A cautious voice emerged. It was a question I hadn’t anticipated even myself. Levia didn’t answer. After remaining still for a long while, he spoke very briefly but definitively.
“You’ll be able to decide that.”
At those words, I put down the charcoal again. I felt my fingertips trembling. A very faint tremor. A thrill as if something was touching me. Neither cold nor hot, but a sensation that shook something somewhere inside me.
I looked at Levia cautiously. Levia wasn’t looking at me. He was still looking at the drawing. But that gaze seemed to be looking at me beyond the drawing.
I tilted the drawing back. Giving the drawing my attention was no longer comfortable. No, I was anxious.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Somehow, I became afraid.”
“Why?”
I looked at the drawing I’d made. The throne, the sword, that person. Everything was heading somewhere. Toward that place I didn’t know. And with the premonition that I might have to follow that direction someday, this silence suddenly felt anxious.
“Was this… originally inside me?”
I opened my mouth. It was a question that came out without my knowledge. I didn’t think before uttering it. A doubt that had suddenly surfaced just flowed past my lips.
Levia didn’t turn his head. He answered while continuing to look at the drawing.
“How would I know? You have all the answers. If you try to see, you’ll see. If not, it can’t be helped.”
Those words seemed ordinary yet were strange. Had I known such things from the time I was born? These forms. These emotions. This blank space. And this silence.
The figure in the drawing was silent. Neither the seat nor the sword held moved. But something inside me kept shaking. Anxiety raised its head that I had to go somewhere that wasn’t here.
“Is it okay… to stay in this forest for a long time?”
Such words suddenly came out. This time Levia looked at me. His gaze left the drawing and moved to my face.
I didn’t avoid his eyes. At least for that moment.
Levia nodded very quietly.
“If you’re okay with it, there’s no problem here.”
At those words I drew in breath. Strangely, I felt relieved. Even though it was such a plain answer. What those words contained was unconditional acceptance.
I looked at the drawing again. I drew in one more figure standing beside the throne. I didn’t know who it was. It was a figure wearing a cloak, with no particular weapon in hand. Instead, the gaze was looking toward the throne. As if watching.
I stopped my hand very slowly.
Levia sat beside me without saying anything. Just having that being beside me spread a strange sense of relief.
“What… do you think I am?”
I asked. It was a question that came out only after the drawing was nearly complete.
Levia was silent for a long while. As if deliberately letting that question resonate inside me.
Then in a low voice, he left just one word.
“Elion.”
Those words had no interpretation, no meaning, no explanation. It was just a name. I still couldn’t be certain whether that name was the right name for me, but at least for that moment, it was sufficient as a word designating me.
“That’s all I know. What does it matter now? Isn’t it all the same anyway?”
I didn’t ask any further. Levia didn’t add anything more.
The drawing was quietly propped against the wooden wall. There was no sense of completion, but for now, this was enough.
***
I wiped my hands, regulated my breathing, and looked once more at the drawing beside my bed.
Was this a memory or a fantasy? Even if that truth was revealed later, only the fact that I drew it in this moment would remain.
Night came. Darkness pressed deep between the trees, but Levia’s nest was still warm. The moss-covered ground, pebbles where light spread, and quiet presence.
I lay down on the bed. When I turned my body, I could see in Levia’s direction. Levia was still sitting. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed or if he’d fallen asleep without closing them. But he was there. Not moving, not leaving either.
Would I dream tonight? Or would the figures in the drawing start to move? If someone sat on the throne, would I be able to recognize that face?
Tomorrow another memory might surface. Or a completely different drawing might be drawn.
But for now I decided to do nothing.
In the midst of all that silence, there was one person beside me who had called my name.
That was, strangely enough, reason enough to quietly cross a very long night.
***
Flames surged. The sensation of a battlefield tangled with smoke, blood, and screams struck against my skin. The old flag was torn on the shattered ramparts, and the sword in my hand settled heavily, soaked with dust and blood. Someone shouted. Very close by, but I couldn’t see who it was.
“Cavalry to the left, archers on top of the gate! Now!”
It was my voice. It wasn’t me. It was clearly me, but something inside me that wasn’t the current me gave orders. Soldiers moved, enemies swarmed, and between them I swung my sword.
Someone shouted at me.
“Kill that one by any means necessary! If he returns, it’s all over!”
At that moment, I knew who that person was. But just as I tried to look, the battlefield twisted. Memories shattered like fragments covered my vision, and bursting shouts and the stench of blood cut off my breath.
When I opened my eyes while sitting up, it was already morning.
My breathing was rough. Cold sweat ran down the nape of my neck, and my hands trembled finely. The pain as if my whole body had been swept away had already disappeared, but its lingering echo was clearly lodged somewhere inside me.
It was a dream. But it wasn’t a simple nightmare. It was sensation. Fear that wasn’t foreign, too familiar. I knew that smell of blood.
I remembered everything.
I stopped trying to sit up to collect myself. I felt a gaze. When I turned my head, Levia was there.
“Why? Does it hurt?”
He was standing in front of the nest’s wall, in front of the drawing I’d made, not knowing what to do. Levia gave me a worried look and seemed to be slowly waiting for my breathing to calm.
I barely regulated my breathing and straightened my back from the bed. And I opened my mouth without even being conscious of it myself.
“Was that… all my memory?”
It was a question asking who I had been. Whether what I saw was really me, whether what I’d done was correct. Or whether it was just an illusion created by repeated nightmares.
Levia didn’t answer. He just quietly took one step toward me. And in a very low and slow tone he said.
“Did you have a scary dream? What kind of dream was it? That’s strange. It didn’t rain all night, and there was no lightning either. What did you see to be like that? Did your memory return?”
Those words contained no judgment, no correct answer. I was momentarily at a loss for words. My memory. I found those words even more frightening.
“If that’s… really true.”
The end of my words trailed off. The voice that sank heavily sounded unfamiliar even to myself. Levia looked straight at my face. His gaze was quiet and affirmed nothing.
“If it’s really true, then I was that kind of human, wasn’t I? Shouting to kill people, saying they must be killed….”
A suffocating sensation surged again. When I spread my fingers, they were still trembling faintly. Those were hands that had gripped a sword. In the dream, those hands hadn’t been afraid and hadn’t hesitated.
“If that’s a memory, I… can’t deny it.”
I murmured quietly. It was the first time I’d brought out words that had been pooled inside me. Levia was still standing before me. Then, he slowly shook his head.
“Is that bad? Everyone fights originally. To survive, for something better, to get what they want. I don’t know exactly what dream you had or what memory you recalled. But you must have done it because you had to. Isn’t that right? Did you dislike it?”
“…I was afraid. That I was… like that….”
“I see. That’s possible.”
Levia didn’t speak falsely. But the words that followed were a bit different. With an understanding older than words, Levia added.
“But the current you won’t do that, right?”
Those words caught me head-on. The memory could be real. The blood, the war, the orders could all have been things I did. But the current me didn’t choose that again. The memory followed me, but it didn’t define me.
I drew in breath. Those words were so clear they felt rather unreal. And at that moment, I realized the emotion I’d been holding onto until just now had been an unbearable weight.
Levia asked me with a face full of worry.
“Does it hurt? Will you be okay? Was it that big a shock?”
I didn’t know in what sense he was asking. Even these simple words were hard to properly perceive. Levia carefully reached out his hand and brushed up my hair, saying.
“Did you dislike it that much?”
And when I thought he was giving his attention to the drawing I’d produced again, he turned it over completely. Had that been standing up? I don’t know. I’m in a daze.
“It seems your soul might crack. The trembling is… severe.”
I momentarily stopped breathing at those words. That wasn’t a simple metaphor. He saw through the anxiety and confusion I myself couldn’t understand.
I got up from where I was sitting. My body was heavier than usual. My legs tingled and my chest was still stuffy. But I felt like I couldn’t endure it if I didn’t move.
I carefully moved my feet toward the drawing. The charcoal marks I’d drawn over the past few days—swords, armor, throne, and one by one the forms of people came into view. The images I’d drawn that night still remained as they were, and now those forms seemed to overlap with the wreckage I’d seen in my dream.
The cloaked figure standing beside the throne. Who was that person? I recalled the memory of stopping while trying to draw someone more beside them. Perhaps… in that empty seat, the ‘one who must be killed’ who appeared in today’s dream might sit.
“Can war… be justified?”
I uttered such words without knowing. I couldn’t distinguish whether it was a question or a soliloquy. After a brief silence, Levia raised his head.
