A Lifetime on a Single Memory
How wretched it is to live an entire lifetime upon the memory of a single moment.
That was the fate of the merfolk. It was like a disease they carried from the instant of their birth. The most intense emotion carved into the soul left a scar so vicious that no circumstance, however changed, could ever overturn it.
For Iser, that scar was the human named Giovanni.
"Good night."
"...You too, Teacher..."
This place was peaceful.
"Have a peaceful night."
It was so comfortable it made his skin crawl.
An absurd sensation. Not one a mermaid—not Iser—could allow himself.
Even the quiet spring breeze and the soft murmuring of the forest pressed against him with a charm he could not shake free. Iser had been given a bedroom in Ji-oh's cabin.
"……."
The floor beneath his bare feet was wood.
The polished floors, walls, and ceiling of the cabin gave off a faintly bitter fragrance that left the mind pleasantly hazy.
The broad terrace window stood wide open, drinking in the forest air in full. The bed, neither too large nor too small, held a soft, lingering warmth.
"……."
When he lay upon that texture—
"...Is this..."
Iser could not hold the words back.
"Even remotely reasonable?"
In the midst of this peace, Iser felt a terrible emptiness and loss.
"Where am I right now...?"
In the mermaid's memory, Giovanni was dead. He had died horribly.
What had Iser thought then, looking at the wounds no child of the sun should ever have been able to inflict, at the rotting skin and the putrid filaments that had spilled from empty eye sockets?
...I may have been drugged, but that doesn't mean I have no memory of that time.
On the contrary, the scene remained searingly vivid. No one would ever know what thoughts had driven him to eat the man.
That was the moment their peace had met its death. The dead were not supposed to return, so what, then, was this comfortable space? Where was he feeling this calm right now?
"...It's frightening..."
The belly that had once been full now felt hollow again.
"……."
In its place would come rotting flesh, no doubt.
"...I feel sick."
His stomach turned.
It was like seasickness. His brain seemed to sway.
His vision was at once blurred and sharp; the silent voice of the forest grew louder by the second. Because a mermaid's memory stopped forever at Giovanni's death and the sun's ruin, this gentleness could never fail to feel repulsive.
Iser had grown far more accustomed to blood and screams.
"Ah..."
That was a mermaid's fate.
"……."
Merfolk lived in seas of blood.
Even when an impossible gift like this was pressed into his hands now, he had become nothing more than a pathetic adult who felt only terror first.
"……."
Only much later did the mermaid speak.
"...I think I'm going to have bad dreams."
He had never known that the place he lived was a nightmare.
Lying here like a corpse, he finally understood that it was hell.
"……."
A strange sensation pulled Ji-oh upright in bed.
"...Mm..."
The urge to take a walk.
Shall I go out?
Ji-oh was not the sort of person who pondered the roots of his own desires too deeply.
He left the sleeping Honey behind and stepped out of the room. Soft wooden stairs carried him down to the living room, where, for some reason, he found the teddy bear lying on the sofa and the cat Dana curled beside it.
Both looked up at him, glowing with a light so faint it seemed about to go out.
"I thought I might take a walk."
"……."
"Dana, want to come with me?"
Dana, who had been watching black-haired Ji-oh, soon stood at his side. Her steps made no sound, as if she were a ghost. The teddy bear did nothing to stop them as they left the cabin; it merely watched.
Still wrapped in the black cloak he always wore, Ji-oh walked without assigning any particular meaning to the path. He had come barefoot, yet the soft grass underfoot never hurt.
Everywhere here felt pleasant to the touch. That was probably why he wandered without shoes more and more often. The simple joy of walking was enough.
"The forest is quiet."
At this hour the woods always held a strange, sleeping silence.
"Dana, do you like the forest?"
"……."
"How about the trees? The scent of the flowers?"
"……."
"The weather really is nice."
Soft rustling... the sound of tender grass swaying.
"The moon is so bright."
This place had both a sun and a moon.
Yet they were clearly different from those of Earth or any other planet. They shone with the colors of transparent jewels, never so painfully bright that looking at them would hurt the eyes.
It felt only like gazing at a brightly painted picture...
"Look."
Above their heads floated a gem-moon of glacial, icy light.
"It looks like you."
"Myaong."
"That's a different meow from usual."
It almost sounded like she was imitating a cat.
"You are a cat, but..."
He started to say more, then decided he did not want to think about it further and turned his gaze away. She resembled that cold moon hanging in the night sky.
"You're shining."
"Myaong."
"Thanks to you, it isn't dark."
The round moon was large, and above this sky, just as in the deep sea, a milky way of jellyfish-like lights was draped. They held their silence with a dry, lifeless sparkle that carried no vitality at all.
The moon poured down its light. The milky way drew a veil. At his feet stood the icy cat, and the forest that should have been dark was secretly bright; the only shadow here belonged to Ji-oh himself. He was the sole black thing in this place.
"Even with the heavy scent of trees..."
His steps soon halted before a radiant spring.
"There's the smell of the sea inside it."
"……."
"Aria."
He saw his student standing with pale bare feet dipped in the still spring water.
"Can't sleep?"
Looking at the black cloak whose face was completely lost in shadow, the mermaid smiled her usual practiced smile.
"How could anyone sleep in a place like this?"
"Was the bed not to your liking?"
"Everything was so much to my liking it gave me chills."
"Yet you haven't run away."
"Because someday I hope you'll accept us."
Pearl-colored eyes held the black cloak.
"If you take responsibility, will you also forgive? Will you love us again the way you did back then?"
"My forgiveness is unnecessary. Resenting or hating you is not my part to play."
"...We have so much time."
Aria's voice was as clear and measured as ever.
"I never thought it would come to feel like such tremendous terror."
She asked Ji-oh,
"Do you know what this spring is?"
"I saw no reason to know, so I never tried to find out."
"Do you know what this forest means to you?"
The mermaid kept asking.
"Why you were placed in this situation, why you returned in this grotesque form that is neither resurrection nor anything else, what intention and context the world is following as it flows this way..."
"I'm not curious."
"A very Teacher-like answer."
There was a smooth, pearl-like quality in the mermaid's voice.
"Benevolent and indifferent."
And for that reason, there was also a roughness.
"Are you aware that this place is your belly?"
"This is a painting I drew."
"It doesn't seem all that different."
"If you call it a part of me, that might be true."
Because Ji-oh had created this place, and at the same time he was a portrait.
"I knew this forest reflected my mindscape."
"Can you still call yourself human after that?"
"I have never once stepped outside being human."
"……."
"I have always been human."
It was so self-evident there was no need to deliberate.
"It seems like a good night for conversation. Is there something you wish to ask this teacher?"
"……."
At the sudden shift in tone, Aria stared into the pitch-black cloak.
"...I can't see your face..."
Nothing inside the cloak was visible.
"You do exist, don't you?"
"I have never disappeared, Aria."
"What do you look like right now?"
"I haven't looked in a mirror, so I wouldn't know."
"But I can't see you either."
In that case—
"How can you prove that you exist?"
How was one supposed to distinguish whether a human, a sun god, a painting, life or death, lay inside that pitch-black shadow?
If it was a shadow whose very appearance no one could know until someone defined it.
"I have a question, Teacher."
"I promise to give you the best answer I can."
"How can you be so certain you won't disappear?"
"Nothing is eternal. Both the living and the dead continue to change."
"It's true I never saw the limits of humanity. The humans I knew grew endlessly stronger, evolved, and sometimes even became gods or nature itself."
But.
"You're a different texture from them."
A pitch-black canvas that could become anything.
"...If I'm feeling fear and loss because of that, will you understand?"
"I think it's only natural to feel distance after I've changed so much."
"Distance? That isn't what I was trying to say. It's completely different."
As long as he was "Giovanni," she had no intention of drawing away.
"Why would I try to distance myself from you? I've already spent long ages staring at nothing but empty sea that was neither coffin nor grave, forced to feel that vacant space. Now that I know this isn't some sudden, ridiculous nightmare or miracle, I don't feel anything as petty as distance."
So the emotion Aria was feeling right now was—
"I..."
"……."
"...Teacher."
Closer to wretchedness, or desperation.
"Why are you always standing at the center of fate?"
It was dreadful.
"Wouldn't it have been better if you had been some insignificant person who simply passed by? Born into an ordinary family, living an ordinary life, dying an ordinary death. Who in the world suits that place better than you? Of the thousands upon tens of thousands of humans I've watched, and far more besides, why were you never included among them... I keep wondering."
Looking at this forest made it clear. No—
"Just looking at you is enough to know."
If you could look into those eyes and still fail to understand, it would be no different from being unable to see the world at all.
"Even if you died, it wouldn't have mattered. It was a situation I expected. Even if it hadn't been a peaceful, gentle death, I would have been satisfied."
"……."
"If only you had been just a little more ordinary, if only you had shone just enough that the entire world could simply let it pass, if only you had died that way... how good that would have been."
From beneath the pitch-black hood, from the deep shadow where nothing could be seen, a voice flowed out.
"You wished for me to be happy."
That was unmistakably Giovanni's voice.
"Is it hard because the person I am is too special, too much to handle?"
"I'd like to call it an overblown sense of self, but it does seem to be true."
"You don't think it's an extremely cute bit of sulking?"
"……."
How many different voices could possibly flow out of that shadow?
"...Unfortunately, this isn't a situation cute enough for that..."
If she could have laughed it off, it would have been so much better.
"...How long have you been a portrait?"
"I don't really know either."
"What do you think you are?"
"I am Ji-oh."
"Your happiness is no longer the important thing."
Giovanni had not met an unhappy death.
"I know that was a death that pleased you."
Therefore what mattered was the fear and loss of those around him—of the merfolk, of Aria.
No matter what moment arrived, Ji-oh would always make the choice that made him happiest.
"You'll live the life that pleases you. No matter what becomes of everyone around you later, you'll do the absolute best you can in that moment. Don't you think that's so idealistic it's terrifying?"
"It seems Aria thinks it's terrifying."
"Yes, it is terrifying. Because I know it's the best, and I know it's ideal. I respected that side of you, so I can't turn around now and tell you to fix it. I've already lived too long drowning in it..."
What was the true nature of this portrait?
Its name was "Ji-oh's Portrait." He was a person and at the same time a painting. Only a painting, yet also a painter. The master of the destiny he himself had painted, and a vast nature that would go on embracing still more destinies.
Had he been a portrait from the beginning, and that was why the name "Ji-oh" kept being repeated endlessly? Or had he, at some point, become a portrait precisely because he was Ji-oh, and thereby come to embrace countless "Ji-ohs"?
"Yes."
Unable to bear the anxiety any longer, Aria finally defined it.
In the impossibly distant past, in the future, and even in this very moment—
"...Teacher, you'll be special your whole life."
This person could never be ordinary. Not once, not ever, had he been.
"……."
"……."
What was left to look at now when she wanted to accuse something of cruelty?
"...Teacher, do you believe in humans?"
"There are kinds of happiness you can obtain only by believing."
"And you have no intention of giving that up."
"Just as Aria has no intention of giving up her anger."
"Right, then..."
Aria smiled with a drained face she had never shown before.
"I'll take care of my own share myself."
Of the shadows beneath that pitch-black cloak, how much would she be able to claim as hers?
She only prayed she would never again have to cast any of it into the sea.
To be continued.