“HMM…”
Nichika nudged Wolfie awake and they regrouped with Lambert who showed up from beyond the white veil. All together again, they set off to make their way out of the valley. The petacolons showed them a shortcut, so the rest of their journey should have been easy sailing, but Nichika was too busy glowering and groaning at the crystal pieces in her hands to enjoy herself.
“Something doesn’t add up.”
After the wicked purple flower withered, the crystal at its core drained of color, turning gray. On closer inspection, she noticed deliberate messy lines marring the surface, which nagged at her. She pushed the two halves together and inspected it closely.
“…?”
“Nichika, you’ll trip if you stare too hard at that thing while walkin’,” Lambert warned with a wry smile.
“Maybe she’ll pay more attention if she falls off the cliff again,” Oswald heartlessly supplied.
“I won’t fall!”
“Oh yeah, you already fell once. You lack the intelligence for learning your lesson.”
“GRRR—!”
Geez! He’s a genius at rubbing people the wrong way!
“Hey, hey! Those scratches look like picture letters from down here,” Wolfie observed with interest, looking at the crystal from below. His observation stopped Nichika from throwing a snide remark back at Oswald.
“Does it?”
“I can’t read it. Maybe Master can?”
She flipped over the crystal and the three of them stared down at it. Now that Wolfie pointed it out, the scratches did look like letters if viewed through the distortion in the center of the crystal. In other words, Nichika had been looking at it upside down.
Reading what it said shocked the words right out of her. Unaware of her reaction, Oswald inclined his head, a puzzled look on his face.
“…No, I’ve never seen these letters before. There are only three and they look difficult to decipher.”
“I can’t make sense of ’em either. What ’bout you—Nichika?”
The crystal trembled in Nichika’s shaking hands as Lambert’s question went unanswered. She read it. The three letters spelled the word for sloth.
The problem was, those letters were Japanese kanji.
“H-How?”
What in the world did this mean? Why were Japanese letters carved into an item left behind by the boy cloaked in a white robe? Not even Cherry Blossom Kingdom, the one place with a similar culture to Japan, used the Japanese writing system. Nichika kicked her brain into high gear to figure it out, when someone suddenly yanked on her ear, causing her to shout.
“Ow! Ow! OW!”
As expected, it was Oswald who rescued her from drowning in thought.
“Why don’t you explain it to us before you start forcing the rats in your brain to turn those wheels?” he demanded without a shred of guilt for pinching her.
“Fine! I will! Just stop hurting me!” Nichika rubbed her red ear as she considered suing him for assault. “It looks like letters from my world.”
“It does?”
“Well, I think so…at least.”
She couldn’t say for sure because the lines making up the letters were so sloppy they looked like an earthworm squirming through dirt. Someone could write with their non-dominant hand and it’d still look better than what was carved into the crystal.
“Oh yeah. I forgot you were summoned from another world, Nichika,” Lambert said, only just now remembering that tidbit about her.
“So? What’s it say?” Oswald pushed.
Nichika ran her eyes over the crystal again. She slowly read the letters aloud, confirming each one. “Sloth…I think.”
“Sloth?”
That’s weird…
Nichika had naturally read it out loud in Japanese, yet Oswald heard it in his own language. Strange as it was, Oswald began hypothesizing with the information she gave him, so she set that suspicion aside for the time being.
“You could call the petacolons sleeping the day away a form of slothfulness. Basically, they were doing exactly what was carved into that crystal.”
True enough, the haze the purple crystal spewed could be said to have caused slothfulness in those who inhaled it. Everyone present became dead tired the moment they breathed the corrupted air.
Nichika thought of a particular piece of knowledge from her world and decided to share it with the others. Reluctant over how to breach the subject, she balled her hand in front of her chest and carefully picked her words.
“Hey, do you guys mind hearing me out for a minute? There’s something called the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ in my world, and sloth is among the seven.”
“Seven deadly sins?” Wolfie repeated the curious sounding words.
Nichika drew on her vague knowledge. “I don’t remember the nitty-gritty details because I only ever read about it in books… Uhh, what were they again? It has to do with people’s desires. So you’ve got sloth, right? And then there’s greed, lust, jealousy…and I’m forgetting the rest.”
She dug through her mind for the remaining sins but came up short and hung her head.
“In other words, there’s a chance other magic crystals pertaining to each sin are out there?” Oswald summarized for her.
“I think it’s a possibility,” she affirmed with a nod.
As long as she was going to continue collecting the Great Spirits against Phantom’s wishes, they were undoubtedly going to clash during the journey ahead. Her theory was still within the realms of guesswork, but it never hurt to be wary.
“The seven deadly sins, huh? First I’ve heard of it,” Lambert said, folding his hands behind his head.
Oswald looked back at his apprentice. “What if the kid in the white hood calling himself Phantom comes from the same place as you?”
“What?” Her jaw dropped at the reality she never considered.
“Didn’t you call it Japan? Phantom used a writing system that doesn’t exist here and even knows about this seven deadly sins thing. It’s a real possibility, don’t you think?”
“Phantom is…Japanese?”
Then was he summoned here like I was? By who? For what purpose?
“Next time you meet Ini tell him: ‘I still haven’t forgiven you. And I will never ever forgive you for all eternity.’ ’Kay?”
His parting words echoed in her head. A boy with knowledge from her world had appeared to prevent Yuna’s revival. Indescribable worry flooded Nichika’s heart at this new discovery.