The Boy in the City of the Dead

by Kanata Yanagino

  “Destroying you would be too much of a waste. I will wait until you lose your attachment.”

  Having said his piece, the Echo of Stagnate tossed Gus’s upper half roughly aside.

  “As for you...”

  His gaze turned to me. My heart jumped into my throat. My legs started shaking. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t even do that.

  I saw, clearly, his lips slowly creep up at the corners. He walked toward me. I couldn’t move.

  Mary and Blood might have noticed him coming towards me. Still half-destroyed, they tried to grab onto his feet, but were pressed down even more strongly. Again, I heard the sound of bones breaking all at once, too many to count or even make out.

  He was right in front of me now. In that instant, I sensed my own death. But the words he spoke next with a smile on his face were, unmistakably, words of praise.

  “Well done. You helped immensely. You have my gratitude.”

  “For... what?” I somehow managed to string some words together with my quivering lips and tangled tongue.

  “These heroes you see before you...”

  The god of undeath spread his arms as he spoke, as if he was enjoying this very, very much.

  “They became the highest-ranked among undead by entering into a contract with me, on the condition that when their attachment to the High King was lost, they would meet with me again, and become my servants fully.”

  This man, who emanated an unholy aura, was he... saying that... “I...”

  “Yes.”

  The man laughed. At me?

  “Thanks to you, the Sage’s attachment has waned, and the War Ogre and the Beloved Daughter have lost their attachment to the High King completely.”

  The words didn’t register. I couldn’t process them. I—The reason I—

  “Thanks to you, these great heroes will at last become mine.”

  He looked thrilled.

  “Thanks to the good life you led as their son.”

  But I—

  When I was reborn, I—

  I said to myself I—

  I was going to live... this time...

  Live right, this time...

  “Ha ha ha! Too shocked to speak? Understandable.”

  I couldn’t think.

  “But my gratitude wasn’t a lie...”

  His voice came in through my ears.

  “And although inexperienced, you are an apprentice to three great heroes...”

  I couldn’t understand.

  “What would you say... about joining my forces and serving me?”

  I couldn’t comprehend.

  “I will allow you to remain in harmony with these three forever.”

  “—!”

  “Hah hah hah. Interested? I assume so... But forcing an immediate answer would be insipid.”

  A pause.

  “I will give you time to consider with your precious family.”

  He laughed.

  “Appropriately, tomorrow is the winter solstice. When that accursed sun is at its weakest...”

  His form crumbled into a black mist.

  “After dusk, I will hear your answer.”

  There was a rush of wind. He disappeared.

  Standing there like an idiot, I could only watch him go.

  After the god of undeath departed, I started to carry the three of them, unconscious and battered, to a room inside the temple.

  They’d been damaged to the point where they could just barely still function as undead. They hadn’t been completely destroyed only because the god of undeath intended to gain control over their souls.

  All three of them were high-level undead. They could recover from slight wounds in no time at all, but this was different. They’d been injured far too badly. On top of that, the one who had inflicted those wounds was an Echo of Stagnate, who was the source of their immortal powers. There was no way recovering from that would be easy.

  It was impossible to hope that they’d be fully healed by the time tomorrow rolled around. Their wounds were regenerating far too slowly. They would probably still be gravely injured.

  First, I carried Mary, whose arms were broken and throat gouged out, by draping her body over my shoulder. She hung there, completely limp. She was thin and painfully light.

  Next was Gus. I couldn’t touch him, of course, since he was a specter. I used a number of Words to transport him. My voice trembled several times.

  Blood was completely broken. I carried his bones back one by one, piece by piece, sorting the parts as I went. I went back and forth between the temple and the hill, over and over, clenching my teeth to fight back tears.

  This was my fault. I had robbed Blood and Mary of their attachment.

  I now finally understood what had been behind Gus’s actions, too. Why he had been against bringing me up, why he had tried to cram so much knowledge into me, why he had tried to kill me, and why he had told me to lose on purpose.

  Neither Blood nor Mary could abandon me. It wasn’t in their natures. But if they raised me, they might lose their attachment. So Gus was dead set against it. He didn’t get his way, though, and they brought me up anyway. And I worked hard, because of my previous life’s memories, to be a good kid who learned fast. Blood and Mary really took to me.

  The reason Gus forced so much cramming onto me must have been to try to break me. He figured that the weight of all the ridiculous tasks he was piling on me would be too much for me, and would stop me from wanting to study. But even then I kept pushing on, and he could tell that Blood and Mary’s attachment to the High King was being lost, and their focus was shifting to me instead.

  So he decided to just go for it and kill me. The reason he used Create Golem and Stone Blast at that time was to make it look like an accident. After all, there was plenty of fallen rubble lying around in the underground city already.

  I didn’t think he was horrible for choosing to do that. He had to weigh two things against each other: the possibility that the souls of his two friends would be eternal slaves to an evil god, and the life of a child who had been picked up just ten-odd years before. It wasn’t crazy of him to choose the former.

  Despite all that, Gus was probably still conflicted. He definitely hadn’t wanted to kill me. Not only that, but from what I knew of Gus, he would definitely have realized the possibility that Blood and Mary would be so devastated by my death that they’d lose their attachment even faster. In the end, the problem lay with the other two’s hearts. Gus himself would have known that it wasn’t the kind of issue where you could choose the right answer by logic. That was why he gave me the chance to strike back. He was leaving the outcome in the hands of fate.

  How much must he have suffered when I refused to fight? How much must he have agonized over that decision? What was he feeling when he chose to let me live?

  He told me to lose on purpose for the same reason. It was because, if I won, Blood would feel that he had achieved everything he set out to do, and it would make him lose his attachment.

  Even though Gus expected me to fight against his request, he said nothing to me about the reason for it. He must have been dying to tell me what I was doing to Blood and Mary, that I was on the verge of dooming them both. But he said nothing.

  And when things at last turned fatal, Gus had already resolved to fight the god’s Echo alone. To protect me, Blood, and Mary, he fought that terrifying being on his own.

  I had the feeling that Blood and Mary had made peace with it—that they would lose their attachment if they raised me, that they might meet their end and leave Gus on his own. Their choice to raise me was made in full knowledge of all of that.

  They could have chosen to abandon me. They could even have chosen to bring me up any old way, without really caring. But no, they fully embraced raising me. They didn’t shirk from it. I could imagine the many arguments they must have had with Gus. Blood, looking awkward, but refusing to budge. Mary, looking apologetic and guilty as she stood up for me.

 
; I’d been living a carefree life, oblivious to everything. Just sitting on my butt, leeching off Gus’s internal agony and Blood and Mary’s self-sacrifice. I sniffed. What had I been doing? Getting so giddy over how I was going to “live right”... Naïvely believing them completely when they said they’d explain someday. Building up hopes of going to the outside world.

  Tears came to my eyes as a vague memory of my prior life resurfaced. The sound of a motor. A handcart trundled by, carrying a white coffin. A cold, mechanical sound accompanied the slow, inexorable closing of the incinerator door.

  The deaths of my parents in my past life... I caused them constant trouble. They died before I could give anything back.

  Tears flooded down my cheeks. My knees hit the cold floor in front of them all as they lay there unresponsive. A burning feeling of frustration clawed my heart from the inside. I curled up on the floor in pain.

  “I’m... sorry.” This time? This time, my ass. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry...” Again, they were dying because of me. I still caused them trouble and gave nothing back, as hopeless as I ever was. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry... Forgive me... Oh, gods...”

  Now I knew. I really was scum. Reborn or not, I was still hopelessly incompetent scum.

  This time, my ass. You’re just the same now as before, I told myself. Unable to do anything when it really matters. Curled up in a dark room, your chest burning with emotion you don’t know what to do with. Repeating apologies that won’t reach anyone. You’ve been reborn, and you’re still no goddamn different.

  ◆

  “Hey...”

  The voice caused me to awaken with a jolt. I remembered curling up, crying, moaning, saying “sorry” again and again... and not much past that. I wasn’t even sure whether I’d passed out or fallen asleep.

  “Wow, you look like crap,” said Blood, who was still broken everywhere. His jaw rattled with laughter.

  “Oh... Dear me, you’re right.” Mary’s voice sounded hoarse; her throat was still mostly destroyed.

  Gus, who had only his top half, shrugged his shoulders.

  “That’s not good for you, Will,” Mary croaked. “It’s the middle of winter. You mustn’t sleep on the floor.”

  “Yes,” said Gus. “Go and make yourself some herbal tea or something. I daresay that you haven’t eaten a thing since yesterday.”

  “Yeah, you can’t go doing that. Eat your fill. Everything else can wait.”

  Everyone was acting just like normal. It was tempting to believe it had all been a dream.

  Touched by their warmth, the burning emotions inside my chest scratched and clawed to get out. Something rose up inside me. I was finding it hard to breathe. My eyes blurred.

  “I’m sorry...” I involuntarily shifted my gaze to the floor. I couldn’t look up at them.

  “Will. No,” Blood spoke firmly. “This is our fault, not yours, for doing something so stupid in the first place. It caught up with us. That’s it.”

  “We’ve existed too long, in defiance of the eternal cycle. We have to pay the price.”

  I still couldn’t bring myself to look at them as they spoke.

  “So, let’s see, Grandpa Gus,” Blood said. “You outright ignored the contract, then tried to beat the hell out of him when he came to collect. And then, you failed! What a guy. Never change.”

  “Hmph. A contract you’re forced into by someone preying on your weaknesses is nothing I call a contract. He deserved to be sent packing at the last second. That said, I didn’t expect him to have split his Echo in two. My intention was to blast him away so thoroughly that he wouldn’t be able to show his face in this dimension for another decade.”

  Mary’s laugh was muffled. “It’s awful to say, but I must admit I did get a little enjoyment out of seeing his pallid face being blown away.” The other two burst out laughing at this remark, which was unusually brash for Mary.

  “Yes,” she said contemplatively, “if we could bring the god of undeath down with us, I wouldn’t be too unhappy with that.”

  “Yeah. What d’you all say, wanna gang up on him and teach him a lesson? I figured I was never gonna beat a god, and I did sign up for the contract, so I kinda resigned myself to it. But we did blow him up once. Who knows, might work.”

  “Mm, that’s the spirit. I can’t say whether I could cast it in this state, but what if I used the Word of Entity Obliteration with no restraint at all, wiping him and us off the face of this world at the same time?”

  “Hey, that sounds awesome! We just disintegrate and cease to exist, souls and all. That’s exactly what we were looking for!”

  “Gus, I think that’s a wonderful plan.” The atmosphere about them was refreshingly positive. This had probably been how they talked to each other while they were alive. But it was obvious that it was just empty bravado.

  Gus had won once, barely, through a sneak attack and a barrage of seals his opponent hadn’t anticipated. But I doubted there’d be a second time. The three of them were seriously wounded.

  “So—Will,” Blood said, turning the discussion to me. “You’re an adult now. Independent. Get out there already and explore the world.”

  “I’m sorry that we can’t hold a coming-of-age party or ceremony for you.”

  “If you want a present, all the knowledge we gave you over the years will have to suffice.”

  My heart ached.

  “Go wild out there, get some people under you, and get up to a ton of mischief.”

  “B-Blood! Don’t give him bad advice!” she said, putting emphasis on every word.

  Gus laughed loudly. “Well, you have to turn somewhat of a blind eye to these things. Boys will be boys, and men will be men.”

  “Once he starts down a slippery slope like that, he won’t be able to kick the habit, you know!”

  My heart ached. That burning emotion was scratching furiously at my chest from the inside.

  “Getting in a bit of trouble’s all part of learning. Right, old man?”

  “Indeed. I wouldn’t worry. The boy will be fine.”

  “Yeah, Will’s gonna do great.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t have faith in him...”

  My heart... ached. So badly that I couldn’t bear it anymore.

  “You’ve got it all wrong...” It’s not like that. You don’t understand. “I’m not the kind of person you’re all hoping for me to be!” As if I were spitting blood, I forced the words out with a trembling voice.

  Spurred on by Blood, I poured out everything I’d been keeping bottled inside me, becoming a soggy mess of negative emotions: self-reproach, shame, grief.

  I told them that I had memories of a previous life. That there, I had been an unsalvageable, hopeless person.

  That when I’d been reborn, I’d resolved to do it right this time. That I hadn’t been able to realize anything, and had been making them suffer while I lived comfortably. That in the end, I hadn’t given them anything back.

  I verbalized everything that was in my chest, like a criminal confessing to his crimes. They quietly listened.

  “I don’t even remember whether I cried when my mom and dad died, after causing them all that trouble...”

  That’s right. Back then, what was in my mind? Someone like me who couldn’t even pull that out of the hazy fog was just...

  “Scum.” Scum, who got flush with the idea of being able to start over in a new environment. “I’m just irredeemable scum.” The outside world was impossible for a person like me. How could I ever live up to their expectations?

  My head was spinning in circles. Suffering, pain, sadness, embarrassment. I couldn’t look them in the face.

  “Will,” Mary called my name.

  I timidly raised my head.

  “Grit your teeth.”

  A shock of pain ran through me. It took me a few moments to realize what had happened. Mary had slapped me across the cheek with all her strength. Her arm, which had just been starting to recover, was twisted even more unnaturally than
before.

  I yelped in horror. “M-Mar—”

  “Look at me!” Ignoring her arm, Mary placed a hand firmly around my cheek and turned my head so we could make eye contact. But she had no eyeballs there, just empty sockets.

  Mary had lost her eyeballs long ago, and always kept her head turned downward. That wasn’t just a reserved and polite expression. It was also so that she wouldn’t scare me with her empty eye sockets.

  “Will,” she said sharply, “as your mother, I forbid you from hurting yourself anymore. You, scum? Don’t be so utterly ridiculous. You’ve always been hardworking and dedicated. No matter how incredibly difficult the tasks Gus set for you, no matter how many times you were injured while training with Blood, you always did your best, even when you were left to fend for yourself in the mountains and the underground city.”

  She spoke quietly, but vehemently and with authority. Not once in my life had I seen Mary speak so strongly.

  “Take a look at what you’ve accomplished! Who gives a fig about your old memories? I understand that the god of undeath shook you up, but get over it! You should not be letting it affect you like this!”

  I suddenly felt as if I’d taken a hard knock to the head.

  “You don’t remember whether you cried when your old parents died? Of course you did! Look how sorry you’re feeling just for having a hazy memory! Look how much you’re crying for us right now! How in the world would a person like you not have cried?!”

  I felt my heart being firmly shaken. I started regaining feeling in a part of me where there had only been numbness before. I thought I’d cried myself dry, but the tears started to well up in my eyes again. Something warm was starting to flicker and glow inside my frozen heart.

  “Will! William! Stop that brooding and shape up! Well?! I’m waiting!”

  Pushed on by her voice, I sobbed one final time, straightened my back, looked straight at her, and answered, “Okay,” in the most confident voice I could muster. The feeling of hopelessness that had been itching away inside my chest had disappeared completely. I felt a lot better.

  Over Mary’s shoulder, Blood and Gus were laughing off the awkward situation.