Chapter 200 - The One Who Forgot (2)

A diary: a record of what happened during the day.

After writing for a while, he shut the diary with a snap. Then he rested it on his knees and drew a long breath, as though preparing himself for something.

“Well then, Najin?”

He looked at Najin and forced a smile. His expression held fear, and regret at having to part.

“I will see you tomorrow.”

At the very moment he said it, the last grain of sand slipped down the hourglass. As its upper chamber emptied, his body went limp. Like a puppet with severed strings, he did not move a muscle.

He was not dead. Najin could still hear faint breathing. He seemed to be asleep, but even when Najin took him by the shoulder and shook him, he showed no sign of waking.

‘Something is strange here.’

-It certainly is.

As a rule, transcendent beings had no need for sleep. That was all the more true in the Outer Lands, and Najin was no exception. He only slept out of habit, having lived that way for nearly twenty years. He could go about a month without sleep and suffer no physical ill effects.

‘Even when I do sleep, an hour or two is enough...’

That much sleep was enough to relieve his fatigue. Sleeping for hours in the Outer Lands, teeming with every imaginable danger, was nearly suicidal, so naturally he had begun sleeping less as well.

Yet the man before him slept as though dead.

Najin wandered around the desert for a while as he waited for the man to wake. He finally stirred around sunrise, slowly opening his eyes in the early dawn.

“...”

His eyes were not merely unfocused, but empty.

The moment he opened them, he looked at the cover of the diary in his hands. Two lines were written on it.

-Turn the hourglass over.

-Read pages 1 through 10 of the diary.

He turned the hourglass over. As the grains slowly fell, he leafed through the diary a page at a time. After reading page ten, he raised his head and looked at Najin.

“Do you know me?”

“We spoke briefly last night.”

“I see. Did yesterday’s me leave any message?”

“You told me to have you open to page 781.”

“781, 781...” Murmuring the number, the man opened to that page and nodded.

“Najin. Is that your name?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It says here to explain the contents of the first page. Apparently, I wanted to have a conversation with you.”

He handed Najin the diary, and Najin took it. Since he could not read the ancient language written in it, Merlin translated for him.

-I lose my memories every day.

-The time allotted to me lasts from sunrise until sunset. Turn the hourglass over. When all its sand has run out, I fall asleep.

-When you wake, you will remember nothing. Though I am writing this diary for myself, you feel like a stranger to me.

-But my hope is this.

-May you spend your day doing something worthwhile.

Najin’s eyes narrowed.

“You lose your memories every day?”

“Yes. The only memories I retain are how to read and write, and that I must address everyone with respect.”

“With respect?”

“Because there is nothing in this world that deserves to be spoken down to—or so I seem to believe. That is my only memory.”

His face was expressionless as he spoke.

Then he asked Najin’s indulgence and began reading rapidly through the diary. As he read, his expression gradually changed.

“I see.”

After a little time had passed, he closed the diary and let out a long breath.

“It says I was a knight of Londinel. My nickname was Blue Hydrangea. Before that, I was called ‘Blue Spear.’”

Though speaking of himself, Blue Spear spoke as if describing someone else.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Najin.”

Sand continued to fall through the hourglass with a soft rustle. Blue Spear glanced at it and smiled.

“As I said, I lose all my memories every day. I do not remember who I am, or what we spoke about yesterday...”

He extended his hand to Najin, offering a handshake.

“How do you do? I am Blue Spear, a knight of Londinel.”

“Najin. I am Najin, a free knight.”

It was Najin’s second introduction, but Blue Spear’s first.

2.

“There is a daily routine I must follow without fail. My past self left repeated instructions emphasizing its importance. Would you wait a moment?”

What Blue Spear called his daily routine was simple: standing in the middle of the desert and swinging his spear. He must have lost every memory, yet while wielding his spear, he did not look like a man who had forgotten anything.

The angle of each swing, his movements, his breathing, his footwork—all of it approached absolute perfection. Even Najin could not easily imitate those movements.

“Didn’t you say you lose your memories?”

“Yes. I lose my memories every day.”

“But the way you move... it doesn’t look as though you’ve forgotten. Your movements are flawless, without anything wasted. At the very least, you don’t look like someone who picked up a spear for the first time today.”

“Haha. Thank you for saying so, but...”

Blue Spear smiled sheepishly.

“This is different from moving with precise knowledge and recollection. It feels closer to instinct. When I hold a spear, I have a vague sense of how to wield it.”

His mind lost its memories, but his body did not forget the past. These were movements repeated over long years. Just as he did not forget how to breathe or move his legs to walk, he did not forget how to swing a spear.

He had repeated those movements until they became habit.

As he performed them one after another, Blue Spear seemed to search his memories. Groping for memories that no longer existed, he spoke.

“It is written in the diary. I was a knight of Londinel, and the only person who knew the spear arts that embodied Londinel’s long history. It says these arts must never be forgotten.”

“...”

“Londinel lives and breathes at the tip of my spear. A nation’s history rests upon it. If I do not remember, it will be forgotten. So I must remember.”

Najin had heard words like those somewhere before.

“And so I must repeat these movements. To keep them from being forgotten. I must engrave the memories into this body.”

He had heard something similar from Kirchhoff, the Sword Master of the Forgotten Kingdom.

「Londinel lives and breathes at the tip of my sword.」

「I myself am proof that Londinel existed.」

Kirchhoff had swung his sword as he said those words. He had sought to prove Londinel’s existence through his blade. Recalling that, Najin spoke cautiously.

“Do you happen to know the name Kirchhoff?”

“Yes. It is written in the diary. Kirchhoff, the false knight. Yet a knight truer than any other. There are few entries about him, but it seems that when my memories were intact, I held him in high regard.”

“Then, about Londinel...”

“I know that Londinel fell, and that it was erased from history. It is written here.”

Blue Spear let out a long breath.

“I suppose my past self—the me whose memories and mind were intact—made a decision.”

When Najin asked what that decision was, Blue Spear answered.

“To give everything for Londinel. It seems I believed I could gladly offer my life if it meant leaving even a single line about the nation where I was born and raised. What you see now must be the result.”

Blue Spear smiled as he spoke.

“And since you remember Londinel and know of Kirchhoff, a knight from that land, my past self’s choice seems to have been worthwhile. I am glad.”

“... Do you not regret that choice?”

“Regret? I cannot say. I cannot relate to what my past self might have been thinking.”

“Then do you resent it?”

“I cannot say that either. But judging by the entries on pages 100 through 600, written as I was losing my memories, it seems I resented myself.”

He opened the diary. Its pages were filled with words scrawled so violently they nearly tore through the paper. The letters were so distorted that not even Merlin could decipher them.

“The me of that time may have felt regret and resentment, but...”

Blue Spear smiled bitterly.

“The me of today feels nothing at all. Having lost every memory, I can neither resent nor regret it. I know nothing of it. But I do have a question.”

“What question?”

“Was what I preserved truly worth that much? And was my life so worthless that I could throw it away like that?”

He could not know what he had cast aside.

“I must have had a life of my own.”

Blue Spear swung his spear.

“There must have been things I cherished, people dear to me, possessions I treasured, and memories I never wanted to forget. Surely there were.”

His spear cut through the air, stirring wind. Sand-laden gusts scattered around him. Beneath the blazing sun, in the middle of the desert, he swung his spear without end.

“But I abandoned all of them. And the me of today feels that what my past self threw away was too precious to lose.”

“Of course,” Blue Spear added with a faint chuckle, “I do not know what any of it was.”

3.

Najin watched Blue Spear wield his spear, and thought.

If someone lost all their memories every day, could they truly be called the same person they had been yesterday?

‘I’ve seen plenty of people who have only lost particular memories.’

There were many such people in the Outer Lands. The Lost, who had lost themselves. Those who had forgotten what they once were. Yet they had not lost every memory—only specific fragments.

The Helmeted Knight had been one of them.

As he slowly became one of the Lost, the Helmeted Knight had lost his memories. His name, his affiliation, his sword—and at the end, he had nearly forgotten even himself. Najin had prevented that, but...

Perhaps the man now before Najin was one of the ends the Helmeted Knight might have met.

‘A man who has forgotten everything. Someone who loses every memory each day.’

To Najin, that was much like dying every day and being born again.

Blue Spear died each day, and each day he was born anew.

He had only the time between sunrise and sunset, until the hourglass ran out. He spent most of that time swinging his spear.

“...”

To Najin, it looked like...

‘This is a keepsake left behind after death. His last words, too.’

It was the keepsake and the final testament Blue Spear would leave behind.

Those nearing death tried to leave something behind. Proof that they had lived. By leaving that proof, they sought to give their lives meaning.

“Hah, haaah. Hah!”

Panting, thick beads of sweat running down his body, Blue Spear swung his spear in the sun-scorched desert. Each time another handful of sand fell through the hourglass beside him, his eyes wavered, as though he were afraid.

It was the fear of death.

He swung his spear as though struggling against that fear.

Blue Spear etched the traces of his spear swings into the sand. Desperately, he carved those marks, though the night’s winds would bury them and erase them by morning.

‘A man who loses his memories every day.’

A man who died and was born again each day.

Blue Spear was a mayfly.

There was a saying that warriors spoke through their weapons. If so, for Blue Spear, wielding his spear was nothing less than a final testament, leaving proof that he had lived for a day.

To swing his spear was to speak his last words.

To write his diary was to write his final testament.

And so he lived another day, and died again.

Najin felt he understood why the star of Funeral Rites had pointed him toward Blue Spear. And where he ought to guide him in granting his funeral rites.

The sun was setting. The hourglass was running out of sand.

“Well then, Blue Spear?”

After their conversation, Najin told him,

“I will see you tomorrow.”

Holding the star of Funeral Rites, Najin rose.