No conversation passed between Nito and I during the ride back to the temple. The same thoughts were probably going through both of our heads, but it seemed that neither of us could come up with a clear path to follow.
Charolles’s trike was sitting outside as we drove up, despite usually being nowhere to be seen. I pulled the Kettle up alongside it, and we got out and headed inside. The saint’s statue was standing in the main hall as it always did; we went past her and down the corridor. The door to the library was open, and a peek through it revealed Charolles sitting in one of the chairs at the table. I waited for a moment, before calling out to her.
“What’s up?”
“Welcome back,” she replied. “I’ve been waiting for you two.”
The room seemed awfully empty to me, and I soon realized why. The piles of books had all been returned to their shelves. Before I could wonder at that, Charolles stood up and walked toward us, taking a thick book from her magic bag and offering it to us. I accepted it readily, but noticed that it was shockingly heavy.
“You can have it.”
“That’s great, but what is it?”
The leather-bound book was covered in scuffs and looked positively ancient. Constant rough treatment over the years must have battered it.
“It’s a map. You were looking for one, right?”
“You found it?” I asked.
“That’s the courier’s map I inherited,” she said, shaking her head. “There isn’t a map in this library, or so the author said.”
“What? Monty?”
“Yes. He said that he’s read every book in here, so there’s no point in searching anymore.”
“That’s why you’re giving us yours? It must be important to you, though.”
Considering she’d said she inherited it, it must have been an accumulation of some kind of ancestral knowledge, not just some simple map.
She shook her head, though, simply saying, “I don’t need it anymore. There’s no point in us couriers continuing our work, so it’s of no use to me.”
“You’re searching for that story, though, aren’t you? Don’t you use it for that?”
“I’m done with that too,” she said.
All I could do was let out a dumbfounded “Huh?”
“The author knew it. Apparently, there isn’t an ending to it in the first place. It was an incomplete book written by a hobbyist... That kind of thing happens quite often. A book starts out being written for fun, but the author tires of it before it’s finished.”
I knew it. I’d had a feeling when we passed each other on the way to Monty’s that she’d gone to ask him about the story. An author was definitely the best person to ask about a story, and I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it the night before. My mind had just been preoccupied with my worries about myself, apparently.
“Monty knew it, though... You’re really sure? It’s definitely the right one?”
“It is. He even knew what happened in it.”
Whether it really was the right book or not, this was all too sudden. My brain wasn’t great at the best of times, but having this sprung on me out of nowhere had robbed me of the ability to string a decent sentence together, and so I remained silent. Nito had been standing quietly beside me with her mouth agape through all this, but now she stepped forward and looked up at the taller girl.
“Charolles, are you leaving?”
Charolles crouched down and met Nito’s gaze.
“I suppose so, yes. Now I know that what I was looking for doesn’t exist, after all.”
That sentence hung in the air, a stifling weight in the small room.
“Wh-Where are you going?!” Nito demanded.
“I haven’t decided. I’ve spent all this time looking at the map, carrying my things from place to place, and searching for something or someone. Now that I don’t have any of that, I don’t know what to do with myself or where to go.”
Nito pressed her lips tightly together, her brows furrowing. It seemed like she might start crying at any moment. Charolles gently reached out to stroke her cheek.
“Don’t make that face. I’m sorry for worrying you.”
The two of them held each other’s gaze for a while, but then Charolles abruptly averted her eyes and stood up.
“You’re looking for a place, aren’t you? It’s better for you to have it than me. It’ll actually be useful for you.”
She gave me a glance and then moved past us both. Nito spun around in a tizzy and called after her.
“You’re going right now?!”
“Oh, well, we’re doing the Lantern Flower Festival, aren’t we? I want to join in too.”
“But...you just...”
Charolles looked blankly back at her and then seemed to realize how her actions had seemed from an outside perspective. She snorted.
“Sorry about that. I was just going to go check my trike over.”
“It was very ambiguous...” I commented before letting out a sigh of relief. That had all felt like the lead-up to a farewell, so I’d also thought she was about to leave for good.
“Oh my, were you going to miss me as well?” Charolles asked teasingly.
“Not at all. Not even the slightest, most minuscule amount,” I replied with the harshest frown I could muster.
“Well, that’s a shame,” she replied nonchalantly, before heading out down the corridor.
Nito’s eyes remained fixed on her back as she left. I dropped my own gaze to look at the book in my hands and let out another sigh through my nose. Partings followed meetings. That was the unfortunately inevitable nature of the world, but it was still hard to bear. Everything changed eventually, and we had no way of stopping it.
“The Lantern Flower Festival, huh?” I mused.
We four would be the only participants, and once it was over, Charolles would be moving on down a different path. It was shaping up to be a rather lonely festival, in my opinion. Even I was feeling down about it, so of course Nito’s deflated spirit was painfully obvious. She adored Charolles, so the suddenly much-closer parting must have weighed even more heavily on her.
“Are you okay?” I ventured hesitantly.
“I had it all wrong...” she murmured. “In stories, you get all sorts of suffering and sadness, but everyone does their best and things go well in the end. They find what’s precious to them and end up happy... I thought real life would be the same way, that if you believed and tried hard, your wishes would be granted and there’d be a smile on your face.”
If reality were that way, then it would be the best thing ever. I’d have felt better about laughing at all the adults who said stories were stories because they didn’t happen in real life. Reality wasn’t so kind, though. I knew that, and now so did Nito.
“Reality is much harsher than fiction,” she told me, looking up with a wan smile. “I don’t know why people smile, and I have no idea what I can do to put those smiles on their faces. I’ve read so many books and know so many things, but I still don’t know anything about helping people get through their pain and suffering.”
Her gaze gradually drifted downward as she spoke, until she was staring at her feet.
“There are people here suffering, but the only thing we can really do is watch? We can’t use magic like the saint, so we can’t help anyone?” she asked.
Maybe it would make her feel better to say there was something she could do? I wondered. Even if neither of us knows what that something is.
She seemed so blindingly bright to me, in how she’d worry and suffer so much for someone she’d only just met, and truly want to help them. She seemed fragile too, though. It was like her heart was made of spun glass: beautiful, but far too easily cracked.