Chapter 101: Family (3) (1/2)
…I had a dream of a long time ago. It was a dream of living with my family in a cramped room. The memory was fleeting like a broken sunset, not even a single moment was left complete, but it was beautiful. I also had a family.
“…”
I opened my eyes. The bright sun was beating down. It was dazzling, so I blocked it with my hands. The area surrounding me was covered in wind-swept grass, and I could hear the chirping of grasshoppers. The trees surrounding me shook and spat out their leaves as the wind pushed past us.
While exploring that landscape, the cute pitter-patter of small footsteps approached from somewhere.
“Brother~.”
A childish and cute cry. I looked toward its source.
“Brother~, where are you~?”
She was maybe six years old. Although she couldn’t speak properly, I knew immediately who she was. A smile naturally lit upon my mouth.
“Brother~.”
It was Yeriel. She had run to the middle of the forest in search of her brother. I muttered to myself.
“Is this Yeriel’s memory?”
It seemed that the security mechanism of the diary or something similar had put me into this memory.
“Brother…”
Yeriel, who had been searching for a while, put a finger to her lips and bowed her head sadly. And then.
“…I can’t find it!”
She shouted out loud. I managed to hold back the laughter that almost burst free from me.
“I can’t find it!”
There was, of course, no answer. Only Yeriel’s cry echoed out lonely.
“After all, it’s my brother~ I can’t find him~.”
Yeriel praised her brother. I was very jealous of him.
“I can’t find it!”
“…”
“I can’t fiiiiind~!”
Yeriel walked back and forth, repeating only that cry.
“Brother…?”
She kept walking. With her short stride, she jumped back and forth, but as the forest deepened, she suddenly turned back.
“…”
She had come so far that she couldn’t even see the way back.
“…Ugh.”
Yeriel back-pedaled in fear. Tears welled up in her eyes, and her hands gripped the hem of her dress.
“Waaah…”
“Tsk.”
Before the crying bomb exploded, I stood from my seat on the ground and walked over to her.
“Oh, brother…?”
Yeriel, feeling someone’s movement, brightened up, but when she saw me, she suddenly retreated. She held a vigilant posture, though it was more adorable than threatening.
“…Who are you?”
I put my hand over Yeriel’s little head.
“I caught you.”
“…What?”
Yeriel looked up at me with her big eyes and tilted her head. I realized it too late at that innocent reaction. Follow current novels on lightnovelpub.com.
“Oh, right. You should’ve caught me. And I should be hiding.”
I was moved here so suddenly that I was a little dizzy. My head ached, too.
“What are you doing? Let go! I need to find my brother!”
She shook off my hand. I glanced around, scratching the back of my neck.
“You probably won’t find him.”
“What? Why?”
“…He suggested playing hide-and-seek because you bothered him.”
Deculein and Yeriel’s hide-and-seek. I’m not Deculein, but somehow… I thought I knew the story behind it.
“Leaving you alone looking for him, he probably went out to have fun.”
“…”
At that moment, Yeriel’s expression turned to one of absolute shock. An expression matched that of a six-year-old who was betrayed by the world, but then she shook her head vigorously.
“N-No! No way!”
“…”
“No way! Brother! Brother~! There is a strange person here!”
She pumped her short legs and ran away as fast as she could. I followed her while calculating the magic concentration of the area.
“Ah! He’s following me! Don’t follow me!”
“I’m just walking.”
I still didn’t know what kind of magical phenomenon this was, but… I felt strangely light.
* * *
[ She pumped her short legs and ran away as fast as she could. I followed her while calculating the magic concentration of the area.
I still didn’t know what kind of magical phenomenon this was, but… I felt strangely light.]
“What is this…?”
Yeriel read the story recorded in the notebook marked 「Deculein」. This meant that Deculein had become a notebook like her vassals.
“Did Deculein come here right before me?”
“Yes.”
The diary resembling Deculein answered. Yeriel frowned as she held the notebook.
“But why is my story here? Why did Deculein meet ‘Young Yeriel’?”
“The world in this artifact obeys its magical laws.”
“Oh what shit, tell me in detail! Who could understand when you say things like that-“
“Deculein entered by your diary, that is, Yeriel’s, and was recorded by the security mechanism. Therefore, he was recorded in The Memory of Yeriel.”
Yeriel was dazed, her head feeling dizzy.
“Then how did Deculein get in? He didn’t even have a key.”
“The diary was made in pairs. If you open the door of one diary, the door of the other diary will also open.”
“…”
Yeriel’s jaw nearly hit the ground. It was a mechanism she never thought of because she had never opened it before.
“Then, how do I solve this?”
“Do you need to solve it?”
“…What?”
Yeriel’s brow twitched, but he continued with no emotion.
“Yeriel, don’t you want to be the successor? If you leave Deculein as he is, the position at the head of the family will be yours.”
“…”
Yeriel didn’t answer. She just stared at the artifact without saying a word, and he continued.
“If you have a hard time judging what to do, see Deculein for yourself.”
“Me?”
“Recorded beings reveal their thoughts and desires more openly. It’s a process called ‘internalization.'”
“…”
“Look at Deculein’s record. His raw desire is there.”
Yeriel bit her lip, but soon after, she reopened Deculein’s notebook.
[…Young Yeriel made a castle out of the earth with magic. Young Yeriel went –tada~– bragging about it. I laughed.]
The two seemed to have become friends. Yeriel’s frown deepened as she read further.
[When I praised her, young Yeriel said. “Huhu! My older brother is way better than me! He’s already learning college magic!”]
“…”
A record of Deculein, who had become words. Yeriel looked closely and suddenly found something strange.
[As I was with her, I remembered the days when I was ████. ]
“What is this? One word is… broken. It can’t be read.”
“It can’t be. You must have seen it wrong.”
“No…”
In the meantime, the pages continued to flip onward as the thoughts were written quickly, hiding that one part in a sea of words.
“Forget it. You’re fucking useless.”
“Your eyes are the problem.”
Giving up asking, Yeriel turned to read the record again.
[Instead of playing hide-and-seek by herself, it’d be better for me to play with her a little bit.]
Coming to that paragraph, she thought:
‘Hide and seek alone… I did this.’
Yeriel knew this memory. She played hide and seek alone. Among the many memories she had, this left a particularly big scar. That day, Deculein abandoned her during a hide-and-seek game, and she lost her way, spending two days wandering through the woods. It was a particularly painful memory to recall.
Yeriel asked the diary.
“Where are my memories? If this diary is a pair, there will be memories of me other than Deculein’s.”
“It’s on the other side of the hallway.”
She turned and walked down the hallway to her left. As he said, the hallway walls were full of frames of her memories, a title under each of them.
[The day I first learned etiquette]
[I was caned]
[The first magic I showed to my brother…]
Almost all of her childhood memories were related to Deculein. When she was young, she was very dependent on him, so there were many funny titles.
“…Ah.”
Then she found what she sought.
“It’s this one.”
[Sad hide and seek by myself]
The landscape in the memory frame revealed the middle of the forest where she had been lost. Yeriel, who unintentionally looked inside, watched with wide eyes.
“…!”
This was the painful memory of the day when she was lost in the woods, all alone.
─I can do this too!
—Oh. That’s interesting.
Yet, Deculein was with her younger self.
“Perhaps…”
Yeriel, watching the scene play out blankly, produced the Key of Yukline from her pocket. Then, she slowly put it into the frame.
Clank-!
The key was stuck somewhere in the frame. As expected, in this world, this was the universal key.
Crackle-!
Yeriel twisted the key in the frame as if opening a door, and at that moment, her entire body was pulled in.
“Ugh!”
Swooon!
Her sense of space distorted as if her soul were moving. All sense of direction was twisted and bundled up like a rubber band as the world swayed around her. She felt like throwing up but managed to hold it down.
“Ugh…”
Once the dizziness began to fade, and she was able to open her eyes.
“…?”
Yeriel found herself shorter. She looked around blankly. The clear sun that she had seen in the frame was up in the sky, and below her on the ground was a castle of earth made with magic.
“Don’t you need to go home?”
Deculein stood there with a caring face, an expression he had never before shown to her. Yeriel’s heart sank for a moment, but then she nodded.
“Oh, I still have plenty of time. What about you… uncle?”
*