Occult

 

There's no way I could tell them!

— The Black Witch, Chryse

 

White.

White, stretching as far as the eye could see.

In a landscape swallowed entirely by pure white, a single point of red existed, solitary and small.

That red was spreading, slowly, slowly outward.

What was that red…?

I strained to focus through my hazy vision, but it was no use. Still, the red drew my attention so irresistibly that as I stared, the contours of the white began to emerge.

Within the expanse of white, an even purer white.

Arms, legs, a head. The silhouette of a living creature.

The moment I recognized it as such, my vision snapped into clarity.

Blood.

That red was blood, pouring from the dragon.

It kept gushing, staining the surroundings crimson.

"——!"

I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

The arrow I had loosed had pierced the white dragon's heart.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"…!"

I bolted upright and scanned my surroundings, mind reeling.

My heart hammered. Sweat clung clammily to my skin.

"What's wrong…?"

My sudden movement must have woken her. At Nina's drowsy voice, I finally came back to myself.

"No, it's nothing… just a strange dream."

"I see…"

Seemingly satisfied, Nina closed her eyes again.

But… had that really been a dream?

The trembling feedback of the bow as I released the arrow, the sense of a dragon's life ebbing away… they still lingered inside me as something vividly real.

The only white dragon I knew of was Ai's reincarnation. But the figure in my dream had been too indistinct to tell whether it was her.

That bow, though. Could the bow in my dream have been the dragon-scale bow Fie had made?

Bows never caught on in Scarlet, and that dragon-scale bow was the only one ever crafted. It had been given to a master archer from an outside village, and I had no idea what became of it after that. The archer was almost certainly dead of old age by now.

In the dream, I had distinctly felt the bow's vibration as the arrow was loosed, yet I couldn't see the bow itself. If I had been seeing through the archer's eyes, that would have been strange. But if I had been seeing through the bow's perspective, it made perfect sense.

Magically speaking, a connection still existed between me and that bow. It was the same principle as communication magic through scales, but since a far greater quantity of my material had been used, the bond ran deeper. It wouldn't be so strange for its experiences to bleed through to me… I thought.

… Should I try to confirm this with Ai?

I had given her one of my scales and told her I would visit again. But I'd never made good on that promise, and I hadn't so much as reached out. She hadn't contacted me, either.

I gazed at Nina, sleeping peacefully beside me.

Back then. Setting aside the circumstances and conditions, I had chosen the one who had loved me faithfully by my side all along over the woman I had once loved. I didn't regret that decision.

… And yet.

"Being alone… is lonely."

Was that white dragon, who had murmured those words, still alone even now? The thought stirred an inexplicable unease in my chest.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"Speaking of which, Mentor, I heard that a white dragon was slain over in Shiou."

It was several months later, and from an unexpected source, that this news reached me.

"Yuuki, when did that happen?"

"Um, I'm sorry, I don't know exactly… but Shiou is quite far away, so it must have been at least two or three months ago."

Yuuki had come to Scarlet only recently, after seeing both her parents through to the end of their natural lives. Jean had followed Yuuka in death within mere months. Having lived over seventy years since Yuuki's birth, it was fair to call it a life well lived.

"The one who slew it was apparently a woman known as Rashida of the Vermilion Bow… Right, all done!"

With that, Yuuki hopped off the roof. She did a neat flip in midair and landed on the ground with barely a sound.

"Thanks. I'll call on you again."

"Thank you for your patronage! Though honestly, the original construction is so solid there was barely anything for me to do."

Taking her payment for the roof repairs, Yuuki flashed a cheerful grin.

The path she had chosen was not the sword but the hammer, working as a craftsman who built and repaired structures.

"Well then, please don't hesitate to call on me anytime you need anything!"

She'd been a member of Lufelle's artisan guild for less than a year, but her skill was excellent and her reputation growing. I'd taken to asking her to handle repairs on our home. That wasn't solely because she was good at her work, nor simply because I wanted to look after Yuuka's daughter.

"… She really does look just like her, doesn't she."

After Yuuki had disappeared from view, Nina murmured softly. I nodded.

My prediction had come true — she had, indeed, grown into a beauty. That was a wonderful thing in and of itself, but…

Yuuki resembled her far too much. Not her mother, Yuuka. The Yuuki who had once been my wife.

It was true that Yuuka had always carried a certain air reminiscent of Yuuki. They were distant relatives, after all, so a degree of resemblance was to be expected. By the same logic, Swordsaints who grew into the spitting image of Durga still appeared from time to time even now.

But she was too similar.

Her features, her build, her personality. Her voice, her mannerisms, her habits, everything about her was the spitting image of the Yuuki of old.

… And yet there was one crucial difference: the distance she kept between us.

Having spent all seventy years of her life in Shirogane, I was practically a stranger to her.

She didn't call me "big bro" with easy familiarity. She didn't speak to me in that casual, offhand way. She didn't cling to me affectionately. She treated me as one of Scarlet's villagers, with measured courtesy and respect.

This was hard on more than just me, it seemed. Nina was struggling with it too.

She had thought of the original Yuuki like a little sister, after all.

"Hold it."

Nina's hand clamped down on Chryse's head just as she was trying to slip away unnoticed.

"You know something, don't you?"

"L-let go of me! Or I'll pop my head off and make a run for it!"

"If your body runs off but the head that does the talking stays behind, that defeats the purpose."

"Oh. Right."

Chryse squirmed and struggled, then gave up and went still at Nina's words.

"I knew something was off. You go quiet every time this topic comes up. Normally you stick your nose into everything."

"Ughhh, nothing gets past you, Miss Nina…"

Who would have thought that this detachable head of mine, so convenient for sticking my nose into things, would be my downfall… Even as she cracked another one of her undead jokes, Chryse straightened up and turned to face Nina and me.

"Well, putting together everything you've all said… the soul inside Yuuki right now is probably the soul of the Yuuki who was Dad's wife."

"What do you mean?"

Surely her reasoning wasn't as simple as the two sharing a name.

But neither could I imagine Yuuki having been reincarnated, and both Nina and I tilted our heads in confusion.

"Big Sis Yuu originally had two souls inside her. I thought, 'huh, that's weird, guess it happens,' but since it didn't seem to be causing any problems, I never really paid it much mind…"

This was the first I'd heard of it. By "Big Sis Yuu," Chryse meant Yuuka.

She'd never once mentioned anything like that before, but…

Just as I was thinking that, an odd feeling prickled in my chest.

Had that truly been the case?

"Back then… when Yuuki was about to be born, Big Sis Yuu asked me, 'Can you take the soul inside me and put it into this child?' I told her I could, and I did."

"Wait. Then what about the child's original soul…? The baby's soul, what happened to it?"

Nina fixed Chryse with a sharp gaze.

"Oh, that's fine. A newborn baby's soul is like an empty vessel. You pour all sorts of things into it… love, experiences, setbacks… and both the vessel and its contents grow together. I just put the contents in a little early, that's all. She's Yuuki, and at the same time, she's Yuuki-chan."

I had a rough sense of what Chryse was trying to say.

The idea that the soul has two aspects existed in my previous world as well. The hun and po in Chinese Daoism, or ba and ka in Egyptian mythology. In essence, the current Yuuki possessed the hun of the original Yuuki and the po of a new person.

"Then why doesn't she remember us?"

"Well… I think it's because the soul and memories are separate things."

If memories belonged to the po, then it followed naturally that she wouldn't remember the past.

"Big Sis Yuu seemed to know a way to pass on memories too, but…"

Looking guilty, Chryse glanced at Nina.

"Given the circumstances… she probably decided that carrying those memories forward wouldn't be good for anyone."

In that moment, Yuuka had noticed that something had changed between Nina and me.

So she'd stopped the memories at her own generation.

"Even if this life of mine should end, I swear I will stay by his side. Always, always."

The words Yuuki had spoken at our wedding echoed through my mind.

Ah… Yuuki had really done that.

She'd dwelt in the hearts of the Swordsaints, watching over me all this time.

"I want to take what Father entrusted to us… and give it shape, as a Swordsaint, and return it to him."

And they, in turn, had kept passing it down, so that one day they could return it to Yuuki herself.

"Thank you, Chryse."

Knowing beyond all doubt that she was truly Yuuki brought my heart an unexpected calm.

The girl who had been reborn had a new life of her own.

Perhaps it was one that would barely intersect with mine.

Even so, the sheer joy of getting to meet her again like this was more than I could contain.

That was what I felt, from the very bottom of my heart.