Work Text:
written by SAV_JaneDoe
translated by Dothan_osc on X
From that day on, strange things began to appear before my eyes every night.
This place, once filled with vivid blue, became covered in hues of gray; the faces of those who had been with me were veiled in black, and in the end, at the very last...
Ah, who was that person again? I cannot remember the one person who must never disappear, the name of that person who has only just begun to fade from sight -
...Thank goodness. It was a dream.
As time passed, I grew more and more afraid of the night. Whether because I woke early, or thanks to it, I did enjoy watching daybreak each morning. But I feared the inexplicable omens that appeared before my closed eyes for hours on end. Perhaps, they would seem like nothing at all once I came to know their meaning; yet the unmapped region of the unknown was far too deep, too vast, and too dark.
Even so, fortunately, the days that followed remained much the same.
“Thank you, Nameless!”
“Jane, you could do something like this? You should have said so!”
“...It is a little embarrassing to say this, but I am glad you are here.”
That is, until I met Hings again; the one who had pressed me for my name.
“Oh my, if it isn’t Nameless. What are you doing here?”
“Ah,”
A sudden jolt of pain.
It felt as though a piece of flesh deep within my chest had been torn away.
Only then did I realize why her face had appeared to be disappearing.
A loss that carves out the heart was staring at us all, licking its lips.
“What is it? What’s wrong all of a sudden?”
“Ah... no. It is nothing. Please pay it no mind.”
From that moment on, I pressed down the rising head of my unease, and did my utmost to eavesdrop on what those who knew nothing had planned for her.
Then I might learn when, how, and where she would come to leave.
I had to buy time to hold her back, to stop her, or, at the very least, to carve her into memory.
“They say we are trying to contact Fleet Command again this time?”
“The communications officers will have their work cut out for them.”
“But the one who was here before, when he tried to make contact...”
“That subject is off limits. Do not bring it up.”
“In any case, when is it?”
“Probably three days from now.”
The one who was here before? What on earth had happened to them?
Fleet Command? Ah, so the ones here now were not all there were?
What could have happened for there to be an incident they could not even speak of?
Countless questions festered within me, but I could not bring myself to suddenly barge in and ask. Still, since I had managed to obtain at least some information, I waited for her to have even a few words to spare for me before she left.
The captain created that time for me.
“Jane, we will soon attempt to contact Fleet Command again.”
“I have heard. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“There is nothing for you to do directly, but could you speak with Hings for a while? Her senior, who made the same attempt, passed away under unfortunate circumstances, so her heart will not be in a very good state. I am asking this especially because it is you, Jane.”
“Understood!”
When I stood before her door, I heard the sound of sobbing before I could even knock.
“Um, excuse me -”
My voice shrank of its own accord.
And yet, perhaps she had heard it, for the person inside startled and hurriedly opened the door.
“Ah, Jane... My apologies. The captain sent you, didn’t she? You may come in.”
Hings received me with a face still disoriented by tears.
“I’m sorry. You may already know, having heard about it, but I was thinking of my senior who died. It is sad, but to be honest, I am frightened as well. There is no guarantee that the same will not happen to me...”
I wished to know what had happened, but I could not bring myself to ask, and only listened. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I was able to hear the answer soon enough.
“There was a senior of mine named Kirby, who attempted to contact Fleet Command before I did. His being so proactive could feel burdensome at times, but he was a good person. And yet...”
The look of tears spread across her face once more.
“...That was the first time I saw a life for which death would have been kinder.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“The senior I saw at the end was in a state one could no longer call human.”
In the end, Hings burst into tears again.
“No, he simply was not human anymore! Something black had grown over his face, and his body was more like a beast than a person. In that state, with things like injection needles hanging all over his arms, he was crying, and I, I... there was nothing I could do for him.”
“T-then that person now is...”
“He is dead! He died trying to do the very same thing I have to do now! That was the last I saw him. And not long after, he died! But do you know what he said before he died?”
“What did he say...?”
“It’s all right.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘I really am all right.’”
“Ah...”
With her face soaked in tears, she smiled emptily.
“But what can I do? The dead are dead, and the work entrusted to me is the work entrusted to me. I will succeed. I will succeed, and accomplish something I can stand before my senior and Gross without shame.”
“...You seem to care about him more than you let on, even though you said you did not like him.”
Her face, already red from crying, flushed twice as deeply.
“N-no, it is not like that... forget it! Really, you have no hesitation saying such things in front of someone who was crying until just now. Go on, now! I have nothing more to say.”
I left the room as though chased out. And yet I did not feel bad. Partly because my curiosity had been satisfied, but more than anything because she seemed all right. I set my worries down, and for several days lived peacefully, having utterly forgotten the thought of someone whose death had been foretold.
That morning was noisy. Since an attempt to communicate with Fleet Command was something worthy of the entire group’s attention, there was likely no helping it. Because I had completely forgotten the future I had foreseen, I even ended up oversleeping, and began the day being scolded by a colleague.
Half in expectation and half in worry, I headed toward the place where the crowd had gathered. People, and living beings that were not people, had gathered in a certain corridor as though there were something to see.
On the wall of the corridor hung a photograph in a golden frame: a man with shining eyes, short hair, and a face tinged with red. Above the photograph, raised letters of the same color as the frame had been fixed in place.
‘IN MEMORIAM’
Hings stood before it with her eyes closed and her hands clasped, tension spread across her face.
Seeing those words and her manner, I could tell.
The person in the frame was the senior who had died.
Hings seemed almost to be praying, and almost to be pouring out some grievance. Before long, the eyes she opened shone with tears.
The problem, however, was the moment those eyes met mine.
I remembered every forgotten premonition.
My heart tightened with unease. But there was nothing I could do. I knew only that she would soon die; I did not know when, how, or why. On the way? While searching? Returning? After she returned? Why? Why did it have to be her?
When I came to myself, her back was already receding toward the exit. Wanting to at least offer her a few words of farewell, I followed close behind and shouted.
“Please take care of yourself! You must come back alive!”
She, having grown as small as a dot, answered with surprising vigor, as though she had recovered her spirits at some point.
“You think something like this is enough to kill me? Who do you take me for? I will come back perfectly fine, so do not fret!”
The door closed, and with despair that something had ended and relief mixed in equal measure, my heart rose and sank again and again at an uncertain height.
“What is wrong, Jane?”
Someone asked, but I could not answer.
I could only hold my breath and quietly await the fate designed by the Architects.
From that hour onward, the communications room moved busily. People came and went without pause, and clear voices and imperfect electronic sounds passed back and forth with solemn urgency. The voice mixed with mechanical noise continued to report their location and situation, while the voice carried directly through the cold, settled air continued to answer them. The sight of what I had defined as “condensed life” steeping out its own aliveness was both desperate and beautiful. Within that taut tension, they continued striving to draw their fated discovery out beyond the unknown, and it seemed, perhaps, that they had almost succeeded.
That is, until a single scream tore through all the tense air.
A single, utterly broken scream clawed through the vibrations at my ears. The fragments of torn tension struck the diaphragms not only of me, who had just been summoned and arrived before the door, but also of those already inside. It felt as though the soul contained in my upper body had fallen to the floor.
A terrible silence descended upon that place.
I recalled certain scenes I had seen several days before; scenes I could see because I was myself.
Veiled faces, lost saturation, grim premonitions.
I turned over in my mind the form of the one who had seemed to disappear first.
Medium-length hair, and brown eyes that had flashed past just before they were obscured.
The form of Hings, the person who had just gone out beyond there like a candle before the wind.
Why was I forced to release her into the claws of death?
It was because the fact that I was the “Dream of the Dawn” was a secret, and because behind this death lay the hands of those far higher than I.
I quietly bit my lip.
Once the wave of silence had passed, a violent commotion rose in an instant, like fire fed with oil. Some turned away, and some clicked their tongues.
And one lost his reason.
The man who had sat in the chair at the center of the communications room and become the passageway for all that happened there.
The partner of the one who had just fallen.
The communications officer, Gross.
Was there anyone who could describe what he felt at that moment?
know his story. I know that secret story he could not tell, and that, in the end, became eternity. I had heard the words that had been locked away, impossible to open by any means.
“Yes, I love her.”
Yes. He had lost his love.
No one could stop him as he kept checking, again and again, on the well-being of the one who must already have died. And because he knew that, he vomited out his pain not through action, but through words alone.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
The sound of him shouting, clutching to the very end at tension already worn to shreds, dug bluntly into my chest.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
A murmuring voice, sitting motionless, gazing blankly beyond the screen with blurred vision and unfocused eyes, pressing down on tear ducts that seemed about to burst.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
Of course, no answer came back.
Only one man’s voice circled like an echo within a space where the pressure had grown heavier than ever before.
The next day, we headed to the place where her signal had last been detected, to search for Hings’s body.
There were chaotic footprints that had lost all direction, and they showed plainly the tragedy of the day before.
Her body was not far away, at the bottom of a cliff.
I found her first, and helped retrieve her. The cooled blood was sticky, and the body that could no longer move of its own will was as heavy as it was cold.
.
.
.
.
.
.
“No. I will not look.”
Ah. This was why I had been afraid to return.
“Ah... I will not look. I cannot see him.”
“Can you not at least bid him a final farewell?”
“I cannot. I cannot do it. Absolutely not.”
Gross shook his head like a machine.
The sight of him spitting out only “no,” as though something in him had broken, frightened me.
It was not impossible to understand. He had lost his love.
But what frightened me was that I feared the pain would pass wholly into him, and that he might, by some chance, follow the path of the dead.
“I do not want to... I cannot. No, no.”
But if the final sight Hings had seen of his senior was a life for which death would have been kinder, then what was I seeing now?
He was not human now. Blue terror stood stark upon his face, and his words and actions were more like those of a beast than a person. In that state, with the burdens of the dead hanging heavily from his shoulders, he was crying, and I, I... there was nothing I could do for him.
Even so, I could not let him collapse endlessly. After some time had passed, and the blue cast faded from his face, I thought it might be all right to speak to him.
“Um...”
“Ah, you are Jane, correct? What business do you have with me...”
“I know you must be suffering the most. But,”
“What are you trying to say?”
“You must not... die. You, at least, must live. Please. You must.”
Gross gave a sorrowful smile.
“It would be very good if that were something I could decide. But Jane, living and dying are never things one can choose as one pleases.”
He turned away and headed toward the communications room, where not a single light was on.
I watched his back in silence, and suddenly recalled the second face that had been veiled.
The face of a pale man with a beard.
I felt my blood run cold.
When I awoke from my deep thoughts and came to myself, the door to the communications room had already closed.
And when I placed my hand upon the doorknob,
I realized that it was locked.
My vision went dizzy.
“W-what are you doing right now?”
I knocked on the door, but there was no answer.
“Can you hear me? What are you doing? Let us talk for a moment!”
From inside, I heard faint footsteps. My hands trembled.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
In the end, I became another him.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
I heard footsteps again. They did not sound as though they were touching the floor. No, no.
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
“Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
Then came the sound of a wheeled chair striking the wall.
I collapsed where I stood and screamed.
Hearing that sound, others gathered, and by the strength of several people, we barely succeeded in forcing open the door that had been locked from within. I forced my eyes away from the gap in the doorway, but in the instant before they closed, my vision caught sight of two feet hanging in empty air, unmoving.
Their funerals were held at the same time. This place, once blue, turned black all at once. Yes. This was what I had seen. This sight, this very scene.
I knelt before the golden frames that had grown to three, and wept. The final screams of lives I had failed to save, because I alone had let them slip away before my eyes, tore through my mind. Around the time I could not even offer them any words of farewell, nor control my breathing, a hand came to rest upon my shoulder.
It was the captain.
“Jane, this is not your fault.”
“......”
“Do not carry it too deeply in your heart. Do you understand?”
I clenched my teeth. Because my face burned so hot, the hot tears felt cold.
‘I do not understand.’
Once again, I felt a stab of sharp pain. I realized who the last veiled face belonged to.
‘I do not understand, and I never will.’
Again, night after night, strange things continued to appear before my eyes.
This place, once filled with vivid blue, became covered in hues of gray; the faces of those who had been with me were veiled in black, and in the end, at the very last...
Ah, who was that person again? I cannot remember the one person who must never disappear, the name of that person who has only just begun to fade from sight -
.
.
.
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