"It took a long time for me to sit here and write this again. A lot has happened. There were times I thought I never wanted to leave another record. But in the end, I picked up my pen again and found some paper, because if my guess is correct, one day, this might help someone. No... maybe itâs more accurate to say I hope it will."
The ridiculous feeling Yuder had felt the moment he read the first sentence vanished in an instant. He continued reading the rest of the writing.
"There is something I want to write down first. Maybe whoever reads this in the future will dismiss it as a fantasy, or a delusion. And maybe... they wouldnât be wrong. But whatâs important is that when I first heard this story, I believed it with all my heart, without a single doubt."
Yuder felt a strange premonition, as if he already knew what would come next. And the writing that followed proved that feeling to be right.
"From being born a child abandoned under a lemon tree, to awakening a power unlike others, to giving it the name of magic, and to becoming the magician who stood at the right hand of a new emperorâit took a very long time. It wasnât an easy journey, but I never felt it was unbearable, because there was always one friend by my side."
"Yes. The only friend who recognized and guided me. The first person who told me I didnât have to be ashamed of my power. Someone who never flinched no matter what happened, and a mysterious existence who supported the path of myself and other magicians. My lord, who gave me children connected by soul, though I could bear no heirs of my own."
"I used to think that his calm, as if he knew everything in the world, that gentle and sorrowful smile he always gave me, and even his extraordinary abilities, were all simply things he had been born with. At least, until the day death approached him, when he confessed that it wasnât so."
Yes. As expected, it was a story related to the founding emperorâs last words.
How different must that day have looked from Lumaâs perspective compared to his son, Oblik van Ta-in, the first Duke of Ta-in? Yuderâs heart pounded with the thought that he might finally learn something real and definitive.
"He spoke of how reckless and foolish he had truly been. He mentioned several incidents that we had managed to overcome without much difficulty, and talked about how all of them had been catastrophic failures. He even described events heâd never experienced as though he had lived through them. According to him, he had once been nothing more than a wretched swordsman who lost everything, unable even to properly wield his once-proud blade. At first, I thought it was all the delusion of a man close to death."
"When I told him that those things had never happenedâor had long since ended wellâhe smiled."
"âNo, my friend. Those things all did happen. Itâs just that now, theyâve become things that never were. Because I stopped myself from repeating the same mistakes. Thatâs all.â"
"He spoke again about â NĐŸvĐ”lŃgÒ»Ń â (Continue reading) the final catastrophe that had struck the Empire. What remained for me as the last battle we triumphed over together, remained for him as a memory of a pitiful death. Most of those alive now werenât present back then, and he claimed that I had used some sort of magic on him when he was fatally wounded in that final battlefield."
"âIt was a magic Iâd never seen before, not before or after. You, with the same face you have now, made a final request to me. To please make sure this never happens again...â"
"And so my friend said he went back again. Back to the past, before he met me. To a brilliant time when he still had every opportunity. To a miraculous moment when those who had died were still alive."
Heâd pressed down so hard he nearly tore through the page. Yuder felt a cold yet searing tremor run down his spine.
Finally.
He had finally come face-to-face with it.
Someone who had experienced exactly what he had!
Heâd suspected it before, of course, but the feeling of knowingâof confirmationâwas a completely different experience from mere speculation.
âIt really... was true.â
"Yuder?"
Perhaps noticing the sudden intensity of his breath, Kishiar turned around from where he was reading. Looking into Kishiarâs eyes, Yuder tried his best to speak calmly despite the flushed heat rising to his face.
"I think weâve finally found the information we most wanted to find."
"...Could it be?"
"Itâs written here that the founding emperor truly did return to the past like me, using Archmage Lumaâs magic."
"As expected... so itâs true. Can you show me?"
Yuder opened to the relevant passage and showed it to him. Of course, Kishiar couldnât immediately decipher the part written in the code Luma had created, but he still nodded, his eyes gleaming.
"So, did you find anything about the âchoiceâ Oblik van Ta-in wrote about?"
"No. Not yet."
"Keep reading, and if you find anything new you want to share, tell me right away. I really want to hear it."
"Yes."
He knew he needed to keep reading, but it was hard to calm down. Yuder placed Lumaâs journal on his lap and leaned his head against Kishiarâs back. Emotions and thoughts he had pushed aside, since nothing had been completely certain before, surged through him like a flood.
The founding emperor, thought by all to be a godlike figure, had actually been someone who turned back time like him. And heâd spoken of a terrible failure, saying he hadnât even been emperor at firstâthat it was all changed.
If heâd failed and everything had ended then, what would have happened? The Orr Empire likely wouldnât even exist. Magicians wouldnât have been treated with the respect they now enjoyed. And his descendants wouldnât have been able to live on as they did.
Which meant... there might never have been a person named Kishiar la Orr.
The fact that a single personâs return to the past had changed the future so drastically hit him viscerally, through the warmth he felt against his back.
Yuder placed his hand on the one belonging to the man quietly sitting upright like a pillar. The feel of skin beneath that crimson-stained bare hand was so vivid, and yet... in another version of events, it might never have existed at all.
"...Suddenly I feel grateful to Archmage Luma and the founding emperor."
"Because... thanks to them succeeding at their second chance, I was born?"
"Yes."
Kishiar let out a small laugh, his shoulders shaking slightly at Yuderâs firm answer. Yuder furrowed his brow and squeezed the manâs hand more tightly.
"I mean it."
"I know. I wasnât mocking you. I just smiled because itâs so strange and wonderful."
When Yuder didnât reply, wondering if it was really true, Kishiar stopped smiling and gently pressed their heads together as he explained.
"Think about it. How many times do you think Iâve heard people say theyâre glad I was born?"
"I donât know exactly... but probably a lot."
"Yeah. From the moment I was born, people called me the Empireâs good fortune. But that was all because of this face."
He spoke without a shred of embarrassment, pressing his head more firmly as he joked.
"In other words, thatâs the first time Iâve ever heard someone say theyâre glad I was born for a reason like that."
"......"
"There were times when I used to think, whatâs so great about being born? Shouldnât I just thank my mother and be done with it? But... it seems that since my birthday this year, I might start thinking about it a little differently."