My breath grew fainter and fainter, as if it might stop altogether. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore... I’d lost. My life up until today had lost all value, all meaning. So it was fine if my breath stopped now. It was fine if I died. It would bring relief.
“Professor! Pull yourself together!” Rouge gripped my hand tightly, interrupting my thoughts and repeating herself.
“P-Professor...?”
“Yes. You’re our teacher. Please don’t forget that, I beg you...”
“No...” Reflexively, I tried to answer. “That’s wrong. I’m the chancellor.” But seeing as I couldn’t even sit up, I swallowed my words.
“It’s okay. You’re our proud professor. Even if my sister isn’t here, even if you’re no longer the chancellor, that one thing won’t change.” Rouge tightened her grip on my hand even more. And then, she repeated what the Jewelculi always said in unison. “A year ago, you saved us from the research institute. You saved all of our families too. You worked tirelessly to heal our weak bodies and even created a place for us to live! Because you were there, professor, everyone in Viaysia now welcomes the Jewelculi with smiles, right? If not for you, we wouldn’t have found a place to belong. We’d have died somewhere, alone and forgotten. We wouldn’t even have known our own names when we died! That’s why we’re all so grateful! We’re so glad you were there!” Rouge pleaded with me, her throat trembling with effort.
Yet, seeing her desperate plea, the first thought that crossed my mind was, coldly, Why is she here now? From what she’d said, it seemed to be because I had saved the Jewelculi a year ago. Why had I saved them in the first place? If I’d just wanted manpower, I could have recruited fully trained fighters elsewhere instead of raising them from scratch. In fact, I’d poached many talents from the South. So why had I brought in these troublesome, short-lived, unstable beings?
The Jewelculi were irrelevant to me. They were a debt born from the Southern Alliance a thousand years ago, something that had no connection to me, a member of the Northern Alliance. So then why?
As the endless Why? echoed in my mind, I suddenly shifted my gaze. I looked down at my arm, gripped painfully tightly. Rouge’s monstrous hand, the hand of a dryad, intertwined with twigs, was clutching my own. It was covered in scrapes, just like mine. Worse, the Sorcerification had turned it red and made it soft, like a mollusk. It was a very familiar hand.
“A familiar hand?” Yes. Long ago, someone had held my hand like this, pulling me back from the brink of madness. However, that memory was so ancient it was truly blank, and I couldn’t recall their face now. But they’d definitely been there. Just like Rouge had escaped from the research institute, when I was the Nameless Child wandering aimlessly without a name or a place to belong, that person had taken my hand.
Back then, I’d been a slave, barely old enough to understand anything. No, in the South back then, the existence of sorcerers had been so reviled that it would be more accurate to say I had been less than a slave. And being physically weak, I’d been worked to death and discarded in a garbage heap. After that, I remembered crawling out of the garbage to survive, then walking north like I was running away.
Walking and walking and walking and walking on and on... How had I survived? There was no way I could have done so alone. At the end of that escape, someone must have helped me. That someone was precisely whom Kanami the Founder had mentioned earlier...
“Grandma...and...grandpa...?” I wasn’t certain, but grandma and grandpa should be right.
After fleeing, I’d been beckoned by a girl, found my way to a gabled house, and been given a bed. Then...they had held my hand and encouraged me as I lay in that bed. They’d told me I didn’t need to worry anymore, that there was nothing to fear.
Just like Rouge was doing now, they’d held my hand and given me strength. Then, holding a bowl of soup they’d reheated for me after I fainted, grandpa had said, “Now then. Would you be willing to become Titee’s little brother? We’re just an old man and an old woman. We won’t be around forever. That’s why we’d feel at ease if you, being close in age, stayed by Titee’s side.”
They’d made such a kind proposal to me, someone who was less than a slave, without so much as a name of my own.
“Please, become part of our family. Live as Titee’s younger brother. Do you want to do that?”
And I’d answered, “Yes, yes, gladly. To repay the kindness you showed me, I will become her younger brother. I swear on my soul to protect you all.”
That had been my answer. Yes... Indeed, that had been my answer...
“Mm, no need to be so formal. You’re even stiffer than Titee, aren’t you? But I suppose I was a bit stiff in my wording too once. Such grand vows aren’t necessary. I’m sure Titee will live her life as her true self from now on. Just live as your true self beside her. Simply being by her side is enough,” he’d told me.
“Be myself...beside her?”
“Yes, that is enough.”
And so, I’d answered again. That day, the child I was had sworn of his own free will, “Yes. Grandfather, grandmother...I will always stay by my sister’s side.”
Tears welled up again. It wasn’t sadness. It was no longer painful. They welled up from deep within my brow simply because it was so nostalgic, so dazzling, so precious. There were still words I needed to remember. My grandparents weren’t the only important people. After that, I’d received something precious from an ordinary sorcerer girl, the kind found anywhere.
“Why are you following me? This is my job, child! Don’t follow me!” The half bird, half human harpy girl, her mouth pouting, shrugged with an odd way of speaking.
“But...Grandpa and Grandma said to follow you...”
Having been told that staying by this girl’s side was my duty, I couldn’t leave her. Though trembling with fear, I patiently followed her. But soon, it wasn’t just a sense of duty—I began to genuinely want to stay by her side. Before long, we became close, and I received the name I would use for over a thousand years.
“Then, your name shall be Ide! Ide! A fine name, is it not?”
“Ide... Why... Why am I called Ide?”
“Well, um...Ide was the name of a senior member of my animal friends here. He passed away from old age a little while ago, so I thought, if you were willing, perhaps you could carry on the name.”
“The name of an elder? What kind of animal was he?” I hadn’t been particularly unhappy that it was an animal’s name; I’d just wondered what the name meant. After all, it had become my first name.