Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14 - Chapter 12

12. Easily Lost, Easily Broken [we_have_lost]

“...Alice?” I ventured.

I’m sure of it. That’s Alice C looking down at me.

“Yeah...” Alice nodded.

At me?

...Wait, who?

Me...

Oh, right.

“I’m...”

Holding something. What is it?

A person? It’s a human being.

He had his face thrust into that person’s hair. Like he was... hugging that person, from behind. And they were lying down. Was it a woman?

He didn’t think, Why am I clinging to a woman like this? He quickly—no, perhaps it would be better to say “finally”—realized it. Who exactly she was.

“Ito... Nui...”

She was limp, unmoving. Haruhiro pulled his arm out from under her, laying her on the ground as he stood up.

Though she was wearing an outfit that was like underwear, it was pretty tight, and torn in places, too. Even without taking off her multiple layers of glasses, he knew her face all too well. He had synchronized with her using his Resonance magic. It might be more accurate to say he’d gone inside her, or become one with her.

Haruhiro had been Ito Nui. Even now, he felt very close to her. He couldn’t think of her as a stranger. Nui’s pain and suffering, and her joy, Haruhiro knew them intimately. He felt as if the obsession with Alice that dominated her spirit was his own.

Maybe because of that, he felt no hesitation in touching Nui’s cheek.

“Nui-san?” he asked quietly.

It even felt inappropriate addressing her with a -san.

“Nui,” he repeated.

He hadn’t anticipated this at all. Haruhiro was simply mystified.

Why was Nui’s cheek so cold?

He didn’t panic. He just thought it strange, and gradually confirmed it.

Nui’s whole body was limp. Not one part of her moved. Her bright red lips, caked with lipstick or something like it, were still slightly parted. Her chest didn’t rise and fall.

Haruhiro pressed his ear to Nui’s partially exposed chest. There was no heartbeat.

At this point, Haruhiro became flustered. “It’s stopped! Her heart! She’s not breathing! Alice!”

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t the time to be saying ‘yeah,’ is it?! Nui’s...”

“I know.”

“You... know... Huh? Wait, what do you...?”

“Nui’s already dead.”

“Dea—” Haruhiro stopped abruptly.

“Just look. She’s dead.”

“No, but it’s not too late to—”

“Do artificial resuscitation? Fine, let’s try. I think it’s pointless, though.”

“I’ll do it,” Haruhiro said frantically. “I have to. Isn’t that obvious? Of course we’re going to do it. Umm, how does it go...?”

“I more or less know. I’ll help.”

Tilting Nui’s head back to clear the airway, Haruhiro had Alice blow air into Nui’s mouth. When there was enough air inside her that her chest rose, they would wait for Nui to exhale, then blow in again. Once this had been done two or three times, he pushed down hard on the center of her chest with both hands.

Haruhiro had to do it pretty fast, pushing until her chest sank in by about five centimeters. After thirty compressions, they would breathe for her again.

When Alice first breathed into her, there was no response at all. Nui’s body was like an object, not much different from the girl dolls scattered around on the stairs of the Iron Tower of Heaven and the mountain of iron scrap.

Nui was here, and yet nowhere. She was completely dead. But he couldn’t bring himself to say, Let’s stop this. He had to continue.

Nui was like himself. Nui’s memories, her feelings, were clinging on inside him.

She could be a pain, Alice had said.

It was true, Nui wasn’t benevolent or pure. But she had reasons why she could only live the way she did, and Nui had been doing her best in her own way.

When she’d wandered into Parano, when she’d been separated from Alice, Nui despaired, and after losing the ability to maintain her sanity, she’d become a trickster.

No... as the doll master, Nui had just been confused.

Haruhiro had fallen asleep in Parano, had a dream, and given birth to a dream monster once. He didn’t remember what had happened in the dream, but it had been an unbelievable nightmare.

Essentially, Nui had still been awake, but subjected to an ongoing nightmare. Because of that, even when reunited with Alice, she couldn’t have recognized Alice as the person she was endlessly searching for.

Now, the nightmare was at an end.

Alice was here.

Nui had met with Alice again.

“So, why...?” Haruhiro moaned.

“Enough of this.”

The area around Alice’s mouth was stained a deep red. It was proof of how many time Nui had been given artificial respiration.

Nui would have been happy about that. She’d liked Alice so much. Not romantically, and Haruhiro didn’t know if it was what you’d call love, either, but Nui had yearned for Alice with all her body and soul.

Alice could have been nicer to Nui. Not treat her like one of several friends, but put her in a best-friend-like position and gotten along with her.

Nui had liked Alice more than either could bear.

“You finally found each other,” Haruhiro whispered.

“But Nui’s dead.”

“I heard it,” Haruhiro said. “At the very end, your voice. You were calling Nui’s name over and over, right? It reached her. She heard it... She must have heard it.”

Using the back of her hand, Alice vigorously rubbed the lipstick away. Then Alice pulled her mask back up.

“You assimilated to Nui, huh? It wasn’t just magic amplification. Is that resonance’s true nature? Have you been assimilating to me, too?”

“I didn’t know, okay? I never tried to do it intentionally with you, Alice. But Nui...”

“You thought you could save her?”

“I had no proof I could. How could I have? But I thought, just maybe...”

“Probably, the reason Nui died is because she met me.” Alice took Nui’s glasses off one pair at a time. With delicate movements, making every moment seem to be frozen in time. “Because Nui was always, always suffering. She wanted to be like me... to be me. Such a weird girl. It’s not so great, you know. Then again, I guess being alive at all’s not so great.”

“If I hadn’t gone and did what I did...”

“Maybe.”

“It’s my fault,” Haruhiro said, grief-stricken.

“Even if it is, listen. There’s nothing to be done about it now.”

“I couldn’t save her!”

“Come on, it doesn’t even matter anymore. Nui won’t be blaming you. She’s dead. I don’t think you did anything wrong, either. I mean, even if I did think that, nothing would come of it.”

Once Alice had removed all of Nui’s pairs of glasses, the hat came off, but then Alice put it back on, laughing a little.

“Nui’s so weird. I mean, this is just strange. Right, Haruhiro?”

“...Yeah.”

“Could you help me out?”

“With... what?”

“It doesn’t feel right to leave her here like this. I dunno, it just kind of leaves a bad aftertaste.”

Not only did he help, Haruhiro more or less carried Nui by himself.

Though he could carry her under his arm while going up stairs, that didn’t work for ladders. After trying various things, it seemed like it would work out if he carried Nui on his back, fixing her in place using his cloak and other things. She was still heavy, yes, but not unbearably so.

This being Parano, there were several times he thought Nui might start moving around on his back. Just because she’d died didn’t mean she wouldn’t come back to life. Nui was dead. She was just still dead, that was all.

“Here’s good, I guess,” Alice said, tapping the man who sat with his legs overhanging the edge of the landing on the head.

At some point, Alice had told him about it. The man had chosen to rust of his own will, and remained in this place. He looked like a statue, but perhaps the man was still alive.

Haruhiro set Nui down, laying her back against the Iron Tower of Heaven. Nui was dead, so without delicate positioning of her body’s angle, as well as her arms and legs, she’d fall over. Also, the fact she was half-naked bothered him.

“I’ve got a good idea.” Alice took off the raincoat, putting it on Nui instead.

Then, together they managed to stabilize Nui’s body through trial and error.

With her legs spread a little and stretched out, her hands were clasped in front of her belly, and her face looking down, Nui looked like she was sleeping.

Diagonally in front of Nui, that man had rusted where he sat.

Eventually Nui would start to rust, too, no doubt.

Alice sat down not next to her friend Nui, but next to the man instead.

Haruhiro crouched down next to them.

They stayed put there for so long, he began to wonder if the two of them would rust. Or maybe that wasn’t the case at all, and they were only quiet for a moment.

Haruhiro removed his coat and put it around Alice’s shoulders.

“Thanks,” Alice said without looking in his direction, then closed up the front of the cloak and stood up. “Guess it’s time to get going.”

Even when Alice started to walk, Haruhiro didn’t move from where he was for a time. Alice wouldn’t stop, and wouldn’t turn back, either. Even so, he suspected that, from time to time, Alice would come to see Nui. The same as Alice sometimes came to see the rusted man who had been an acquaintance.

Farewell, Nui. With that silent goodbye, Haruhiro chased after Alice.

His cloak had already gotten used to Alice, and looked like a raincoat.

They climbed down the ladders, and descended the stairs.

On the way down, they spotted Ahiru climbing the stairs.

It seemed Ahiru had noticed Haruhiro and Alice, too.

Ahiru climbed a ladder. Haruhiro and Alice waited at the top of it for him.

“There were dolls scattered around below,” he told them. “Unmoving dolls. Lots of them. Those things, they’re the doll master’s, right?”

“Dunno,” Alice said curtly.

Ahiru may have clued in, because he asked no more. “It seems the king’s gotten himself more vassals. I’ve seen the woman who drags two ugly men around with her before. But the tall guy, he was new.”

“That’s Kuzaku,” Haruhiro said. “He’s my comrade.”

Ahiru frowned. “How do you know?”

“We were watching from a distance when you crawled out of Rainbow Mole’s Nest. After you, that woman and her cohorts appeared.”

“It seems you still don’t trust me, Alice,” Ahiru said.

“Whether I trust you or not is up to you, Ahiru.”

“I want to save her,” he protested. “That’s all.”

“I want to take down that piece of shit.”

“You planning to become the new king or something?”

“Not interested. I just want to say goodbye to this messed up world.”

Once before, Haruhiro had asked if Alice didn’t want to return to Alice’s original world. He hadn’t been given a definite yes to that. In fact, the answer had been, Not really, or something like that.

Had Alice had a change of heart since then? Or had the situation changed? Because Alice’s friend, Nui, was dead, there was no longer any reason to stay. Was that why Alice now wanted to say goodbye to this messed up world?

“If we take out the king, can we say goodbye to this world?” Haruhiro asked. “Can we get out of Parano? Is that what you’re saying?”

“There’s a door.” The answer came from Ahiru, not Alice. “The king’s throne is a door. That door’s been there from the very beginning, I hear.”

“A door...” Haruhiro whispered.

Haruhiro and the party had opened a door that was apparently a relic while they were in the Leslie Camp. Once they’d passed through that door, they were in Parano.

“The door I know was, uh, how do I describe it? There was nothing behind it,” Haruhiro said. “It wasn’t built into a wall. If you open it, you just see through to the other side. But, despite that, if you walk into it, you come out in another place... another world. And there’s no going back.”

“I’ve never seen the king’s door opened,” Ahiru said. “All I know is that it’s definitely shaped like a door.”

“I have,” Alice mumbled. “He showed it to me... or forced me to look, I guess. That piece of shit opened the door in front me, just once.”