I didn’t mean to do this, but it ended up this way anyway. Raha became enchanted by me. He became addicted to my power and went mad over me. Now he clings to me while even casting aside his own natural order. I thought if he was separated from his connection with me, if he was isolated from my world, he’d be okay.
Instead, he withered from that sense of loss. Madness arose, and it gradually grew larger. But I can’t lift the veil again either. Raha doesn’t have the qualification to transcend his world and become something like me. Even if I want to do it for him.
No, I don’t want to. Humans have blessings permitted to humans. They’re most beautiful when enjoying these. I was too greedy. As expected, it’s my fault.
Raha must have felt something from my words, because he suddenly said with a normal face, as if declaring,
“No, I’m not crazy. I’m fine. Really.”
“I know. You’re just thirsty. Very, very much so.”
No, this is madness. He’s mad over me. I did something useless. I didn’t know the line of “moderation.” Just because he looked pretty, because he was pitiful, maybe because of the impatience to fill the space Miros left with anything.
I drove this beautiful child mad. With the absurd excuse of being afraid he’d die, afraid he’d hurt, wanting to see his pretty appearance, I committed an outrageous act.
“You said you’d do anything!”
“I clearly said. As long as I can make it happen, and as long as you won’t get hurt.”
“I’m fine!”
“No. If you die like that, I’ll be truly, truly sad.”
“I won’t die. I can stay pretty.”
“That’s nonsense.”
He’ll live longer than the average human standard, but he can’t escape mortality. That’s the price of natural order. Beings with natural order pay with the end of their life. Raha will be the same.
“Is there something you want to eat?”
“…Don’t run away.”
“I’ve never done that. I can tell you many times. I’m just being considerate so you can rest because I see you struggling.”
Raha is an existence that dies even just by breathing. To me, time is just something that flows, but to Raha, it’s very precious. I know that much. I’m just regretful.
“I’m doing this because it’s a waste to spend your precious time in vain.”
But Raha didn’t seem to understand my heart at all. It’s sad.
***
Raha’s case is different from Miros’s. This is a really serious problem.
In Miros’s case, he was in the stage of coming to desire me, but it was ultimately based on human instinct. He perceived me with human thought and awareness.
However, Raha perceived me as ‘kin.’ Of the same world as me—though faint, he came to share his world with mine and synchronized with it. Raha is human, yet he’s trying to become the same kind as me, who is not human. He wants to become the same as me and be subordinated to my world.
It’s not a domain humans can enter, not a space they can endure, yet he rushes in disregarding everything about himself. This is truly terrible.
How did he come to this idea? I stopped him from doing it, and he went mad. He’s withering. At this rate, he’ll die soon. Even if I maintain his life force, it’s useless. His mind will collapse. No, it’s already collapsing.
“…I think I said something I shouldn’t have. I didn’t know it would become this serious.”
Havi, who came to visit after a while, felt very sorry seeing the state of my nest. He seemed to think it was because of him. He thinks this disaster happened because he told me to take in a new human.
I said firmly to Havi,
“It’s not your fault. I was just short-sighted. Even though I knew human endurance was trivial, I thought it would be fine if I strengthened the body. I just reinforced that fragile vessel to make it sturdy. I didn’t think about the hardness of humans themselves. It’s my fault for not considering the fragility of the mind.”
In the end, it’s all my fault. I drove something normal mad. I thought the mind would follow if the body was robust, but it wasn’t. This is an accident that occurred because I didn’t properly understand Havi’s warning that explained the human body and mind are separate things.
Havi expressed that the human body is a vessel, and the mind is the water contained in it. Even though he explained so wonderfully that they’re together but clearly different, I didn’t properly recognize it.
“You did nothing wrong. Don’t be so downcast.”
This is separate from this regrettable situation. Havi warned me more than enough—to the point of seeming excessive—many times. I’m the one who took it lightly and ignored it, and I’m the one who ultimately created the problem in this situation.
Havi just wanted to comfort me. He wanted me to recover through a new human because I was struggling so much. In fact, that was quite useful. But Raha was consumed by my power, and so he went mad. It’s because I was too complacent. It’s my fault for not considering Raha’s unprepared mind.
“What are you going to do with that child?”
Where Havi pointed, Raha was sleeping.
I put him to sleep. His body was getting damaged from crying and throwing tantrums all day, so I put him to sleep first so he couldn’t harm himself. He wasn’t trying to die physically, but from my perspective, it was clear self-abuse. Seeing him eat away at himself hurt my heart, so I couldn’t help it.
“That one received even a little of your power, right? Did he fall asleep that easily?”
“It’s also because winter is approaching. Because of my power, he seems to be synchronizing to some degree.”
“…Right. Most things that take root sleep in winter. Though there are some that endure almost like sleeping.”
Autumn is called the season of abundance. That’s what humans call it. Because it’s the time when everything bears fruit. In fact, there are plenty of things that bear fruit in spring and summer too. But no matter how late, they don’t go past autumn.
Because next is winter. Winter is a time to endure. It’s a period to conserve strength and endure for survival, for the next spring. So most things finish preparing by autumn. They vomit forth fruit and scatter seeds, drop their leaves to reduce loss of strength and prepare for frost.
From the humans’ perspective, they can obtain the most fruit, so it might seem abundant. I still don’t know why they speak of abundance even knowing winter comes next.
With a heavy heart, I thought this and that, then finally managed to speak.
“I’m thinking of waking the ‘Nightmare-Eating Whale.'”
“Does it have to be to that extent?”
“More than you think, that one was close to me.”
“Haa, goodness. Why did you go that far?”
“I was afraid he’d die.”
At Havi’s sigh, I obediently admitted my fault.
“Perhaps this result was destined from the beginning. I tried to fill the sense of loss from sending Miros away with Raha. I had no right to nag Raha.”
Raha made me his salvation. He came to revere me, to praise me. He became enchanted by me and went mad. But in the end, this is all my fault. I saw Miros through Raha. No, that’s meaningless now.
“Raha is Raha. I haven’t forgotten Miros, but I liked Raha.”
What a cunning thing the heart is. Am I becoming assimilated to humans, or was this cunning selfishness hidden all along so I didn’t know? It could be both. What use is it to question that now?
“Raha is a pretty child.”
“That’s true.”
“That pretty child went mad because of me.”
“So you’re going to call the ‘Nightmare-Eating Whale’? That eats too much. It’ll harm you.”
I know. I’ve watched the Nightmare-Eating Whale for a very long time and know it well. By current standards, those who know it better than I do can be counted on one hand. Partly because most have left, but it’s something that old. Though it’s an existence of a completely different nature from me.
The Nightmare-Eating Whale devours anything. In return, it grants wishes equivalent to what it devoured. It’s a very powerful existence that can ignore the will of the world and turn delusions into reality. That’s precisely why it’s neither this nor that—it’s nothing.
There’s the minor problem that one must handle the cause and effect that arises separately from the eating, but anyway, you can’t get a more magnificent and absurd miracle anywhere else.
“Can’t you just erase and overwrite the memory like with that first child?”
“Regrettably, no. Not only is the resonance considerable because he received my power, but his mind is already collapsing. It won’t end with simply becoming an idiot. He might go ‘bang’ and burst. Maybe he could become one gigantic ‘curse’ in itself. A very powerful wish that can’t be eliminated unless I directly annihilate it.”
There’s really nothing I can do now. Raha is barely maintaining human form. If I leave him any longer, he might really become something beyond specification.
“I loved this child more than I recognized. My love became a calamity for Raha.”
Calamity. There’s no other word to express it. I’m fortunate I can stop it even now. I’m fortunate that I admitted it late, that I realized it even now. It’s still okay. If it’s now, I can turn it back.
I looked at the sleeping Raha and sighed.
“I really, really hate this, but I can’t help it. I have to return Raha to the human world.”
“…Just, you could let him transform as he is, turn him into something like us. That one said he wanted that too.”
“Right now Raha is like that because he’s mad over me. He’ll regret it soon.”
