Chapter 496

His friend’s eyes widened in an instant, until not a single part of the pink circles, their edges slightly darker than the centers, touched his eyelids. He abruptly sat up and backed away.

In his friend’s eyes, Elias saw distress and defeat. He saw a kind of bewilderment born from a different source than Narke’s. Neither of them said a word, but the faint trembling of his eyelids betrayed fear. Fear of being rejected? Or fear following the hostility that came from having something read that he had never intended to bring up himself, something he had never even put into words?

Whatever it was, the fear told Elias that it would one day make his friend stronger than anyone else. But for now, it left him so vulnerable that he couldn’t even withstand an attack.

Elias knew those eyes well. They were the same eyes he himself had made a very, very long time ago, and he understood them. What he had seen in his friend’s world had not remained in his hands like a mirage, yet it had certainly remained in his consciousness, just like one.

He knew that shouting at the top of his lungs about something he was supposed to pretend he hadn’t seen was his specialty—the sort of thing that got him locked away in a separate wing of the imperial palace. But he also knew that pretending not to have seen something was just as much his specialty. The two belonged to different fields, but both were driven by the same cause.

For the sake of someone he loved, including the respect he held for them, Elias sometimes pretended not to see what he had seen. At other times, he would shout that he had seen something he was supposed to pretend he hadn’t. As far as he could tell, it was mostly for this friend that Elias had swallowed the questions that occasionally pierced through his perception and rose to the surface.

But today, he had no intention of doing that.

He knew that this stubbornness was making things difficult for his friend right now, but Elias didn’t want to mistake the motives behind actions that might look similar at first glance.

Consideration and avoidance were clearly different. And, in Elias’s view, saying something frivolous to divert attention right now fell into the latter category. He had a feeling that doing so would instead become the beginning of driving a wedge of tension between the two of them. That was why Elias didn’t want to lie and say he hadn’t seen the mirage. That was the reason for his silence.

His friend was the first to speak. With his eyes hidden beneath ash-brown hair that had lost almost all of its curl, he stared blankly at Elias before saying, “You were there.”

“Yeah.” Elias nodded without hesitation. “I was.”

His friend would want to ask how much he had seen. But asking that would be no different from telling him, ‘There are things I can’t tell you.’ Someone who didn’t know how to be cruel wouldn’t do that. Instead, he would struggle with it on his own.

He wasn’t hurt by the fact that his friend had secrets. Hadn’t his friend even told him himself that there were things he kept secret? He had done his best. There was no need for him to feel awkward about it anymore. Moved by his friend’s consideration, Elias spoke.

“I… couldn’t understand most of it. Everything flashed through my mind so quickly, and there was only a tiny fraction I could actually perceive. And even that was nothing more than bits of knowledge I couldn’t tell were logical or not.”

Elias made an effort not to look away from his friend’s eyes. He was being honest and telling him nothing but the truth, and he didn’t want to avert his gaze simply because it was difficult to face him and have his friend misunderstand him. Elias kept their eyes locked as he continued.

“Even if I had looked deeper into your mind, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make sense of anything. So much of it was encoded, and even if information I could actually decipher came at me, it would still have seemed to fall outside everything I understood, so I wouldn’t have been able to accept it easily. You know… even if someone came here from somewhere out there in the universe and tried to explain something to us, it’d be hard for us to understand them, wouldn’t it? We’d probably remember the confusion we felt at the time more than what they actually said. Ah, I’m not saying you’re some unknown creature…”

Elias knew he was rambling more and more, but he didn’t care. There was something he needed to say now. If the pain he had vaguely sensed in that world was real, then he wanted to honestly tell his friend how much he had understood and convey what he thought about it.

Slowly blinking, Elias said, “You’re amazing, just like that elder said. That’s what I learned.”

His friend fell silent. He had probably realized that Elias was talking about something he could only guess was brain capacity—or the countless pieces of knowledge that had been involuntarily stored inside his mind. His friend seemed accustomed to this sort of awe. He neither grew angry nor humbled nor embarrassed. He simply stared blankly at Elias like a statue.

Gathering courage from the sound of droplets falling from the edge of the temple’s thick roof and the chirping of insects, Elias continued, his words gradually blending into the sounds of nature.

“But that’s all. You know what? I’ve won money at the racetrack seven times in a row. The odds happened to be good, too, and I ended up with an enormous amount of money in my hands. When you think about it that way, even my luck was almost amazing.”

It was difficult to tell his friend, ‘I know something you never told me.’ But Elias didn’t want to hide what he had vaguely realized. Of course, rambling about his own experiences when his friend hadn’t asked wasn’t exactly a considerate thing to do either. But the moment he admitted that he knew his friend had nearly driven himself mad thinking about the weight of a human skull, there was no going back. He couldn’t stop there.

“And I’m capable of getting every answer wrong just thirty minutes before I have to hand my exam papers to the professors. Getting zero in every subject is not something just anyone can do. Of course, there weren’t any right answers for essays, so I had no choice but to turn in a blank sheet… I also know how to cross a wide stream without getting my trouser hems or socks wet. A stream almost as wide as a moat. I even know how to climb a 20-meter-tall tropical tree without falling. I’ll pick you some oil palm fruit if we ever go there for fun.”

The corner of his friend’s mouth lifted faintly. The worry filling his face had not disappeared yet. So Elias could find no reason to stop talking.

“But to win money seven times in a row at a racetrack, something unpleasant has to happen beforehand. Something bad enough that you can’t even properly control your own thoughts and judgment, bad enough that you can bet on the movements and odds of racehorses running as hard as they can around a track while being forcibly controlled by people, without feeling even the slightest bit troubled by it. Something bad enough that when you’re lying sprawled in the street, constantly downing brandy just to forget it, you’ll let Old Human gamblers pull you by the shoulder to an illegal racetrack after they see your clothes and decide you’re some rich delinquent. Bad enough that you’ll even take money straight from your own wallet to buy a ticket, when normally you wouldn’t bother.”

Elias fell silent for a long while after he finished those words.

“And after winning seven times, you have to force yourself to smile just to forget that you made that money from the blood and sweat of a horse that might otherwise have roamed those fields and mountains. Of course, that horse was probably born in a stable, and its parents and grandparents probably spent their entire lives in stables too. If it hadn’t gone to the racetrack, it would have ended up pulling a carriage, so there’s no way that poor thing would ever have wandered the plains even if it died and came back to life. Still, you obviously know that what I’m talking about goes all the way back to the Neolithic Revolution¹… People like us always end up going back that far whenever we become disillusioned with the world.”

Elias knew that racehorses were generally well fed and well cared for, and that most of them were content with their lives because they could run to their hearts’ content. But he saw no reason to add something everyone already knew. Once the horses, having worn out their joints, began to age faster and gradually lost their speed compared to the thoroughbreds, most of them would end up on a plate and served at someone’s table the following weekday. Everyone knew that much, too.

One way or another, a horse’s life was in human hands. Perhaps Elias thought their fates were alike in that regard—both were bound to the will of another. He didn’t think that meant they needed to be pitied. But that day, those horses had made a drunk Elias see his homeland, his uncle, his long-term foreign policy, his appointments, and his snap decisions disguised as anything but whim. They had also made him see the impoverished, backward district he had passed out in before he started drinking.

Perhaps he had been too drunk. Even as he leaned his drunken body against the racetrack railing and thought that if he kept looking at the world this way, the only thing waiting at the end was death, Elias had found the relationship between humans and horses reflected in the relationship between humans and humans. He had vomited the alcohol he drank that day into the Rhine the next morning.

Elias turned his gaze slightly toward his friend, who was listening to him calmly, and murmured, “…And then I have to constantly keep myself in check so I don’t get used to making money without putting in any effort. Sometimes I think it would’ve been better if I’d won tens of thousands of Pel in a late-night poker game with pro-Emperor politicians. At least I’m confident when it comes to gambling with rich people’s money. But it was already too late for that. And whenever I visit the relief office I frequent while keeping my identity hidden, whenever I help the poor, the same question always comes rushing back. Is there really no way to govern so that everyone can live at least a minimally humane life without having to personally hand out my own money as charity? And then I wonder whether I even have the right to donate money I made overnight from horses racing to hungry people. Some of them probably wouldn’t want to eat bread bought with money like this, money they had no reason to respect. They’ve been stripped of the freedom to have convictions and the right to preserve their dignity simply because they’re poor, haven’t they…? That’s where my thoughts always lead. So in the end, I just throw a bundle of money onto an empty table at the relief office and slip out as if I’m running away. Then, just to forget everything, I walk into whatever bar looks like it’s about to collapse. I realize there’s still money in my wallet that I withdrew from my stock account a while ago, so I spend one of the bills on alcohol. And if I’m unlucky enough—or perhaps lucky enough—to remember where the profits in that account came from and whose hands they passed through, I can’t even swallow the alcohol anymore. That’s the backlash of winning money at the racetrack seven times.”

Even getting a perfect zero on an exam, crossing a stream, or climbing a palm tree wasn’t all that different. They simply gave him shorter-lived troubles. Elias decided not to get into those.

By now, his friend should have understood what Elias was trying to say. Elias shifted his gaze away from the bushes and looked at him.

“So I’m not going to marvel at your abilities.”

His friend’s eyes trembled ever so slightly. He was good at hiding his emotions, well enough that no one would notice unless they were paying close attention. Elias smiled at having caught that fleeting moment from someone who was usually so meticulous about keeping himself guarded.

Ah. Wasn’t this enough to mean he was already quite close to this person? He knew him this intimately.

Elias didn’t mind whatever his friend might see through in him. He only hoped his friend would feel the same way about him. Trying not to dwell on that personal wish, Elias continued.

“Being told that you’re exceptional in some way isn’t really a compliment to you, is it? Just like saying you’re ‘inferior to other people,’ it draws a line that marks you as different from everyone else, or as the one and only. But there’s a decisive difference between those two judgments, and that’s why you can’t be honest. From everything I’ve heard and seen, this era wants your abilities and places a high value on them. There are so many people who wish they had what you have. And more importantly, you live in a society that believes suffering can be measured and ranked. So you can’t convince people that there are two sides to what makes you who you are, and you can’t even be honest with yourself about it. If you acknowledge the pain that comes from your abilities, it would only sound like a spoiled complaint. To other people, and probably even to yourself, it would sound just as absurd as someone who won a two-year salary’s worth of money in a single night at the racetrack saying they felt so miserable that their body was falling apart that same day… But even so, I don’t think I could ever completely understand the sense of alienation you feel throughout your life.”

“…….”

“So I’ll only say this. I won’t revere you or be wary of you just because you remember more than most people and, because of that, your mind works differently from theirs. At least I’m not the kind of person who would completely change the way I treat you just because I caught a glimpse of the air of your world.”

His friend might not fully understand what Elias meant by saying he would neither revere nor be wary of him, since he had not heard everything the elder had desperately shouted. But the elder had clearly accepted his friend as something beyond human because of his ability to learn every language in the world. Wasn’t that why Pleroma was after him, too? Even the emotions and exhaustion Elias had felt inside his friend’s mind had surely been connected to this trait of his. Elias had never known that his friend remembered everything exactly as he saw and heard it, yet he spoke as though he had known it for a long time.

The fervent envy of gamblers and ordinary citizens who occasionally enjoyed a wager—the ability to win a fortune seven times in a row at the racetrack—and the quiet envy of teenagers his own age—the ability to climb trees as quickly as a monkey—were all things that seemed enjoyable and impressive on the surface. But what surrounded those results was anything but bright.

There was sadness at the root of his winnings at the racetrack, and because he had ultimately won the money, the sadness had not been washed away at all. Instead, it had been joined by self-loathing. At the root of his ability to climb palm trees was the fact that he had been dragged along as a representative of a great power to inspect the colonies, and with every step he took, there came a crushing guilt. The reason he learned to deliberately get a perfect failing grade on his exams and learned how to cross mountain streams was because his uncle had half-driven him out.

Elias asked calmly, “What’s it like? Living in such a complicated world?”

His friend didn’t say anything. He only moved his lips.

“Living in a world where you can remember so much… It isn’t as amazing or as good as it sounds, is it?”

Otherwise, he couldn’t have naturally entertained thoughts like how heavy human skulls were, or how only the head remained while everything below the neck had disappeared from the body.

Elias had no idea what kind of life his friend had lived. Still, he could imagine that his friend must have received the same strange looks from people who regarded him as some kind of eccentric. Elias also knew well enough what it was like to live without being able to connect with anyone.

But claiming that he understood his friend simply because he had managed to make out a vague shape of something he still knew almost nothing about felt arrogant. So Elias waited in slight unease, saying as little as possible.

His friend remained silent for a long while. The bewilderment had faded from his eyes, leaving them calm. He answered without barely moving his lips.

“Yeah.”

Elias nodded. Then he cheerfully snapped his fingers.

“Looks like we found another thing in common. Maybe we just think too much. And—”

Feeling his heart beat a little faster, Elias looked into his friend’s pink eyes and said, “—Can I keep calling you the way I always have?”

Elias saw his friend’s throat move faintly again. Unable to bear looking at his tense expression, Elias lowered his gaze to the floor and spoke.

“Strangely enough, I don’t know why I’m asking you this. I can’t explain any of it properly. I don’t know what I saw or heard, or whether I even heard any of it clearly, and I don’t know if any of it makes sense. So when I say I don’t know, I really mean it. But…”

Elias closed his eyes for a moment before looking back at his friend.

“Somehow, I felt like I had to ask you now. I’m not asking the circumstances surrounding you, or the burdens you carry. I’m not asking God, either. I’m asking you, the person standing here right now. If I keep calling you the way I always have, how would you feel about that?”

Elias saw the turmoil in his friend’s eyes. Suddenly anxious himself, Elias grabbed his friend’s cheeks and added an absurd demand.

“Ah, wait, wait. You have to look me in the eyes, say my name, and answer me. That’s the rule!”

What kind of rule was that? Elias himself thought it was ridiculous, and expected his friend to say as much, but no answer came. His friend’s eyes still shone with their usual intelligence, yet they held an emotion Elias couldn’t identify. Regret? Or perhaps being moved? He couldn’t tell. For some reason, Elias felt uneasy, as though his friend might not remain here. But his friend’s eyes gradually grew calmer.

“Why are you so soaked?”

Only after what felt like an eternity did Elias hear the answer. Following his friend’s gaze, he looked down at his own robe, drenched from the rain. His friend’s clothes were dry—he had changed him into one of the spare sets in his bag. Perhaps he hadn’t expected an answer to his question, because he continued speaking.

“Let’s talk about this in order. I don’t know if you realize it right now, but…”

Don’t know? Elias nodded attentively. His friend would normally have smiled at him, but even seeing Elias like this, he asked in the same calm voice as before.

“Do you know what you just said?”

“…That I asked if I could keep calling you the way I always have.”

“Before that.”

Before that? Of course he knew. Elias remembered the long speech he had given about what it felt like to experience his friend’s world firsthand, and about the horse races. He had also said that he wouldn’t be in awe of him or wary of him. That was what his friend was talking about.

Perhaps he read the answer in Elias’s eyes, because his friend finally spoke.

“Were you serious?”

“What else would I be if I wasn’t?”

Elias said it with a puzzled look, and only then did he realize what had been behind his friend’s calm expression.

His friend hadn’t known how to react.

Elias stared blankly at him, wearing much the same expression. It was only after another long silence that his friend finally opened his mouth.

“It’s the first time. Not just the first time I’ve heard it from you. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard it in my entire life.”

Translator Note

1. The Neolithic Revolution was the critical shift in human history from hunting and gathering to farming and permanent settlements. ↩︎