“What about it? Isn’t that his name?”
“Yes, it is. His real identity is Abel Arsene Schoenberg, the world’s most heinous criminal. We didn’t call him that at first, though. Just before I went to sleep for a year and three months, when we first faced off against him—we called him Arsene the Phantom Thief.”
Now that I thought about it, she was right. Somewhere in there, we’d stopped calling him Arsene and started calling him Abel. However, a big part of the reason was that, at the time, the Federation Government wouldn’t acknowledge that Abel was actually the Phantom Thief. We’d had to call him Abel as a matter of convenience.
“But when you get right down to it, he’s the Phantom Thief. We’ve had a tendency to forget that lately.”
“…His true nature is the Phantom Thief, and his job is to steal things.”
So what had the Phantom Thief stolen?
The Akashic records. In stealing those, he’d broken the world.
“Wait, Kimihiko. Didn’t the System take those back?” Nagisa asked.
“Yeah, along with Abel’s body.”
However, now that I really thought about it, that was weird.
“If it retook everything he stole, then why is the System still not functioning properly?”
Because of that, the Tuners couldn’t make full use of the power of their wills, and the world was heading toward destruction as a punishment for having lost the Akashic records.
“Has Abel not returned everything he stole yet?”
Had he hidden it in a place where the System couldn’t find it?
“There’s one other thing the Phantom Thief stole,” Siesta said, a finger against her chin as she thought. “The sacred text. Mia and I made a fake sacred text to trick Seed, which Abel stole. In other words, those two great evils met back then.”
She was right. Their destinies had intersected. Abel and Seed, our two most formidable enemies, had once joined forces. Now Yggdrasil—the tree where Seed slept—was rampaging, set off by the disaster Abel had triggered.
“It’s connected.”
It was all connected. It had been for more than four years.
Back then, the seeds known as “codes” had already been sown.
“Abel hid the stolen Akashic records inside Yggdrasil.”
He’d planted the codes for that inside Seed.
“When the Phantom Thief steals something, the people he’s stolen from don’t even register that it’s gone. He tricked the System, the mechanism behind the world—even though what it lost has been in eye-catching places all over the world, all this time.” Siesta was gazing at the ice roots, which were thrashing about like dragons. We’d gotten the wrong idea about why it was rampaging. Yggdrasil didn’t want to destroy the world; it was just trying to put what had been placed in its care back where it belonged.
“Seed.” Nagisa set off toward a huge tree, coated with ice, which resembled the original Yggdrasil. “Come to think of it, I left you to that girl. We parted without ever talking.”
Frozen vegetation crawled toward Nagisa’s feet, trying to climb up her ankles. I went to run after her, but Siesta stopped me.
“I don’t have any particular attachment to you,” Nagisa said. “In fact, all I’ve got is resentment. We were enemies from start to finish, and that’s what we’ll always be. I won’t sympathize with you. It’s a fantasy to think that we can resolve everything through talking, and I don’t plan to force it on to you. However…” Reaching the foot of the great tree of ice, Nagisa put her hand against its bark. “Just for now, I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing. We have the same wish. So, Seed, I’ll give your will an order for you. A really strong one. I’ll give you a word-soul to make that wish come true. I’ll believe in your survival instinct for you.”
Nagisa Natsunagi’s red eyes shone.
“If you don’t want to lose this planet, return the Akashic records to the world.”
White flowers bloomed from the ice roots all across the land. Their centers gave off shining orange motes, which began to drift through the atmosphere.
“It’s pollen.”
It wasn’t like the pollen that had once stolen my memories, though. Yggdrasil’s original role was to be a medium for memories. This pollen was a recovery program to help the world retake its lost records.
The same sight was probably playing out all around the world right now: at the clock tower in London, in the streets of New York City, in the deserts of Cairo, and at Yggdrasil’s main body in Japan. The white flowers that had bloomed from the great tree released particles of light, and everything returned—to Mother Earth.
“Assistant,” Siesta called out, staring at something behind us.
“That’s…”
It was a human figure, but only the rough outline of one, and it didn’t belong to anyone in particular.
However, I had a vague premonition about its identity. Returning everything Yggdrasil had been entrusted with meant that even the memories of the person who’d done it would return. He’d said it himself: He was only a program.
Siesta leveled her gun, but the shadow only turned and walked off. Was he going to hide himself for now and attempt to control the new world by some other method later? Or would he give up on this planet and go searching for an unknown sanctuary in some other universe?
“Professor Moriya.”
Abel? Arsene? I wasn’t sure what to call him, so in the end, I’d used the name that seemed most at home in that white lab coat.
The shadow grew smaller, gradually disappearing. Carrying the sins of the human race, he’d searched for an ideal new world, yet he would remain forever evil. And so…
“Let’s stay on the side of justice until our very last moment,” Siesta said. She was seeing the same future I was.
“They’re dying.”
The ice roots that had grown so thickly and the flowers in full bloom quickly shriveled up and returned to the icy ground. Yggdrasil had fulfilled its role. The plants that had been invading the rest of the world were likely beginning to retreat as well.
Siesta and I walked over to Nagisa. She was sitting down, gently holding her palm out toward a thin, withered tree.
“Nagisa.”
When I called to her, she got to her feet, a satisfied smile on her face. Then finally, she spoke to the remains of Yggdrasil.
“Rest well this time, Father.”