CHAPTER 102: RECOLLECTIONS ABSENT IN MEMORY
—She succeeded in finding the seal with much more ease than anticipated.
Emilia: “This is the siel?”
Young Emilia gazed at the strange object before her, her amethyst eyes blinking, and tilted her head.
What stood before Emilia was, discovered in the depths of the depths of the depths of the woods, a peculiar door in a clearing surrounded by trees. Although being a door, it connected to no building, and even after circling around behind it, Emilia found absolutely nothing. It was merely a door, plunked down in the middle of the forest and large enough that Emilia could crane her neck back to look at it.
Emilia: “How come it isn't falling?”
Emilia thought it mysterious and so pushed the door, but it did not move or open an inch. Emilia's skinny arms would of course not topple the door either, the thing instead receiving the pressure in the same way that one would receive a pleasant breeze. The door looked to be made of wood, but its cold touch felt more like ice. Its surface was smooth, the sensation strange, like polished stone. In the middle of the closed double-doors was an ancient lock, its keyhole gaping as large as Emilia's hand. She had not the slightest idea whose pockets could carry a key for something so big.
Emilia: “Queer...”
Emilia tapped the back of her hand against the door, confirming that despite its supposed hardness, it sounded back with no echo. Still unsure of what this thing she uncovered really meant, Emilia tilted her head.
Emilia: “But what could it be? Hm?”
Fairies: “—”
The dim points of light circled round and around Emilia's head as she sought their agreement. Emilia had recognized that the fairies existed here and there throughout the forest ever since her encounter with them in the Princess Room, and after revealing that she was searching for the SEAL, they found its location for her rather quickly. Although they had been the ones to lead her here, it seemed that they did not know the significance of the seal either. But even if they did know, they could not speak, and so they would have no way to inform Emilia.
Emilia: “Dunno, boring. But I did find it. Claplclapclap.”
Emilia applauded herself by herself, and after giving a big nod, left the seal. Now, if it leaked that she was escaping the Princess Room, she had her ace prepared. Assuming hypothetically that Mother Fortuna and the others found out about Emilia's great escapes, so long as she revealed that she knew about the seal—and well she didn't really understand this but probably, they would be on even conversational terms. Not that she could really remember what had first spurred her to think this way.
Emilia: “Harump. Mother Fortuna and everybody else is wrong. Juice is wrong.”
Emilia recollected on the tall, black-robed man, before sticking her tongue out at him in his absence. He was someone, who was not Emilia, who made Emilia's dear Mother Fortuna make her secret faces. She knew that he was not a bad person, but undeniably, he was her enemy. Although she had undergone no direct showdown with him yet, should Fortuna ever present an opportunity for her to meet him, Emilia's volition was primed on the idea to stomp his foot.
Emilia: “The fairies fly in his face, and while he's confused, I step on his foot. And I'll step on him with both feet. And using my heels. ...That'd hurt probably, I'll use my toes.”
She did not forget to insert a wisp of kindness into her heartless plans. No ally would accompany her in her cruel warfare. While keeping watch for the enemy with the fairies, Emilia crept through the forest, departing its depths, on her way back to the village. This was not her escaping the Princess Room, and was instead Emilia's normal free time. Fortuna would be away at this hour, venturing around the forest to check that its barriers were steady, leaving the village occupied only by the elderly and by children around Emilia's age.
The elders could not join Emilia on her adventures, and for some reason none of the children would really approach her. That did make Emilia feel lonely, but when that happened Fortuna would put all her energy into playing with her and make her forget about it. It was thus not that big a deal for Emilia that she could not play with the other children.
Emilia: “And I bet I'm the only one who knows about the siel.”
She alone knew something that nobody else did. That trifling sense of superiority supported Emilia's trifling self-importance. She puffed out her chest, bringing the fairies with her as she steadily proceeded through the forest. Her destination was her abode. Today, she would send her brush running over paper all she wished, drawing pictures on the irregularly large quantity of sheets that Mother Fortuna had prepared for her.
Emilia: “The artiste for today feels like drawing a red sky, and a white forest. —?”
She mimed the action of slapping paint to canvas, when abruptly she noticed that the fairies' movements had turned irregular. She closed one eye as she gazed to follow their path, them splitting off from the forest trail and moving to disappear deep in the bushes.
Emilia: “Trouble feels afoot...!”
The fairies would usually disappear by turning into particles of light, but presently they were disappearing by flittering deeper into the woods. Emilia determined that this meant trouble afoot, or otherwise that they were telling her to come this way. She separated from the path and stepped into the shrub, to then breezily climb over grasses and bushes that were taller than her. She ventured between the trees, twigs catching multiple times in her long, silver hair, exiting to find—
???: “This is quite a predicament I've found myself in. ...The promised time will end up delayed.”
—In the dark forest, standing on a narrow trail, leaned against a skinny tree, a distressed man.
Emilia: “—Auh,”
Emilia unwittingly yelped, then immediately clamming her hands over her mouth. But this was a quiet forest, and that was a child's loud voice. The sound reached the man's ears clearly and inadvertently pulled his attention.
Man: “Who is there?”
The man tilted his neck, turning his head toward Emilia's thicket. Meek features. Evenly-cut green hair. His face was skinny, but his body gave a lean impression rather than a frail one. He was tall, taller than Fortuna, and even compared to this foliage that Emilia could only peek out of by jumping frantically, he was taller. This familiar man was Emilia's detested foe, Juice.
Juice: “—”
He stared wordlessly at the thicket, Emilia clutching her head and regretfully resigning that he would not just let this pass. What was actually happening was, with her clutching her head and so facing backwards, Emilia's bum was protruding from the thicket and Juice could see it entirely. But Emilia did not realise that, and Juice did not point it out. Dejected and uncomfortable, Emilia poked her head out of the thicket.
Juice: “Goodness me, a darling young lady has app—hk!”
A gentle smile arose on Juice's face—or did, until his shock aborted his sentence halfway. His eyes shot open, his lips trembling as he stared at Emilia. The fixedness of the gaze was atypically uncomfortable. Part of that was because Emilia regarded Juice as an enemy, and part of it was because she could not decipher the complex emotions packed into Juice's stare.
Juice: “Young miss, would... no, you couldn't possibly, perhaps...”
Emilia: “—”
Juice spoke with his voice trembling as he shook his head, as if he were witnessing something unbelievable. Emilia timidly looked up at him, saw the overwhelming frailty in his expression—and felt it heartbreaking. He looked like a lost child, or like someone who had always been walking through darkness now seeing light, an expression of something both feckless and fleeting, which prompted Emilia to forget everything she had as yet felt toward Juice.
Emilia: “...Juice, are you ok?”
Juice: “—! aua, aauaaa, AaaaaAaaaaa...”
Emilia walked over, clutched the hem of Juice's black vestment, and spoke. Juice's expression disintegrated further in that instant, his spine trembling as if a lightning bolt had transmit from Emilia's fingers, and he fell to his knees on the spot.
Emilia's shoulders trembled. Juice was on his knees, bent over, his eye level matched to Emilia's. From his eyes there spouted an outrageous flood of tears. The unstoppable stream of tears cascaded into a river down Juice's face. This was the first time Emilia had ever seen a grown-up cry, and all she could do was watch it happen, her breath still.
Taking hold of Emilia's petrified hand, Juice looked the girl straight in her amethyst eyes.
Juice: “I am, okay... yes, yes! I am very well. There is not any issue, at all... I, I... I have just, truly just now, been saved beyond any parallel.”
Emilia: “Really? You were saved, even though you're crying?”
Juice: “I am not crying from sadness... these are tears of gladness, of delight, of bliss... Such tears of happiness, do exist. That is what I, undoubtedly am... b-because you, all of you, taught me.... and...”
His overwhelming emotions communicated through his trembling fingers, and Emilia felt no urge to shake them away. She laid her free hand over the one already grasping hers. Juice bowed his head low, his teardrops dripping to the ground, wailing and wailing and wailing unstoppable sobs, his so-stated tears of happiness proceeding to flow.
—So, crying could be happiness? Then, he was blissful right now?
Emilia: “You're happy, but crying...”
She did feel that she understood it. Emilia had occasionally spent nights sleepless and alone. She would climb into Fortuna's bed when that happened, cradle herself in her mother's arms, and pass the time in warmth until the dawn came. Emilia would be liberated from her unease, blanketed in happiness, sometimes coming close to tears. So what Juice was experiencing was a similar feeling to what Emilia felt back then?
Was there something Mother Fortuna could do, that Emilia also could?
Emilia: “It's ok, Juice. You're ok. Everything's ok.”
Juice: “—hk”
Consolingly, Emilia patted Juice's head. A quake jolted through his body. Emilia took Juice, who still faced downward, and held him to her little chest. His sobs transmitted to her bosom, his intensity surged into her interior.
She had thought about stepping on his feet before, and now she wound up doing this. What an impossible guy. A hopeless opponent. No way she could do something awful to someone who was crying. Surely, Mother Fortuna would forgive this as being hopeless as well.
Emilia: “It's lonely to cry all by yourself.”
Once Juice finished crying, they returned to the village hand-in-hand.
She had to tell Mother Fortuna about this.
About her walk through the depths of the forest, and about a grown-up crying. Because the two who shared her secret were no longer enemies, but something like friends.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
—Leaning against the hardness at her back, Emilia returns from her momentary forfeiture of consciousness.
She shakes her head, twining her fingers into her silver hair, grimacing at the shrill, incessant ringing of tinnitus in her ears. What was that short dream she just had?
That scene was nowhere in her memory. It shouldn't be. But nevertheless, the unfamiliar sight burst out as if she had actually witnessed it before. The characters involved were people that Emilia knew, and she definitely had been present for this production, but they were preforming scenes entirely unknown to her.
She knew Fortuna, knew Juice, knew the fairies, knew her young self. But she did not remember these events. Unknown events. Conversations not shared in memory.
Dripping down, overflowing, Emilia's unseen sights. The door-seal. Escapes from the Princess Room. The fairies' guidance. What Juice's black robes meant. Mother Fortuna's final words, to Emilia.
Emilia: “—Auh, hhk,”
An especially sharp pain rips through Emilia's skull. She rigorously wipes her welling tears away with her sleeve, the pale skin around her eyes swelling with red as she sighs.
Ever since her contract with Puck terminated, these unknown memories have been emerging one after another in Emilia's mind. She had absolutely no idea what they meant. But she did know that they were not meaningless, and were not baseless delusions. The fundamental core of Emilia's heart was not rejecting, and not distancing these memories.
She did know. The deepest depths of her heart did know these scenes. Which meant that these events were ones which truly happened? If so, then why hadn't they been in Emilia's head before?
Her past, which she witnessed during the TRIAL. A memory of being in the forest of snow, Fortuna slinging hatred and umbrage at her, what made her want to scream. Some definitive something, which linked to that point, was missing from Emilia's memory.
Was the link to that missing piece somewhere in this sea of memory? If so, then Emilia would have to delve deeper, dredge the depths, and discover what had drowned.
Emilia: “Have to... find it, quickly...”
Her head, in pain. Her body, heavy. Her vision wavers, the strength sapping from her. But nevertheless she must lean against the wall, prop herself back up, and keep going. Slowly, laboriously, dragging her heavy body along, deep into the darkness, deep into the depths, her face near to tears, by herself, she walks. Alone.
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