Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14.2 - Chapter 4.02

2. Strength Will Make me Strong

The Mantis-go set sail from the K&K Pirate Company’s main base in the port city of Roronea, in the Emerald Archipelago, and set a course toward the east.

Broadly, they headed east, and then further east, across what was called the Blue Sea, or the Blue Ocean. If they followed the Coral Archipelago all the way eastward, the west coast of the Red Continent would come into view.

The Red Continent was inhabited by the tailed people, the long-armed people, the tall-eared people, the three-eyed people, the many-eyed people, the iron-headed people, the furry people, the thorny-skinned people, the feather-boned people, the shadowless people, the ball-shaped people, and more. There were a lot of countries, and a large number of kings.

It was a long way from the Emerald Archipelago to the Coral Archipelago. It was even further from there to the Red Continent, but when a flotilla from the Kingdom of Arabakia discovered the Coral Archipelago some two hundred years ago, the islands were already inhabited, and there were ports there. The many-eyed people of the Red Continent had reached the Coral Archipelago first.

There was only one great landmass in the world that people called Grimgar. That used to be common sense. It was also incredibly wrong.

The people who learned of the existence of the Red Continent came to refer to this side of the Blue Sea as Grimgar. The histories of Grimgar and the Red Continent began to change with the Coral Archipelago as a relay point between them. Before they were destroyed, the kingdoms of Arabakia and Ishmal opened relations with multiple countries on the Red Continent, and traded with them.

The Red Continent wasn’t a legend, or a fiction, or a dream, or an illusion.

That said, the Red Continent was a long way away, and the open sea was full of threats and dangers. On the ocean, where there was nowhere to take shelter, even the all-too-common storms could sometimes prove lethal. Without a talented and experienced captain and navigator, as well as the rest of the crew, it would be impossible to make it to the Coral Archipelago, let alone the Red Continent. Even with ships that had been to the Red Continent many times, when it came time for them to sink, sink they would.

Yume had been told repeatedly that there was no guarantee of her safety, and she understood that. But had she really been ready for anything to happen? Maybe she just hadn’t thought about it that much. As for Momohina, and the crew of the Mantis-go who served under Ginzy, they acted like they were just going out on another voyage like usual. No sign of concern. If anything, Yume was excited. She never had an inkling that anything bad was about to happen.

“It’s been two years now, huh...?”

Yume was using the stick that she used to stir the fire to draw swirls in the sand. She had meant to write numbers, but for some reason it came out as swirls.

They hunted until midnight, then brought the black flying squirrels, big-eyed tanuki, and walking bird-dragon they had caught back to the beach. Yume butchered them there, and Momohina got the fire started. They had already eaten the parts of the black flying squirrels and big-eyed tanuki that were edible once cooked. They had only prepared the walking bird-dragon to cook, but they were both more or less full, so they could leave it at that.

Momohina was lying on her back. Yume looked over, thinking she must be asleep already because she was so quiet, but her eyes were open.

Yume drew even more swirls with her stick.

“Has it been two years? Is Yume wrong about that, maybe? She wasn’t countin’ properly back when we’d just got here.”

“Sounds about right,” Momohina said vaguely.

The Mantis-go had been caught in a big storm on the way to the Coral Archipelago. Yume didn’t know much about the sea, but they apparently had the misfortune of running into a typhoon, or a cyclone, or a hurricane, or something, but they didn’t usually form at that time of year. It wasn’t something they could turn and run away from, so they had to weather the storm until they came out the other side. Inside the Mantis-go, they worked hard, preparing to do just that. Moving cargo around, fixing it in place—Yume helped with anything that she could. If she didn’t keep busy, it made her feel hopelessly uneasy.

“That storm. Y’know, it feels like it was yesterday.”

“I’d already forgotten allllll about it. Ho, ho, ho.”

Unlike Momohina, who was letting out an odd laugh, Yume couldn’t possibly forget. The wind picked up rapidly, the rain hammered the Mantis-go, and she swayed back and forth. No, this wasn’t a swaying, it was more like she was flipped over, and spun around.

At the time, there was only a skeleton crew up top. Yume, of course, was inside the ship. Despite that, the floor was all wet. They were taking on water, and Yume was soaked. People yelled about how this was broken, and that was broken. How this was bad, or crazy. It was hard to stay calm, and if she just sat there she felt like she was going to cry. She remembered begging someone to please, just let her do something. She didn’t remember who that was, though. Yume ran to the hold on their orders, tripped and hit her head, and helped carry planks of wood. She held them in place while others nailed them to the wall, too.

“We’re screwed, we’re screwed,” she heard someone shouting.

“We’re gonna sink like this,” someone else said clearly.

The vast majority of the crew were working hard to prevent that, but she saw one who had cracked, crying, “I give up! I give up! It’s too late!”

There was one who was drinking, and got punched by his shipmate for it. He shouted, “Lay off! It’s the end of the road for us! You think I can take this without drinking?!” and violently tried to take his booze back.

Why did Yume go up on deck again? She didn’t remember. There were a number of crew members heading up there, saying something about the mast looking ready to snap, or that they had to do something about something, and they needed people. There was no reason that Yume absolutely had to go with them. She was terrified enough as it was, so she couldn’t explain what might have possessed her to go up on deck where it could only be ridiculously worse.

However, thinking about it now, she wasn’t ready to wait and become flotsam, so she must have wanted to do anything she could. Basically, Yume didn’t want to die. She was struggling against it.

Momohina apparently tried to stop her along the way, but she didn’t notice. The moment she got on deck, the rain started pounding her sideways. Or maybe the Mantis-go was tilted just right, and a wave had been coming in from the side. What happened to the crew who made it up on deck before her? She couldn’t imagine. Yume was washed helplessly away by that rain or wave. The next thing she knew, she was in the sea, and Momohina was holding her tight.

Momohina said she had told her not to go, but she wasn’t listening, so she came after her. Then they’d been swallowed by the sea together.

“Y’know, Momo-san, if you weren’t there, Yume, she’d deeeefinitiely have drowned right away. Right?”

There was no response. Just the soft breathing of a sleeper. Momohina’s eyes were closed. It looked like she was deep asleep.

Yume chuckled, laying her branch down, and lying down herself.

She could see the stardust scattered across the jet-black sky so clearly that it was blinding. Yume often thought to herself that the stars in the sky on this island looked tasty. That big, yellow star would be sweet, and the pale one next to it would be sour. She was sure they all had their own flavor.

Yume fell asleep, imagining putting the stars in her mouth and thinking about how they would taste, without ever noticing when she had closed her eyes.

When she awoke, it was pretty bright out. Certainly not before dawn. It was definitely morning. The campfire had gone out.

Yume sat up. Momohina was by the shore, spinning her arms in circles, stretching her knees, and doing other warmup exercises.

“Good mornin’, Momo-san.”

“Ohhh. Good morniiiing.”

Momohina smiled at Yume while moving her body. Yume smiled, too.

There were no rules about when they slept, when they woke up, what they did when they got up, or anything like that. There was no way to know what time it was now, and the weather was temperamental. There were times when they could find something to eat, and times when they just couldn’t seem to. Even if they did set up a proper schedule, it was unlikely things would go according to it anyway. When they got to training, they’d focus on it until they were done, but outside of that they generally took it easy. No, even when it came to training, they’d call it off if the weather got too, too bad, and if they spotted an animal they wouldn’t want to let get away, they’d switch over to hunting instead.

This island was surrounded by the sea, obviously. The deep blue sea stretched out beyond the horizon, as if it went on forever.

If they were to make one circuit of the coast, it was a 60-kilometer walk. The island was roughly heart-shaped, and after desperately attempting to calculate the area of it, Yume and Momohina had concluded it had to be about 70 square kilometers.

There was an active volcano in the eastern part of the island, and thin trails of smoke occasionally rose from the mouth of it. The western part was more or less flat.

With the exception of smaller streams, the island had six rivers, plus their tributaries. The majority was covered in dense jungle, while the seaside was mostly windswept coasts and sheer cliffs. There was a sandy beach on the west bank of the area in the center of the southern side where there was an indentation, and the two of them had based themselves there.

Despite being caught in that fearsome storm, they had fortunately found a board to cling to, and survived. They drifted for three days and three nights, no, five days, or maybe it was six? Whatever the case, they drifted for a long time before finally washing up on this desert isle. It was probably close to a miracle. No, not close to a miracle, it was fair to say that it was an absolute miracle.

Yume had gone up on deck because she didn’t want to die, nearly died for her foolishness, and was now enjoying the island life after lucking out and surviving. It wasn’t all fun, but if she accepted all the hardship, the sadness, the loneliness, and everything else, she figured she could say she was enjoying her days here.

There are things in this world you just can’t do anything about. You can whine and throw a tantrum, but what can’t be changed can’t be changed. That’s just how it is.

Even knowing that, there were times, especially on a clear day like today, when she couldn’t help but stare at the distant sea. Could you blame her, really? In the same way that she couldn’t help but smile when she ate something tasty, there was no stopping the tears that came when she thought of the friends she had been separated from. There was no need to stop them. She didn’t want to be disappointed, so it was better not to get her hopes up. It only made her think of what lay beyond, so it was better not to look out to sea. Even as she thought that, she still got her hopes up, and couldn’t help but look.

“...Oh.” Yume blinked.

She stood up and walked towards the shore. Yume wasn’t watching her step at all. She stared exclusively at the sea.

“Fwuh?” Momohina let out that confused sound.

The waves came in. Yume kept walking despite them. In no time, the sea was up to her knees.

Yume narrowed her eyes. Her visual acuity was one thing Momohina couldn’t beat her at.

She saw something. It looked like a dot. There was something floating in the sea. She couldn’t make out the shape of it. So all she could say was that it was something. At first, she thought she was imagining it. While she was out at sea, and for some time after washing up on this island, she had kept hearing and seeing things. But it didn’t happen all that often lately. That wasn’t what this was. It didn’t look like an illusion.

“Hey, Momo-san.”

“What is it, Yumeryunryun?”

“Yume, she thinks she can see somethin’ in the distance. What do you think it is?”

Momohina walked over next to Yume.

“Hrmm, it’s pretty tiny. I’m not really sure. But I do see something.”

“You can see it, right?”

“You think it’s a big tree, maybe?”

Momohina said that, then laughed. It seemed forced, like she was trying to trick herself. It wasn’t like Momohina to laugh like that. Momohina herself realized that, and seemed a little embarrassed.

“Probably... and this’s just a probably, but... Yume, she doesn’t think that’s a tree.”

“Then what do you suppose it is, Yumeryun?”

“A sh—” Yume started to say, then grasped her throat. Suddenly, the word wouldn’t come out. She could exhale, but she couldn’t produce a voice. What could possibly be going on?

“What’s wrong?”

Momohina rubbed her back. Yume couldn’t respond. She just groaned as she looked at the object out at sea. What had she thought it was? Sh, sh... Sh? The word that represented that object just wouldn’t come to mind.

But still, she thought it must be that thing.

You know the one.

As Momohina was rubbing Yume’s back with the palm of her hand, she suddenly said, “You think it’s a ship?”

“That’s it!”

“Mwuh?!”

“That! That’s the word! Ship! It’s a ship! That thing out there, Yume was thinkin’ it’s a ship! Just probably, though!”

As she rambled on like the dam holding her words back had burst, she remembered that she’d had a dream just like this before. Just as she was thinking, Hooray! It’s a ship! A ship’s come! Thank goodness! Now we can go home! she woke up and realized, Oh, no, it wasn’t real, it was a dream, and got disappointed.

“Hold on, hold on, Yumeryun! Clam town! No, that’s not it, I mean calm down!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. We’ve gotta calm down. If we get excited, all sorts of crazy things could happen. Clam town, clam town... No, that’s not it, huh? Lamp gown...”

“You haven’t calmed down at all, huh? Why don’t we swim for now?”

“What the heck?”

“Nyuhahah! Why don’t you go for a swiiiim?”

“Yume’s not goin’ swimmin’. Not now, y’know?”

“You really think it’s a ship?”

“It’s still hard to see. Not clearly, at least...”

Yume and Momohina decided to wait for the moment. It was scorching out. The sun gradually rose, and it got hot. Without saying anything more, the two of them both started walking out to sea. Was the object out there actually getting closer? If it got any smaller, it would soon disappear. But it wasn’t getting any bigger, either. Could it have stopped?

They were getting far enough out into the water that soon their feet wouldn’t touch the bottom. Momohina started swimming.

“Momo-san, are you plannin’ on goin’ all the way out there?”

“I’m not gonna. That’s obviously not possible. I’m just going for a liiiittle swim. Not like there’s anything better to do.”

Yume thought about swimming for a moment, too, but couldn’t get in the mood for it.

Even if that thing was a ship, they might leave without ever coming ashore at the island. If that happened, it felt like no ship would ever come again. That ship was their last hope. It wasn’t that Yume had any solid reason to believe this. She couldn’t even decide if it was a ship or not to begin with.

It looked like a ship with white sails, but it could have been something else that was just shaped similarly.

What happened to the Mantis-go in the end? Yume had spent a lot of time thinking about that. In her worst imaginings, they sunk, and the odds of that being what happened were not small. It had been an incredible storm, and the Mantis-go was already damaged when Yume was thrown overboard.

“What do you think?” she had once asked Momohina.

“I dunno,” was the answer. “I’m not a woman of the sea, you know? I mean, I was a captain, but I never did aaaany of the work.”

“Whaaaat?! You didn’t?”

Momohina, like Yume, had just woken up in Grimgar one day. There was a boy named Kisaragi and a girl named Ichika with her, and also like Yume, none of them remembered anything but their names.

Momohina had Kisaragi and Ichika, and Yume had her comrades. Why did she go and break up with them? Yume had agonized over that one a lot, too. If she were able to turn back time and redo things, what would Yume have done? Wouldn’t she have gotten aboard the same ship as Haruhiro and the rest, and gone to the free city of Vele?

The ship didn’t seem to be getting closer. It just looked like a ship, and she couldn’t say definitively that it was one just yet, but Yume was starting to believe it. That thing had to be a ship.

In the end, that just meant she wanted to believe. Yume had learned that in her time on the island. It probably wasn’t just Yume. Most people didn’t believe in things because they were believable, they believed what they wanted to believe.

For a time, Yume had absolutely believed help would come.

Another time, she had believed help would never come, and they would be on this island until they died.

She had no reason to believe either.

When she couldn’t go on without believing help would come, she had believed it would. Once it became easier to believe it wouldn’t, she believed that.

The reason that the object that was floating in the sea at some undetermined distance looked like a ship to her now was because she wanted to believe it was a ship. Yume was seeing what she wanted to see.

Yume decided to swim like Momohina. As she did the breaststroke, taking it as easily as she could, the thoughts, That’s a ship. Help has finally come, and, That can’t be a ship. Help isn’t coming, swirled around and around inside her head.

Yume wanted to be stronger. But that wasn’t a matter of building muscle or stamina, improving her technique, learning new moves, and raising her combat potential. Those things were important, too, but she couldn’t become truly strong that way.

Yume wanted an unwavering self. One that wouldn’t lean this way, and then that way, based on what was happening at the moment.

Or one that, even if she did lean, would soon snap back, and no matter how intensely she wavered, would not stay that way.

“Momo-saaaan.”

“Whaaaat?”

“...Momo-saaaan.”

“I said, what?”

“It’s a ship.”

“Hrmm?”

“That there, that’s gotta be a ship.”

Yume stopped swimming, and started treading water.

The white sails, the body of the ship, the masts—she could see all of it.

“It’s a ship. We can go home. We can go hoooome...”