[680] Awakening of the Five Senses (4)
* * *
Shagal had only one dagger left, but the attacks on Etella came from all sides.
Dozens of cuts opened along Etella's arms and legs as she held a defensive stance to protect her vital organs.
Her muscles, trained to superhuman strength, wouldn't allow a single drop of blood—but even that was reaching its limit.
As her Skima faltered and her consciousness began to blur, Shagal gave an annoyed kick.
Instead of a sharp stab into flesh, he shoved her whole torso—and Etella toppled backward.
"Why?"
Shagal ranked among the world's top hundred in cruelty, but he wasn't born a psychopath, and something boiled inside him.
"Why aren't you fighting back?"
The Leaf Circus Troupe had never existed.
Even though the clear memory his five senses insisted on was denied, he couldn't bring himself to call it a lie—perhaps because the possibility that it might be true lay buried in his subconscious.
'Only the smell is vivid.'
He possessed a superhuman sense of smell that ordinary humans didn't, but the scent of that incident didn't carry visual information.
There was only the memory of remembering it vividly; the deeper he probed, he couldn't even summon Tia's face.
"Archbishop Raphael didn't kill you."
Etella said it calmly.
Shocked out of his reverie, Shagal glared down at the fallen Etella.
"If that was my master's last will, I will honor it."
"Last will? Didn't kill?"
Shagal strode forward and pressed the dagger to Etella's throat.
"Saying it like that makes your master's honor any higher? I killed him. Why on earth would he keep the world's greatest killer alive?"
Etella recalled Archbishop Raphael's teaching.
"Having the power to destroy evil does not make you good. Aren't you the same?"
She had no strength in her limbs, so Etella only turned her head to meet Shagal's eyes.
"Sacrifice. The courage to burn yourself for the sake of good and to embrace even the devil. That, my master said, is the true value of goodness."
"Cut the bullshit."
He had once tried to live by forgiving.
He had believed someone would forgive him too.
But it was always evil that committed the wrong.
Only by removing every possibility of evil could the world be purified.
"Can you tell me what my master said just before he died?"
"I don't remember." Shagal shook his head as if his neck were stiff.
"It doesn't matter. I realized it the moment I saw you."
Etella answered.
"What? What would you know about me, you—"
He wanted to kill her as soon as possible.
"If you kill all the world's evils, will a world of good come?"
Shagal pressed the dagger to Etella's throat and exhaled harshly.
"The battle between good and evil isn't that simple. Only when all evil returns to good will peace come. My master wanted to pass on that great wish."
Shagal's voice came out squeezed and raw.
"No. What would you know…?"
If, one day, every human turned to kindness, the world's suffering would disappear like magic.
It sounded plainly possible.
It sounded so simple—so why couldn't humanity reach it? Why did they even think it impossible?
"You have no right to know the pain I endured—!"
Shagal reversed the dagger grip and brought the blade down toward her brow.
-Forgive.
The blade stopped dead before Etella's eyes.
'The troupe leader.'
Why had Raiden said that right before he died?
'What? Forgive what?'
Shagal raised his arm again.
"Uaaaaaa!"
-Forgive! Shagal!
"Geh! Geh!"
As if someone had grabbed his wrist, his arm wouldn't fall, and Shagal burst into tears and screamed.
'Why did you kill? Why!'
Had Raiden discovered everything was fake?
Had he, finding it so, cruelly erased even Tia—the one his pupil loved so much—from the world?
'It's already too late! There's no turning back!'
She had lied to Etella, but she had never once forgotten Raphael's death since it happened.
-The way back is behind you.
"What do you want me to do—!"
After losing everyone he loved, he had slaughtered countless people.
Because anyone could choose evil, he had eradicated every possibility, regardless of good or evil.
"So now you say it was fake? Tia didn't exist? My whole life was an illusion?"
That he could not accept.
"No! Tia was real! My life was real! I am a murderer! The worst of the worst!"
He hurled the dagger away, climbed atop Etella, and shook her shoulders.
"Tia! Tell me the truth! Say you're Tia!"
If those words came from her mouth, he felt he could laugh even if he were hurled into hell that instant.
"No. I don't know you."
"Shut up! You are Tia!"
Shagal, as he had with Tia, drowned Etella in kisses.
'Yes. She is Tia.'
The familiar smell of saliva, the sweat, the scent of flesh.
"Damn it! Why can't I remember?"
Only the smell remained vivid.
'Ra Enemi.'
Taking Shagal's kiss unguarded, Etella recalled the chilling will of Ra.
'I don't know why he goes this far, but it won't go the way you think.'
"Tia! Tia!"
A Nemesis slid into Etella's hand and her imagination snapped into reality.
"Ti—"
Startled, Shagal lifted his torso and looked around.
-Shagal! Hurry up and clean this! The performance starts in two hours!
-Wow, your trapeze skills have really improved.
Scenes from the Leaf Circus Troupe flickered through his mind.
-Shagal, you're the ace from now on.
The troupe members he had treasured like family, Tia, the audience—none of them remained human; they had all unraveled into black smoke and drifted away.
"Uuuuu…."
Shagal's mouth opened slowly and his eyes rolled back.
"My master was like a father to me."
Etella's voice anchored him to consciousness as he looked down at her.
Tears ran behind the lenses of his glasses.
"I hate you so much I could die. But… I will love you with the same magnitude as this hatred."
The moment rage consumes someone, good loses to evil.
"So please come back. Come back and restore everything."
Dazed, Shagal staggered to his feet.
'Come back?'
He was not afraid to die.
Just as Etella could endure any pain for the sake of good, Shagal had laid everything down at the extreme of evil.
'I won't.'
There was one thing he had to do before paying the price.
'I'll kill him.'
He would drag Ra Enemi—who had toyed with his life—to the open and stab him.
'Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab!'
The thought magnified his fury and his hands trembled.
'I'll kill! Kill! I will kill him!'
"Etella-sensei!"
Shirone opened fire with his photon cannon.
The blast was powerful enough to cave in a wall, but Shagal had already launched himself off the building.
When Shirone confirmed Etella, his eyes hardened.
"You! What did you do to Sensei—!"
Etella pushed herself up and spoke.
"I'm fine, Shirone."
"Sensei!"
"Leave the shop. I have a plan."
Hearing that, Shagal tilted his head slightly from the railing.
"…What is your name?"
"Romi Etella."
"Etella."
Tia did not exist in this world.
"Don't wait. I won't go back."
The moment she finished, Shagal's figure vanished.
Shirone, who had been glaring fiercely at the rooftop, softened and rushed to Etella.
"Sensei, are you all right?"
Her Skima kept her upright, but the wounds were too deep to recover immediately.
'Sensei Etella being treated like this…'
Come to think of it, everyone was dead.
Goblins, Pidu, Tubo, even his mercenary companions.
'All those numbers, by a single person?'
Etella leaned against the building wall and Shirone, pulled back from his thoughts, asked, "Sensei, why did you let him go?"
"He is unforgivable. He will commit countless killings in the future."
"Then all the more reason—"
"You must have realized too, Shirone."
Shirone fell silent.
"Everything that has happened isn't coincidence. It's the design of someone outside causality."
"Ra Enemi."
Etella nodded.
"My master already knew. Humanity is already Ra Enemi's puppet; people can't even tell what's real and what's fake. Three of the five senses have already gathered at Radom. Considering Meirei's case, she's a gifted one capable of manipulating events on a cosmic scale."
Was Meirei waking from a vision during an oracle merely coincidence?
Humans may make puppets dance, but the puppets would think they were dancing on their own.
"Honestly, I don't even know whether sending Shagal was purely my will or part of Ra Enemi's design. If I had avenged Raphael, would that have been an event outside Ra Enemi's scheme?"
In the end, there was nothing they could know.
"Ra Enemi's strength is unlike anyone we've fought before. If he'd wanted to kill Shirone, it would have been far too easy."
"Probably," Shirone said.
He would have died.
Whether Miro killed him, Gaold killed him, or the whole world rose—Ra Enemi had that kind of power.
"I honestly don't know his intent. That's my judgment. That's probably why my master didn't kill Shagal. He chose to die to find out exactly what Ra Enemi was aiming for."
A judgment fitting someone who had reached the extreme of detachment.
"I intend to follow my master's will too. If every choice still falls into Ra's snare, we can only watch and wait for an opportunity. When the sum of human-perceived reality—the five senses—comes together, a chance will surely appear."
"Can we win? Us?"
Can humanity free itself from Ra Enemi's bondage?
"It's not a matter of choice. We need a compass. Someone who can judge and act by absolute standards, apart from emotion or belief, incidents or variables."
That was Kar.
"It will be a hard fight. But it's not hopeless."
Etella turned to Shirone.
"Go to the living flower. Even if it's under his design, what we can do is meet Ra Enemi."
Shirone glanced toward the living flower.
Reconsidering why Ra Enemi spared those who excelled in certain senses: those who would come would come, and those who were to die would die.
'I can't accept that.'
Humans are not puppets.
"I'll be back, Sensei."
Though injured, Etella could protect her body.
"You must never break."
Shirone smiled, observed a moment of silence for the fallen mercenaries, and flew up into the gray sky.
When Shirone disappeared, sorrow settled back over Etella's face.
'Master, I am sorry.'
She had blurted out that she hated him.
Because that sincerity had broken through her will, it frightened her—she had no confidence she could stand against the great evil that was coming.
'You shouldn't have gone. It's too heavy a burden for me. Can I do it?'
Could she truly forgive Shagal?
Raindrops began to fall onto Etella's face as she looked up at the gray sky.