Chapter 5: A Name Not of This World
“LAETITIA still hasn’t awoken?”
A melancholic voice echoed off the walls of the dreary room.
Five days had passed since Laetitia suddenly lost consciousness and fell into a deep slumber.
Glenreed stared down at her bed, his face scrunched up in pain.
“She just keeps losing weight.”
Laetitia loved to eat, so seeing her body change this way was all the more heartbreaking. She truly looked like she was sleeping and nothing more. But no amount of jostling would rouse her from that slumber. She was breathing and her heart continued to beat, while she merely failed to regain consciousness.
“Laetitia…” Glenreed’s voice came out choked.
He’d been right there beside her. But there was nothing he could do.
The king merely panicked. That panic spiraled into terror. He managed to carry her to a room in the castle, but the situation had yet to improve even slightly.
“King Glenreed, you ought to return for today.”
The hoarse suggestion came from Lucian, who stood over Laetitia’s bedside like a shadow. Her face was as white as candle wax. Under her beautiful eyes were dark circles the color of mud.
“Lady Laetitia wouldn’t want you clinging to her bedside to the point that you neglect your official duties.”
Don’t you dare order me around. What could you possibly know about Laetitia? Glenreed bit down hard on his lip to stop himself from shouting that. The cold despair in his mind told him that no amount of yelling would awaken Laetitia either way.
“Wake up and come back to me already…” Pathetic as it was, his voice came out trembling. As he muttered those prayers to himself… “It’s you…?”
Glenreed couldn’t hide his shock at the next person to enter the room.
✦ ✦ ✦
“WHERE…am I…?”
Above me was a sky full of stars. I was standing in tepid water. Waves tickled the bottoms of my feet as they rose and fell. There was a gentle wind caressing my cheeks. Overhead, the glittering stars looked like they could rain from the sky at any moment.
“I’m at the ocean? At night…?”
But that didn’t fully explain what I was seeing either.
The stars twinkled in the deep indigo sky, yet the beach was a dazzling, bright white color like the midday sun.
I lifted my foot and splashed some of the glistening seawater.
The starry sky and the shore stretched on forever.
What was I doing at a place like this? How did I even get there?
As I stood there in a daze, unable to recall those answers, I heard a voice from behind me.
“A living human, is it? What an unusual visitor we have here.”
“…Who are you?”
I turned around to see a young man with black hair and blue eyes. He had gentle, but handsome features and wore an earring on his left ear, made of what looked like a red braid.
Amused, he began to walk toward me from the beach.
“I’m an inhabitant…no, more like a freeloader here in this place.”
“A freeloader…? What is this place? Where are we?” I asked.
“It’s the Shore of the Stars.”
He pointed up at the sky, almost singing his words to me.
I thought the name must have come from what this place looked like, but the young man chuckled calmly.
“The Shore of Stars, the Place Between Worlds, the Inverted Space. It has many names, so call it whatever you please.”
“The Place Between Worlds…?”
The place between. In other words, I was nowhere. But where was I supposed to go?
I looked around some more, seeing only the white sands, the lukewarm sea, and the sky full of silver stars.
“Maybe you’re lost. Do you remember your name?” he asked.
“My name…? …Ah…”
Once I started speaking, it came back to me. I once had a very, very dear name to me.
“I’m Laetitia…!!”
I grit my teeth. All of my memories started violently flooding into me.
“Ah, I…”
I fell unconscious in the carriage with King Glenreed…
“Is that when I died?” I asked aloud.
“No, you’re alive. Didn’t I just say that?” The black-haired man shrugged in response to my confusion. “I would guess that you lost sight of the world you were in, and now you don’t know where to go.”
“Lost…? Um, don’t you mean my ego dissolved?” Frightened, I’d let the worst possible outcome slip out of my mouth.
“If you still remember who you are here, you must have a really strong ego.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard that. I didn’t understand, but it seemed I was neither dead nor incapacitated…according to this person.
Now that I knew this much, I took another look around at my surroundings. The two of us seemed to be the only living beings in this space. It was a peaceful, yet lonely beach bathed in starlight.
“I want to go back to where I came from. What should I do now?” I asked.
“I’d suggest finding that world. That should do the trick.”
“…Find the world?”
“See all the sand scattered at your feet? Your world might be in there somewhere. Take a look and see if it jumps out at you.”
I didn’t understand what the man was saying, but I scooped up a handful of sand and looked it over.
As I stared, suddenly, I could see horses running in the white sand—more than I could count.
“What?!”
“Oh, could you see it?”
“W-Wait! What just happened?!”
“They’re worlds. Each grain of sand is one single world. Now that you know what to do, check out some different sand too.”
At his suggestion, I nervously looked back at the sand.
There was a world of infinite grasslands. Caves where bipedal, furry beings dwelled. Buildings that looked like ones I knew from my past life, golden sand, worlds full of great ambition and adventures. I saw a scene of a fox nuzzling against a girl with pink hair, a raging wizard in a shop, a hound hunting corpses with a blade, a young healer woman running around madly, a land ruled by a blue dragon king, a contract with a wicked dragon, a drama starring a thief with raven wings, a world where cats grew flowers from their heads…
After looking at nearly two hundred grains of sand, I raised my eyes to the sky.
It was endless. I didn’t know how I could ever find it.
The beach stretched on forever. I felt like I would go mad trying to count so many grains of sand.
It was a hopeless situation, and all I could do was stand there in complete bewilderment.