One brief pressure against his lips had been enough.
That much was excessive for assessing the situation.
Levia was surprised. It was a surprise completely unrelated to the fluttering humans spoke of. First thing to check: had the child gone mad, or was the structure faulty? Was it madness, a backflow of Resonance, or a crack he’d once missed now finally revealed?
The first emotion that arose wasn’t fluttering or insult. It was calculation. Was that sexual, or a mutation of attachment that had lost its direction? When mortals turned toward mortals, it resulted in reproduction and packs. But he himself was origin and proof, an existence not permitted conception or clustering.
So the act the child had just shown was either interspecies curiosity, distortion leaked from Resonance, or both. Either way, the ending was bad. If the child desired the same world as him, the child would break. That was a rule observed since long ago.
“Has our child gone mad?”
Levia muttered very quietly. One hovering Dryad asked back.
—Gone mad?
—…Don’t jump to conclusions. It might just be a simple malfunction.
How foolish. Even though it was his own words, when someone asked back, he denied it again. The Dryad tilted its head.
—Then fix it?
—That’s right…. I should fix it. Before it breaks.
When the Dryad’s innocent question disappeared, silence returned. ‘Madness’ was human language, and to Levia ‘madness’ meant bias that loses oneself, that is, a crack in proof. Cracks create gaps, and gaps draw in water. The impulse the child had just shown was close to the first rush of water pouring into that gap. Whether you called it sexuality or not, the core of the problem lay elsewhere.
Why himself, of all people, also needed to be examined. Levia had loved Miros. It was more than simply cherishing him. Yes, he admitted it. The child would have learned that affection as love.
But was this possible? He himself was absolute. Though fleeting, Miros had witnessed his true form. Was it possible to have sexuality toward such a self? Wasn’t it fortunate if he didn’t die?
No, it might be a simple impulse. Perhaps it wasn’t sexual interest at all.
—Progenitor, that one’s sleeping now.
—…I’m thinking.
—Not fixing it now?
—I’ll fix it in the morning. I said so.
Levia reorganized the movement from just before into numbers again. He opened the drawer of memory and took out the methods of past treatments. Before, rather than driving the child to idiocy, he’d decided to just disconnect the seams and paint over only the dangerous pieces. He’d hung a thin veil, snipped a few connection points between emotion and memory with little cuts. He’d left the minimum sentences and functions needed to live. That had been the best way.
However, the child had returned. He’d found a path that shouldn’t have been in his memory, and his eyes carried starlight again. The conclusion naturally followed that a thin veil wouldn’t be enough this time.
Why was he displeased? This question arrived late. To be precise, it was bewilderment rather than displeasure. He wasn’t perfect, but he was an existence close to it. The fact that such a self had been degraded to a ‘sexual object’ by a human was shocking.
Regrettably, this love was a mistaken act. The child would stake himself as collateral on love without guarantee. And collateral was eventually collected. That future was drawn too easily.
Levia quietly closed his eyes and opened them. The calculation was finished. Danger and cost, result and possibility. Which was greater: the predicted destruction or the danger of idiocy? Before, idiocy had been the greater danger. Not now. The current danger was the impulse itself—the child trying to bind him with the grammar of sexuality and reach the absolute. If that impulse grew, the child’s language would collapse first. Next would be memory, last would be existence. The order might differ, but the ending was the same.
He quietly let his decision settle into a sentence. This time, erase it completely. Not a thin veil but a thick barrier. Not painting over but severing. Cut off both the path from emotion to memory and the path from memory to name. Remove the markers pointing to himself from the child’s interior as if erasing them from a map, then reconstruct that place with neutral events and harmless sensations. No connections, no more regression.
When Levia raised his head, one Dryad rummaged through fallen leaves and approached again.
—Fix it?
—Yeah. That’s safest.
—Will it hurt?
—A little. But I can make it hurt less.
—Don’t like breaking.
—Me neither.
Levia folded and unfolded his finger once. Along the texture of Resonance, the inside and outside of the nest rang very softly. It was the sound of determination touching the world. To save the child, he had to sever the language by which the child reached him. This wasn’t punishment but an old duty, the work of a guarantor. He whispered very briefly to himself.
This time, so you can’t return. So you can live properly.
***
Night sank and the sun rose, yet the door remained as it was.
The air current of the nest had changed. Though the dawn moisture and the trembling of leaf veins changed soundlessly, the threshold between the two people didn’t move an inch.
Levia waited in front of the door. Because they’d made a promise.
“Miros.”
Even at Levia’s call, there was no answer. From inside the door, there was still only silence.
Miros sat at the edge of the bed, having washed his hands about five times and drunk water about seven times throughout the night. The sensation remaining on the tip of his tongue wasn’t erased by water. Miros didn’t close the window. He felt suffocated. His hand wouldn’t go to the doorknob. If I go out now, I feel like I’ll break down more. So he didn’t go out.
Even when morning came, neither of them moved.
Movement occasionally transmitted from beyond the door. Levia closed his eyes and opened them. He could have raised his hand to knock on the door, but the promise came first.
Time flowed askew like an untuned instrument.
Around noon when the sun hung in the middle, as the shadows shortened, the scents changed, and the shadows began to lengthen again, Levia stood up. The promise had ended.
“I’m sorry.”
Levia’s voice rang low in front of the door.
“This time I’ll do it properly.”
What are you saying? As soon as Levia’s words ended, a loud clattering sound erupted. It was so violent that the door trembled faintly. Breath caught inside. The sound of the lock clicking open.
Miros opened the door almost bursting out. Still dizzy, still hot.
“What the hell are you saying right now?”
Levia didn’t tilt his head or move his eyebrows. There were no ripples in his voice.
“I’ve decided to completely erase your memories even at the risk of danger.”
The air flipped all at once. Miros’s eyes flashed.
“By whose authority! I told you not to!”
Miros strode forward. His shoulders heaved, and both hands protested silently. Last night’s confusion and this morning’s hesitation gathered in one place and turned to anger.
“How I’ve lived, what you gave me and what you took away! I explained it! You’re going to—!!”
“I know.”
Levia’s answer was a single stroke.
“That’s why I’m going to end it. So you won’t break down because of me anymore.”
“You get to decide that?!”
Miros ground his teeth.
“You’re going to do that again? Completely this time? Tear up my entire head—!”
“Miros.”
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t scolding. He simply stopped him by calling his name.
“I understand you’re angry. But right now this is something that needs to be handled.”
Levia’s hand rose. An unknowable force spread quietly. The Dryads withdrew far away. At the strange air current, Miros stepped back half a step.
“Don’t.”
Miros breathed through his shoulders. His heels gripped the floor.
“I told you not to. This time, really….”
“Sleep well.”
Before the words of refusal could even finish, a scream-like sound disappeared.
His eyelids collapsed, the tendons in his knees loosened, and the rhythm of his heartbeat stretched out long. Miros’s fingertips scratched the air once, and he fell forward.
Levia received Miros’s body without much effort.
And he laid him down so Miros wouldn’t bump into anything, so his scars wouldn’t pull as much, so his neck wouldn’t bend. New wrinkles formed on the bed. Levia lowered his head and looked down at sleeping Miros’s face for a moment.
Fatigue pooled beneath his eyes. The flesh swollen from last night’s heat hadn’t cooled yet. His lips were closed, and his hands had stopped while groping over his chest like an instinct.
“I’m sorry.”
This apology wasn’t an explanation. It was a notice.
Levia opened his hand once and closed it again. And slowly, very slowly, he prepared to lift his veil.
With the intention of handling what needed to be handled.
He had to erase it.
Levia told himself once more. This choice was violence. But it was also the last method of the love he possessed. Rather than pulling him into Eternity and preserving him, he had to return human time and choice to Miros. Even if Miros was a child who received the Star, Levia believed that proof had to arise from oneself.
Levia looked down at sleeping Miros. Even breathing, hair fallen below his ear, faint traces that brought to mind the place of eyes that had once been empty. Levia’s fingertips carefully touched above Miros’s forehead.
“Miros, I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose you…. So I’m trying to return it. Your time, your pack, your name.”
What trembled longer than the words was hesitation. Severing memories was dangerous, and if it failed, Miros might collapse. Still, Levia decided to bear it. If you loved, you had to take responsibility.
Levia gathered his strength very slowly. The sensation of groping and untying the knots of memory one by one. Miros’s pain to a minimum, Miros’s outline as it was. Fine heat formed on Levia’s palm.
Then, the stillness flipped. Sound was pressed down, wind flowed backward. The nest’s shadow folded inward.
Levia knew instinctively.
[Someone has summoned me.]
There was no time to resist. Levia chose first. Not to let go of Miros. Levia’s hand reached a little deeper toward sleeping Miros.
At the very moment his fingertips were about to brush Miros’s eyebrow, the direction of force changed. The surroundings contracted as if a sheet of light folded, the roots curled inward and stole his footing. The Dryads’ breath was locked somewhere.
Levia looked at Miros until the last moment. His fingertips that hadn’t reached remained in the air.
And he disappeared.
What remained were the twisted wrinkles of the bed, Miros’s even breathing, and only the faint warmth of the spot where Levia had been sitting.
