Wizard of the Deep Sea

TL/ED – Miso

Along with the crack in the mirror, someone other than me was reflected on its surface.

Naturally, it was Sharmia. The Sharmia of the age I knew.

The expression on her face in there was, how should I put it…

[?]

She looked utterly dumbfounded.

She rubbed those large eyes of hers several times, showing a face of sheer disbelief, then quickly scribbled something on a nearby piece of paper and held it up.

[Why are you there?]

It seemed she couldn’t transmit the sound of her voice.

“Can you hear me?” [Yes. But…?]

“I have absolutely no idea either. Where on earth is this place?”

Sharmia looked genuinely flustered, scanning my surroundings through the mirror with an incredulous gaze.

[First of all, the fact that you’re in that place doesn’t make any sense to me. How did you get in there…? How is this even possible? No, what happened? Seriously?]

“Well, obviously something went wrong with the magic Lady Dersia cast, didn’t it?”

[No, even if something went wrong with that, there’s no way Jern could be in there. Are you really Jern? You’re not a fake?]

“…?”

What was she even saying? She was looking right at me and still saying this?

Was this someone else who just looked like Sharmia? When she saw suspicion coloring my gaze, she frantically waved her hands.

[Oh, I’m sorry. I just can’t wrap my head around it.]

“I don’t really understand what you’re getting at. What is this place that makes you say such things?”

[Hmm…]

Sharmia pondered for a moment, made a face as though this were difficult to explain, and then summed up the current situation in a single sentence.

[That place is inside my memories.]

“?”

…It was an absurd thing to say, but.

***

When I stood frozen for a moment, Sharmia added further explanation.

[Did you think that place was the past? Yes. You’re not wrong. It really is the past. If you do something there, say, scratch a wall, that mark would exist in the Imperial Palace right now too.]

“Then why do you call it inside your memories?”

[This is… well, honestly I didn’t mention it because I was afraid you’d think I was crazy, so could I first assure you that I’m mentally sound before I explain?]

“Go ahead.”

I doubted anything could surprise me more than this at this point.

I crossed my arms and replied curtly, and she began poking at the paper with her finger, jotting down her explanation.

[The thing is, I’m actually the one maintaining the world. If I die, this world disappears too.]

“…Excuse me?”

Even so, it was enough to make me tilt my head in confusion.

What was she talking about? Was she actually insane? As I was thinking that, I could see her sigh from beyond the mirror, as if she had expected this exact reaction.

[What I mean is, the way I return infinitely to the past is a little unusual. I was chosen as the person who keeps this world from collapsing… so if I die, it falls apart. But it’s absolutely ridiculous for the world to end just because one person dies, right? What’s one person compared to an entire world?]

“So the world goes back to the past to undo your death?”

[Good guess, but slightly off. When I die, another chosen person takes my place. That’s a much simpler solution, after all.]

It seemed like this “chosen person” was the role the Crimson Circle referred to as the Priestess.

Whether Sharmia knew that or not, she picked up another sheet of paper with a bitter expression.

[But no matter how I look at it, no one other than me seems to be able to receive the Selection. In the end, I always become the pillar that sustains the world again.]

“But at that point, your death…”

I was furrowing my brow when.

I realized something, and slowly opened my mouth.

“…That’s how you go back?”

[Yes!]

Unlike her, writing her answer in lively handwriting, I couldn’t form another word, my mind frozen despite understanding the gravity of the situation.

“That’s…”

In other words.

When the current Sharmia dies, someone must inherit the position of Priestess and maintain the world.

But no one other than Sharmia can be recognized as the Priestess.

And so Sharmia is chosen through Selection once again, the Sharmia of the past, still alive.

“That’s absolutely horrifying.”

[Is it? It’s still bearable, though.]

I couldn’t understand her, answering as if she found nothing strange about it.

At the same time, I finally understood what the Priestess truly was, the title the Crimson Circle used for her position. Something I had only vaguely understood as a being who could see the future and possessed the power of Regression.

The Celestial Realm. The world we currently lived in ultimately needed a medium to intervene in the Real World.

For example, without me, the Deep Sea would be nothing more than a fake buried away somewhere, unable to exert any influence on the Real World. If the Deep Sea had something like a will of its own, then it had chosen me.

And the Celestial Realm had also chosen. It had chosen Sharmia as its vessel, the element through which it would influence the Real World.

It had cast her into Purgatory.

‘Perhaps even this…’

Could it be a scheme the Celestial Realm had devised to prevent its Priestess from falling to the Crimson Circle?

As I said before, could something like a world truly possess a will of its own?

Of course, there were cases like the Puppet, but that was merely something the Void had forcibly created.

Looking at everything the Celestial Realm had done, I couldn’t help but think it was acting with some kind of intent…

As I piled thought upon thought, there was another crackling sound from the mirror.

[Excuse me? Jern?]

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Whatever the case, this wasn’t the time to think about that.

Right now, the priority was finding a way out of Sharmia’s memories, that is, out of the past.

No, wait. Did I even need to? A sudden question occurred to me and I asked it outright.

“But wouldn’t it be better to just deal with the Crimson Circle from here? If this really is the past like you said, if it’s inside your memories…”

[Ah, I figured you’d think of that. I’ve tried it several times myself.]

“…What happened?”

[Tampering with the past doesn’t really make for a good solution. The effort you put into altering the past is what creates the future. After a few attempts that led to truly terrible outcomes, I realized there was absolutely no escaping it, so I gave up.]

…Like a Greek prophecy.

In other words, no matter what I did here, the future wouldn’t change from what I already knew, and in the worst case, I might be the very cause of those events.

If the birth of the Crimson Circle had been because of me… A chill ran down my spine, and I pulled my hand away from the vanity I had been gripping.

Surely being spotted by those guards hadn’t changed anything. As I fretted over that, Sharmia held up a sheet of paper with an urgent expression.

[I have no idea why Jern is inside my memories, but honestly, this is a really dangerous situation. I’ll look for a way to get you out by whatever means possible. But there are a few things you need to be careful about.]

“What?”

[Don’t die.]

Her usual playfulness had completely vanished, replaced by an utterly serious expression.

[If you die in there, there will probably be no way to come back. Because it will become history. No matter what I do, it’s over.]

“Yes. Understood.”

Death is death.

Simple as that. When I nodded, she looked slightly relieved, then wrote the next line, one that struck me as a little puzzling.

[Also, the me in that place can’t die either.]

“Why is that? It shouldn’t be that big of a problem, should it?”

[…It’s still me! Why would you say that! A-are you planning to kill me?]

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just wondering if that was the only reason.”

[To be precise, if that version of me ends up going back through Regression, that too becomes set in stone as history. There would likely be no way to escape it… and it would lead to a similar outcome.]

“Understood.”

In short, don’t die.

And don’t let Sharmia die.

Those were the only two rules I needed to follow.

“Were there any major events during this time period?”

[Major events… I don’t recall any. Oh, there were plenty of assassination attempts though. The Empire was in absolute chaos back then. It was such a mess that even I, a Princess, was being targeted.]

Assassination attempts didn’t count as a major event…?

[Honestly, back then, I wasn’t all that afraid of dying.]

“Because you knew you could come back?”

[Even before I knew that.]

“You must have been quite cynical.”

[That was, um, there was some kind of turning point…]

As I watched Sharmia tilting her head, trying to recall something, a different thought suddenly occurred to me.

“Have you ever seen me there? What if I’ve already altered history?”

[No. And even if you had, I probably wouldn’t remember. It was so~o long ago.]

“That long…”

I was about to ask just how long ago it had been, but then I recalled that she had repeated this cycle who knows how many times.

…She might even be older than Dersia, for all I knew. I swallowed the rest of my words and nodded.

“Understood. Is there anything else?”

[There is! The most important thing is still left!]

“?”

[Let me see… this should work.]

Sharmia suddenly picked up a croissant from the desk.

Then, with complete seriousness, she held it up to the mirror.

[Remember this croissant.]

“Mm.”

Just as the theory that she might actually be insane was gaining some traction.

She added a supplementary explanation.

[If I’m not holding a croissant, you must never, ever believe what I say. Just run. No matter what I tell you, don’t believe it. Refuse. This is really important.]

“Understood for now. But could I at least hear the reason?”

The rest I could let slide, but this particular piece of absurdity was novel enough to warrant a follow-up question. When I asked, Sharmia wrote her answer with a grave expression.

[This place is inside my memories. I have a hobby of revisiting memories, things I’ve forgotten, things that made me happy, and I’m not the only one with that hobby.]

“You’re saying someone else looks into your memories?”

[Exactly. No one but me can see them. So the one looking is the future me.]

“…? Then there’s no problem, is there?”

[…]

The Princess fell silent for a long while.

Then, with an expression as though something stung, looking like she wanted to crawl into a hole, she wrote the words out.

[The thing is… that, future me. Yes.]

“Yes?”

[…This is the first time I’ve ever told anyone this…]

I had lost count of how many unbelievable things I had learned today.

[That, future me… joins the Crimson Circle.]

“…What the f, are you out of your mind?”

[Ehehe…]

This one was absolutely impossible to let slide.

“This isn’t something you can laugh off. You said that future can never be changed.”

[That’s right.]

“Then, at some point, it’s a certainty that you’ll be with the Crimson Circle?”

[Y-yes, I suppose so.]

“No.”

What even was this?

Sharmia, what on earth was she fighting against?

…Why was she even trying?

What had this transcendent being felt upon seeing that the future she least wanted was guaranteed to arrive?

Watching a future version of herself, one who carried all the same actions, memories, and feelings, make that choice. What had she felt?

The words swirling inside me were too heavy to escape my throat. I simply stood there, dumbstruck, and she fidgeted as she added more words.

[Anyway, please remember this, okay? The future me will definitely try to make you and the current me submit. You really need to be careful.]

“…Understood.”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask right now. This wasn’t the time for that.

I simply buried it in my heart and slowly nodded.

As I watched her looking relieved, something else suddenly came to mind.

“But that croissant thing, doesn’t the future… the Crimson Circle version of you already know about it?”

[Yes. She would know.]

“Then isn’t it completely meaningless? She could just bring the same croissant.”

[Oh, that won’t work.]

“Why not? It’s just bread.”

If it was the same croissant, anyone could make one.

I asked with that thought in mind, and she smiled bitterly as she wrote her reply.

[In that future, they can’t make things like bread.]

“…”

For the third time.

My mind went completely blank.