Around midday on that day, I went out. On the outskirts of town, on top of a small hill, there stood rows of rounded stones. It was a graveyard.
“Hello. I really appreciate all this.” At the entrance, I said a word of thanks to the grave keeper, as I always did. Over the past ten years, the number of graves here had increased. People come into the world and leave it, but gravestones don’t thin out much. In other graveyards, sometimes gravestones can be torn down when a whole family dies or something, but this graveyard was for nobles. Unless the line ended, the gravestones would remain—especially since the Ranoa Kingdom and the Magic City of Sharia were growing ever more powerful. As their might swelled, so did the number of nobles, and the number of gravestones soared with them.
I stopped in front of one grave.
On the rounded stone was written Paul Greyrat. It was much more worn than it had been when it was first built. Using the gear I’d brought, I tidied the area around the grave and polished the stone. After that, I put out some alcohol as an offering, then put my hands together.
I hadn’t come here for a long time. Long ago, any time anything had happened I’d come to report it, but lately, my visits had grown less frequent. We still came once a year with the whole family…but that wasn’t the same, somehow. That annual visit, it seemed to me, was more of a custom than a visit to see Paul. There wasn’t enough gratitude in it.
“Hey, Dad. Everyone’s doing great.”
With this first announcement out of the way, I went on to give him a rundown of recent events. I did this every year, but you know, just in case.
“I’ll be thirty-four this year.”
Thirty-four was the age I’d been when I died in my previous life. Without even thinking about it, I’d gotten that old. For some reason, it felt like getting to thirty-four had taken longer in this world than in the last one. Probably because I’d had more on my plate. That, and I’d traveled way more.
“But even though I’m turning thirty-four, I had a dream where I die at seventy-four.”
Where had that dream come from? Maybe it was just that: a dream. Or maybe the Man-God had been showing me my future—the Man-God sealed away, and me meeting my death in contentment. It had happened the moment that Lara slipped my bracelet off, so the Man-God could have intervened then.
“If that really was the future…”
If the dream had been shown to me by the Man-God, then maybe it had shown the fruits of all the work I’d put in up to now. We had won the Battle of the Biheiril Kingdom. It had really been the last battle—after that, the Man-God no longer had any way to defeat me and Orsted, and so he had given up. Ten years had gone by with no interference from him. There’d been nothing at all.
It might be that he was skulking around in the shadows, but just like Geese and Badigadi had said, I hadn’t heard a peep out of him. Sometimes, I even found myself forgetting what I was doing all this for.
“That means I can stop trying so hard. Right?”
If the Man-God really had given up, if my work was really at an end, then I could cut back to about half the work I was doing now and live a more laid-back life. I could spend one whole day in every three or so on devoting myself to baby-making with my wives, or teaching all sorts of things to my children… A quiet life like that didn’t sound so bad.
“Just kidding,” I said, laughing. What an idea! Even if the Man-God had given up on me, so what? It wasn’t like I hated my job now. I wasn’t suffering. I was getting things ready to lead Orsted to victory in the battle to come. It was a blast. Yeah, there were hard times, and painful times besides, but never enough that I wanted to run away from it. There were things I had to take care of, tasks I wanted to do, new challenges to try. For all I knew, making me feel like everything was okay now was the Man-God’s plot.
“I’m going to keep on giving it my all, Dad.”
I’d just keep on going as I always had. It had been a dream, I decided. A dream born out of hope, showing me what I wanted to see.
“Please watch over me,” I said, just like I said every time. Then, I put my hands together once more.
The fact I existed had to mean there was a world after death. Only, that didn’t necessarily mean Paul was here in this grave. He’d be off enjoying himself somewhere else. There might not be any reason at all to come here.
I was okay with that. This was a ritual. From today, I was going to go on trying my best, and pledging that in front of Paul’s grave mattered to me.
“Oh, and Geese…” Geese’s grave was next to Paul’s. I laid an offering on it, then put my hands together. I wasn’t sure what Geese thought about this, but then, it wasn’t like the guy had wholeheartedly wanted to destroy me or anything.
“If you don’t like how things worked out, you can tell me about it in forty years… Though I might live longer than that. Or I might die sooner.”
I didn’t want to gloss over Geese’s death, but a lot of my feelings about the way his life ended had faded in the past ten years. What I remembered now was his smile. He’d always been wearing that stupid grin and talking about jinxes. Imagining it now, I could only think of it as a good memory. No one I loved had died because of Geese. I had no reason to hold a grudge.
Now that he was gone, I could at least visit his grave.
“Right, I’ll be back soon. Probably with the family, next time.”
I stood up. I wasn’t going to change anything just because of a weird dream. I was going to do what I wanted to, and what I had to. That was all.
And with that, I set off back to the house where my family was waiting.