“That’s right. The first time, Ark complained the entire journey about having to fly across the ocean, so…” He chuckled. “When I cast the magic circle, he never asked why I’d been there before, though. Perhaps he already realized I was up to something, even back then.”
The entrance to the tower appeared before them, the Charles in the memory standing nearby.
“Oh my. There are so many soldiers…” She winced. Lille only remembered there ever being one or two soldiers guarding the tower at once. In the vision of the future that once was, however, the grounds were crawling with them.
“I imagine they increased patrols in case any other countries launched a counterattack. Just now, my past self decided to cast an invisibility charm in order to sneak past them, since there’s no way I would’ve been able to avoid killing anyone, faced with such a large number of enemies,” Charles explained.
“I never knew there was a spell like that,” Lille commented in wonder.
“To tell you the truth, it’s a forbidden spell. Many people would use it for evil, no doubt, so the textbooks don’t teach it. I’d be arrested if I used it back at home. But, well, this was…an emergency, y’know?” His voice grew quieter, sheepish. He looked down guiltily as though he were a mischievous child being scolded. “You won’t tell Master August, will you? He’s strict about that sort of thing…” He bit his lip at the thought.
“I promise not to tell.” She smiled.
Although Charles said he’d turned invisible, Lille could still see him for some reason. Perhaps it was because the memory was from his point of view. While Ark waited outside, Lille watched Charles begin to climb the stairs up to the top of the tower. After using magic to unlock the sturdy, reinforced door, it swung back to reveal a terribly thin girl wearing a tattered dress. In that timeline, she didn’t even have a name.
Did I really look that awful…?
The Lille in the vision had no sense of caution, and simply stared vacantly at the stranger who had suddenly burst into her room.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name’s Charles. I’m a sorcerer, just like you,” he replied kindly.
“A…sorcerer?” She blinked.
“This’ll be a battlefield before long. I’m here to rescue you before that happens. Would you come with me?” He offered her a hand.
“But…if I go with you, it’d cause trouble for people,” she said—the exact same words she told Ark when he’d come to collect the current Lille.
Sadness briefly flared in Charles’s eyes, then he grinned, trying to comfort the other Lille. “Not at all. I’ll make sure it won’t,” he assured her. “Come on, we need to hurry.”
“All right.” She nodded, hesitantly latching onto Charles’s outstretched hand. Then, all of a sudden—
“INTRUDER! He’s on the enemy’s side!”
Soldiers spilled into the tiny room.
“Get behind me,” Charles directed calmly.
As the soldiers charged toward him with their swords poised, Charles shot off bolts of magic, stunning each of them one by one. In the meantime, Lille quivered as she watched from behind Charles’s back.
Eventually, all of the soldiers were flat on their faces, unmoving. But then the current Lille noticed a curious glint in one of the men’s eyes.
He’s only pretending to be unconscious…!
Despite knowing she couldn’t touch anyone, Lille leapt forward with her hand outstretched and screamed at their alternate selves. The soldier waited until Charles and Lille had resumed talking, then dove between the two of them.
“Watch out!”
For a moment, Lille wondered if she had yelled without thinking again, but quickly realized the voice belonged to her alternate self. The other Lille dashed out in front of Charles in order to defend him, and at the same time, he shot off a blast of magic to divert the course of the oncoming sword. Instead of stabbing anyone, the blade merely cut off a chunk of Lille’s hair, the strands fluttering to the floor.
One side of her long, disheveled hair was now short. She froze, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. The current Lille gasped as well, looking on in shock.
“Oh… Oh no… My hair…” the other Lille breathed, horrified.
Her knees started to knock together as tremors chased up and down her whole body. Lille had fully believed in the lie she’d been fed—that if she cut her hair, her magic would go berserk. Even after learning the truth, the idea still scared her enough that she couldn’t gather the courage to cut it.
“Hey… What’s wr—?” Charles said, approaching the girl.
“They said I could never cut it, or else…!” she shrieked.
As soon as Charles anchored his hands on her shoulders, her mana ran completely wild. Jade-green flashes of light accompanied a huge shockwave, the pulse totally filling the small room. Charles was almost thrust into the air, but luckily he was able to cast a barrier around himself just as he lost his footing.
The ground beneath them shook with the impact. Stones clattered down from the ceiling, and the walls of the tower began to crumble.
“Gh…!” Charles grit his teeth, rushing over to take Lille in his arms and cast a teleportation spell. They both disappeared, then reappeared outside the tower.
“Are you still with me?!” Charles shouted desperately, shaking her limp body, but…her eyes were utterly devoid of light. When Charles registered what that meant, his bottom lip began to tremble.
“No… You can’t…” he whimpered.
Lille’s eyes stared into empty space. Her chest was unmoving. Her arms and legs lolled.
Oh. I really did die.
She had been expecting it, but her vision turned cloudy, and her body ran cold nonetheless.
“Again. It happened again. I let someone die. She tried to protect me, and… Is it all my fault?” he choked.
Lille desperately wanted to tell him “No, it’s not your fault at all,” but her voice would never reach the Charles in the vision. Instead, what spilled from her lips was a question.
“Master Charlie…” she began in a whisper. “I thought that threat about not cutting my hair was just a superstition. Was I wrong…?”
Leo—a sorcerer—had suggested cutting her hair when they first met without thinking anything of it, and she’d never seen the phenomenon mentioned in any of the books she’d read.
“…No, you’re right. I suppose it’s technically true that there’s magic stored in a sorcerer’s hair, but it still shouldn’t go out of control if you cut it,” Charles said.
“Then, why did I…?” She frowned.
“In this timeline, you still fully believed that something terrible would happen if you cut it. Your mana ran wild because you panicked when you saw how much the soldier cut off. Then, in the midst of the chaos, you released every single mana particle inside you, and…,” he trailed off sadly.
“So…it happened…because I thought it would…?” She nibbled at her lip.
It suddenly struck her that the reason the thought of cutting her hair still made her so anxious was due to remnant memories of the future that wasn’t there anymore.
“I’ll go back… I need to save this girl…” Charles muttered to himself, twisting the crown of the pocket watch with trembling fingertips. Beneath her own fingers, Lille could feel the current Charles’s hand shaking slightly as well.
“I’m so sorry, Lille. You died because of me,” he apologized dolefully.
“It’s not your f—”
Before she could finish speaking, the scene before them contorted, and the outlines of their own bodies began to fade away.
“…Looks like this is where the memories end,” Charles said. His voice was echoey and far away as if it were dissipating, too. As Lille looked up at him, his translucent lips moved; they seemed to say “Sorry I couldn’t protect you.”
Her consciousness waned, just as it had when they first entered the world of memories. Within the pitch-black darkness, she could’ve sworn she heard Charles sobbing in the distance. She frantically searched for his warmth and found it. She wrapped her arms around the quaking, curled-up body and bundled it against her chest.
I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here. I won’t leave you behind ever again.
She didn’t know whether she said the words aloud, nor whether Charles could hear them. Still, she closed her eyes and prayed that when they returned to the real world, he at least wouldn’t be trembling anymore.