Chapter 5: The Garden of the Third Option
The moonlight bathed the empty engawa. The violin lay at his side, a silent witness to the first crack in his mental fog. The smile that Taiga had triggered had faded, not from sadness, but from deep concentration. The momentary relief had created an unusual space of clarity, and within it, the visions weren't screaming—they were aligning, like pieces of a cursed puzzle he could finally observe from some distance.
'Taiga has something that's only hers. All I have… is a catalog of ghosts. And they're all versions of me. Or of who I'm supposed to be. I can't keep running from them. I have to… understand what they're offering me. Or warning me about.'
His gaze drifted for a moment. The warm conversation he'd just had with Taiga passed through his mind, and a small smile slipped across his face. But he shook his head quickly, trying to focus on his current dilemma; the comically serious look returned to his immature features.
'There's that red-haired me. The one who believes saving everyone isn't a dream, but an obligation. Who smiles while bleeding out for strangers. His path is a straight line toward a cliff… but he walks toward it with a faith so bright it hurts to watch. He's noble. He's naive. And he ends up… empty, having given everything and kept nothing for himself.'
Shirou imagined himself in his place. White hair and eyes a bit more yellowish, like amber. He imagined himself with a cheerful smile, one he wanted to imitate, but with a body full of holes— from weapons that those he saved had thrust into him without knowing. His face was cheerful, yes, but his heart was so empty that just thinking of being like him made him want to vomit.
'And then there's his logical conclusion. The man in the red cloak. The one who followed that straight line to the very end and discovered the cliff was a bottomless abyss. Who became a tool of endless slaughter, a slave to a duty he hates, for having loved an ideal the world cannot sustain. His bitterness is so vast it drowns any past joy. He's not a hero; he's a monument to the failure of being one.'
If the first Shirou made his stomach churn, this one terrified him to the core. Because he knew, without a doubt, that his path was the worst of all. A path so devoid of the happiness and smiles he so yearned for, that the mere thought of suffering a similar fate plunged him into a spiral of endless terror.
'But there's another route. The one who breaks the mold. The one who looks at the same ideal, looks at the purple-haired girl… and chooses. Chooses a concrete love over an abstract one. Betrays his dream of being everyone's hero to become the hero of just one person. He's… human. Heartbreakingly human. But in his eyes, even at the end, I see the weight of what was abandoned, the ghost of all those he didn't choose to save.'
Disgust. That was all he felt imagining himself in this Shirou's place. Not for refusing to kill the girl he loved— he knew deep down he'd make the same choice for Taiga or Kiritsugu, without hesitation—, but for the regret he felt, even while being happy with his girl. It sickened him: If you made a decision, if you chose your own happiness over others', why do you regret it so much? Why not just fill the void in your heart with her? What disgusted him was his deeply buried desire to return to his old ways, to save everyone instead of following the path he had chosen.
'And then there's him. Kiritsugu. The one who saw the dilemma from the start and chose the arithmetic of carnage: sacrifice the few to save the many. He created a system, a cold logic to navigate the horror. But the scale always gets stained with blood, and in the end, the weight of the "few" ends up breaking the one who holds it. It's efficient. It's hell.'
A hell he refused to walk. He admired Kiritsugu. He respected him and even saw him as a father-in-waiting. But the path he chose, the one where he had to sacrifice even those he loved most for strangers, was the path he detested most of all.
A shiver ran through him, but not of fear— of clarity. These weren't destinies. They were cartoons. Exaggerations of a single truth, of a single rigid answer to a complex world.
'It's as if all these visions are trying to tell me something, as if my subconscious is desperately trying to warn me about something. The idealist says: "Save everyone." The cynic screams: "Saving everyone is a lie." The traitor whispers: "Save one." The pragmatist orders: "Calculate and sacrifice."'
Shirou's expression twisted into something ugly: a savage fury, one he felt rising from his very soul.
— But I hate all these paths! I hate having to conform to something laid out by someone else. Even if that someone is me!
Then his expression returned to normal, his eyes shining with a nascent joy mixed with hope and uncertainty.
'What if… they're all wrong? Or what if… they all hold a fragment of a larger truth?'
A strange sensation, an itch he didn't know where it came from, flooded his body. It was as if thousands of ants were crawling over his skin and into his brain, forcing his mind toward a more extreme line of thought.
'I don't want to be any of them. I don't want their rigidity. I don't want to be the hero of everyone… but I *will* be the hero of those I can reach. Of those who carve a place in my heart, like Taiga. Of those for whom I feel it's worth it… to make the impossible possible.'
His fists clenched tightly. His eyes shone with a faint golden hue, just like his hair, which for an instant gleamed with a luminous silver color.
'If the world forces me to choose… I'll choose to create a third option. I'll use what I am—this confusion, these visions, this body that isn't entirely my own—not to follow a script, but to rewrite the rules of the game. I won't be a sword that sacrifices itself, nor a scale that judges. I'll be… the miracle that happens when someone refuses to accept that there are only two paths.'
Just at that moment, the sliding door of the *engawa* opened smoothly. Kiritsugu emerged, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, his gaze sweeping the yard with the efficiency of a sentry until it settled on Shirou. There was no surprise; few things escaped his attention.
Shirou didn't turn, but his posture shifted slightly, a tacit acknowledgment of his presence.
— You haven't slept— Said Kiritsugu. It wasn't an accusation, but an observed fact. But his eyes didn't stray from Shirou's hair, noting with sharpness its faded silvery gleam, as well as the lingering traces of magical energy around the boy.
— I couldn't— Admitted Shirou, his voice clearer than Kiritsugu remembered in days. Inside, the strange determination he'd had earlier was fading; it was like a child who gets angry with his parents to the point of wanting to leave home, but who, at the threshold, regrets it and takes a step back inside. — The images… they don't scream anymore. They went quiet. As if they were waiting for me to look at them.
Kiritsugu approached, sitting down beside him. He didn't ask. He just waited, taking a sip of coffee. It was his way of giving permission to speak.
Shirou took a deep breath, gathering the words he had been ordering in his mind.
— I've seen… paths. Futures I could have. Or that some me had.— He looked at his hands, as if he could read destinies in them.— One is an idealist. Believes he can save the whole world, and breaks himself trying. Another… is what that idealist becomes when he realizes he couldn't. He's bitter. Empty. Only hates the idea he once loved.
Kiritsugu didn't flinch, but his eyes darkened a degree. He knew that pattern firsthand.
— Then there's the one who chooses to save just one person— Shirou continued, and in his tone there was a hint of sad empathy.— He abandons the dream of being everyone's hero to be someone's hero. He's… more human. But he also seems to carry a terrible weight. The weight of having had to choose.
He paused, seeking courage for the final comparison. He looked up at Kiritsugu directly.
— And then there's the path of calculation. The one of the scale. Sacrifice the few to save the many. It's logical. It's… practical.— Shirou swallowed.— But it hurts. It hurts so much that in the end, the person holding the scale breaks.
The silence that followed was dense, charged with the unspoken recognition that Shirou— because of his visions— had just described, with chilling accuracy, the essence of Kiritsugu's failure.
The man lowered his cup slowly. His expression, normally a stone mask, showed the finest of cracks: a slight clenching of his jaw, a slower blink.
'How much do you know, Shirou?… How much do you know about what happened in that war? Do you even know what I did… what I did to you?' Kiritsugu thought to himself. His heart sank with guilt, regret, and a dawning paternal concern.
—And?— Was all he asked, but the word wasn't a challenge. It was a genuine invitation to continue. A slightly softer tone, an attention that went beyond mere observation.
Shirou felt that small change. It was minuscule, but for him, accustomed to reading the man's silences, it was like a green light.
— I don't want any of those paths, Kiritsugu— He said, and now his voice trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the intensity of the conviction he was forming.— The idealist forgets himself; I don't want to be like that. The cynic hates himself; I fear having a fate equal to or worse than his. The one who chooses one… feels he betrays a part of himself; his hesitation to move forward and the regret I see in his gaze disgust me. And the pragmatist… ends up destroying himself; I want to be happy, I want those around me to be happy with me, I couldn't bear that martyrdom.
He stood up, facing not Kiritsugu, but the moon rising high in the sky, bathing the world— and the small, yet unusually heroic figure of Shirou— with its faint light, heavy with secrets waiting in the shadows.
— I… want a path where I don't have to break. Where I can… choose joy. A foolish joy, one that's an act of defiance. I want to save people, yes, but… the people I can touch, those who come into my life. I want my heart to be big enough for them, but not so big it becomes a hole that swallows everything.
Finally, he turned toward Kiritsugu. In his amber eyes there was no longer the lost fog, nor the panic of the visions. There was a fragile, youthful, yet unquestionable determination. And beneath it, the unspoken question of a child lost in a sea of doubts, searching for a ship to cling to.
— Is… is it a stupid idea?— He asked, and for an instant, the eight-year-old Shirou who had lost everything surfaced in his voice.— To try to do things differently? To create a path that isn't in any of those sad pictures?
Kiritsugu looked at him for a long moment. The air seemed to hold its breath. Then, the man exhaled softly, and something in his shoulders, a perpetual tension, eased a millimeter.
—Stupidity,— He began to say, in his usual grave tone.— is following a known path toward a predictable abyss. What you describe…— He paused, searching for the precise word, something he didn't do often.— It's not stupid. It's risky. Almost reckless. And it's… new.
A happy smile bloomed on Shirou's face. That was the highest praise he could expect from him. Not an effusive approval, but a tactical recognition of the validity of his strategy.
— But a decision isn't a path.— Kiritsugu added, his voice regaining some of its pragmatism, but now with a hint that could be interpreted as guidance.— A path is built with actions. Small ones. Consistent ones.
Shirou nodded, absorbing each word. The smile hadn't faded from his face in the slightest.— Where do I start?
Kiritsugu looked toward the yard, his gaze falling on the low stone wall, partially collapsed, that separated a patch of wildflowers.
—That wall,— He said— is badly made. It's falling apart. It's good for nothing.— He looked at Shirou.— Tomorrow, at dawn, don't repair it. You have to decide what to do with it. Do you tear it down completely and use the stones for something else? Do you repair it until it's like new, even better than before? Or do you leave it there, as a reminder that some things fall apart on their own?
It was more than a manual task. It was a metaphor in action. He was giving him the first brick of his new path: the power to choose and to build.
— The tools are in the shed— Kiritsugu finished. And before turning to go inside, he added, with a neutrality that couldn't quite hide a glimmer of something warmer: — Taiga stayed here tonight. Wake her when it's time. She likes her tamagoyakireally sweet. If you burn them, she'll make you clean the school's dojo.
It was his way of saying: "Your path includes those already on it. Take care of them. And be prepared for the consequences of your actions, even in the kitchen."
Shirou remained a moment longer, looking at the broken wall. A crooked, worried smile replaced the previous one, but it didn't extinguish the flame burning inside him with a force he had never before seen or felt.
—I don't know how to cook…— he whispered as a drop of cold sweat slid down his forehead.
—I know— Kiritsugu's distant voice was heard. Shirou could swear that, for a moment, he heard a faint snort of laughter in his stoic father's voice.
* * *
The next morning, before the sun rose in the east and bathed the world in its light and warmth…
Kiritsugu, whose relationship with sleep was more a sporadic truce than rest, sensed a change in the sounds of the house. It wasn't a noise that alerted him, but its absence: the agitated breathing and feverish murmurs that usually emanated from Shirou's room at night had ceased.
In their place, a new sound, strange and light, floated from the yard. Snoring. But not an adult's—the soft, spaced-out snoring of a child deeply asleep, punctuated by… giggles? Brief exhalations of dreamlike joy.
Intrigued, he got up. He crossed the house in silence, his bare feet making no sound on the tatami. As he slid open the *engawa* door, the cool dawn air greeted him, carrying a scent he didn't expect: damp, freshly turned earth, the sweetness of wildflowers, and a touch of fresh water. It wasn't the dry, dusty smell of a demolished wall or one in the process of being so.
And then he saw it.
His mind, trained to assess scenarios in milliseconds, stalled. For an instant, the "Magus Killer" was overwhelmed by a scene that fit none of his logical parameters.
Shirou lay asleep in a corner of the now-transformed space, leaning against the trunk of the old cherry tree. He was covered in dirt and stone dust, with green chlorophyll stains on his hands and cheeks. On his face, beneath the grime, was an expression of profound peace and exhausted satisfaction. A slight smile curved his lips, and from them escaped another of those sigh-laughs, as if in his dreams he was seeing his work bloom.
But it was the work itself that made Kiritsugu hold his breath.
The low, ugly, crumbling wall had vanished. In its place, Kiritsugu didn't find an empty space, nor a pile of rubble. He found a garden.
Not a simple arrangement, but a miniaturized composition, almost a living diorama that seemed to have sprung from the earth in a single night of frantic creation.
The pond: A perfectly oval depression, lined with the smoothest, flattest stones from the wall, forming an irregular mosaic that trapped water from a cleverly repaired hose— Kiritsugu recognized a piece of rubber from an old bicycle inner tube used as a seal—. The water was crystalline, reflecting the first lights of the sky.
The drainage and paths: The rubble and smaller stones had been shrewdly arranged to form invisible channels beneath the earth and gravel paths that snaked between the flowerbeds.
The plants: This was the impossible part. The patch of wildflowers the wall had isolated was now integrated, but multiplied. He had transplanted clumps of forget-me-nots, bellflowers, and small ferns, placing them with a landscaping sensitivity that was unnatural for a child. But what rooted Kiritsugu to the spot were the flowers.
Some, the wild ones, seemed to vibrate with exuberant health, as if they'd been established and well-watered for weeks. Others… others were flowers Kiritsugu vaguely recognized from walks in the hills: a couple of wild orchids, some daylilies. Flowers that were out of season. And yet, there they were, standing tall, with turgid petals and vivid colors, not a trace of wilting from the transplant. They seemed to have acclimated instantly, as if the very earth under Shirou's hands had sighed with pleasure and welcomed them.
The center: In the heart of the small garden, on an especially flat slab, Shirou had placed a simple clay vase. 'Where did he get that from?'. In it, a bouquet of cherry blossoms, whose delicate branches shouldn't yet have flowers, arched gracefully. A few drops of dew, or perhaps water from the pond, gleamed on their petals like diamonds under the growing dawn.
The whole ensemble breathed harmony. A harmony achieved not with the brute force of demolition, but with the delicate, stubborn understanding of a child who had decided his first act of creation would be an act of beauty.
'He disobeyed' Was Kiritsugu's first clear thought. 'I told him to do it today. To decide what to do. And he… made the decision in the night, and executed it immediately. With an urgency that couldn't wait.'
But the disobedience seemed irrelevant in the face of the magnitude of what had been achieved. He approached, crouching down. He ran his fingers along the edge of the pond: the joining of the stones was firm, stable. He smelled one of the out-of-season flowers: its fragrance was intense and natural. He observed the soil around the transplants: moist, loose, with no signs of plant shock.
'This isn't gardening. This is… a denial'The assassin's analytical mind worked at full speed. 'It denies seasonality. It denies the time needed for roots to take hold. It denies the logic of physical exhaustion. A child, in one night, has done the work of an expert gardener in a week, with results an expert couldn't guarantee.'
He looked at the sleeping boy. The dirt on his face, his small hands bruised from the effort with the stones. The peaceful smile.
And then, a connection formed in his mind, cold as steel. The visions of the future. The white hair that occasionally emanated magical energy. And now this: an ability to subtly alter the reality around him, to tip the balance of the probable toward the beautiful and harmonious. Not with visible magical tricks, but with an influence so profound it convinced the very plants to bloom and the stones to accommodate themselves.
'His Origin… isn't just "Clairvoyance". It's something deeper. Something linked to **creation**, to **preservation**, to the **exception to the rule**. A miracle, in the most literal and dangerous sense of the term.'
A wave of fierce protectiveness, mixed with humble respect, flooded him. This child hadn't chosen an easy path. He had chosen one that required making the impossible possible, over and over again. A path where joy wasn't a passive state, but a constant act of creation against the world's entropy.
With careful movements, Kiritsugu removed the jacket he wore over his shoulders and gently laid it over Shirou's sleeping body. The child snuggled into the warmth, murmuring something unintelligible, his smile not fading.
Kiritsugu stood there, contemplating the impossible garden under the increasingly golden light of dawn. The air smelled of life, of future.
—Good— He murmured to himself, and the word sounded like a renewed oath, a promise made not only to a son, but to the possibilities that son embodied.— So that's how it will be.
The wall that divided was gone. In its place, there was a bridge toward something new. And Kiritsugu, the man who had demolished so many things in his life, found himself wishing, for the first time in years, to see **what** would grow next.
* * *
**Glossary of Chapter Terms:**
"Engawa": In Japanese, engawa is a word that could be translated as "intermediate space." For architects, it's the place that connects a house with nature.
"Dojo": The term used in Japan to designate a space for the practice and teaching of meditation or modern traditional martial arts (gendai budo). In Japanese, dōjō (道場) literally means: "place of the way" (where the word dō comes from Chinese *dao* or *tao*).
"Tatami": A padded mat on which some sports are practiced, like judo or karate.
"Diorama": A panorama in which transparent canvases painted on both sides allow, through lighting effects, seeing two different things in the same place.
"Tamagoyaki": A Tamagoyaki (卵焼き, literally "roasted egg"), also called dashimaki (だし巻き), is a type of egg omelet found in Japanese cuisine. It is often served as part of breakfast in Japan or in sushi dishes.
"Stubborn": Obstinate, headstrong.
"Magus Killer": The title given to Kiritsugu by the magical society. He earned it thanks to his infamy as a renowned hunter of Magi. Often in the canon, Magi portray the "Magus Killer" as an extremely dangerous lunatic specialized in killing their own, someone from whom it was almost impossible to escape alive, and, if one did, it was at the cost of losing your ability to practice magecraft due to his special assassination methods, the "Origin Bullets".