Eternal You (Premium)

by Yuri Kitayama

“This...”

  Rio knew this sensation — he had experienced it once before. He had felt it when he had regained his memories of Amakawa Haruto.

  Rio had met Flora as a dirty orphan in a shabby shack, when he was suddenly attacked by an unknown man. He had heard the mysterious voice of a girl back then, too; it sharpened his senses and helped him overcome the crisis at hand.

  “...You want me to head southeast?” Rio asked hesitantly, but there was no response. The light pillars had disappeared at some point too.

  He had no idea if the voice he heard was real or not, and it was possible that he had just misheard something. However, Rio had one possible explanation in mind.

  Is it the voice of the spirit inside me? Rio thought. Perhaps the pulsing in his chest just before he heard the voice was caused by the spirit girl residing within him.

  The voice had told him to go southeast, because there was someone waiting there. Could that someone be the owner of the voice? If so, it couldn’t possibly be the spirit within Rio.

  ...I don’t know. Rio shook his head uneasily. Just thinking about it wouldn’t give him any answers. But the truth was, the directions came from a girl who had saved him once before.

  “...I’ll go and take a look.”

  Rio decided to head southeast for now; he turned on his heel and weaved his way through the chaotic crowds, walking back the way he came to leave the city once more.

  Several minutes after that, he entered the forest neighboring the city of Amande, and used his spirit arts to fly up into the air, heading southeast.

  ◇◇◇

  Obeying the order of the voice that echoed in his head, Rio proceeded southeast. However, after nearly an hour of flying at a steady speed and surveying his surroundings, he couldn’t find any particular oddities.

  The direction to head southeast had been pretty vague to begin with, and he didn’t know how far southeast he needed to move. While he had been spurred into action by the situation at hand and the strange sensation in his chest, he had regained his senses by now.

  Guess I’ll turn back.

  Just as he thought that, with his senses that had been strangely sharpened since the events earlier, Rio noticed the ode and mana was heavily disrupted in a corner of the grasslands before him.

  “...What’s that? The distortion is almost like the aftermath of time-space sorcery...”

  Rio gulped and widened his eyes. Reflected within them was the light of significantly stagnant ode in the air; it was similar to the phenomenon characteristic of the aftermath of using time-space sorcery.

  This amount of residual essence is unprecedented. Judging by the way it’s disrupted, not much time has passed yet... Did someone use teleportation sorcery? Rio speculated, taking into consideration the situation left before him. However, from what he could see in the air, there was no sign of anyone at the scene nor in the surrounding plains.

  There don’t seem to be any spell formulas set up. In that case, the teleport sorcery was either to a random destination, or the destination was set to here... At any rate, not even the basics of time-space sorcery could be performed with the standard of sorcery in Strahl. The only possibility would be an ancient artifact. Guess I’ll go down and have a look first, Rio speculated, then decided to descend to the spot for now.

  As soon as he stepped down onto the grassland, a cold wind noisily brushed against his skin and shook the endless expanse of grass. Rio carefully dragged his gaze over the surroundings, searching for any remaining traces.

  This place is a fair distance from the road, and the perfect spot to hide away and do something, but these... are footsteps... Enhanced with spirit arts, Rio’s vision discovered the faint footsteps amongst trampled grass.

  There were three sets of footprints. Each set headed directly south, right in the direction of Centostella, the kingdom located furthest to the southeast of the Strahl region.

  There’s no mistaking the fact they arrived by teleportation sorcery. Could these be the people that voice was talking about before? I don’t think it could be a coincidence.

  It seemed he would need to investigate further. With a small sigh, Rio flew up into the air and followed the footsteps with his spirit arts.

  Interlude: Adrift in Another World

  Merely an hour before Rio arrived at the grasslands, and just as he discovered the spot where ode and mana had been disrupted by time-space sorcery, three Japanese people dressed in peculiar outfits for this world were standing around in the grass.

  “...Miharu?” A middle school girl dressed in her uniform timidly called out to Miharu, who was a high school student that wore her uniform, too.

  The girls were unaware of the fact that several pillars of light across the Strahl region had pierced into the heavens less than a minute ago. They had no idea what had happened, nor how they had come to this place.

  “Ah, erm... It’s out of range here. M-Maybe it’s broken?” Miharu replied. She had been staring at the “Out of range” display on her phone screen in a daze when she realized her name was called. She put on the best smile she could.

  “B-Broken...?” The middle school girl’s expression clouded with worry.

  “Did we... warp, or something?” The primary school boy, dressed in his casual clothes, muttered doubtfully in confusion. The modern townscape they were standing in moments ago had changed to a grassy plain before they had realized it.

  In a word, it could only be described as “impossible.”

  “No way, this isn’t one of those games you always play.” The middle school girl shot him down point-blank.

  “Then how would you explain this situation?” the primary school boy objected with a pout.

  “I-I don’t know. A-A dream, maybe...”

  “That’s not much different than my idea.”

  The primary school boy and middle school girl started bickering with each other in somewhat irritated tones, most likely feeling aggressive after being placed in such a bewildering situation.

  Miharu took a deep breath and consoled the two children. “Aki-chan, Masato-kun. Let’s calm down and process the situation, okay? Do you two remember where you were before you came here?”

  As the eldest, she had to keep herself levelheaded.

  “Where we were... Didn’t we all meet up after the opening ceremony at school?” The boy named Masato sighed glumly.

  “But weren’t Satsuki-san and Takahisa-kun with us too?” Miharu asked without missing a beat.

  “Yeah, they were,” Masato nodded with certainty.

  “What about you, Aki-chan?”

  Prompted by Miharu, the middle school girl named Aki nodded. “Yeah... We were all together in the residential area.”

  “Did the two of you feel anything strange before the landscape changed? Anything you noticed at all. I was talking to Satsuki-san when my vision suddenly looked like it distorted,” Miharu said, explaining the series of events from her own perspective as she questioned the other two.

  “...I was talking to my brother when the landscape distorted, I think,” Aki answered with a murmur.

  “Now that you mention it, my view also warped...” Masato tilted his head with a hum.

  “If the three of us saw the same thing, then it couldn’t be a hallucination... right?” Miharu muttered.

  That didn’t change the fact they didn’t know anything about their situation. After all, the peaceful residential area they had been walking through only a short moment ago was now a field of grass, leaving nothing but rocks, hills, and mountains in their view; not a single man-made structure was in sight. In the location they were originally at, a sight like this wasn’t possible no matter how many kilometers they moved.

  Thinking about it calmly, the entire situation was so unscientific that it was starting to feel eerie. Perhaps they actually had warped, like Masato said.

  An indescribable fear ran through Miharu, making her shudder faintly.

  “Hey, did we really warp after all? Is t
his even Japan anymore?” Masato asked Miharu and Aki, looking suspiciously at their surroundings.

  “We have no way of knowing that, since there’s no phone reception out here.” Aki shook her head bluntly.

  “L-Let’s make a decision first,” Miharu suggested to the two. “Do we stay here, or do we move?”

  The conversation was going around in circles, so she decided to raise her question and change the topic.

  “But if we moved, we wouldn’t be able to return here anymore. Someone might come to save us... Are you sure?” Aki asked worriedly.

  Despite having no evidence to the contrary, she had the vague belief that they could suddenly be returned back to where they came from if they remained here. Her reasoning to stay put and wait for rescue during times of disaster wasn’t entirely wrong, either; there was a higher possibility of being saved by preserving their stamina, rather than walking around blindly and using up energy.

  However, that would increase the possibility of rescue only when they had the supplies for an extended stay — for example, when climbing a mountain, you would inform someone of what day you plan on returning in advance.

  “There’s no guarantee anyone will come save us. There aren’t even any roads here. Does anyone even know that we’re here?” The questions Masato was asking were indeed of sound reasoning.

  “That’s... true, but...” Aki said, pressured into agreeing.

  “Even if we stay here, there aren’t any walls or a roof to shelter us. It’s kind of cold, we have nothing to protect us from the rain, and we barely have any food or water...” Miharu noted, listing all of the disadvantages of remaining where they were. The more she spoke, the more despair she felt for their situation.

  “I don’t have any food or water.”

  “Me neither...”

  Masato and Aki both paled at once.

  “I-I have some tea and biscuits. It’ll be fine!” Miharu hurriedly opened her schoolbag, taking out the bottle of tea and the homemade biscuits. She showed them to the other two with cheery encouragement. However, the amount wasn’t enough to ease their concerns.

  With such limited supplies, even if I gave it all to the two of them, we’d run out of food and water in no time... I have to do something before that happens. While she somehow managed to calmly analyze the situation, impatience was slowly rising within Miharu.

  “Hey, let’s try to find someone. If we stay here, we’ll either starve to death or freeze to death,” Masato proposed anxiously. Seeing Miharu’s composure had helped him keep his own cool, but he could still keenly feel the precariousness of their current situation.

  “What do you think, Aki-chan?” Miharu asked.

  “Y-Yeah. I agree... But which way should we go?” Aki nodded hesitantly, looking around the grassland with a worried expression. Miharu didn’t know the answer to that either.

  “Let’s try heading that way, since the other side has mountains in the distance.” Miharu stifled her worries and pointed south.

  ◇◇◇

  Once they decided the direction in which to proceed, the three of them started to silently move. They walked for about ten to twenty minutes, but there was still no sign of anything man-made. On the contrary, there wasn’t even a single sign of life.

  The air was chilly and dry; simply walking parched their throats. After walking for an hour, Miharu made the other two take one sip each of the tea in her bottle. Since this was all the water they had, they needed to ration it economically, but regularly. After all, it was important to keep hydrated when moving.

  If only there was a river or something... Miharu thought earnestly as she led the other two, who followed her without complaint.

  “...Ah, it’s a person... —Hey, isn’t that a person?!” Masato suddenly said.

  “Huh? ...Y-You’re right! It’s a person, a person! Miharu!” Aki’s voice bounced happily.

  Far in the distance where Aki and Masato were looking were human-like figures. While they couldn’t tell how far away they were, it looked like a large group of people moving in a line. Upon further inspection, creatures that looked like horses were pulling something among them.

  That’s a horse... right? The inconsistency of the sight with the time period made Miharu pause in shock.

  “Hey, Miharu! Aren’t we going?! There are people there!” Aki pulled on Miharu’s sleeve.

  “Y-Yeah. That’s... right,” Miharu nodded slowly, all while wondering with unease as to where in the world they really were. But it wasn’t just unease in her heart, though — there was faint caution, too.

  “Heeey!” Unaware of how Miharu was feeling in her heart, Masato yelled loudly and drew attention to their position.

  “Heeey!” Aki followed after Masato.

  “Heeey!” Masato and Aki’s voices eventually overlapped with each other. There were people there; placed in a completely unknown situation, the mental relief that fact brought to the two was immeasurably huge.

  The two children waved their arms desperately in an appeal as they shouted. Then, having noticed Masato and Aki, several figures left the line at the other end. There were three of them, and they approached Miharu and the others at an oddly fast pace.

  Masato and Aki noticed that fact and waved their arms happily.

  “...Huh, a horse?”

  They soon froze, because they had noticed the figures closing in were on horseback. As Masato and Aki were frozen, the mounted figures came right up to them.

  “**** **!” The man riding at the front shouted. The three Japanese students couldn’t understand what he was saying at all.

  “***, ****!”

  When the leader-like man riding first yelled, the other two came to a halt at once.

  The men riding on horseback all had rough facial features, and were clearly not Japanese. They were dressed in light leather armor with dreadfully solid metal swords that were sheathed at their waists.

  The men calmed the horses they had just halted and glared down at the three. Aki and Masato backed away in fear.

  Miharu was also fearful, but she stood in front of Aki and Masato to protect them.

  “Ah, umm... D-Do you understand Japanese?” She opened her mouth to try and say something, then blurted out the first question that came to mind with a trembling voice.

  “****’* ****, *** ***?” The apparent leader cocked his head suspiciously.

  “Do you know where we are? We seem to be lost...” Miharu asked in English next, refusing to give up.

  “*****.” The man shook his head as though he was giving up on communicating.

  “Huh? English is no good, too? Then, umm, what should we do... M-Maybe my pronunciation was bad.”

  Unable to come to a mutual understanding, Miharu finally faltered, and her unease continued to increase. She was overwhelmed by the unpleasant throbs in her chest.

  Behind Miharu, Aki and Masato had completely shrunken in on themselves in silence. They had never spoken to any foreigners in their lives, so they were frightened.

  It was understandable — the other party was equipped with swords, after all.

  “****, ***’* *** ***** **** *** ** ****? **** ** **** **** *** ****.” One of the men on horseback stared at Miharu’s face and body with a grin as he said something to the leader. There was no restraint in his gaze, making Miharu fidget slightly.

  “****, ***’** *****,” the leader replied to the man with a grin on his mouth. His gaze was also fixed on Miharu.

  “*** ***** *** ****’* ** *** ******. *** *****, *** ***** ***** ****.” The third man also said something, his line of sight on Aki and Masato as they stood behind Miharu.

  “W-What?”

  “Hey, isn’t this kind of bad?” Aki and Masato said as they looked up worriedly at the men holding their conversation between themselves.

  “*** *****, *** ****.” The man who appeared to be the leader said something, and the other men immediately dismounted from their horses. They all started casually walking toward Mih
aru, Aki, and Masato.

  Miharu spread her arms before Aki and Masato to protect them, placing herself in the line of fire. Like Masato had said, she had a bad feeling about this... but, really, she knew it was already too late.

  The three of them slowly backed away.

  “D-Don’t come any closer!” Aki suddenly yelled from behind Miharu. Her voice trembled, most likely from fear.

  She glared at the men threateningly, but it was like staring down the barrel of a gun.

  One of the approaching men burst into cackles at the sight of Aki’s bluff. Then, the leader suddenly drew his sword from the sheath at his waist. No matter how they looked at it, that gleam and thickness of the blade couldn’t have been a fake.

  “***’* ****!” The leader-like man suddenly yelled at Miharu, Aki, and Masato.

  Aki gave a small shriek. “Eek!”

  Masato flinched, too. A bad feeling gnawed away at Miharu bit by bit, paralyzing her legs. It was as though someone had a fist clenched around her heart.

  “L-Let’s run! Quickly!” Masato said.

  “Y-Yeah!” Aki nodded vigorously.

  “Don’t run, you two!” Miharu returned to her senses with a gasp and grabbed Aki’s and Masato’s hands in a fluster.

  The men had weapons and were on horseback; she highly doubted they would be able to run from people like that, and running might urge them to kill instead.

  More importantly, the air around the men felt abnormal.

  “Eh? Ah, but...” Aki tried to say something, but trailed off.

  “Don’t run. You don’t know what they’ll do, so obey them quietly. Please?” Miharu muttered, raising their grasped hands to appeal her willingness to go along without resistance. Both of her hands were trembling with fear.

  “****.” The leader snorted mockingly at Miharu and the others’ lack of resistance, then gave some kind of order to the other two men from horseback. The two men suddenly moved to obey him, tying Aki and Masato’s hands with rope. They collected the schoolbags the two of them carried, and brought the two children over to the horses, attaching the ropes to the saddles.

  Aki and Masato were upset, but quietly obeyed them as Miharu had told them to. The two of them anxiously watched Miharu, who was the only one left behind.