Chapter 9: The Person Worth Saving
Ouka
THE sight of the submerged girl sent shudders through Ouka.
“Is she a Fresh Golem…?! Whose corpse is this?!”
Her face was clean but abnormally pale, even for a corpse. The bizarre color brought back memories of the frog specimen Ouka dissected during his schooldays.
“A human specimen…?” He suddenly realized what liquid filled the tank. “Embalming fluids? Is this liquid an embalming fluid?!”
If he was right, just how long had this corpse been stored in the liquid without decaying? Since when? For how long?
“What the hell is this?!” Unsure of how to proceed, he dumbly stared at the tank.
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Then out of the blue, “Who’s there?!” barked a voice from upstairs.
“…!” Ouka bit down on his lip to stop the frightened noise from escaping his mouth and faced the staircase.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs. Ouka held his breath and lied in wait until a man holding a black file under his arm finished descending the staircase.
“You are…Ouka Baraki?” said the middle-aged man—Crank Getz—when he saw Ouka.
“What? You know me too…?!” Ouka asked.
“I have my reasons to. More importantly, what are you doing here?”
“That’s my question. What in Heaven’s name are you doing, Professor? Whose corpse is this? How long has it been here for?” Ouka asked, shoving his thumb at the tank.
Getz looked at the Golem inside and answered with sadness straining his voice, “…This girl is my daughter Roberta. I suppose it’s been eleven years since she started going berserk.”
“ELEVEN YEARS?!” Ouka had never heard of a case like that before. “Have you been living with a Golem that’s out to kill you for eleven freakin’ years?!”
“At first, yes. She tried to kill me in the beginning. But she no longer has the desire to do so.”
“How…?!” Ouka glanced at the tank and noticed something off about the creature inside.
The Fresh Golem named Roberta was calm. She wasn’t throwing herself against the tank to try and kill her Tamer Getz. Berserker Golems always tried to kill their Tamer no matter what. So why wasn’t she?
“…How did this happen?” Ouka questioned, trying to make sense of what he saw.
Getz answered him, quiet and thoughtful. “She struggled and raged and thrashed around in the beginning. I restrained her with chains and submerged her in the tank. I couldn’t bring myself to erase the letters from her forehead even in her berserk state. But two years passed, then three, since she had been submerged…and then I finally realized something I hadn’t before. It occurred to me that Roberta had stopped acting violent.”
“A Berserker Golem…calmed down?”
“Yes. She’s no longer trying to kill me.”
“That’s impossible!”
There was no way what Getz said was true. Berserker Golems tried to kill their Tamer. Even if no one knew the reason for it, that was supposed to be the law of the land.
“I didn’t believe it at first either. But my daughter didn’t attempt to kill me even when I removed her chains. Believe it or not, she even looked at me like a helpless, small child…”
“Like a child…? By child you don’t mean…” Ouka came to an astonishing conclusion. Getz nodded.
“You’re thinking on the right track. A Berserker Golem is no longer a Golem. Freed from their Tamer’s control, they become an existence that moves of their own free will—they are born again as another life-form, similar yet different from humans,” Getz declared flatly.
Ouka struggled to speak. What could he say about a fact that over a hundred-fifty years of Golemology had failed to uncover? He swallowed the lump lodged in his throat and wrung out, “Professor…did you create new life?”
“You could say everyone who has ever made a Golem and allowed it to go berserk has created life,” he said, looking at Roberta. His eyes narrowed with the pain and guilt he felt toward the child. “But this girl is the result… She will rot the moment she sets foot outside the tank, so she can’t even leave its confines. Just like how my daughter never knew what was beyond the hospital walls while she was still alive.”
Profound regret colored his voice. Getz continued speaking as if moaning the words. “In the end, I’ve done things that only hurt both Roberta and this Golem. Anyone who tries to bring back the dead will become miserable… Just like Grinzam.”
Hearing Grinzam’s name reminded Ouka of why he came to the clinic. Roberta piqued his curiosity too, but he had an investigation to conduct.
“…I heard from Erie that you’re old friends with Grinzam. That true?”
“Yes, it’s true. Our friendship is old history though.”
“Well, let’s just say I believe you. How’d you meet Grinzam?”
“I often went to retrieve corpses from the Church for research purposes, before Fresh Golems were restricted. A young Rabbi called out to me on one of those trips. ‘Are you thinking of creating life too?’ he asked me. That was Grinzam.”
“Create life…?”
“Yes. He often came to my clinic whenever he hurt himself during research experiments after that. He told me about the cubes during one of those visits. ‘Sehem-hamphorasch has the potential to produce true life,’ he said.”
Ouka frowned. He couldn’t deny the fact that the cubes created something extremely close to a Berserker Golem. Considering how Roberta had transformed into a different life-form, Grinzam’s hypothesis couldn’t be completely discounted, but—
“…I don’t think that’s what it does,” Ouka concluded.
“But he believed it did. He probably wanted to hold on to that dream to endure his lonely and wretched life.”
“Okay then.” Ouka sighed. “That doesn’t sound at all like the Grinzam I’ve heard so much about. Ain’t he supposed to be the ‘strongest Rabbi in history’ and ‘the heinous traitor’?”
“He had a reason that led him to that point,” Getz said, taking a breath. “One day, Grinzam met a prostitute who came to leave her baby at the Church. He persuaded the prostitute not to do it and changed her mind. She chose to raise the child herself instead.”
“That sounds even less like the image I had of him. Sounds like Grinzam was a decent guy.”
“I thought the same thing. I was under the impression he was a man of few emotions, but Grinzam began to change after he met the prostitute. She was a woman living earnestly on Chest Island, while he was a natural-born Rabbi who knew of nothing beyond the Church. It was a relationship they needed to keep in secret, but they grew close nevertheless.”
“So, were they lovers or somethin’?”
“I wonder about that. I’m not so sure of the answer myself. But either way, the woman quit being a prostitute, took up work at the mines, and raised her child. Grinzam watched over them both. If only that meager happiness went on forever…”
“Something put an end to it?”
“I guess it’d be about eight years ago now…the woman died. She died in a Berserker Accident caused by an Illegal Golem.” Getz’s eyes fell, and his face twisted with pain, bitterness. “When she died, Grinzam said, ‘I might be able to bring her back to life if I use Sehem-hamphorasch.’ He tried talking the Church elders into using the cubes for her sake… Naturally, the Church didn’t approve.”
These events were finally starting to connect with the Grinzam Ouka had heard so much about. Thinking back to his days as a Rabbi, he reasoned, “‘Sehem-hamphorasch exists solely for Sephiroth. Everything on this archipelago exists solely for the day he will be named.’ So goes the Church elders’ motto. Makes sense why they didn’t approve.”
“Indeed. Thus, Grinzam made a run for it with the cubes, but he was taken down before he could get away… That’s the truth behind the Grinzam Disaster.”
Bitter feelings surfaced inside Ouka after hearing that story.
“The strongest Rabbi in the history of the Church ran away with the cubes for self-serving reasons and was put down.” Ouka had only been given that simple explanation during his days as a Rabbi.
But it was wrong. This was the story of yet another person led by the nose by the Church, who had felt compelled to make an outrageous choice as a result.
Ouka clicked his tongue and continued the story from his end. “…And then, four years after he made off with the red cubes, we failed our research as well, and the Church ended research into the cubes for good. Grinzam’s hopes were squashed along with it.”
Getz quietly shook his head. “No, his hopes haven’t been squashed.”
“How so?”
“There are still people who have continued with his hopes, in his place.” Getz pulled the black file from under his arm and held it out to Ouka.
“What…is this?”
“Something I stole from the dormitory custodian. You should be able to understand what it means.”
Ouka opened the file. At first he had no idea what it was, but he gradually started to understand what it contained as he read on. Inside the file was the list of discovered Engrave Incantations, data on the strength of every Prime Body type, and a register of twelve Rabbis…including Ouka. Faces of people he would never see again lined the register. The file contained numerous documents that should have been unknown to all but those involved.
Ouka’s hands trembled. A taut, stiff voice rushed from his mouth. “Wh-Why are these documents here?!”
“The person carrying on Grinzam’s ambitions continued research into Sehem-hamphorasch even after his death. But that was no easy task. They needed ample funding, a fully equipped facility, and a talented team,” Getz answered, his voice low.
Ouka’s head jerked up and he furiously shouted, “Is that it?! We were just USED, then!”
“Unfortunately, yes. And you must understand what those documents being here means, yes?”
An electric shockwave shot down Ouka’s spine.
Right, there aren’t many reasons for these documents to be in my hands. Ouka struck on a probable cause and his heart rate skyrocketed. I have to warn Kiriko about this, as fast as possible. The woman had become his enemy, but he needed to warn her.
“…Professor, why did you show me these documents?”
“I heard Erie’s story and thought I should do what I can too.”
His answer convinced Ouka. Witnessing Erie’s single-minded devotion to her goal and the dangerous line she toed had likely brought the professor back to his right mind for the first time in eleven years. What she had told Ouka earlier at the pub replayed in his mind.
“…But, if there’s even the slightest possibility of them disposing of Heathy, I have to go to him.”
Yeah, you’re right, girl. If there’s somethin’ I gotta warn Kiriko about, I have to go to her.
“I owe Erie my thanks!” Ouka exclaimed as his parting words and dashed out of the basement cellar. He raced up the staircase and exited into the clinic. He shoved the file into his shirt and ran alone through the darkness.
He ran in order to go to the Church, where the woman he needed to save was.