A Memory of Shackles
And well he might.
"I haven't even done it yet, and still it keeps coming back, terribly vivid. As if I truly had."
"Th-that's... what are you..."
"At first I thought I might be dreaming. I wasn't."
...The day he first met Presepe.
It was immediately after he heard that filthy remark.
"You'd be fine with her, would you? You stupid bastard."
She had retreated from him at a near run, as if some urgent matter had suddenly arisen, and Atar watched her go and thought of the ankle he had held in his hand. White, and slender. It would have suited a thick, heavy shackle remarkably well.
"Right... there was one I'd had made. A very thick one."
Her frame was slight to begin with. Crushed under heavy iron, she would obviously suffer all the more, and he had wanted to fasten it on her. Whatever it took.
And yet.
"Atar, it hurts..."
That tearful voice. That low moan.
Presepe with shackles wound about her whole body, slumped against the wall like a wilted flower, staring blankly into empty air.
That had been the beginning. Atar had heard countless conversations and seen countless scenes: Presepe, poor thing, flushing and smiling at him without the faintest idea of what kind of man he was; the moment they boarded the ship that would carry them out of Ateloia together; and the eyes that had filled with bewilderment on the day he first locked the shackles around her.
Was this a memory that belonged to him alone? A hallucination, say. Or madness.
But could something like that be this vivid?
Atar could not find the answer by himself.
Presepe, unable to find any answer that would do, stared at him in naked horror.
From the way he spoke, it was as if Atar possessed the memory of the previous cycle's ending.
It was not that she had never considered the possibility that something had changed. She had simply never imagined the change would take a shape like this.
Then is this a bug, too?
Strange choices appearing. Data tearing loose in grotesque shapes. Presepe Outside the Birdcage had always been a game riddled with bugs, and if she bent over backward a hundred times she could force herself to accept everything up to that point. This, though, was far too strange.
The Atar Hanan standing before her felt like a person with a self. Not some simple character in a game, reciting fixed lines and repeating fixed actions.
"I can't tell whether you truly don't remember, or whether you're refusing to answer on purpose."
Atar's face twisted as he spoke.
"Then shall we do it the same way? Until you're ready to open your mouth properly."
"Do... do what? Aah!"
A short scream tore from between Presepe's lips. Atar had seized her wrist without warning.
He locked his grip around it, then drew something from inside his coat with his other hand. Presepe knew it all too well.
"I'll fasten shackles around your neck, your ankles, your wrists... and shut you inside a cage with a mirror. It will be magnificent."
...Those very shackles.
For an instant the pain she had felt in Atar's ending seemed to come alive again.
"What are you doing? Stop!"
Panic took her, and she thrashed to wrench her wrist free, but there had never been any way to overcome a strength so purely brutal. The shackle, cold as Atar's gaze, met her skin.
Presepe squeezed her eyes shut. Then, with every ounce of strength she had, she kicked his leg.
Caught off guard by the sudden blow, Atar staggered. At the same moment the hateful shackle slipped from his hand, struck the ground with an ugly clatter, and rolled.
Smack!
The sound was sharp. Atar's head snapped to the side.
A storm of feeling lay bare across the face of the woman who had struck him: humiliation, and fear, and shame.
Presepe still remembered every last thing that had happened on Atar's route. She could call it up with perfect clarity. How wretched she had been, unable to resist, unable even to speak. Remembering it alone and remembering it together with the man who had done it were matters of an entirely different kind.
Or perhaps the difference was this.
A person who might yet do such a thing, and a person who already had.
Only now, far too late, did she feel as if her shame had been stripped bare.
"What do you think you're—"
Atar's shout broke off, and he faltered. The reason was simple. Tears had gathered, just barely, in the eyes fixed on him.
"Presepe!"
He reached to seize her again, but she was a little faster. She ran without a single glance back.
"...Ha."
Atar exhaled, his face thick with irritation.
He was no less stifled than she was. But judging by the reaction he had just seen, it had not been a delusion of his alone after all.
"Damn it."
In any case, the key to the secret was in that woman's hands. He was meant to remain in Ateloia for some time even after the celebration ended. There was still time.
Whether he bound her in shackles, or in rope, or failing that threatened her and beat her until she broke, there would be a way. One way or another.
Thinking this, Atar slowly bent his knees to retrieve the fallen shackle.
"...Hm?"
In that instant he sensed a presence at his back.
He turned on reflex.
A black shadow fell across the face of the man holding the shackle.
Presepe ran without thought, and only when she had left the flower garden entirely did she stop, dragging in ragged breaths.
"Hah—hahh..."
Her face was deathly white. She clutched at her chest until her breathing steadied, then looked back to see whether Atar was following and forward again to where the guards stood waiting, over and over.
She seemed to have gotten away. The trouble, of course, was that this was nowhere near the end of it.
Her limp white hand trembled. She did not know what to do with herself; she covered her mouth, then fidgeted with her fingers, then did it all again.
"It's—it's all gone wrong..."
Noah, Atar, Dietrich—every one of their appearances had snarled. Dietrich had not shown himself at all after leaving the banquet hall.
What the hell is this. Why does this keep happening.
I didn't even pick a wrong choice this time.
...And if it goes on like this, what if the other characters get their memories back too?
What happens then?
Through death after death, the one small comfort Presepe had clung to was that she could still control them, after a fashion. Choose an option she already knew, and nothing would change. But if every one of them ended up like that?
I won't be able to control a thing. Everything I know turns useless. I can't even save anymore...
Everything she had trusted came spectacularly undone, and her mind seemed to come undone with it. Fear crashed in all at once. She needed somewhere even a little safe. For the first time in her life, she desperately wanted that damned tower.
"Go back... I have to go back..."
No. Wait.
Go back where?
The tower? Or the banquet hall, the way the original story goes?
She stood there unable to choose either, her mind gone blank, and in that instant a scream rang out from far away.
"Aaaaah—!"
It came from the path she had just run. From the flower garden.
"What's going on!"
The guards ahead must have sensed that something was wrong. They murmured and started toward the sound, and before long a nobleman came sprinting up, clothes in disarray, gasping for breath.
"G-guards!"
"Someone's dead! A man's dead!"
He shouted like a man scared out of his wits, his mind clearly gone.
"What are you saying!"
"Prince Atar—Prince Atar has..."
...What?
"Prince Atar is dead!"
At words she had never once expected, the color drained from Presepe's face.
"Go and see, quickly! I'm telling you, it's Prince Atar, no mistake!"
"What do you mean? Explain yourself properly!"
"He's dead!"
The man shouted, furious now.
"In some strange—some strange state..."
"...Pardon?"
"Stop grilling me and go look for yourselves! Damn it!"
Confusion spread over the faces of the guards gathering around them. Presepe's was no different.
"What..."
Her dry lips moved, the words barely there.
"What are you saying...?"
...Why Atar.
Only moments ago he had been lunging at her, eyes wide, trying to lock a shackle around her wrist. Why, suddenly, this?
"You didn't... you didn't see wrong, did you?"
"L-Lady Presepe..."
He recognized her. He could not bring himself to shout at her the way he had shouted at the guards.
"Dead, in so short a time...?"
...It can't be.
Presepe stood there blankly, sense emptied out of her face, and then, before she knew it, she was running again.
"Lady Presepe! Please, wait just a— Lady Presepe!"
A guard's urgent voice chased her from behind. Not a word of it reached her.