Translator: Alpha0210
He felt as though he'd been wandering for a long while through a hazy fog.
Somehow, it also felt as if he'd had a long conversation with someone.
A cluster of emotions that couldn't be summed up in a word or two came over him all at once, and the largest lump among them was, incongruously, sorrow.
Sorrow?
Had this body ever felt sorrow, even once? He couldn't say. He'd tasted his fill of every kind of negative emotion since he'd been reduced to this state, but sorrow hadn't been among them, he was fairly sure.
Feeling that strange sentiment, Residue slowly came awake.
His body was stiff and sore, his airway thick and clogged. An irritating sensation, as if his lungs had swallowed a great deal of dust.
"...Cough, mmh."
His throat felt bone-dry. Even swallowing his own spit stung, so he looked around, and there was a kettle sitting on the table. A cup had thoughtfully been provided beside it, but Residue gulped straight from the kettle.
The water inside was lukewarm, but that only made it go down easier.
"Ahem."
Hacking up dust once more, he looked around with a somewhat dazed mind.
It was some kind of room. A room fitted with a bed, a table, a chair, and a window. It gave the strong impression of being a single-occupancy room.
Where am I, and who am I?
For a moment, a stupid thought crossed his mind.
He shook his head and quickly reached a conclusion.
Where he was, he still didn't know, but this body was Residue.
He blinked rapidly. As his dazed mind slowly sharpened and his senses came into focus... strangely, only his memory refused to fall into order.
In the first place... why had this body lost consciousness at all?
What had happened just before he blacked out?
......
......
No good.
Nothing came to mind.
There was no help for it. Tedious as the exercise was, at times like this there was nothing to do but retrace it all, one step at a time, from the very beginning.
In the 'inside', that is, the Unified World, he had finally finished preparing to venture out to the 'Outside'.
Following the flow of fate, or however he vaguely recalled it. Five beings gathered in one place. At the very instant he'd been about to advance into the 'Outside' together with Lukas's former companions...
...the Blue Knight Pale's behavior had nagged at him, so he'd tailed her, and there he'd been ambushed by Agolet, the Lightning God, and the Black Thorn Demon King, who lay in wait for him.
The plan had been altered, half by force, and he'd ended up heading for the 'Outside' with those bastards rather than the original members, and...
"And now this?"
A rasp threaded through his voice. His throat was in a sorry state. While he was at it he poured the last of the water in the kettle down his throat, but it didn't leave him feeling particularly refreshed. Uselessly lukewarm, the stuff. If it had been cold water, it might have snapped him wide awake.
...Something felt off. Whether to call it a lingering unease or a sense of wrongness... it was all vague, but chewing on it any longer didn't seem likely to produce a satisfying answer. So he had no choice but to ball up all the uncomfortable things and toss them into some corner out of sight.
"Hmm."
He got up from the bed and checked his physical condition first.
No wounds anywhere in particular, nothing that felt out of place. But his body felt oddly stiff and heavy. His head, too, was as clouded as a sky full of storm clouds.
He brushed off his clothes for no real reason and thought.
Where was this place?
He looked around again, this time more carefully.
Sure enough, a room with no distinguishing features.
Nothing unusual about it, save for the fact that the room's structure and most of its furniture were made of wood.
...Surely this wasn't the 'Outside'? There was no way, but...
No. It had been called a place where common sense didn't apply in the first place, so there was nothing strange about it taking any form at all.
For instance, this flimsy-looking room might be incredibly sturdy, impossible even to escape, and he might end up trapped here until the day he died.
Thinking as much, Residue opened the window.
Click.
The window opened with an almost anticlimactic ease.
He couldn't help but frown slightly. No wonder. Spread out before him was a scene he hadn't witnessed in a very long time.
"...."
There was a sun.
A scarlet sunset just now sinking, clouds stained the same color, and a flock of birds bound for somewhere came into view. Just then a lukewarm wind blew.
From outside, inward.
Residue's hair stirred faintly. A scent carried on the wind, the scent of food. Bread? He thought he could catch grilled meat, oil-pickled vegetables, the smell of fried-flour sweets, too.
He tilted his head down.
The street, over which dusk was only now settling, had formed a boisterous night market, as if bent on driving back the encroaching night.
Merchants hawking their wares, and people wandering about with eager, cheerful faces. The ordinary scene of a street brimming with life.
Ordinary...
"...."
What was going on here?
Am I still dreaming, even now?
He stretched a finger out past the window, on the chance that he was only permitted to look and still couldn't get out. That expectation, too, missed the mark. Residue's hand met no resistance at all and melted into the lights of the street.
"What is happening here?"
The moment he murmured it in a low voice, he sensed someone behind him.
He turned to look, and someone was standing there.
"Ah..."
The woman staring blankly in his direction had a face that seemed, somehow, as if he'd seen it somewhere. But no matter how he racked his brain, no clear impression surfaced. Had his memory really deteriorated that far?
About the time that thought struck him, the woman spoke.
"...So you're awake."
It was an ambiguous voice in several senses, mingled with bewilderment and other layered emotions. And regardless of that, Residue's sense of wrongness grew a little stronger.
Not just her face, but her voice, too, seemed familiar somehow. No. It was clearly a voice he was hearing for the first time... A similar voice, maybe, but not this one. Same with her face. He'd never actually seen it anywhere. A similar face, perhaps, but not this one.
"Who are you?"
"Excuse me?"
"What was this body doing here? Why had it been lying asleep in some rundown room like this?"
"...Hah."
The woman made a somewhat dumbfounded sound and shook her head.
"Just as rude as I'd heard."
"As you'd heard? Who did you hear about this body from?"
"What is this. Did you come down with amnesia or something?"
"Amnesia?"
Was that it? Could be.
Residue shook his head clear.
"Since I'm not even aware of having forgotten anything, 'memory gap' would be the more accurate term, I'd say."
"...You don't look terribly anxious, for someone in that state."
What was this woman even going on about.
When Residue looked at her with sour eyes, the woman returned an equally cold gaze. Then she even let out a sigh, and...
Taking in that reaction, that attitude, that look in her eyes once more, Residue murmured half unconsciously,
"...Iris PeaceFinder?"
Creak.
The woman took a step back, and the floorboards creaked.
"How do you know my name?"
"Mmh."
So that was it. The identity of the sense of wrongness he'd been feeling all along.
Her looks had changed a little, but because of that distinctive air about her, he'd kept feeling a certain familiarity. The dazed expression she wore now didn't suit her, but anyway.
...But was that all? The nagging feeling still hadn't gone away.
"Why are you here?"
"...Because I'm the one in charge of guarding you, obviously. More to the point, how do you know my name–"
Iris seemed to be saying something more, but it didn't properly reach his ears.
Residue took in her face again first.
Right. Her features were a little different, and her voice was off too, but that particular air of hers was unchanged. The naive look sat a bit awkwardly on her, yet this one was Iris PeaceFinder, no doubt about it.
In that case, why had she changed her appearance?
No. Before that, why was Iris in the 'Outside'? He hadn't chosen this woman.
In the first place.
"...Is this really the 'Outside'?"
"Is your head all right? We're inside a room."
A slightly mocking voice reached him. She seemed to be hiding her bewilderment behind the sarcasm, in her own way, but to Residue's eyes that clumsy act was plain as day.
In any case, this insolent side of her did match the Iris he'd known, but... something was different.
A face half-mixed with question and wariness, a strange distance, and... a slight tension.
Ah.
In that instant he grasped the identity of the sense of wrongness.
Iris was acting as if she were seeing Residue for the very first time.
"Isn't it you who's got amnesia, not this body?"
"What?"
"Looks like you've forgotten me entirely."
"...."
A look like she was staring at a madman.
Residue nodded and asked,
"Iris PeaceFinder. Do you know anything about this body?"
"...Hah. There's no way I'd know someone like you."
It wasn't the sort of 'I don't know a thing about you anymore!' feeling.
Which meant Iris genuinely didn't know Residue... How had it come to this.
One sense of wrongness had vanished, but another filled the empty space. They wrapped around Residue's whole body without a gap, like damp leeches.
...A few things.
With just a few more clues, something felt like it would fall into place.
"Stop ignoring me and answer now. What are you? How do you know my name?"
By now a sharp edge had entered Iris's voice. She was glaring at him with eyes to match, but no particular reply came to mind.
"Where is this place?"
"I'd say I've given you plenty of answers already. It's time you put my questions first."
This was the kind of flow where bickering would go on forever.
Should he overpower her and then wring the answers out of her?
No. Maybe because it was still a face he knew, something about it felt awkward. If she'd borne some obvious malice, that would be one thing. But settling a situation like this one by force felt off.
So what to do.
......
......
All right.
"I'm going out for a bit."
"What?"
Residue flung himself toward the wide-open window.
"W-wait! Where are you–!"
Letting Iris's startled voice go in one ear and out the other,
meeting the lukewarm wind.
Residue,
thought once again that his body felt a little heavy.
*
There was a reason the wind felt so oddly muggy. All around was desert, and clay-built structures and half-bare styles of dress caught the eye.
The sun had set completely by now, yet the city hadn't sunk into darkness. As if in tune with the clamor of the streets, lights appeared here and there, and smoke billowing up in soft puffs vanished beyond the night sky.
A city that comes alive at night is a good city. Because if public order were a shambles, a night market like this could never take shape.
Leaning at a slant against a back-alley wall, Residue carefully took in the people strolling the streets.
"...."
Anything strange about them?
No matter who he looked at, they were all perfectly ordinary sorts.
People who woke, worked, ate, spent their leisure, and went back to sleep again. Ordinary people, of an ordinary town.
Or were all of them putting on an act?
Residue let his thoughts drift on absently, and then, all at once, his mind reached toward Iris. Had she no intention of coming after him? With the ability she possessed, following Residue should have been no trouble at all.
"...There's far too little to go on."
He arrived at the same sort of conclusion as before. It seemed simply stepping outside hadn't been enough.
Should he wander around a bit first? Grabbing a few suitable people and steadily questioning them wasn't a bad approach either. Whatever it was, it beat holing up forever in this musty back alley.
It was the moment Residue was about to step out into the flickering, lamplit street.
"Feeling any better?"
A voice came from behind him.
Residue froze mid-stride, foot still extended, and turned his head.
"No. Maybe that's the wrong question. You're up and about, so you must be fine."
"...."
It was a strangely familiar voice.
The same as with Iris.
A voice he'd heard somewhere, yet one that seemed somewhat different from the voice he truly knew–
...But this time, Residue had no trouble placing whose voice it was.
If anything, he knew exactly.
He turned, and the figure he'd expected was standing there.
A frayed brown robe. Dark blond hair. A dry expression.
The owner of the very same face, the very same build as 'this body'.
– Looking at Lukas Trowman, Residue fell silent.
The sense of wrongness had now become déjà vu.
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