The Fool's Choice

 

Sometimes the greatest fool seizes the right answer,

and sometimes the wisest of all makes the most fatal mistake.

 

"… Give up?"

For a moment, I couldn't understand what she was saying.

"Why?"

The instant I realized she meant Ai, the question left me before I could think.

Nina knew better than anyone how long I'd been searching for Ai. Better, I sometimes suspected, than I knew myself.

That she would say such a thing with Ai's reincarnation right before our eyes was utterly beyond me.

"Because… it doesn't make sense, does it? Chryse said that Aisha woman was Ai."

"No, it does make sense. I had Chryse double-check just now, and what she was reacting to was the armor Aisha wore. Chryse's magic isn't very precise. She couldn't distinguish between the person and a scale they happened to be wearing."

The connection itself had been faint and tenuous to begin with. Chryse had explained that she'd simply reacted more strongly to whatever was nearest.

"The moment I met her, I knew. That white dragon is Ai's reincarnation… Didn't you feel it too, Nina?"

She shook her head weakly.

"I… felt it too."

So the sensation hadn't been mine alone. I'd already been certain, but hearing Nina confirm it carried more weight than my own instincts ever could.

"But… she's a dragon. Ai was human, remember? And she doesn't remember us. Can you really still call her Ai?"

"Of course I can."

Nina seemed deeply shaken by how readily I answered.

"Huh? Come to think of it, I never told you, did I? … I'm a reincarnation too. I was human before."

"What…?"

It was a story from over a thousand years ago. I retained the knowledge from my previous life as a kind of residual data, but I'd lived so much longer as a dragon that my scant century as a human hardly felt real anymore.

"I wasn't hiding it or anything. It's not really a big deal, is it?"

Things like preferring the crust over the soft part of bread, or feeling slightly off if I put my left shoe on before my right. Trivial quirks. The sort of thing Nina had probably picked up on over our long years together.

That was about all my previous life amounted to.

So.

"No… no, no… that can't be…"

I never expected her to shake her head over and over, her voice trembling with shock.

"Then… the way she is now… you're saying she's the same as you?"

"Yeah, that's right. It never occurred to me before, but…"

Looking back, perhaps it wasn't so strange.

"On her deathbed, she learned that I'd once been human, and she swore she'd come back. It wouldn't be strange for her to wish to return as a dragon. That way, she'd never have to face another separation cut short by a human lifespan. We could be together forever."

It had surprised me, but the more I thought about it, far from being a problem, wasn't it everything I could have wished for?

"So I need your help to restore her memories."

If we could manage that, everything would fall into place. The wish I'd carried since the very moment I was born into this world would finally come true.

… And yet.

The partner who had supported me through all of it sat in silence, her eyes fixed on the floor.

"Nina?"

"… No."

Was there some problem with the method she'd prepared? That was my first thought.

"No. I won't help restore that child's memories. I refuse."

But what came back was not hesitation. It was flat refusal.

"Wh… why?"

I couldn't begin to understand why Nina would say such a thing.

"Because…! She didn't remember you!"

A cry so raw it was almost a scream. Yet even hearing it, all I could do was flounder.

"Wait. You'd already considered that possibility, hadn't you? That's precisely why you prepared a way to deal with it."

"… If she had… been reborn as a human, that would have been fine."

I looked at Nina's face as she spoke, and froze. Glistening drops were trailing down her cheeks.

"If she'd… lived again as a human. Remembered you again, fallen desperately in love with you again, and lived her life that way. I was prepared to help with that, as many times as it took."

Nina was a strong woman. I had rarely seen her cry.

The last time had been when Chryse died. Before that, only a handful of times in all the centuries I'd known her.

That she was shedding tears now shook me to my core.

"Then why…?"

"Because I respected her."

And yet. I could tell, somehow, that these were not tears of sorrow.

Even through them, her sharp eyes pierced me like a lance.

"She… Ai…! She loved you more than anyone! She poured every last second of her short life… her entire heart and soul, into you!"

Those were.

Tears of anger.

"… I thought… I could never do that. To keep loving you until I died… no, even after death. No matter how much I loved you. My feelings could never, ever match hers. That's… what I believed…"

I understood that feeling well.

Human lives are so heartbreakingly brief, and precisely because of that, we cannot help but see them as powerful and precious. We watch them live each moment with everything they have, watch them blaze past us in the blink of an eye, and somewhere deep down, we envy them. We admire them.

"If she'd remembered you, that would have been fine. Even born as a dragon, if she'd truly remembered you, kept loving you. If you two could have been… happy together… I'm sure I could have blessed that."

Nina clenched her fists and spoke in a voice that sounded wrung from her by force.

"But that's not what happened. She wasn't human. She didn't remember you. She never came to find you. The most important thing she should have held onto, she'd let slip somewhere along the way."

Her words gathered heat as she went.

"So I refuse… to accept her as Ai. I refuse. Even if their souls are the same. A dragon who forgot about you, who'd have me hand her those memories on a silver platter so she can waltz back to your side for eternity? I will never accept that!"

And then the heat became something fierce as blazing fire.

"While she'd forgotten all about you, I was here! Right beside you, the whole time! I love you more than that dragon ever could!"

I had never known such intensity burned inside her.

I had once described to Chryse the love that Nina and I shared as something like floating on a calm, glassy sea, or napping in the shade of a tree swayed by a gentle breeze.

I had understood it as closer to the love one feels for family than to the passion one feels for a lover.

But that had been my assumption alone. No. Perhaps it had been an assumption even for Nina herself.

"… Even… so…"

Nina dropped her gaze back to the floor and opened her rucksack.

That enormous, mountain-sized rucksack she'd hauled all the way here.

"Even so, if you still want her…"

What tumbled out were massive chunks of rock and bundles of wooden slats.

"These are…"

I recognized the patterns painted on the rock's surface.

They were the cave paintings Ai had drawn on the back wall of our cavern, long ago.

I'd noticed them missing at some point and assumed the wind and rain had worn them away. But Nina had cut the stone free before that could happen.

The wooden slats stirred memories too. Faint traces of charcoal still clung to them, bearing the words of long incantations.

They were the world's oldest spellbooks, the first I'd ever given to Ai. Paper hadn't existed back then, so we'd carved letters into wooden boards and rubbed charcoal into the grooves to make them legible.

There were other things as well. Ancient, ancient relics suffused with our memories. Every last one over a thousand years old.

Things that even I had forgotten existed.

Nina had kept them all. Carefully, preciously stored away.

For the day she would see Ai again.

Perhaps she had wanted to see Ai again even more than I had.

"If you show her these… she might remember. And even if she doesn't, you could use magic, couldn't you?"

Among the spellbooks were several in Ai's own hand. They were records and memories both, imbued with the intent of the woman who had written them. Enough for Chryse to sense a soul within.

If I could use magic to place those into the present Ai, the memories from that time would return to her at the very least.

I stared at them, agonized—

And after agonizing endlessly, I crushed them. The artifacts Nina had spent a thousand years desperately preserving crumbled beneath my fingertips with just a touch of magic.

"… Are you sure?"

Nina asked, her eyes wavering with uncertainty.

"Yeah."

I let out a long, slow breath… and answered.

"I'm sure."