Javert's Iron and Justice (13)
[S#.37 Main Building 2nd Floor Corridor (Night)]
Grandia Academy’s half-destroyed main building.
Debris from the collapsed building lay scattered everywhere.
At the center of the murky background, Javert sat collapsed on the floor.
Javert: "What on earth did I..."
Beside her lay lumps of meat in school uniforms.
It looked as though a one-sided massacre had taken place.
Javert was covered in blood from head to toe.
Javert: "Ah."
The light went out of Javert’s eyes.
They trembled, as if hinting at despair.
A gloomy background track faded in.
Javert: "I did... all of this..."
Javert’s hand trembled.
The angle changed.
The screen gradually pulled away from above her head.
The surrounding scenery came into view from the overhead angle.
Javert: "......"
The corridor was a mess.
Around Javert lay roughly thirty corpses.
Every one of them was dressed in a school uniform.
Javert: "I..."
Javert murmured.
The background music swelled.
The screen gradually darkened.
Javert: "This wasn’t what I wanted..."
Javert’s expressionless face slowly crumbled.
The screen focused on the lower half of her face.
A single tear slid down her cheek.
The screen blacked out for a moment, and a short message appeared.
[Principles.]
The screen flickered.
A harsh noise cut through the background music.
The music grew messier and more grotesque.
It was a reflection of Javert’s mental state.
[I thought principles were everything.]
A glitch effect appeared on the screen.
Once more, the screen blacked out.
[Now.]
[I don’t know anything anymore.]
The screen came back on.
Javert was holding a dagger in one hand.
Its sharp tip was aimed at her own throat.
Javert: "......I’m sorry."
Words that might not have been meant for anyone.
The screen zoomed in on the hand holding the dagger.
Javert’s face was reflected in the clean blade.
A few teardrops appeared in the reflection, and immediately after, the screen turned pitch-black.
-Stab!
The sound of something being pierced rang out.
The background music stopped, and the glitch effect vanished as well.
Silence continued for five seconds.
[I’m sorry.]
A small message appeared.
After that, the screen that had gone dark returned to normal.
Javert had collapsed beside the students.
The sound of a dry wind rang out.
As the silence deepened, the camera slowly drew farther away from them.
[EP47. Blue Night Side A]
-Javert's Iron and Justice-
[End]
Ending credits.
The video ended.
***
Who was Javert?
If asked that question, most players would probably answer in unison.
‘Javert Droit.’
Valter Droit’s adopted daughter, and the de facto second-in-command of Grandia Academy.
At the same time, a monster who had worked as a heresy interrogation investigator and racked up countless accomplishments.
A woman who was never left out whenever the strongest were discussed.
‘And...’
A person who committed suicide in every route of the story.
A supporting character who never once had an ending where she survived and found happiness.
‘Someone who cannot be saved.’
Javert was an unsalvageable character.
The original game was praised for its vast story and dozens of branching endings.
Yet among all those routes and endings, there was not a single ending where Javert survived.
An unconditional bad ending.
Her cause of death was always the same, suicide.
No matter what path the player took, Javert died midway through the original story.
Maybe the developers had decided there was no way to finish her narrative except through death...
‘Because Javert was that kind of person.’
Strong, yet fragile.
Javert was so unstable that she seemed ready to break at any moment.
‘She held a fierce conviction, but her heart was soft and warm...’
In a sense, perhaps she was similar to Alice.
The difference between them was that Javert hid herself.
She killed her own feelings, wrapped herself in a shell like iron armor, and hid away.
-Is there perhaps someone inside this robe who should not be here?
-Are you saying you wish I were not your student?
What I had done was break that shell of Javert’s.
I hammered at the woman until her iron armor cracked.
I targeted her most vulnerable point.
‘Altruism.’
A heart that thought of someone else.
A heart that wished to treat precious things as precious.
‘You may have thought you lost that when you were young...’
But I knew.
You had only hidden. You had not disappeared.
Beyond that sturdy iron armor, the fourteen-year-old Javert still remained.
“Investigator.”
“......”
I looked down at the woman before me.
Beyond the dark, I could faintly see her disheveled red hair.
“......Student Viktor?”
Green eyes looked up at me.
Her complexion had grown haggard over the past few days.
Blank questions passed through her eyes.
How had I gotten into the underground prison, which should have been under strict management?
Why had I appeared before her, and why had I snatched the dagger away just now?
“......”
“......”
A short silence lingered.
My hand was gripping Javert’s dagger tightly.
Its form, forged from light, contained intense heat.
Which meant my palm was cooking in real time.
Ssssh.
A searing pain spread.
None of that mattered.
Burns were lifelong friends of mine, were they not?
Without changing my expression, I calmly tossed out a few words.
“This is a little hot.”
“......Let go.”
Javert murmured.
Of course, I had no intention of letting go.
If anything, as though rebelling, I put even more strength into the hand gripping it.
Squeeze.
“I won’t let go.”
“No, your hand...”
“Please withdraw it from your side, Investigator.”
“......”
I pulled the dagger farther toward myself.
With enough force that I might burn my face along with my hand.
Perhaps that was what pushed her back.
Javert withdrew the dagger’s form.
The violently sharpened light returned to particles and scattered.
The flashing gleam died down, and the solitary cell was dyed in darkness again.
“Ahem, thank you.”
“......”
My hand throbbed.
Still, I paid it no mind and smiled.
Javert asked me.
“......Why did you come here?”
“I came to see you, Professor.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you might do this.”
“......”
A woman who had lost the will to live.
Her pupils had gone black and dead.
“Why are you interfering?”
“Investigator.”
“Did I not let you go? Did I not allow you to run wild as you pleased? Do whatever you want, Student Viktor.”
“Investigator.”
“I am telling you not to interfere with my work.”
“I cannot do that. Not if this work of yours is suicide.”
Grab.
The woman’s hand seized my collar roughly.
I did not resist, and let her shake me.
“Why?”
“Oops.”
“Wasn’t Student Viktor the one who made things this way?”
“Wrong. Everything was your choice, Investigator.”
“If you had not touched Purgatory, none of this would have...”
“But the one who chose to let me go in the end was you, Professor.”
“I am choosing again this time. Leave me alone to do as I please.”
“No.”
“Then why...”
“Because you are precious to me.”
“......”
Her hand held my collar.
I placed my own hand over it.
I covered the cold skin with my warmth and began to thaw it.
“......I.”
Javert’s head dropped low.
Her expressionless face broke apart, and fragments of emotion leaked through the cracks.
“I no longer... know why I should still be alive...”
A watery line drew itself down her white cheek.
Transparent tears flowed, and the woman’s coldness crumpled miserably.
“I want to stop now.”
Her voice was full of resignation.
Javert cried without sobbing.
She looked like a broken doll.
The usual cold Chief Investigator was nowhere to be found.
She was only wilting like an annual flower in December.
“I want to end it.”
“......”
The flower petals spat out a painful answer.
I quietly listened to her story.
‘Right...’
You are this kind of person.
Though you wore a shell, at your core, you were kinder than anyone else.
So deeply kind that you were hurt just as much, and to stop that, you hid yourself away.
“Investigator.”
The girl hiding inside the wardrobe.
That was you.
“You do not have to live only by principles.”
“I cannot. I, of all people, cannot do that.”
“You are only afraid, Professor.”
“If I do not keep to my principles, everything will fall apart.”
“That will not happen every time. Principles cannot be the correct answer every time.”
There was something I wanted to show you.
The story that had unfolded hundreds and thousands of times.
To you, who had always met a tragic ending.
To the hand that held the dagger, and to your throat that had been pierced by it.
“No matter how important principles are, a person cannot become human by living on them alone.”
No human lived only by correct reasoning.
Correct reasoning.
It was nothing but a line drawn so humans would not become beasts.
Just because one did not become a beast did not mean one had become human.
You could not become human by following only correct reasoning.
At times, dissenting views also had to be nurtured.
And the value of those opposing views might be quite precious.
‘You still don’t know.’
The woman’s heart was coated in steel like a shell.
So its color could not be seen.
Javert seemed to believe her own heart was silver.
But I believed her heart was red, just like everyone else’s.
“I will show you.”
I quietly held out my hand.
It was a hand with the skin peeled away from stopping the woman.
“Just once.”
“......”
“Please hold my hand, just once.”
“......”
My palm was a complete mess.
Javert stared blankly down at that hand.
As if she could not understand, she murmured with tears in her voice.
“What meaning could there possibly be in doing this...”
The woman asked for meaning.
So I gave her the answer exactly as it was.
“None.”
“......”
“That is why I am going to make one from now on.”
“Make meaning? What does that even...”
Grab.
Javert only hesitated silently.
I did not wait for her.
I reached out first.
Then I slipped my fingers between hers, locking our hands together.
“Hold on tightly.”
“Ugh, wait...”
Wait.
I had no intention of waiting for words like that.
I had come here today to completely smash Javert’s trauma.
“Then we are falling.”
Shuuuuk.
My foot had been tapping the floor this whole time.
All at once, the heel of my shoe pierced through the ground and sank down.
Our bodies were sucked in within an instant.
I pulled Javert toward me and embraced her.
Caught up in the wall clipping bug, the two of us fell downward.
“......?!”
Javert froze in shock.
As if telling her it was fine, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
The wind struck us fiercely.
A route that led in a straight line all the way to Purgatory.
I grinned and looked up at the blue screen.
[Sub Quest]
-Title: About the Things We Regret.
-Objective: Clear Purgatory Floors 81-90.
-Failure Penalty: None
-Success Reward: ???
[Time Limit: Until the Last Calamity arrives]
Memory.
Recollection.
Imagination.
[Floors 81 through 90 are treated as one stage.]
[Therefore, clearing Floor 81 and clearing up to Floor 90 will take place at the same time.]
We fell through the space between them.
The next moment, my consciousness blacked out, and a message appeared.
Ding!
[Entering Prepared Space ‘Purgatory’ Floor 81.]
[Phenomenon ‘Regret (SS-)’ is occurring.]
[Your trauma will be recreated on the floor.]
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