That memory wasn’t a complete image. The stickiness of blood remaining on my fingertips, the mud that had wrapped around my ankles, the pressure of the freezing air that touched my back. I fled, hid, and at the end reached an alien respite. That was this place.
I tried to regulate my breathing, but it wasn’t easy. Returning to the nest, I immediately stood before the wooden board. The drawing I’d made days ago and turned away from was still standing in that place. Patterns roughly rubbed on with colored ink, lines that forced forms into being.
But now I knew what it was.
It was part of a flag I’d seen on the battlefield. The symbol of the unit I’d led, and the mark of orders. I hadn’t forgotten it, and even after losing my memory, my hands had recreated it first. That moment when I’d given direct orders and brought about someone’s death.
I gasped roughly and grabbed the wooden board. My trembling fingertips ran over the roughly painted colors. Tears welled up, my vision blurred, and my lips trembled. And I collapsed right there and swept the drawings together.
All the wooden boards I’d drawn during this time. Things where I’d carved following patterns, added colors, and drawn designs. They were traces of hands that had sustained me in this place. But now they were overwhelming. This wasn’t recovery but oblivion. The respite built on erasing the truth was no longer respite.
I kicked aside the colored ink rolling around with my foot. I swept together every piece I could grab. The tears that had gathered at my eyes fell one by one. The sensation of evaporating as if holding heat the moment they touched the floor. This was crying. The soot soon became tears.
With my waist bent, I groped the floor with my hands. My palm covered in colored ink scratched over the wooden pieces. Each time I drew breath, the back of my neck tingled numbly. The me who had endured inside this nest all this time couldn’t handle this one small piece now. One piece, two pieces. The color remaining on them had already faded, and some were broken. I held them as if embracing them to my chest.
Because they felt like the things I couldn’t protect.
“What is… what is all this…? Why…?”
Words leaked out. As soon as I uttered them, my breath broke. I covered my mouth with my hand. But the emotion didn’t stop. The crying that had been rising up my spine opened my throat and boiled over. My shoulders trembled and my chest tightened. I could no longer endure.
“What was I supposed to do!”
A scream burst out. I collapsed as if crumbling onto the moss-covered floor. My fingertips struck the floor. With a dull sound, the colored ink broke and pieces scattered. The things I’d made were broken by my own hands. Wood powder lodged under my nails and blood seeped out, but I didn’t stop.
The crying burst out roughly, and my whole body gasped for breath. With my sullied hands I grabbed the wooden boards and dragged them beside the embers. And with trembling hands, one by one, I put them inside. I opened my eyes, watching the colored surface burn away. The tears were drying up.
“I, no I… what should I have done?”
I didn’t want to leave anything anymore. Because I knew how precarious and cowardly the respite I’d made while forgetting the past I couldn’t handle had been.
The flames spread quietly. The pieces burned away quickly, and the colors disappeared as if melting and flowing in the heat. Smoke rose low and seeped near the ceiling. I knelt sitting before it, gazing at the fire without even blinking.
At some point I heard footsteps. It was Levia. Levia didn’t approach closely and stopped at a place quite far away.
I turned my face toward Levia.
“This place, from the start it wasn’t my place, was it?”
My voice was hoarse and my eyes were hot, but my consciousness was clear. I was someone who had fled, and I’d been forgetting that all this time.
Levia spoke slowly.
“Why do you say that?”
“…Right. Why did I ask you such a thing?”
What answer did I want to hear? What words did I want to hear from him when I asked? I don’t know. He wasn’t making a fuss like usual, and didn’t seem angry or surprised either. He just quietly looked at the disaster I’d made.
I felt no emotion.
“Why the drawings? Weren’t they enjoyable?”
“Now, I don’t know.”
“You keep just saying you don’t know.”
It was strange because I felt nothing. What was he thinking? How did I look? He’d provided everything to me without cost. He’d even asked if I wanted anything more. But I couldn’t answer any of it.
When I had no memory, because I didn’t know; now that everything had surfaced, because I had nothing.
Levia seemed to think for a moment, then looked at shabby me calmly and said.
“This is my nest, and I permitted you. You wanted it too. If you’re talking about ‘your people’s’ agreement, I have no idea at all.”
Those words had no correct answer or judgment. It was simply a fact I couldn’t deny. That I’d been here, lived, and found stability while losing my memory. That was my time that no one could take away.
I closed my eyes and drew in breath. Inside my lungs were still full of smoke. But now I could breathe.
Levia didn’t approach any further. Silence settled heavily. But that weight didn’t crush me. Rather, it seemed to quietly embrace me.
I slowly raised my body. As I passed stepping on the ashes at my feet, the remnants of pieces crumbled with a crunching sound. The crying had stopped, and my heart slowly regained its pulse. I stared at somewhere far beyond.
The forest was still the same. Between those trees, the place where I’d collapsed came dimly to mind. The moment when, after shaking off pursuers, this forest had embraced my body as my breath was giving out. I didn’t die and was alive. And now, along with my memories, I’d returned to that beginning.
Levia still said nothing to me. That was his way. An attitude that neither pushed me away nor held me back. I rather felt consolation within that.
I had a path I had to walk again. Not flight but steps. I began to think of that path myself. The thought of having to leave the forest outside approached me not as flight but as ‘return.’
That I’d regained my memory was in order to leave.
But leaving wasn’t immediately the end. If I could return again someday, that would be my real steps.
I murmured lowly to myself.
I am now not a person fleeing.
***
The fire had already gone out. The wooden boards had all become ash, and the colors had completely disappeared. The dizzy sensation had settled, but hadn’t completely settled. I sat before those remnants and just breathed for a long time without doing anything.
The powder lodged in my fingertips wasn’t erased, and the slowly tightening sense of alienation didn’t disappear. However, I now knew what it was. I’d recalled the truth, destroyed because of it, and was now collecting the emotions remaining after that.
I hadn’t left yet. I was here. But this place was no longer a place for me. Knowing was sometimes harder than enduring. When I didn’t know, I just had to breathe, but now I had to weigh the meaning of even breathing.
I slowly rose from where I was sitting. There was no strain in moving my body, and strength entered my legs. Even though I’d collapsed like that yesterday, today I could walk again. That the sense of alienation and adaptation to reality could coexist—I was realizing that now.
Inside the nest was quiet. Levia was somewhere, but wasn’t visible. He was always like that. Without approaching me or turning his back, he always remained nearby. I took out one of the clothes hanging on the wall and put it on. It was one of the clothes Levia had given me. Cloth woven from soft, light fiber. The sensation of it wrapping my body was familiar yet unfamiliar.
I opened the wardrobe once more. Deep inside, the clothes I’d been wearing when I first came here caught my eye. Unfamiliar but definitely mine. Already washed long ago, they held faded colors and were quietly folded with seams burst here and there.
They were proof I’d been alive on the battlefield. Traces of that moment when I’d fled with someone’s blood on me, carrying both death and survival on my back simultaneously. Though clean now, the memories of that time seemed to have soaked thoroughly between the fabric.
I took them out and spread them on my palm. And carefully unfolded the cloth, layering it over the clothes I was wearing now. Not everything. Just one layer. It was the act of simultaneously wearing the warm sensation of this place and the weight of the outside world I’d lived in. I wanted to leave only as much weight as I could bear.
I heard footsteps. I didn’t turn around. It was Levia. Without calling separately, he was here. I still showed him my back and opened my mouth while adjusting the collar of those clothes.
“Why don’t you hold me back?”
Silence filled the space briefly. And the voice that soon came was low and quiet.
“You’ve never wanted it.”
I turned my head. Levia had approached one step closer. Naturally, as if he’d been there from the start.
“It can’t be helped.”
Those words held neither forced emotion nor regret. Like a petal floating on water, the words were light but distinct. That was Levia’s way.
“I’d like it if you just stayed with me continuously. You’re pretty, and I enjoy watching you like that. But that’s why you have to go back. I don’t want to acknowledge it, but I seem to have grown attached. So I can’t preserve you here anymore.”
“…Because I’m pretty?”
Finding something funny in those words, Levia giggled and said.
“Yes. Because you’re pretty. You’re too precious for me to preserve and display you.”
I turned my head and looked at the wall again. There were still traces of wooden pieces stuck there that hadn’t been erased. Knowing what they meant, I could no longer avoid them.
“At first I was afraid.”
It took time to utter those words while moving my lips. But once I brought them out, my heart that had been keeping its mouth shut all this time began to slowly show cracks.
“When I realized you… weren’t human, I was afraid. When you first spoke to me too. Because I didn’t know anything, but you seemed to know all about me.”
“That can’t be. I definitely asked. Who you were and why you came here.”
“…I must not have remembered because I was out of it.”
“That’s possible. You weren’t intact originally, and your breath gave out once as soon as you saw me.”
Somehow the voice saying those words gave a melancholy feeling. Even though he was clearly smiling.
“It might have been from then.”
At those words Levia tilted his head. He looked like he was half-smiling, but within it were even more complex emotions hidden in layers.
“It’s really strange. Whenever my gaze touched, at some point you were always there.”
I lowered my head. My fingers naturally brushed over my arm. Sensation seemed to remain in a place that wasn’t even bruised.
“I don’t mean the fear disappeared. Just that now… I know it’s not only fear.”
The moment I brought out these words, somewhere in my heart crumbled a little. I’d acknowledged it. That I’d been leaning on this place. On this nest and the being called Levia within it.
“You were comfort to me.”
That was a clear confession. Even without putting the name ‘love’ on it, this was sufficiently emotion. I didn’t deny it.
Levia erased his smile and looked at me with an expressionless face, then slowly nodded.
“I haven’t done anything. I’ve only adorned you prettily, but you didn’t like that.”
“…You knew?”
“Still, I’m grateful you obediently accepted it.”
Levia waved his hand in the air, making a gesture as if drawing something. Perhaps it was a gesture of gathering something. At Levia’s movement, the Dryads who’d been hovering around made rustling sounds. Were they saying something?
“It’s really strange and fascinating. Human emotions are sometimes more precise than time. I can’t know, but I know they’re vivid.”
Those words held both tenderness and coldness simultaneously. An attitude that accepted me but didn’t define me. Levia had always been such a being.
“Then… you’ll remember me, right?”
I asked cautiously. And unable to wait for the following answer, I added again.
“Even if I leave, you’ll be here. Right?”
Levia turned his gaze briefly. His gaze brushed outside the window, and a light breeze seeped over the moss.
“I’ll be here. Like now, always. If your time passes through this forest, it won’t be only mine anymore.”
Those words were consistent. I exhaled a breath of relief. And suddenly, words I wanted to ask came to mind.
“Can you… notice if I want to see you again?”
At my words Levia didn’t answer. Instead he approached one step and met my gaze. In his pupils was a pattern that spread like leaf veins. Like the surface of a living plant, it was always in that place and trembling faintly.
“I can sense what you desire. That doesn’t mean I can know everything. However, I’m thinking of trying not to look as much as possible. Because my gaze alone might influence your causality. Nevertheless, if I miss you too much… I might secretly peek.”
His words held no expectation or coercion. A way of releasing just one possibility. Those weren’t words holding me back, nor words making me distant.
I nodded. And quietly turned around.
I picked up a cloak hanging in a corner. It was clothes resembling what I’d first worn here. My fingertips wrapped the cloth and naturally rested it on my shoulders. I was surprisingly calm to myself.
***
There was nothing to pack. I left nothing here. No, perhaps I was leaving everything behind. Objects, pieces, drawings. The emotions I had within them were no longer only mine.
When I stepped out moving like that, Levia didn’t follow. But the moment I crossed the boundary, his voice came like the wind.
“Thank you. Elion.”
It was like words that weren’t sending someone away, but quietly collecting the time spent together. I nodded again and put strength in my toes.
“I won’t forget you.”
The forest was still quiet. The sky was clear without a single cloud, and the trees were too tranquil to be sending something away. But within it, I was feeling the decision I’d made.
“I’ll definitely come back.”
Those words resonated inside me. And I slowly placed one foot toward the forest.
I know. The air, light, and sensations of this place will remain inside me. Someday, they might lead me again. Though Levia didn’t say it, he would know too.
I murmured lowly to myself.
I can leave while remembering you. And if I can come again someday, then it’s no longer flight.
