Chapter 347
Chapter 347
"If you're Pleroma yourself, why do you say such things?"
"Is there any reason an unidentified nobleman who claims to have come from Berlin through Austria-Hungary to Munich-Freising can't understand that?"
"……."
"It seems you find it absurd that a Pleroma—who should be nothing but evil—would speak of righteousness. I find it remarkable that you'd even attempt to conclude whether I'm good or evil when we've barely just met. Does it matter? If I'm on your side, I'm a saint no matter what I do, and if not, I'm a villain. The heroes of a nation's past become today's butchers, and the heretics of yesterday become the pioneers of this era. Have you never been conscious of how childishly subjective and how laughably mutable that standard is, living in an age when history's judgment flips on ideology like the back of one's hand? So then, am I someone who shouldn't even harbor resentment toward Pleroma in your view—simply because I drink blood?"
"……."
As if you wouldn't ask in my position.
But I had no intention of saying he was wrong and I was right, or of agreeing that every word he said was correct. I already knew full well that where his words were heading passed straight through me and pointed at his own memories. Whether spoken to the world or to himself or perhaps to both, it was an incantation cast not at me but at something beyond. It wasn't a story only I could perceive. Anyone would have experienced throwing words that could never reach a past self dragged out from some corner of time and space, and at such moments, one knows what words carry and what sound they come wrapped in. Mecklenburg seemed to have already sensed it too, for rather than filling his face with questions, he merely watched the man's back with guarded eyes.
"Believe my words or not, as you please. I harbor no regret even if you see me as a liar, a sophist, or a fraud."