That was the trigger.
As if the final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place, that night, he remembered everything.
✦ ✦ ✦
An elderly warrior, his left eye hidden by an eye patch, was laying waste to the fairies.
There were fairies suspended, covered in blood, or fallen flat on the ground.
And there was Helbram.
“He must be after our wings!! Some humans believe our wings can be used for potions of longevity…”
“Fairy King!! At this rate they’ll—”
✦ ✦ ✦
Harlequin shook free from the nightmare and jumped to his feet, completely dumbfounded.
How could I forget something so important?
“I…was the king…of the fairies living near the Sacred Tree of the Fairy Realm.”
That was it. He was no ordinary fairy, he was the one and only Fairy King.
“I had many friends…and my one and only little sister…”
Elaine in her white dress—the organized little sister who always scolded him.
“She watched over the Fairy King’s Forest, with the Sacred Tree that connected this world and the Fairy Realm.”
The huge Sacred Tree pierced the heavens, and its roots spread across the land. Rainbows arched among its branches. The hollows of its trunk were like looking glasses, reflecting occurrences from distant worlds.
“But…My friend who had an interest in humans was deceived by an evil one, and taken away.”
That’s right. The eccentric human lover, Helbram. Always a cheerful optimist.
He laughed and said that humans had various “ways of thinking” and “cultures” that fairies lacked.
When I told him that if he was too trusting, someday he’d have a bad run-in with humans, he laughed and said:
“When that time comes, you have to stop me! You, my true friend!”
And sure enough, he was deceived and caught by an evil man pretending to be a peddler.
“I…came to this world…chasing after him.”
I ignored Elaine who tried to stop me.
“How are we supposed to protect the forest without you?”
“Don’t go, big brother. Don’t leave me by myself.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Just how many centuries ago was that?
However, though Harlequin had flown out of the Fairy Realm to rescue Helbram, he did not make it in time.
His friends were killed, with their backs cut up and their wings torn off.
The old warrior with the eye patch snuck up from behind while Harlequin was trying to rouse a barely-breathing fairy cradled in his arms.
Taken by surprise and cut down, Harlequin fell into the river. In the end, Diane picked him up on the shore downstream.
At that time, he lost all his memories.
“…I…”
Harlequin clenched his fist.
I wasn’t able to save Helbram or my friends, and I abandoned the Fairy Realm and the Fairy King’s Forest.
All this time, I was living here by myself, happily having forgotten everything.
There’s no going back from what happened.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then.
Suddenly, a violent boom that sounded like an explosion came from outside. Harlequin and Diane rushed out of their den.
“Aaahh! Is that a fire?”
They could see the sky beyond the hill turning a bright red.
“The village is over there.”
That human village they had just gone to visit in the afternoon was burning.
“Let’s go! Quickly!” urged Diane.
“It’s too dangerous!” Harlequin shut her down. “Diane, you wait here!!”
His expression wasn’t his usual slightly foolish one.
It was the expression of the Fairy King, who protected the Fairy King’s Forest with his immense magical power, whom humans feared.
“I’ll go alone. When it’s over, I’ll—”
When this is over.
I have to go back to the Fairy Realm.
In order to fulfill my duties as the Fairy King.
But before he could speak, Diane gave a sad, lonely little smile.
“Go find your friends and return to them.”
Harlequin froze momentarily.
“I promise! I’ll always love you, I’ll always be by your side!!”
“You just have to love me forever!”
He remembered their previous exchange.
Perhaps Diane had already known.
That was why she interrupted him when he said he’d stay at her side.
She’d realized it was a promise he couldn’t keep.
Harlequin looked back at her.
Diane was smiling. But her large purple eyes were brimming with tears.
Who needs me the most?
Harlequin clearly knew who that was.
“I’ll come back to you. I promise,” he said gently.
At those words, the tears started falling out of Diane’s eyes at last. “Okay!”
Harlequin flew towards the village, leaving behind Diane, who nodded and waved her hand.
✦ ✦ ✦
“How awful!!”
Flying over the forest and hills at full speed, Harlequin witnessed a terrible sight.
During the day, the small houses had smoke from cooking fires rising from their chimneys. Now the homes were all engulfed in flames.
The roads and squares were covered in corpses.
“Everyone was cut down from behind…”
Even the children who had looked up at Harlequin and Diane so curiously.
And the women who had stretched out of their windows and smiled at them.
“…!”
One of the grandchildren of the old hunter was also lying on the ground. Harlequin flew down to his side and lifted him up in his arms.
“…”
He wasn’t breathing anymore. Harlequin clenched his fist. “It’s just like that time…”
The terrible scene made Harlequin distinctly remember that other time.
Yes, back then, too, my friends were all cut down from behind, with slashes on their back, and fallen on the ground—
“It can’t be that man with the eye patch! No. It’s been several hundred years since then. There’s no way a human could still be alive…”
A burning house blocked the road, with the flames engulfing corpses as well.
The smell of blood was overwhelmed by the smell of things burning.
It was then that a single living person appeared from within the fire and thick swirling clouds of smoke.
The flames reflected off his blood-spattered armor. The sword in his right hand wavered in the rising heat.
Harlequin looked at his face—and found himself speechless.
A dull metal-plated eye patch. Coarse hair mixed with white. A distinctive helmet in his left hand.
“How! How…are you still alive?!”
There was no doubt. This was the old knight who killed his fairy friends—and Helbram!
But the old knight also stiffened when he saw Harlequin.
“That’s my line!” He was clearly flustered. “Back then, I sensed your presence and knew that you’d come to rescue me. But since that villain took you by surprise, I thought he killed you…I took him by surprise and killed him in revenge.”
“No, it can’t be, that way of talking—” Harlequin remembered that characteristic accent. “Helbram!!”
Without a doubt, this was Helbram, the friend he thought had been killed by the old man!
“Why do you look like that?!”
As though in response to Harlequin’s cry, the old knight changed forms in an instant.
Now Harlequin saw the unforgettable figure of his old friend, the form that had appeared in his dreams so often: a young fairy with bright green hair and amber eyes.
Helbram quietly cast his eyes down and spoke.
“I stayed in that form so I wouldn’t forget my hatred of humans.”
He spoke of his hate so clearly.
“So you did this to these people?!”
Harlequin couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe his friendly, cheerfully smiling friend could commit such a violent deed.
“Didn’t you like humans?!”
“Yes. I did,” Helbram muttered sadly. “Even though they could be weak or foolish, humans lived their short lives to the fullest. They were dear to me…But humans deceived our fairy friends and killed them. Without even a real reason—”
The smell of smoke choked the air. There was the clattering noise of burnt roof tiles falling.
Helbram gave a thin smile.
“They said that fairy wings would make good money…heh. What is money, anyway?”
Out of all the things that humans wanted, money was the thing that fairies understood the least. Yet, for it, humans sometimes even gave up other things that were important to them, one after another.
“They told me, ‘We’ll give this stuff to your friends.’ Just because I brought our friends out to see this rare…On account of my bringing our friends to see some rare-looking rubbish…everyone…was killed…”
A shining drop fell from his lowered eyes.
“Harlequin, can you picture it?”
Reflecting the red flames, it looked like a drop of blood.
“Right in front of your eyes, one by one, your friends getting their wings ripped off!! He even took his time, going slowly…saying he didn’t want to damage the wings!”
With a forced smile, Helbram mimicked the brutal snapping and cracking sound effects.
“Even now, the sound, the screams of all my friends are stuck in my head!”
Harlequin bit his lip.
What a horrible sight that must have been.
Helbram loved humans, and believed in them.
His trust was betrayed in the cruelest fashion—and he’d lost his mind.
Harlequin remembered something the boy with the flute had told him: the rumors of a madman who just roamed around killing people.
That was it. It must have been Helbram.
His old friend’s voice was warped with loud laughter.
He screamed, his face strained with tears: “I hate the humans! I’ve been killing them for five hundred years!”
The updraft caused by the heat brought winds, and the air rushing into the valley reverberated like a beast’s howl.
Harlequin cast down his eyes.
Helbram, I’m sorry.
Five hundred years.
Did I live with Diane, so carefree, for so long?
And all that time, my friend was walking in hell, killing the humans he’d loved.
“But it’s not enough. I won’t stop until I’ve wiped out every last human on earth!”
Harlequin, however, heard a different meaning in Helbram’s declaration.