Chapter 33

Chapter 33 : Treasure Hunting Is Made of Dreams and Hope (3)

Pan stared at me in silence.

Whenever those clear, deep blue eyes fixed on me so still and directly, a chill would creep up the back of my neck for no reason.

In that brief pause, I could feel, without the slightest concealment, his attempt to read the true intent behind my question.

In the end, I looked away first and buried my nose in the teacup.

“Ru told you that?”

“The last time.”

“She must have taken a liking to you.”

“It would be enough if you just told me whether it’s true or not.”

“It’s true. He came.”

In the end, those Fragments of the Original Work were still no different from traces or possessions left behind by Sek.

If Pan had gone so far as to allow him access even to the precious Record Archive and let him smear the power of phantasm all over the place, there was no way he had known nothing.

I lifted my head from the teacup and studied Pan.

The air of tension that had sunk so low a moment before had vanished without a trace, and he was smiling again, saying the tea really was good.

What sort of man had Sek been, for an Underfolk—one who had even been a lord, no less—to receive goodwill from the members of the forest?

To have been trusted enough that they would let him walk straight into the place where their hearts lay without hesitation.

The words Timol had shouted came back to me for no reason, and my breathing tightened slightly.

I may be rather insignificant, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel a little wronged.

“So it was only possible because that was a peaceful era? Meanwhile someone else got locked up and put through all sorts of things because they wanted to kill him.”

“Hmm.”

“Ah, so is that why all the members of the forest view Sek so favorably? If they’d looked on me with even a quarter of that goodwill, I wouldn’t have gone through all this. I even dyed my hair for the sake of improving people’s perception of me, so naturally I feel a bit cheated.”

“Well……”

“And perhaps setting that trap was pointless after all. The rumors only got worse, and now the only people who come to the office are troublesome ones.”

“Me too?”

“……Wouldn’t it be all right if I siphoned off a few bottles?”

Of liquor, that was. What I meant was that if I gave him a few bottles, perhaps he would stop being troublesome.

At my words, Pan slowly curled up the corners of his mouth and gave me a sly grin.

He rolled his eyes once, as though some scheme had occurred to him, then propped his chin on one hand, tilted his head, and tossed out the answer as if it were nothing at all.

“There wouldn’t be much difference.”

“Then sell it.”

“No, not that. I mean that there isn’t much difference between Sek and you.”

“……?”

I raised my brows and openly conveyed my confusion about just what sort of nonsense he thought he was talking.

Pan traced circles around the rim of his cup and then let out a short laugh, as though I had asked something absurdly obvious.

“The children like you.”

“Konu and the others?”

“Yes. Sek was the same. When Sek first came to the forest, Pering was about as young as Konu is now. Children at that age fall hard and give their hearts away easily.”

So it had been that long ago.

I felt the sharp edge inside me soften a little.

Without meaning to, I thought of Konu again, the way I’d met him in front of the half-destroyed office after the attack.

Konu, who came running over and believed in me with that cool little face, despite the fact that I had never really done all that much for him.

The child who would lift up that round little head of his and puff himself up before the other children as though bringing out his Frame meant he was fully grown now.

‘So he’ll grow up into another Pering. He’ll believe in me, and think of me from time to time.’

Something churned in my stomach.

Why did it have to be Pering, of all people?

To shake off the useless thought, I shook my head and then drained my now-cold tea in one gulp.

He wasn’t even my child, so why did it feel as though I had raised him?

“See? You’ve grown attached too, haven’t you?”

I couldn’t deny Pan’s words.

What did it matter, though? That was what I thought—right until I was forced to douse myself again with cold water.

I had always brushed this world aside lightly, telling myself it was nothing more than a few lines of text inside the Original Work.

Attachment? So what? Nothing would change because of that.

I raked a hand through my hair and pulled up one corner of my mouth.

“If you know Sek that well, do you happen to know his tastes too? Like what colors or foods he liked?”

“Why?”

“Because you said I resembled him then, and that there wasn’t much difference between us, so I got curious.”

Of course, that was a lie.

I was grasping at straws for the treasure hunt.

Pan studied me with suspicion for a moment, then shrugged and began listing things off surprisingly easily.

“He liked red. Just like that earring. Especially fresh, warm, red blood the moment it came spilling out—”

“—No jokes.”

I clapped a hand over Pan’s mouth and started mentally filtering red things out of everything that had happened so far.

There were simply too many overlaps for that.

“Ah! He liked animals. Especially ones with horns on their heads.”

“So that’s why there were so many horned Phantasmal Species?”

“Was there?”

“There were.”

Woldeer had horns too.

The old memory made my insides feel heavy again, so I snatched back the untouched tea I had given Pan and swallowed it all at once.

“You……! That was mine!”

“Yes, yes.”

After shoving Pan out the door while he whined that I ought to return even the liquor I’d siphoned off, I locked it firmly behind him.

Good. One hidden bottle was still safe.

---

On one of the many days after I began the copying.

I was, as always, repeating the same pattern: going out to search for traces of the fragment, only to fail again.

Since I couldn’t keep assisting with this forever, I had tentatively decided that the last possible day would be when they began rearranging the shelves in earnest.

It was while I was staring up at one of the maze-like shelves, tens of meters tall, that I noticed something odd in a corner.

It was a crude drawing done with a few rough strokes: the face of an animal with pointed ears.

‘A rabbit?’

It was small and clumsy, exactly like the sort of doodle some child might have drawn while passing by.

If this had been the library outside rather than the Record Archive, I would probably have mistaken it for something children had truly scribbled and ignored it.

But this was the Record Archive.

A place with restricted access, open only to Pan, Ru, and those granted permission.

‘Could this…… be a trace?’

I rubbed the drawing with my hand, but whatever it had been made with, it neither smudged nor faded.

It looked suspicious, and yet it wasn’t caught by the Phantasm Domain.

That was why, despite being buried in here for so long doing unpaid labor, I had never noticed it until now.

At first I thought Pan might have drawn it as a joke, and I touched the doodle a few more times before suddenly stopping.

‘This style feels familiar.’

The rough yet decisive strokes. The spacing between overlapping lines. Above all, the animal itself.

I had seen something like this before in the travel record, the first Fragment of the Original Work I had ever obtained.

That drawing.

The one tucked carelessly into the corners, which I had only glanced at and thought, He must have been bored.

It was practically waving a flag and telling me the clue was here.

I steadied my trembling hands and started searching for more of the drawings nearby.

They had been drawn without any apparent order.

Between shelves, on the floor, inside books whose names had been erased, between the patterns of the ceiling tiles, and so on.

The animals were all different kinds, but the style was unmistakably similar.

In the end, I had no choice but to wake Ru.

I needed to know whether those drawings had been there for a long time, or if they had appeared only recently.

“Doodles? In hereee?”

“Yes. Drawings about this big, shaped like animal faces.”

I held my thumb and forefinger a little apart to show the size.

At my words, Ru narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.

“Hmmm. I haven’t seen anything like that. Where did you see them?”

“You haven’t?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

Ru practically lived and ate in the Record Archive. She was here twenty-four hours a day, and I had even heard that she periodically changed the locations of the books, and whenever the mood struck her, she could even strip the entire place bare and reorganize it from scratch.

Even I, after staying only a few days, had seen the drawings. There was no way Ru could have missed them.

“If it’s something serious, then please tell me where it isss.”

“Then follow me.”

Leaving my unease aside for the moment, I guided her there anyway. So far, all I’d found were the drawings themselves, and they seemed to hold no power of their own, so there was nothing there that could directly endanger me.

“It’s over here. Right here…….”

I was about to point out the doodle of the deer at eye level to Ru, who had followed me over.

But the hand I had half raised ended up only scratching awkwardly at the back of my head instead.

“Here? There’s nothing thereee.”

Ru peered around in entirely the wrong places, unable to see even the drawing right in front of her nose.

She truly hadn’t been able to see the drawings all along.

Drawings visible only to my eyes.

It felt as though saying any more about them would be dangerous, so I pressed my lips tightly together and smoothed my expression into place.

“That’s strange. Perhaps I got mixed up because the paths here are so confusing. Ah, where was it…….”

Despite how transparent and clumsy my excuse was, Ru only tilted her head once and then shrugged, her curiosity already fading away.

I’d gone so far as to wake a sleeping Ru and take that risk.

As I imagined the increased volume of copying in my future, I silently mourned myself.

“If I see them again next time, I’ll definitely call for you, Ru.”

“Hmmm. All right, do thatyy. Ah! But you mustn’t go over there.”

Ru pointed toward a section where the floor tiles changed beyond the shelves.

“From there on, only my lord is allowed in.”

“Ah…… really?”

“Yes! From line 197-9909 to line 299-0900.”

I followed the direction of her gesture and tried to picture the position while recalling that string of complicated numbers.

‘Wait. This…….’

The forbidden area sat directly above the boundary formed by the places where the drawings had appeared, though there were gaps in the pattern here and there.

Even if they were only doodled animal faces, it could hardly have been more suggestive.

I pressed a hand to my forehead and covered my eyes, then started sketching the positions of the doodles in my mind.

I linked one drawing to another, then added and subtracted even the positions of the shelves between them.

I ran through the various possibilities—tracing straight across the lines, avoiding them, cutting through them—and then—

I let out a dry laugh and washed my face with both hands.

‘This is an arrow.’

It felt as though a great arrow, tens of meters long, had risen into the air and was now pointing directly at me.

“Riwin? You should head back nowww.”

“Ah, yes. I’ll come tomorrow and finish the rest of the copying.”

“Hmm. That won’t do, you knowww? Tomorrow’s copying comes out tomorrow too!”

So it was an endless cycle of copying. A Möbius strip of transcription, or something of that sort.

But now that I had found a clue, I would have gladly done this damned copying a few more times over.

---

I take it back.

Copying truly was hell.

After discovering the drawings, I went back to my room and looked through the travel record again. The tiny doodles tucked into every corner were definitely of the same type as the ones I had seen in the Record Archive.

Had Pan simply looked on with indulgent laughter while Sek drew all sorts of nonsense everywhere? Or had these been done in secret without even Pan knowing?

I knew that question was a useless curiosity.

And yet what I really found myself curious about was something more fundamental.

What kind of person was Sek, exactly?

He was the Underworld Lord, and yet he wandered leisurely about someone else’s territory.

……Then again, hadn’t Pan said I wasn’t so different?

I rubbed my aching arm and rose from my seat under the excuse of organizing the finished copies.

“I’ll go put these away.”

“Riwin.”

“Yes?”

“Copying ends todayyy.”

“…….”

“You’ve worked hard all this timeee. Afterward, I’ll buy you something delicious.”

One thing was certain: Ru absolutely knew where I had been going and had only pretended not to.

I forced a vague smile, gripped the completed copies tightly, and moved away from Ru.

‘The way things are going, I might eat that delicious meal and never wake up the next day.’

I had planned for today to be the end of the copying too.

Once I discovered that they were arrows, the pace of finding the drawings accelerated, and I was able to locate most of them.

Those drawings were all arrows, and the one and only destination they indicated was unmistakably clear.

The great tree that had so astonished me the first time I entered the Record Archive.

That very tree, which had stolen my gaze simply by being inside the building at all, and because of the way it stood where sunlight filtered down just enough.

The destination of the doodled code was that tree.

“Ru, since when has that tree been standing there?”