Chapter 197
Strictly speaking, Anne Sullivan herself was not here, nor was she scheduled to come.
Naturally, there was no one else to take on Anne Sullivan's role either.
But who was Anne Sullivan?
Wasn't she the one who had managed to create a connection to the world for Helen Keller, who could neither hear nor speak?
The story of those two gave him great inspiration as he had to teach speech to Yurik, who was no different from an animal.
Therefore, today, the third day since coming to this world.
"From now on, I'll teach you how to speak. Be grateful and bow your head."
"?"
Yurik, who had just woken up 30 minutes ago, and he revisited the lake they had come to yesterday.
Young Yurik had mastered the method of washing by rubbing as he had taught him, And he was watching him splash in the water.
While watching, he had been thinking about how to teach Yurik writing and speech,
And after concluding that the only way would be Helen Keller-style teaching, he slowly stood up.
He had to approach closely to teach language.
But when he took one step, Yurik suddenly backed away with a suspicious face.
What was this?
"Why? Why are you going backward?"
"......"
"Have I ever hit you? What did I do? Considering what you've done to me so far, even hitting you once would be self-defense. But far from that, I haven't even bothered you."
"Grrr."
"You think everything's solved by growling!"
Like a Chihuahua.
Yurik hesitated and remained wary every time he tried to move.
They glared at each other in a standoff for a while.
When he suddenly approached with large strides, Yurik jumped like a startled moose and the next moment disappeared into the lake with a splash.
What? With a 'splash'?
It happened so naturally that he couldn't grasp the situation for a moment before realizing.
"Ahhhhh!"
A person had fallen into the water!
This lake didn't have gentle terrain and had several deep, sunken spots on the bottom.
Normally he would have avoided them well, but this time he seemed to have fallen in surprise because all his attention was focused on his movements.
The place where Yurik had been standing had quite a high water level, with water reaching just below his ribs.
He took a big breath and plunged his head underwater. Passing through the clear, rippling water a little ahead, he could see something white struggling.
When he grabbed it and pulled it up, Yurik was dragged out of the water without resistance.
Yurik, soaked from head to toe, now looked not like a Chihuahua but exactly like... a kitten that had just been bathed.
"Why were you so surprised?"
Young Yurik didn't answer.
Whether he was shocked from almost drowning or shocked that he was holding his hand,
Or maybe both, his red eyes had grown as big as marbles.
Seeing things like this, he couldn't possibly think this was the adult Yurik he knew.
That was natural, since the adult one's thoughts were impossible to read and he was completely black-hearted, a genius at scheming.
Moreover, he placed no value on human life and treated people like chess pieces he could manipulate.
But this one only resembled him in face and seemed very far from scheming and such things.
A guy who couldn't understand speech and had just barely learned to wash himself alone - scheming? Dark intentions? Plans for world destruction? Being two-faced?
Not a chance.
"Now, what just went into your nose and mouth was called water."
He spread Yurik's hand that was still being held and wrote the word 'water' on his scarred palm.
Writing letters with fingers should have been ticklish, but Yurik didn't avoid it.
Instead, he just looked at him with a blank face and made a sound exactly once.
"Achoo."
"...Huh?"
An 'achoo' shouldn't come out here and now.
He inwardly cried out 'no way' while leading him out of the lake,
But why had ominous premonitions never been wrong?
No matter how warm and humid the temperature of this era was,
He had overlooked the fact that falling deep into a lake with low water temperature and then walking more than 20 minutes while soaking wet without properly drying could cause hypothermia.
The current Yurik was still young.
Children had higher body temperatures than adults and relatively poor ability to regulate body temperature.
Of course, Yurik wasn't that young, but he was still much more vulnerable than him, an adult.
When they returned to their shelter and he saw Yurik huddled under the rock shivering, the impression of Yurik as the villain he knew gradually faded.
No, it was true that Yurik had killed him multiple times.
But now he strangely wasn't angry, and no longer felt tense or afraid when thinking of him.
Moreover, the current Yurik was strictly speaking, in terms of temporal causality, a human from before he had done such things to him.
Was there a reason to be harsh to Yurik who had 'not yet' killed him?
Or could it be considered that the sin given to Yurik still existed because he remembered the result of being killed by him?
...It was a difficult problem to think about. It was even more so for him, who hadn't majored in philosophy and usually kept his distance from such problems.
While he repeatedly agonized at a distance from the rock where Yurik was lying down, the sky was gradually turning red.
The sunset burned just as beautifully in this era as in that era.
Wrapped in strange emotions while watching the sunset, he remembered what Verde had said.
-Please pity other people.
He understood what Verde had said,
But did those 'other people' include young Yurik too?
If Verde were here, he wanted to ask once more.
From where to where should be considered people, and what was the reason for making such a request to him.
Standing until the sunset completely faded and the sky turned reddish purple, his legs began to ache.
Feeling awkward about leaving the shivering child outside while he went under the rock shade, when he entered, young Yurik quickly moved to a corner.
Even while crouching, he shot aggressive looks at him, seeming unable to make a definitive judgment about him yet.
Regardless.
When he suddenly grabbed Yurik and hugged him while lying down, Yurik struggled and thrashed like a rabbit caught in a trap.
He ignored this and tried to sleep, but the struggling got worse, so he finally flicked his forehead three times before it subsided.
The calmed Yurik was just the right size to hold while sleeping since he was small.
His body was cold as he had worried. It was even colder than he had thought, making him a bit scared that Yurik might die here soon,
But after holding him for a while, he gradually became warm and he could feel his body relaxing under his arms.
After being like that for a while, he could hear wheezing sounds as he breathed through a blocked nose.
It was fortunate that the night wasn't very cold now.
He stayed awake with his eyes open while holding Yurik. He couldn't wake the sleeping child by dozing off and having nightmares and screaming.
Ah, somehow it felt like he had returned to putting his younger brother to sleep when he said he couldn't sleep...
Having various thoughts throughout the night, dawn broke.
Yurik seemed to like the warmth, so now he slept well clinging to his side even without being deliberately hugged.
He carefully withdrew his arm so as not to wake Yurik and pulled over the book he had placed by his head.
The book that was both the grimoire Pnakotic and would write a new story was still clean.
It was truly a complete blank page with no stories or records of any demonic beasts.
Only the first sentence of the story was written clearly.
[Before everything happened.
The being who would come to have the human name Yurik encountered a stranger from an alien star.]
He looked at the soundly sleeping Yurik and took up the pen. The record and story continued below the first sentence.
[Yurik did not recognize the stranger who had come back through time. However, the stranger recognized and understood him at a glance. The stranger had once hated and despised him to death, so he had come to think only of killing him, but now he wondered what was the point of all that.
The path the stranger decided was not oblivion. It wasn't turning a blind eye, and it certainly wasn't forgiveness.
However, the stranger who met this Yurik decided on suspension. It could be called probation or surveillance.
Nothing had happened yet. But if a very long time passed and Yurik thought the same thoughts and tried to commit the same sins as before. If his transgressions became confirmed.
The stranger resolved that only he would be able to kill Yurik at that time...]
*
"This is playing in water."
"Yes."
When he wrote letters on Yurik's palm, Yurik nodded seriously.
They were crouched at the edge of the lake, enthusiastically splashing water with just their hands.
The improvement in his relationship with Yurik had begun exactly one week ago.
On the day Yurik had almost gotten hypothermia, when Yurik realized that he had hugged him all night so he could sleep warmly without being cold, Yurik no longer treated him harshly.
Though he still flinched and was startled when he grabbed him without warning or moved quickly,
The behavior of unnecessarily baring his teeth and growling had definitely disappeared.
Once his attitude softened, there was tremendous progress in teaching him writing too.
When he had him touch the rock at their shelter and taught him that this was a rock, Yurik seemed to realize something and was so excited he couldn't leave that spot for a long time.
After that, he taught him many things.
Besides rocks, he taught him ground, stones, water, mud, wind, me, you, and even simple expressions like yes and no.
Yurik was quick to learn, and he became incredibly busy every day finding new things to teach from their surroundings.
Conversation was the same. At first, when he spoke to him, Yurik would only tap his neck with a suspicious expression.
But later he would imitate him and make sounds similar to groans.
Then he finally began to clumsily utter short words like yes and no.
After that, it was smooth sailing.
Whether he taught writing or demonstrated new pronunciations, Yurik absorbed everything rapidly.
Seeing clear results, his heart swelled with emotion without him realizing it.
"Thank you, Anne Sullivan. You are the light of humanity."
"Anne?"
"No. I was just talking to myself."
"Talking, to self."
Yurik kept muttering "talking to self, talking to, self" while repeating the action he had just taught him called 'playing in water.'
Watching that, he secretly sighed.
Over the week, he had taught Yurik most things he could teach.
And the limits were gradually approaching.
The reason was too obvious. The environment wasn't very rich.
When teaching words until now, he had prioritized non-abstract things. It was easier to teach things you could directly touch or visible objects.
But there was nothing around here.
Ground, rocks, soil, clouds, sky, or this lake.
It would have been good if it were a place where at least some plants grew. Then he could teach the concept of colors and things like flowers or fruits too.
It would have been a great help in teaching abstract concepts like fragrance too.
When he scratched his head roughly, Yurik stopped splashing and stared at him intently.
"Head. Hair."
"This is the action of scratching. I scratched my head. I told you before, right?"
"Scratch, scratched."
"Oh, well done. You're a genius."
When he answered halfheartedly, young Yurik began repeatedly memorizing 'scratched.'
Of course, taking Yurik and leaving their shelter would be easy.
But the reason he didn't was just one.
There was no information about what was around here.
He had come this far wanting to meet Yurik before he committed all his crimes. But he didn't know what situation this era's Yurik was in or why he had come to meet him.
What if they encountered something dangerous as soon as they left this area? He wasn't confident he could win in a fight.
Naturally, he couldn't expect combat from the Yurik here either.
Should he take such risks and leave, or stay here a bit longer?
While calculating this and that while racking his brain, Yurik tugged at his clothes.
"Stomach hurts."
"That's not your stomach hurting, that's being hungry. Are you hungry?"
"Hungry."
Yurik said clearly.
Since he was the type who didn't need to eat meals, he often missed the timing if Yurik didn't tell him.
He got up with his stiff body and said.
"Let's go home."
"Yes."
He returned to the rock cave with Yurik following closely beside him.
In the corner, Yurik's red berries were neatly gathered.
He didn't know what the berries were, but Yurik substituted meals by eating a few berries once a day.
As he handed Yurik a handful of slightly dried berries, his earlier worries came to mind and he sighed again.
Even if they left here, the possibility of a better environment appearing was uncertain, so should he really leave looking for plants and such things?
There would certainly be great merit, but even without berries and flowers, he could somehow try to teach...
...Wait a minute. Berries?
He stared at the berries in Yurik's hand.
Bright red, plump, round berries.
Come to think of it, when he first met Yurik, he had been alone.
Alone, but he had been trying to go somewhere.
Where had Yurik come from? And where had he been going?
If these berries were growing in the place Yurik came from...?
He grabbed Yurik's shoulder as he was about to eat and asked.
"Where did you get these?"