Chapter 74

Chapter 74 : Forgotten Being (1)

System.

This wily bastard predicts my behavior patterns.

There were times when it openly threw Quests at me and guided the situation, but there were also moments when it pushed me from behind, secretly and unexpectedly.

It had been like that when it drove me toward Sky’s Domain too. The surrounding circumstances tangled together, and by the time I thought, Ah, wait, I was already walking that path.

That urging stayed within the bounds of each person’s will, and I failed to suspect it.

It felt like moving like a horse according to the world’s predetermined course.

That was why I could not shake the thought that this world had been deliberately manipulated.

It was also why I had believed the absurd story that I was inside the Original Work.

The thought patterns of the characters, the events being lined up, their relationships. The fact that all of it flowed according to that system’s intent.

It was a matter a little different from individual free will.

I ended up realizing it in everything I had thought was the path I chose for myself. ‘Ah, could this be……?’

Once that happened, I entered a state where I could do nothing.

I made the stupid judgment that if I was going to move as a marionette tied to strings, I would rather stay still. In the end, even that trapped me in the dilemma of wondering whether it, too, had been an “intended stop.”

That did not mean I tried to escape that dilemma.

I narrowed my eyes as I sketched Fluffnix preening his feathers in a palm-sized notebook.

Scritch, scritch.

The rough sound of charcoal scraping against paper calmly settled my complicated mind.

In the past, when my heart was unsettled, I had often immersed myself for days, trying not to think at all.

Forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, until the picture before my eyes was complete.

Though even that was a method only possible before that incident.

“Iwon―.”

My hand stiffened at the old thought that abruptly surfaced, and I stared at the line that had jutted out before clicking my tongue.

Attaching meaning to useless amusement.

“Wow. You’re doodling. How leisurely, Slave No. 1.”

“Why are you picking a fight again?”

“I was thinking your skill is still the same.”

“Still……?”

I stopped my hand, raised my head, and stared at Pan, who was looking into my notebook.

I had scribbled in notebooks occasionally, but I did not think Pan had ever seen that.

I tucked the charcoal between the pages, closed the notebook, folded my arms, and jerked my chin at him.

“Did you see the picture I gave Ochel or something?”

“No? You drew a picture for Ochel? She cannot see anyway…… ah, so that is why you gave it to her?”

I shoved Pan’s face away with the hand that had been holding the charcoal, because the corner of his mouth had pulled up into a gloomy smile, then rose from my seat.

“Will you draw me one too? You could give me the one from just now.”

Ignoring Pan as he followed me around, I called Fluffnix.

The creature tilted his head, then quickly understood my intent and flew up, digging his claws through Pan’s hair. Then, as though he had merely been passing by naturally, he flew over to me and sat on my shoulder.

“Hey, could you remind me that leaving that Phantasmal Species alone is entirely my consideration? Before I roast it.”

“You are going to roast a bird that is already on fire?”

“Then before I freeze it……!”

“……Stop talking nonsense.”

When I opened the door leading from the terrace into the office, the bell rang softly with a clink.

Murel, who had been sprawled on the sofa, sprang up, and Quiro, who had been behind the bar table, dipped their head.

For an instant, the red energy pulled taut.

The raw wariness from two hundred years ago was not a knot that could be easily washed away after one or two meetings.

I stood in front of Pan, blocking him, and pulled over a chair to offer him. It was a position slightly off to the side, where one’s gaze would not directly meet the sofa.

“Sit.”

“I came to drink a cup of tea, but you are not brewing it yourself?”

“That one does it well too.”

I said it while pointing at Quiro.

There were two sturdy idle workers here, so there was no need for me to do everything.

Murel, who liked people, handled Fixer reception. Quiro handled tea preparation when it required a tricky recipe. Of course, I had forced both of them into those jobs by making it a condition of my physical training.

I placed the notebook on the bar table and wiped my charcoal-stained hands with the damp cloth Quiro handed me.

In the meantime, I quietly watched the notebook, whose pages turned on their own because they had been creased open, then asked Pan,

“Where did you see my drawings?”

“Strictly speaking, it must have been Sek’s drawing.”

“You mean Sek drew?”

“It is your past, so naturally…… mm, do you still think you are not Sek?”

I clenched my jaw as I looked at Pan tilting his head. His artificial smile and sly eyes wore an expression that said he had found something to use.

Apparently, after I had played dumb about whether I was Sek or not last time, he had kept it in mind.

“Why are you trying to confirm again something that ended as memory loss?”

“Because whether you are Sek or not is important.”

“What is important about it?”

“The decision of whether I show you Sek’s drawing depends on that.”

“……You have Sek’s drawing?”

“Oh-ho, are you showing interest now? In that Sek.”

I lifted both hands. You are right. I understand.

After dealing with Quiro and Murel, who kept looking at me with gazes directed at a ghost from two hundred years ago whenever our eyes met, I had slowly started accepting it too.

Part of it was because some of Sek’s memories had flowed into me, but when everyone around me treated me as though I was simply Sek who had lost his memories, I started thinking, ‘Ah, is that so?’

Most decisively, it did not feel strange at all when old habits came out without my noticing.

“Since you are saying I am that Sek, let me ask. Did you ever hear about ‘Iwon’ before?”

“About you?”

“Retu said I told her about when I was ‘Iwon.’”

I brought Pan the tea that had been completed in the meantime, then perched across from him.

I was curious about Sek from that time, but I was also deeply interested in the Iwon he had supposedly spoken of back then.

Whether the “Iwon” Sek spoke of was me from the time when I had done nothing but scribble meaningless drawings, or the current me, who had fallen here and could only flounder and roll around.

That distinction was important.

I hoped that I had not been rolling around in this damn Original Work under the system’s threats since more than two hundred years ago.

‘Could the me from two hundred years ago not have left clearer hints? What the hell was he doing?’

Apparently, Pan found it more important to bury his nose in the tea and savor it than to revive old memories. I waited until I counted to ten while Pan sipped his tea with a happy expression, then grabbed the teacup.

“If you do not want to be banned from this forever, answer the question first.”

Why was he dragging it out when it was not even difficult to say?

“Ahem. Sek did not tell me much. Only that ‘there was a time when I was Iwon.’”

That does not let me draw a conclusion.

“For some reason, after hearing that name, it engraved itself in my head and did not fade easily. So when you appeared and I heard your name, I thought this would become interesting.”

“Interesting? You mean when I was trying not to die?”

“You did not die, so do not use that to induce guilt. I am already sorry enough.”

I released the teacup and shrugged. I did not have even a single knot left from what happened back then.

At that moment, Murel raised his hand sharply from behind and added his opinion.

“I heard about Lord Iwon as well. He told me to remember it as ‘a name that will be forgotten.’”

A name that will be forgotten?

A name engraved so it would not be forgotten.

Was it something like a device that let anyone who heard it recognize that I was Sek?

Was the only information I had gained that those who remembered the name and pronounced “Iwon” correctly were people who had heard about “Iwon” from Sek?

I completely took the teacup from Pan, who had been carefully sipping at it, and pulled up the corner of my mouth.

“Why? What? I said everything I had to say. My heart trembles every time you look at me that way.”

“I am Sek, you said. Show me the picture.”

I feel like there will be a hint there.

---

In exchange for handing over the rough drawing of Fluffnix to Pan, I was guided to the secret vault in the ruler’s castle.

He explained that it was so large it was closer to a secret warehouse than a vault, but still.

Standing before the secret room at the very top of the ruler’s castle, I lost even what little expectation remained at Pan’s proud expression.

The door opened with a fairly heavy sound, and the scene inside was exactly as expected.

“It is a junk warehouse.”

“Junk? If you took any random thing here and smuggled it away, you could live your whole life in a human city.”

“Ah, I will note that.”

Opening the vault door felt like a simple puzzle. It opened easily by moving rods in order, so I had already memorized it.

I understood where Pan’s pride came from. Not only were there unusually shaped objects, but the rare things stored inside glass cases looked impressive enough even to me, who had no idea what they were.

“The drawing?”

I shook my head and recalled the purpose of coming here.

If Sek from that time had been me, there had to be a purpose behind giving Pan a drawing.

Even when someone bought a painting from me, I was the type to ask the reason, and I almost never simply gave one away.

I doubt I would have broken that principle just because it was this world.

And if I really had crossed over here two hundred years ago, then I would have been even more cautious. I had been suffering from trauma.

“Actually, what I said earlier was just a joke.”

“……Which part?”

“The part about only showing you if you were Sek.”

Pan pulled aside the cloth over a separate space arranged at the innermost area and stepped slightly aside. It felt as though he was telling me to go in alone, so I needlessly swept my gaze over the dim interior and swallowed.

“Sek gave me that and asked me something. He told me to show it to you when Iwon came.”

“You are only showing me that now? I have lived here for months.”

“I was not sure.”

I turned my eyes, which quickly adapted to the darkness, and approached the frame lit by faint light as though bewitched.

The drawing was in an ordinary quarter-sheet-sized frame.

“I also resented Sek for disappearing after giving me only that.”

Pan stayed far away and did not interfere with my viewing.

But I had to stop walking before I even came right up to it.

From far away, I had not been sure, but that was a portrait.

If the one who had drawn it was “me,” then I knew better than anyone what meaning a portrait carried. It was a picture that the current me would absolutely never draw, and that made me feel a sense of wrongness in its own way.

When I grew close enough to recognize who it was, I doubted myself.

More precisely, I doubted my memory.

The truth was, I was in a state of memory loss, so could I really be certain that even the memories I had considered wholly mine were truths I had experienced?

That picture gave weight to that doubt.

“Danhye……?”

Was Executor “Iwon” merely a lump of memories left behind?

Was I only “Appearing Character No. 1,” no more than a lump of polygons somewhere, created by the system?

“As expected, you recognize her.”

Pan approached from behind and muttered something more, but it did not enter my ears.

Because the woman smiling in the portrait was the trauma inside my memories, already dead.

Without even smoothing my rigid expression, I let out a hollow laugh.

Sek could not have been an existence Iwon had crossed into. If Sek truly had been me, there was no way he would have drawn a picture like that, given it to Pan, and prepared for the me of the distant future.

I felt like absolute shit.

I forced my trembling hand up, grabbed the frame, tore the painting out, and ripped it apart.

Pan did not stop me.

As though he had already known this would happen.

“Did Sek tell you?”

“Something like that.”

This is fucking terrible.

I deliberately avoided looking at the remnants of the painting scattered across the floor and turned back outside.

Whether this was Sek or the system’s intent, fine. I got it. I would overturn everything the way they wanted.

Ding!

[Executor’s Contribution to the Original Work increases.]

[Executor’s current grade: Supporting Role F → Supporting Role E.]

[Congratulations! Minimum grade for 〈Deleted Original Work Viewing〉 achieved.]

[A certain amount of 〈Soul Fragment of a Forgotten Being〉 is required for 〈Deleted Original Work Loading〉.]