Editing City Series:Volume6c Chapter5 (section)

===Part 5===

Schweitzer and Lowenzahn stood in a small room.

In fact, it was a one-room house.

There was a fireplace on the north wall and windows on the east and west walls.

The smell of wood hung strongly in the air, which helped it feel warm.

But there was one thing the room lacked.

“There’s no bed even though we’re supposed to be staying the night. Is this some form of harassment?”

“Apparently an elderly Schattenbild lived here. A living shadow probably wasn’t in the habit of sleeping.”

“Hmm. Well, it wasn’t like we were actually planning to stay the night.”

Lowenzahn approached the western window.

She chose a position that wouldn’t cast her shadow on the closed curtain, placed her fingers on the edge of the thick curtain, and pulled it back just enough to see out.

It was dark outside.

The forest village didn’t provide much visibility, but she could see the bonfire that was being kept burning in the center square for today’s special event. She also saw light in a small window near that.

“The Messiah still hasn’t made her move. The pursuit team should be in position by now, but at this rate…”

Lowenzahn did not receive a response.

Curious, she looked to the window visible through the cracked curtain. She could just barely make out the scene behind her reflected in the glass.

Schweitzer sat in a chair by the eastern window with his head resting in his hand. He seemed to be lost in thought.

“Captain?”

No response.

“Captain Hellard?”

“I’m listening.”

“Then how about responding from time to time?”

Lowenzahn turned around and sighed. She moved away from the window.

She stopped just a few steps away from him. He was tall even when seated. The shoulder of his Der Held prosthetic arm came up to her chest.

So she rested her elbow on its flat shoulder armor.

“If you could redo your life, would you?”

“It isn’t possible. Not unless you altered the space-time Tons at the very center of the world.” And after a pause, “Redo it, huh?”

That seemed to remind him of something.

“Back in high school, we had this one science assignment. It was a simple orbital calculation. It gave you the answer and you were supposed to derive the formula and then provide a proof for it. …But we found it to be such a difficult problem at the time. We were spinning the globe around and checking through our physics text, desperate for the solution.”

“Yeah?”

“But the results of our calculations were all different. We had the formula partially derived, but we didn’t know what we needed to complete it. We only had a week before the assignment was due, so we spent six days struggling with it.”

“Yeah?”

“But we just could not find the solution. We had all given up on the final morning before it was due, but then one of us arrived with the solution. And with it copied into all of our notebooks.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know how that person found the answer?”

“No, but I’d love to find out.”

“They threw out the partial formula we had worked together to make and redid it all from the beginning.”

“Was that person Eryngium?”

Lowenzahn’s guess made Schweitzer freeze.

A few moments of silence followed.

But he finally smiled.

“I worried you, didn’t I?” He nodded. “The person who brought us the answer was Dog Berger. He’s always been an expert at throwing out old things. Eryngium, Marsch, Alfred, and I were all thankful.”

“I see…”

“But during our celebration that night, Eryngium said she could have created a new formula using the one we had all made together.”

“But didn’t that Berger person throw out the old one because she couldn’t do that?”

“It’s hard to say. Maybe she could have. …But when she learned how he had done it, she smiled and said something to him.” He sighed. “She told him to always do things his way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lowenzahn draped her arms around his head from behind. “Is simply redoing things wrong? Or is throwing out the old things wrong?”

“I don’t know either. But it is what she said. And I will respect that even if she no longer remembers any of it. Besides…all of these questions were not redone – they were inherited.”

“Inherited?”

“Five years ago, a girl appeared before me saying she didn’t want to run away. She still hasn’t found an answer to her question…but I have some hope that she will be able to find it.”

“We are about to capture that girl. …I saw her earlier. She was an ignorant fräulein who worries so much about others and thinks no one will really hurt her.”

“The Messiah who accepts everyone and the young man with a divine name who rejects everyone.”

“I think both of those options are wrong. You can’t accept everything or get rid of everything. You need to redo things partway through.”

“Why?”

“Can you feel this?” asked Lowenzahn, pressing her chest against his back. “My chest feels funny, doesn’t it?”

“Do not ask me questions with only awkward answers.”

“Oh, you are adorable. But listen. …When you saved me at that hospital so long ago, I was undergoing an Eingeweide implantation surgery.”

Schweitzer tensed.

He tried to turn around, but she stopped him by pressing her face against his head.

“I have an Eingeweide heart called Neue Erde. It was partially because the heart disease I inherited from my mother had worsened…but it was also to implant this, which is incorporated into my skeleton too.”

“Stop.”

“I have no left breast. It was used to create the machine and remade. It was completely redone.”

The tension drained from Schweitzer’s body.

“Does Neue Erde’s Ober Beweisen…let you prophesy?”

“You can…think of it that way if you want.”

“So you too gained power by redoing something.”

“That is one way of doing things,” she replied.

She let go of his arm and took a step back.

“And remember that some people can only do things that way.”

“I will,” he said, standing up.

He looked back and she held her arms lightly to her chest and refused to look him in the eye.

She cleared her throat and turned to the curtain covering the window she had been looking out earlier.

“That Dog Berger person seems to be having a rough time of it too.”

“Yes, he has been carrying a certain bond with him all this time as he fights.”

“A bond?” asked Lowenzahn, looking back.

Schweitzer raised his Der Held for her to see.

“His Gelegenheit was created using two things. The first was his own divine power. Gelegenheit’s Ober Beweisen removes the seal on that power.”

“And the other thing?”

“Eryngium Ilfheim’s memories. Using its Ober Beweisen will revive her memories. And as long as those remain inside Gelegenheit, he will never use his divine power.”

He looked up.

“Because that preserves the fact that he abandoned her.”