. Emma isn’t going to regain consciousness just because we sit here like this… Let’s go back, eat something, and get some rest. We have to keep living our own lives.”
Selin must have been worried too, but no matter what Leto added, none of it reached my ears.
I could think only of the letter. The letter I had crumpled up and thrown away.
Then a thought struck me like a bolt of lightning.
Only then did a hazy voice escape my tightly closed lips.
“……The letter.”
“Huh?”
Leto looked at me with a slight furrow between his brows, as though asking what I meant. I did not even notice, continuing to mutter blankly.
“A letter came from seven years in the future.”
Leto’s expression grew even stiffer. He began studying my face closely. Even so, I could not stop speaking.
“It said Emma would be attacked by a magical beast and fall into a coma… If I had told Emma about it—no, if I had served as her escort?”
“……Ian.”
Leto’s voice sank heavily. It was solemn, the voice of someone being utterly serious. But I abruptly sprang to my feet.
I began babbling whatever words came to mind: regret and guilt.
It was suffocating. I shook myself like a dog drenched in rain, trying to fling off the feeling of disgust.
“If I had, if I had, I could have saved Emma. No, maybe she wouldn’t even have been hurt! If only I—if only I had been a little more careful……!”
“Ian!”
At last, Leto could not hold back any longer and shouted. His cry jolted me back to my senses, and I stared blankly at him.
Leto strode over, placed a hand on my shoulder, and sighed before speaking.
“Please, let’s go rest… You look like you’re having a really hard time.”
Of course. To anyone else, it must have sounded like the ravings of a madman.
That was understandable. Even so, the words written at the end of that letter remained vivid in my heart.
‘If you fail to protect the future, the world will be destroyed.’
What if those words were true?
No, talk of the world being destroyed did not even feel real to me, so that did not matter.
But what if victims like Emma continued to appear?
As if possessed, I rose and started walking. My unsteady steps soon became a sprint. I heard Leto shouting behind me, but I ignored him.
I was on the road back to the dormitory. Selin was visible in the distance.
She started waving at me with a delighted expression, but when she saw my troubled face, she soon looked at me with puzzled eyes.
I seized Selin by the shoulders. A pale-pink flower bloomed on her cheek.
“A-Again, why are you doing this……?”
“Selin.”
At the rough voice I forced out between gasps, Selin’s eyes widened. Soon, her expression turned serious.
I was more serious than I had ever been. Selin realized that as well.
“A letter came from the future—huff… from the future. It also said Emma would be hurt……”
“……Senior Ian.”
At that soft call, Selin and I met each other’s eyes.
Her eyes were filled with disbelief. It was an unfamiliar gaze, like that of someone confronted by an incomprehensible riddle.
“Are you drunk, by any chance?”
At that, I let out a dry laugh.
Selin’s suspicion was perfectly reasonable. I would have thought the same thing in her place. But my instincts, along with the strange experiences I had undergone around that dream, were telling me otherwise.
This was not something I could dismiss as a mere prank.
So I left the two people I trusted most behind and ran again.
I reached the dormitory. I took a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard and poured it into a glass. The sharp smell of strong alcohol stabbed my nose and bored into my brain.
It did not matter. I downed the liquor in the glass at once. The hard liquor flowed down, burning my esophagus and stomach.
Then I staggered over and overturned the wastebasket.
Two weeks had already passed since that day. But since I rarely stayed in the dormitory, I probably had not emptied it yet.
All sorts of paper trash spilled out. I almost hoped that what had happened that day had been a drunken hallucination while I was half-asleep.
But when I saw a single sheet of luxurious letter paper crumpled into a ball,
I could only let out a hollow laugh. Then I immediately unfolded the crumpled letter.
‘To. My beloved Ian Perkus’
Along with that opening line came countless lines of text. Amid the flood of information, I found the words I had been so desperate to find.
‘Come to think of it, that year’s Hunting Festival was unusually rife with incidents. It began when Emma from the Department of Alchemy went to gather materials and was found unconscious after being attacked by an unidentified magical beast.’
It was there. Exactly as I had seen it.
A now-fulfilled prophecy that Emma would be attacked by a magical beast while gathering materials.
I staggered over, and my eyes skimmed the letter once more.
As though I meant to etch every single character into my mind, I leaned against the desk, gulped down my drink, and read it over and over.
It was a love letter from the future.
I still had no idea why, of all people, it had arrived to me. But what I had to do was clear.
If I failed to protect the future, the world would be destroyed?
Frankly, it was a story I could not even begin to take seriously, but fine.
I would follow it through, just this once.
I still did not know whether this letter had truly come from the future or was merely someone’s prank.
Even so, I vowed to play along at least once, carefully folded the letter, and tucked it inside my coat.
Then I thought. I understood the rest of its contents, but there was one thing—the name whose identity I could not figure out at all.
‘From. Sepia, thinking of you tonight as well.’
Who on earth was ‘Sepia’?
The night grew deeper with the alcohol, and I found myself with a new task.
I had to find ‘Sepia’ and forge a connection with her.
It was the beginning of a romance to save the world.