Editing User:Démiurge (section)

== Partie 8 ==

It was a full-on collision of Veig’s and Til’s souls, entangling, stirring, radiating white. No one could tell whose soul it was anymore. Everything raced through the catalysts and through the minds of all present…

……

…The man had been born with outstanding sensibilities. Everyone knew him to be a genius. He too knew this, not as a matter of presumption or conceit, but as a proud matter of fact. He swung his hammer without guile, yet with ferocity. To create a work that was better—no, the best. An unprecedented masterpiece. A divine revelation!! He would enter that 

realm only one before in the history of Dwarf, his ancestor, had laid eyes on. His eyes reflected the back of that genius who had laid his fingers on creation—the alteration of concepts. He would reach that extreme none had approached in six thousand years. The man who kept piling up successes was the second coming of that sublimity. Everyone was certain he would be the next chieftain. Amidst all this, the man was hurling invective at a strange kid who was following him around:

“Hey… Get lost already, would ya, fockin’ brat?! You’re gettin’ in the way of my work!!”

“I’m not getting in the way, I’m not. I’m seducing my future husband, I am.”

The one contradicting him as if it was nothing was, at the time, a little girl. The one who called herself his future wife.

“If you think I’m getting in your way, that just proves you have feelings for me, doesn’t it, Uncle? Doesn’t it?!”

“Niecey, you’re gonna stand there winkin’ and blowin’ kisses at me like some bloody fool? I’ve feelings, harsh feelings!”

She was the precocious daughter of one of his older stepsisters, and she’d taken an inexplicable shine to him.

“I ain’t got no interest in some kid who ain’t even got any hair grown in yet—can’t bear to look at ya. Piss off,” he commanded.

The child shuddered at the man’s sharp one-eyed glare.

That was that. Everyone kept their distance from him. His eye had the gift of ending the conversation. Even children always grasped the point that he lived in a different world…until then…

“H-how do you know that I’m smooth?! Have you seen it?!”

But this child shuddered because she suspected he had looked at her naked. Incidentally, this was the fifth time this exchange had occurred. In other words—

“You peeped on me?! You licked me all over with your eyes, how can I get married now, you should take responsibility, and then I’ll be the wife of the chieftain, what a way to marry up, it is! Come, come, come, Mr. Sir? If you’ll marry me, I can show you my body aaany—”

“I can see from your face you ain’t got no beard, all right?! Don’t blush. Why are ya strippin’?!”

“Ah!! No, I don’t want to be the wife of some pervert who lusts after children, I don’t!!”

“Listen to me, will ya?! Wait, didn’t you just say you were seducing me? What do you want?!”

No matter how he tried to get rid of her, she kept coming. The man clutched his head.

—The hell’s with this fockin’ brat? His niece had a strange way with words. But more than anything, it was his own sense of discomfort that confused him. Never having experienced failure or discouragement, the feeling was altogether unfamiliar to him. It would be a while before he realized it was his first experience of anger.

“…Listen, Niecey. I’m a fockin’ genius. And that makes me a bloody fine man. You followin’ me?”

“Ah! S-so you mean, when I marry you, I’ll be a fine woman?!”

“Argh, that ain’t it at all. This is the problem. You ain’t good for me, is what I’m sayin’.”

Back then, he had concluded thus:

“You’ll never be a fine woman.”



“…Uh-huhhh… What is a fine woman…?”

“First of all, she’s an adult with hair. You’re out of the question. And she’s a woman who fits me. Let’s see… So first, she has big boobs. And then, if her spirit-arm craft ain’t at least on my level, I ain’t messin’ with that, either. Otherwise, hmm, she’s damn beautiful and damn chaste and damn sexy as far as I’m concerned. That’s what it means to be a fine woman.”

“…Uncle, that’s just a fantasy woman, it is.”

“Rngh?”

“I-I—I mean, there are no Dwarves with big boobs, there aren’t! And everything after the ‘Otherwise, hmm’ is exactly what my aunts told me virgins fantasize about, it is! Uncle, are you a virgin? By the way, what is a virgin?!”

“Shut up! What’s wrong with an outta-this-world man wanting an outta-this-world woman? Those fockin’ sisters of mine!!”

And then:

“Heh, you’re hopeless, you are. I’ll just have to become a fine woman for you, I will.”

……Suddenly…

“In another thirteen, I’ll be an adult, I will. I’ll be downright bushy, I will!! I’ll be beautiful, and oh so chaste, whatever that means, I will! Then you just have to get me sexy, and that’s that, it is!!”

…the child whose pale blue eyes sparkled as she spoke started to feel extremely dissatisfied.

“I’ll do my best to make spirit arms like you, I will. If you just give up on the big boobs, I’ll be such a fine woman, right in front of you! And I’ll help you stop being a virgin, I will!!”

She smiled as if to ask: So what is a virgin? He thrust back feelings he didn’t understand himself—

“It ain’t happening. Such a good-for-nothin’ ain’t ever gonna get how to make spirit arms.”

…And that—

was the man’s first misreading…

“……A good-for-nothing…? …What? You mean me…?”

…What? What’s with those teary eyes like you can’t believe what you just heard?! The man felt ever more uncomfortable.

“Wh-why nottt? I-I’ll d-do my best, I will.”

“Your best ain’t gonna do it…!! Why can’t you see?!”

Ah—the child truly didn’t understand.

Dwarf was a race that created exactly what it imagined. But she didn’t see that she didn’t see what he saw. She’d never even imagined she might not have talent. The man stood bewildered as to why that was so uncomfortable for him.

“…I…I just don’t—understand, I don’t… A-after all…”

She rebutted between sobs.

“…Uncle, you don’t understand why I don’t understand, you don’t!”

And at last the man had his answer.

'''“U-Uncle—you can’t overcome the limits of your own imagination, you can’t!!”'''

“R-really…I’ve already surpassed your imagination, by being unimaginable to you, I have. I’ll make a spirit arm that surpasses you easily… S-see, I’ve won the argument, I have!”

…Indeed…the man himself did not understand the child. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, what she was feeling, what…she was crying about… The man she admired over all others had told her she was good for nothing. But she argued against that absolute pronouncement and declared that she’d yet overcome it, weeping and despairing while her eyes burned with blue fire. It was that paradox that baffled the man who never strayed or erred:

…He feared that unimaginable child…

…The man had been born with outstanding sensibilities. They grasped even that divine realm only his ancestor had seen. And thereby he became the first in history to reach the extreme that in over six thousand years no one had been able to approach.

And then? What next?

The man could only imagine following in the footsteps of his ancestor, but still he had a hunch. Given all this, what was it that his ancestor had seen before he reached this realm?

He couldn’t have been a normal Dwarf. He must have been different, something unreadable, incomprehensible, unimaginable… Rather like that well-endowed lady his ancestor was said to have loved…or—

“I—I promise I’ll make a spirit arm that surpasses you, I do.”

—like the paradoxical child declaring this irresolute resolution—

“…Arright then. Go make a spirit arm that surpasses mine and bring it back here.”

—to overcome six thousand years of Dwarven stagnation…and the limits of sensibility—

“I’ll be here waiting for the damn fine woman who can beat me. It’s a promise.”

—to become a damn fine woman.

The man and the child joined pinkies in a solemn oath. He didn’t understand what was meant by her eyes, which looked up at him holding back tears. But he decided that, until he understood, until he was surpassed—he’d be the finest man imaginable…to be a good match for such a fine woman.

But the child fled…

She was still a paradox, while he still did not understand her at all, running even as he chased. The days and months passed idly—until one day…

…the man fell right into the trap of two strange Immanities. The otherworlders were winning while running from their past. The contradiction made the man sure: These two would know why the child ran.

…And his hunch was proven right. However—

“…A damn ham-fisted resolution… I was the one running, huh?”

—as their consciousnesses melded and the man touched the soul of the child from back then, he laughed at himself. He’d been called out on his limits—and he himself had run from overcoming them.

And from trying to imagine why the child had cried that day. Her eyes, heavy with unease, had sought—

—someone to be her place of belonging, to take her fumbling hand as she looked up to that sky where she knew she couldn’t fly…in that darkness as deep as her will. That was all… The man shouldn’t have waited to be surpassed. He should have sought with the child a way to surpass his limits.

“… Really? Is that really how it is? You were running? Are you sure?”

In their melding consciousnesses, the sarcastic laughter of a young man interrupted their thoughts.

“You think falling into the junk heap with Til and becoming like Shiro and me is not running? You think that’s being right? Yeah, maybe it is. But maybe it isn’t.”

Was the man running from his tab? From the paradoxical child who hoped for what he couldn’t imagine? From his paradoxical self who tried to understand a child he couldn’t? Chasing after the child who fled against his sensibilities that told him it was impossible, going so far as to put us on the hook…

So, what’s the difference between running and running from running…?