Chapter 52
Chapter 52
There was a clink as the teacup touched the saucer. The sweet smell of dessert and the fragrance of tea filled the air, and Nari looked around.
Once she stepped out of the bamboo grove, a picnic spread on a meadow appeared. A man dressed head to toe in black wore several stacked hats, a woman dressed in all white lay sleeping face down, and a young Nari sat nearby.
Crunch. The black-clad man, Lude, bit a cookie in half. He looked over and flashed a grin, and Nari spoke to him.
“Are you… the Lord of Chaos, or are you me?”
“Who knows? Can you tell the Lord of Chaos from the ‘Lude’ you have been acting as?”
There was no way she could. You cannot create an entirely new person with illusion alone. To make an avatar that truly seemed alive, you needed an original.
If you copied someone exactly as they were, you would be caught sooner or later, so the Lord of Chaos borrowed the look of one of his incarnations to craft Lude.
His breezy mannerisms were also modeled on the Lord of Chaos, so Nari had no way to tell herself-as-Lude apart from the Lord of Chaos.
“Here, have a cup.”
Clink. Lude set the cup down again and smiled. Nari let out a long sigh and sat across from him.
It was the moment when the main self and the alt, Nari and Lude, faced each other, something that should never have been possible. Lude looked at Nari and smiled.
“Hello, ‘me.’”
“…Yeah, hello.”
Nari sat and stared into the teacup. It was plain water. She looked at Lude in disbelief, but he only lifted an eyebrow.
“Huh?! Just water?!”
“Well, do you have any color of your own? Every deed of ‘yours’ has been mine. You are just like water, something essential only so that I can move.”
Nari’s fingers tightened into a fist with a small squeak. He had put into blunt words the vague resentment she usually felt about her situation. Lude burst out laughing. The small Nari beside them spoke with a cold little smile.
“You chose to die socially yourself. So why are you upset?”
“Do you think I wanted it that way?!”
When Nari shouted, the white-haired girl sleeping beside them twitched in her sleep. Nari started to bend closer to see her face, when Lude’s voice stopped her.
“She is not going to wake up.”
“Who is she?”
“...”
Lude looked straight at Nari. The child Nari also looked straight at her. Nari fidgeted with her cup, feeling as if her breath were stuck. The child Nari spoke.
“I am the past. Lude is the present. That sleeping girl is the future ‘you.’”
“…Me?”
“We are all you. Everyone you met on the way here is you, and the one talking to you now is you.”
Lude propped his chin on his hand and smiled. It was not the mocking smile he had shown before, but a gentle one given for the Nari in front of him.
“Yes. We are your heart-force.”
Heart-force is the power illusionists chiefly use, an energy that comes from one’s “heart.”
It is extremely hard to handle, and if you lose your grip even a little, it leaks out as black smoke. The stronger an illusionist’s heart-force, the more effort it takes to keep it under control.
“I wanted to meet you. It is good to see you, Nari. It was very hard to get to the point where I could talk with you.”
‘To… think I can talk with myself like this.’
Nari’s eyes went round with surprise, and she blinked. Smiling, Lude lifted her cup and dropped in a tea bag. A fragrant scent began to spread.
“Everyone kept saying I must control my heart-force. They said I’ll fall into the Deep World because I cannot control it.”
“But you thought otherwise?”
Clink. Lude set rosemary tea in front of her. The plain water slowly turned a rosy red. Nari bobbed her head slightly as she looked at Lude.
“The heart is not something you can just control because you decide to, you know?”
“...The Lord of Chaos has been working very hard to help me control it.”
“That is only plugging the leak. And this Deep World is exactly the kind of place even he cannot fully monitor. That is why the Lord of Chaos is so uneasy about your dreams.”
“He is uneasy?”
“Of course. You think about it too, deep down. Perhaps the reason the Lord of Chaos comes to the Deep World every night is not to protect you, but…”
At Lude’s words, Nari lowered her eyes. She had, in fact, thought about it more than once. Maybe the reason the Lord of Chaos came to the Deep World every night was not to protect her, ‘But to pick apart her every move and every thought,’
Was it not?
“Then why did you want to meet me?”
“Why did we? That is your desire. It is not that ‘we’ wanted to meet you. ‘You’ wanted to meet us.”
With a face that said “me?” Nari blinked. Lude snapped his fingers. A sky-blue sheet of stationery had appeared in his hand.
“Ah,” thought Nari, as she patted her pocket, but it was already empty. Lude waved the sky-blue paper lightly.
“Still feeling unsettled?”
It was the sky-blue Wargod stationery. Nari nodded. She was, indeed, unsettled. Being attacked by others had been awful, and discovering that she had attacked others and then forgotten it had been awful in a different way.
Even if they cleared this gate, she had no idea how she should face Jeong Suho. Lude watched her, gently stroking the sky-blue stationery.
“If this goes on, the Lord of Chaos will give you advice like always, and you will go along with it again. It will be like when you brushed off your irritation about going to the Wargod with ‘PMS’ and moved on.”
“That is probably true.”
“But the part of you that wants to think through your own affairs and decide for yourself is what called us here.”
“...While tagging on this weird fairy tale?”
“Sometimes the long way around is the right answer.”
Lude laughed and handed the sky-blue stationery back to Nari. Beaming, he spoke.
“This time you did not look away, did you?”
“Yeah.”
Nari took the sky-blue stationery and held it tight. Lude clapped once. At some point, a brick road had unfurled behind him where they were having tea.
“The retrial for the treatment of the Azure Duke will open.”
“Okay.”
“Check deep inside the pocket of your apron, and you will know what to do.”
Nari reached all the way into the depths of her apron pocket. Something sharp touched her forefinger. She carefully closed her hand around it and drew it out, blinking in surprise.
A red crown engraved with a heart lay in her palm. After a moment’s hesitation, Nari took off her ribbon headband and set the crown on her head. Her apron dress shimmered and began to change.
“Do I give the verdict?”
“Yes. You decide your own heart. Do not follow the Lord of Chaos, or Kang Ihyun, or everyone else’s opinion. Do as you feel. This world exists so that you can.”
Before he even finished, the sound of running footsteps approached. Wearing the dress of the Queen of Hearts, Nari was already racing down the brick road.
Lude and the child Nari watched her run and smiled. Their figures slowly blurred.
* * *
“Then, I will now pronounce sentence here and now on the Azure Duke, who dared to take Her Majesty’s heart, leave it be, and trample it underfoot—”
Bang! The moment the judge in a powdered wig raised his gavel, the courtroom doors swung open. Everyone inside turned to look. Wearing the Queen of Hearts’ dress, Nari clicked forward on her heels toward the front.
“H-Here comes Her Majesty the Queen-!!”
In the panicked moment when an extra shouted, everyone bowed their heads. As Nari walked toward the front, she looked over the seated audience. Familiar faces filled the benches.
Kang Ihyun, who helped her move forward. Kang Sujin, who made her recognize her shortcomings. Min Jaeyoon, who helped her overcome her pain. And Lude, who had spoken honestly with her.
Yet since Lude had said they were all Nari, every one of those roles was, in truth, Nari herself.
Shin Bitnari, who helped herself move forward. Shin Bitnari, who made herself see her shortcomings. Shin Bitnari, who helped herself overcome her pain. And Shin Bitnari, who had a candid conversation with herself.
She was not someone who could do nothing without the Lord of Chaos or Kang Ihyun. At the very least, she could decide her own heart.
“I will give the verdict.”
So she had to hand down the verdict as well. She could. Nari climbed to the top and took the courtroom microphone. Looking around, she spoke in a low voice.
“Jeong Suho.”
“Y-Yes!.”
The Azure Duke, Jeong Suho, looked up with a startled face. He looked exactly as he had in the past. He had not changed at all. Even after coming here, he must have been the same.
When she saw him here, the feeling that rose larger than resentment was gladness. And larger than that was something else.
“I am sorry.”
The courtroom fell silent. Everyone blinked. Nari spoke again.
“It has nothing to do with whether you are different or not. I should not have said those things to you. I… owe you an apology.”
Nari acknowledged the harm she had done. Cracks split across the courtroom with a dry scraping sound. As everything began to melt away, she spoke again with sober gravity.
“I was wrong. I am sorry, Suho.”
Clang! The world shattered in that instant. Everything turned to glass and began to fall apart.
A status message appeared before Nari. No, it was her subconscious, imitating a status window.
[Quest complete! ><]
[You have finished the Deep World on your own power! Your personal trait changes its form!]
[Natural Lucid Dreamer -> Little Explorer in Dreams]
[Your comprehension of your Constellation increases!]
“…Comprehension?”
“Nari, you did wonderfully! Let’s go.”
Before her stood Kang Ihyun in the form of a white rabbit, hand outstretched. A little surprised, Nari looked at him, then took his hand.
As the world shattered around them, Kang Ihyun lifted her and took a long stride, heading into a vast cavern. It was a rabbit hole. Looking around, Nari spoke.
“What… is your role?”
“I am the one who can send you safely anywhere. This time it happens to be Kang Ihyun, but it has also been Jeong Suho, and it has also been the Lord of Chaos.”
“Your role changes every time?”
“Yes, I am…”
Kang Ihyun looked at Nari. In the falling rabbit hole, his forehead clearly visible, he gave a bright smile.
“The one you believe without a doubt will protect you no matter what. It is a pleasure to meet you like this.”
No matter what. Nari tightened her arms around Kang Ihyun’s neck without thinking. She glanced aside, wondering when she had come to trust this man so much.
Thud. The endless fall of the rabbit hole ended, and they touched down. The cave Nari had been heading toward lay before them.
“Do I go in here?”
“Oh, no~ This is the place I am guarding. It is not time for you to go in yet. Turn around.”
Nari turned and saw a white door. It was the same type as the door the Lord of Chaos would prepare to let her leave the Deep World, only the color was different.
“From now on, you should be able to leave the lobby and the shallow layers of the Deep World on your own.”
“…Really?”
“Oh, right. There is one last thing I want to say. Nari, please remember this. You must be careful about it.”
Kang Ihyun raised his hand to his forehead. Just as he was about to snap his fingers, his expression changed sharply.
He looked all around, then stared straight ahead. He saw Nari in her queenly attire, his eyes went wide, and he shouted.
“Uh… huh? What? This place is… huh?”
“...What is it? What? What are you trying to show me?!”
“Nari?! Why are you here? And… What is that outfit?”
“What is it?”
They stared at each other in silence for a moment. After that brief pause, they finally realized they were facing the “real” other. Nari clutched her head.
“So what am I supposed to be careful about?!”
Of course, leaving someone hanging was still quite infuriating.