Bonus Short Story
Memories of the Ray of Sunshine
No one knew for how long, but there she resided.
In the midst of the pitch-black void was a dimly glowing spiral staircase. No one knew when they came into being, but there were a multitude of doors to rooms of varying sizes.
Outside of the space she inhabited, there were highly intelligent people who possessed mana. Those people opened up her space, where time didn’t exist, and stored all sorts of items. Her job was to look over the myriad of doors made for each person who opened a rift into this space and to erase the doors that no longer had living owners.
That was the reason for her existence—the spirit who governed time and space. She was neither taught nor ordered to do so, but there she was, in the mind-numbingly long flow of time, doing the same set of tasks over and over without question.
That day was like any other as she silently erased doors that lacked owners—the same, unchanged routine. However, that was the day a stone disrupted the still lake of her daily existence.
She suddenly felt a disturbance coming from the largest room.
(What...?)
The size of a room was determined by how much mana one possessed, and this one was much larger than all the others. So much so it had shocked her when it came into being.
Something had entered that room, and it wasn’t inanimate—there were signs of life.
She rushed to the room, her eyes widening in surprise. There she saw a single man staring back at her.
“Hey, you the Spirit of Time?”
“... And who are you?”
That was the start of the first conversation she had with someone other than the spirits on the outside. Although her heart was beating a little fast, she spoke with composure. “Spoke” in a loose sense, of course, since her preferred method of speaking was telepathy.
“Me? Name’s Weidt. Nice to meet ya!” the man said with a big, toothy smile.
That smile was like a ray of sunshine, bringing light and color to her flat, dull life.
This was how the Spirit of Time, later rechristened as “Lydia,” and Weidt, later known as the First Dragon King, first met.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Weidt entered the rift in space with a heave-ho and yelled into the vast area, “Heeey! I’m here to plaaay!”
A few moments passed with no response. He took in a deep breath to belt out another call, but then a girl with long, flowing snow-white hair appeared.
“You’re here again?”
“You betcha!” Weidt said with his trademark toothy grin.
She breathed a deep sigh for what felt like the umpteenth time. Weidt had been visiting frequently since the first day he came here. Even though she’d warned him that she didn’t know how this isolated zone would affect a living being, he still came in spite of the consequences. Reluctantly, she decided to make a contract with him in order to minimize the effects on him. However, she honored her brethren’s requests to make it a normal contract, one that could be annulled at any time.
“Say, can I give you a name?” Weidt suddenly proposed out of the blue.
Her eyes flew open and she angrily replied, “You obviously can not!!”
“Spoilsport...” Weidt said disappointedly, pouting.
As soon as she glared at him, he quickly averted his gaze. To a spirit, allowing a person to name them meant subjugating themselves to said person. It wasn’t something you’d casually suggest like Weidt assumed. No one could just ask a spirit, “Mind if I give you a name?” and receive a jolly reply of, “Oh, hey, sure!”
“C’mon, it’s not something you really have to rack your brain over. Just because I give you a name doesn’t mean I can give you any orders, seeing how you can’t leave this space. It’s just that you not having a name is inconvenient. It’s way better if you have one.”
“I don’t feel it’s inconvenient. Besides, no spirit would just let someone name them for a reason so trivial.”
“Well, tell that to Chi. He consented with no fuss.”
“Don’t lump me in with them...”
Chi referred to the Spirit of Earth, one of the twelve highest-level spirits, who Weidt had already named. Unlike her, when he was casually asked, “Mind if I give you a name?” he swiftly replied with, “Yeah, sure thing!” He was a fool who lived based solely on mood and instinct. In fact, the only reason Weidt knew that the Spirit of Time resided within the pocket space was because Chi had told him. She cursed him for opening his big mouth, but she wasn’t going to say that aloud.
During his frequent visits, Weidt brought all sorts of items from the outside world under the pretense of them being “gifts.” When she would ask what an item was, Weidt would recall a tale surrounding it, and she would listen enthusiastically. Spirits had a special method of mutually understanding one another’s thoughts, which the Spirit of Time used to learn about the outside world from the spirits that resided there. But since her information was always secondhand, it was often skewed by the likes and dislikes of the spirit it came from. In that regard, Weidt would give her detailed, objective accounts instead of subjective spins. Also, as long as she was within her domain of space, she could form a solid body like Weidt’s. Thanks to that, she could give and receive sensations that couldn’t be conveyed through sight alone.
The Spirit of Time became very busy trying to express emotions—anger, enjoyment, loneliness—ever since Weidt came to her realm. Although she would sigh and gripe every time, a part of her definitely awaited his arrival each and every time.
“Say, can I name you now?”
“No.”
“Spoilsport.”
That was the back-and-forth they shared every visit. She made it known she wished he would give up on the idea, but Weidt was persistent and asked every time he came to see her.
Then, one day, after hundreds upon thousands of visits, he asked once again in jest, “Say, can I name you now?”
That was when she finally said, “Fine.”
“Spoilspor—Wait... Huh?!” Weidt was in the middle of his usual retort, but after actually catching her response, his eyes widened and he gasped in shock.
His extreme surprise made the Spirit of Time chuckle to herself. “You look awfully surprised considering it was your idea.”
“Uh, well, yeah, I guess you’re right. Still, you really sure?”
“I am.”
“Alright. Then, from today on, you’ll be ‘Lydia’!” he said as if making a grand announcement.
However, he didn’t get the ecstatic reaction he was expecting. Instead he was met with her furrowed brows and perplexed expression.
Slightly worried, Weidt asked, “You don’t like it?”
“No, that’s not it. You just kind of blurted out a name, so I’m just worried if you actually put any consideration into it. You didn’t decide with the same lighthearted approach you usually take with everything else, did you?”
“Heck no! I’ve been thinking about this name just in case you gave me the okay.”
“I’m relieved to hear that.” Lydia repeatedly whispered her new name in her mind so she wouldn’t forget it. Then she looked at Weidt with the biggest smile ever. “Thank you, Weidt.”
“N-No problem,” he replied, cheeks red. He nervously looked away from her as she flashed a genuinely happy smile his way.
From then on, Weidt would come visit Lydia even more than before, sharing many hours with her—like following her when she would erase rooms that had lost their owners.
“Hey, you mind if I take these?”
“But that belongs to someone else.”
“But you’re going to be erasing them anyway, right? Don’t you think it’s kind of a waste to just erase things that are perfectly usable? In that case, I’d say it’s better I make practical use out of ’em.”
“Well, I don’t really mind. Not like I’ll be using it.”
“Score!”
Another time, Weidt gave Lydia a jack-in-the-box under the guise of a gift. It scared her out of her wits, and he doubled over laughing at the sight—something Lydia strongly reprimanded him for.
“Sorry, okay. Don’t get so upset.”
“If you ever do anything like that again, you’re banned from here forever!”
“Right... I apologize, really...”
Sometimes, Weidt would air out his complaints and Lydia would console him.
“I’m fed up with work! I didn’t want to become some stinkin’ king anyway! I’m gonna just hole up here!”
“Okay, okay. Stay here for however long you’d like. Once you’ve rested, try getting back to work, okay? You have a lot of people depending on you.”
The time she spent with Weidt was enjoyable—blissful. That was exactly why she had forgotten that her time with him wouldn’t last forever.
One day, he brought a portrait set in a frame about half the size of his body. Depicted on the painting was Weidt himself—a much more regal and gallant depiction than real life.
Lydia couldn’t help but giggle, saying, “Why are you suddenly lugging that thing in here for?”
“...I figured I’d bring it so you wouldn’t get lonely.”
“Oh, please. You come to visit so often that there’s no possible way I’d get lonely.”
Once he finished installing the frame on the wall, he turned back to face her. One look at his expression was enough to make her grimace in uncertainty. The portrait hanging from the wall was of Weidt when they first met—a youthful individual brimming with exuberance. However, the man before her had graying hair and deep wrinkles covering his face and hands.
She wondered why she never noticed any of that before now. While it was harder to notice since he aged more gracefully due to being a dragonkin, he had most definitely grown elderly.
Once she did notice, terror struck. It had almost slipped her mind completely, but even though dragonkin lived longer than other races, they were subject to aging—unlike spirits. Meaning their lives would one day come to an end.
“Oh no...”
“Say, Lydia. Once I die...”
“No!” Lydia screamed, not wanting to hear that. She covered her ears with her hands and turned her eyes away from Weidt.
Weidt awkwardly smiled, took Lydia’s arm, and brought her into a tight embrace. “Please, even if I die, keep this room as it is and don’t erase it. And once you gain your next contract-bearer, give everything over to them, will you? Over to the next person who cares for you as much as I do.”
“...No one like that will ever show up.”
“Rest assured, they will. I’m living proof people like that exist. I don’t know how long it might take, but there’ll be someone else who’ll bring a smile to your face. A girl, if possible. I’d get jealous if it were a guy.”
“You’re such a goofball...”
“Lydia, just hold out for a bit. I know you can do it,” Weidt said with the utmost confidence, smiling.
Although his face was much older, his smile was just the same—a ray of sunshine that warmed her heart.
Eventually, in what felt like the blink of an eye, Lydia sensed grief and sadness coming from her brethren, the Spirit of Earth. After him came the Spirit of Flowers, who was contracted after Lydia. A host of spirits who loved Weidt were weeping.
Lydia dropped to her knees in the room packed with all the memories she shared with him. She wanted to go to his side right away, but since she couldn’t leave this domain, her wish remained ungranted.
Through her brethren’s vision, she saw Weidt lying peacefully in eternal slumber. Then he disappeared before her eyes...
His smile, his warm smile that illuminated her life like a ray of sunshine, was gone, and the only way she would ever see it again was through the portrait hanging from the wall.
Her flat and dull life resumed once more. However, she couldn’t go back to how she was in the past. The second Weidt’s face popped into her mind, her heart ached.
Lydia fulfilled her duties in order to distract herself, going to rooms that had lost their owners and erasing them. But she never forgot to check the contents of said rooms and take out anything useful beforehand, just as she had learned from Weidt. She would take what she salvaged and either throw it into someone else’s room or bring it back to his.
Nevertheless, the sadness and loneliness that had taken stay in her heart wouldn’t go away.
Left without recourse, the sadness proving too much to bear, she stood in front of the portrait of Weidt and gazed upon it. Wanting to be as close to it as possible, she removed it from the wall and hugged it tight. That was when she felt something strange on the back of the frame. She turned the portrait over and found a green stone embedded in the top of the frame. When she touched it, it easily popped out and rolled into the palm of her hand.
Lydia looked at it, perplexed. “A gemstone... or maybe not. Scales? Wait, could this be... is this a dragonheart...?”
Lydia’s knowledge of it was limited, but a dragonheart was the symbol of matrimony dragonkin gave to their mate. The gemstone-like item, the same shade of green as Weidt’s eyes, was undoubtedly Weidt’s dragonheart. And since it was painstakingly chiseled into the frame, there was absolutely no way Weidt brought it in by mistake.
That only meant one thing. What she was holding was Weidt’s feelings—feelings he was unable to convey right to the very end.
A single tear trailed down her cheek. Then, with the intensity of a broken dam, tear after tear spilled from her eyes.
“What were you doing, putting it here of all places? I wouldn’t have ever noticed it... You big dummy...”
She gripped onto the dragonheart and continued to weep until she had no tears left.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
A considerable amount of time had passed, even from a spirit’s loose perception of time. Up until then, only Weidt had ever stepped foot into this domain. But now there was another.
“Lydia, I’ve got a gift for you~!”
A contract-bearer—one Lydia thought would never appear. She thought she would have to endure this sense of loneliness for the rest of eternity, but just as Weidt said, another contract-bearer surfaced and put a smile on her face.
“Welcome, Ruri,” Lydia said with a sweet smile, greeting the bearer of her new contract—the girl known as Ruri.
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