Who am I? Who was I?

He could not remember his name.

In truth, his inability to recall his name was nothing sudden. He had forgotten it decades ago. That was nothing new.

Nothing new, but...

Now, his name was not the only thing he could not remember. Where he had belonged, what weapon he had wielded, what convictions he had held, how he had acted—in short, how he had lived his life.

All of it was hazy. Pale and indistinct, as though shrouded in mist. The Helmeted Knight’s eyes grew vacant.

His very self was fading. Something tickled inside his helmet. From his body, concealed beneath his armor, came a grinding crunch. Desperately, the Helmeted Knight swept away the mist filling his mind. No matter how much he cleared away, it came rolling back. Within that mist, he found a lone helmet.

He seized his helmet. Horned Helm. Proof that he was commander of the Order of the Golden Horn. The glorious horned helmet. Ah, yes. He remembered. He remembered now. Clutching the helmet in both hands, he groaned.

“Ah...”

With his memories restored, the Helmeted Knight realized what had been happening to him moments before. It was easy to guess what would have happened had he failed to remember. Far too easy. He trembled as he pictured the end awaiting him if he took even one wrong step.

He was afraid. He felt terror.

Hero of the Empire, transcendent being, Constellation, Sword Master—all those grand names were utterly useless now. All that remained here was one human being. A shabby, pitiful, wretched human being.

And that one human being was trembling with fear. He clasped his helmet. It creaked beneath the pressure of his fingers.

“Get a grip on yourself.”

CLATTER!

The Helmeted Knight shook. Someone had grabbed him by the collar and was shaking him. He raised his head and looked ahead. There was a shining star. A truly enticing star. A star that could keep him alive.

'A star. Starlight. Life.'

The Helmeted Knight reached toward that star as though entranced, then caught his breath. He seized the military banners wrapped around his body. Get a grip. How much farther did he intend to fall?

“My mind wandered for a moment.”

“...”

“Why are you looking at me like that? I remember everything now. I remember. At my age, your memory starts getting fuzzy. It’s nothing.”

He tried to make light of it, but Najin’s expression did not change. Najin clenched his teeth. Watching him, the Helmeted Knight thought: The boy was perceptive. He must have noticed long ago, and had simply been pretending not to.

Yes. Enough excuses.

He let out a long breath and spoke.

“Is today the twenty-seventh day?”

“... Yes.”

“I promised thirty days, but I never thought you’d really learn it all this quickly. Once you learn that last technique, I’ll have nothing left to teach you. Well? Are you starting to get a feel for it?”

“... I’ll try.”

“Good. I’ll watch.”

Najin swung his sword, performing the sword techniques the Helmeted Knight had taught him one after another. His stance was perfect, the arcs traced by his sword beautiful. Even to the Helmeted Knight, who had once been a Sword Master, Najin’s movements deserved a passing mark.

CREEAK.

But one. Just one technique did not deserve a pass. His sword wavered. His stance wavered. Naturally, the slash delivered with that unsteady tip was terrible.

Najin knew it himself. His face was rigid as he swung his sword. He looked guilty. But as far as the Helmeted Knight was concerned, Najin had no reason whatsoever to feel guilty.

It was not the boy’s fault.

Najin was an excellent pupil. He learned everything quickly and was quick to understand. Teach him one thing, and he could readily grasp ten. There was no doubt he was a squire countless knights would covet.

If a pupil that gifted could not even begin to grasp a single technique after more than a month... the fault lay not with the pupil, but with the master. The Helmeted Knight knew that.

“...”

He gave a bitter laugh.

Of course it was difficult to learn. He could excuse it by saying it was a Sword Master’s technique, that it contained the essence of a Sword Master’s life, but he did not want to.

“Stop.”

The Helmeted Knight halted Najin’s sword.

“Enough. You won’t make any progress this way.”

“No, if I just try a little longer...”

“Don’t rush. Besides, this isn’t something you can learn that way. It’s only natural that you can’t reproduce it in the first place.”

The Helmeted Knight looked up at the sky. Gazing at the stars embroidered across it, he murmured,

“How could you wield a sword that even I can no longer wield? I’ve been teaching you something I can’t do anymore. With the demonstration itself wrong, how could you possibly learn?”

He let out a long breath.

“I can’t remember. How I performed that technique. How I drew out my sword aura. All I remember is how it felt. I can’t recreate its exact form, so I’ve just been relying on those sensations to explain it to you.”

“...”

“Of course you can’t imitate it. The answer key is wrong. What good would copying the wrong answer do?”

Najin tightened his grip on his sword.

The Helmeted Knight lowered his head from the sky. Looking down at his rusted armor, he murmured,

“Memory. Memory, huh.”

The technique that had been his very symbol.

The technique that had brought him glorious victories and made him a Sword Master.

Recalling that technique was no easy feat. It was his symbol—in other words, it was practically the Helmeted Knight himself. That memory had been lost alongside his self, the moment he had been stripped of transcendence.

To recall it... was tantamount to attaining transcendence once more.

A human who had forgotten even his own name.

One of the Lost, wandering through pale mist.

How could someone who could no longer believe in himself attain transcendence?

'It’s impossible.'

The Helmeted Knight looked at Najin.

'Impossible, but...'

Back when he had been called a hero, he had accomplished impossible feats time and again. As he reached back through his glorious past, his gaze turned toward the distance.

“Ah, yes. There was that place.”

He murmured,

“If I go there, I might remember. Yes, there, perhaps...”

The fallen star struggled.

To shine one last time.

2.

The Outer Lands resembled the underground city of Atman.

The thought suddenly occurred to Najin.

Of course, if he examined the details, that thought might be wrong. The Outer Lands were not a city into which insignificant criminals fell, but a place where powerful figures who had reached great heights and heroes gathered. To say the two resembled each other would be an insult to those heroes.

And yet Najin felt that the Outer Lands and the underground city were alike. Their atmosphere and nature were similar.

Whatever the reasons, the Outer Lands were a place where those pushed out of the world accumulated like sediment—a landfill where such things piled up and were buried. Even the way it was filled with people robbed of their dreams, crushed beneath the weight of reality and slowly dying, was the same.

“...”

Was that why?

Why the Helmeted Knight’s back reminded him of Ivan?

“Where are we going?”

“To the place where I won a glorious victory.”

The Helmeted Knight answered Najin’s question. Pointing somewhere, he walked on and on. Najin followed in silence.

“I think I’ll remember if I go there. There should still be traces of my sword strikes, so if I see them... well, surely something will come back to me?”

“Is it far from here?”

“Not that far. We should arrive after a day or two of walking.”

His voice was light as he said it. With each passing day, the Helmeted Knight’s voice grew lighter. So did his steps.

“Did you know, Najin? When I said I put a hole through the Emperor of Revelry’s heart, that wasn’t just a figure of speech. I really did pierce her heart and bring down that bitch’s stars.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I accomplished that feat against a Constellation with no fewer than ten stars. Guess how many stars I brought down.”

“I’m not sure. Two or three?”

“I wouldn’t brag if that were all.”

The Helmeted Knight laughed heartily and spread his hand wide.

“Five. I brought down five.”

Even Najin was surprised by that.

“Five out of ten means she lost half of them. Wouldn’t that be enough to turn her into one of the Lost?”

“Right. Normally, losing half your stars or more at once would make you one of the Lost. But that bitch’s stars are a little unusual, so that didn’t happen.”

“What?”

“The Emperor of Revelry puts on masks and plays countless beings. It’s a kind of multiple personality situation. When she loses a star, she discards the personality corresponding to it. Like a lizard shedding its tail.”

“What kind of bullshit...”

“The moment I brought down five stars, another five began to rise. The Emperor of Revelry has dozens of masks—more than hundreds, even. I suppose she can simply handle only ten at a time.”

“Do you know what those masks are?” The Helmeted Knight did not ask expecting an answer. He answered his own question.

“They’re the stars of Constellations the Emperor of Revelry has devoured.”

“...”

“She dyes those stars in her own colors and handles them as if they were hers. She can use ten at once, but that bitch has collected over a hundred. The stars I once had must be mixed in among them.”

“Then how the hell... are you supposed to fight her?”

“Exactly. Seems hopeless, doesn’t it?”

The Helmeted Knight shrugged.

“Kill her again and again until she dies. That’s the simplest method, but it’s not easy. To manage it, you’d have to bring in the stars of the Round Table, at least. So the remaining method is... to deny the very existence of the Emperor of Revelry.”

“Deny?”

“Yes. Ultimately, she’s the one controlling the stars. Cut through the stage she’s laid out, deny the concept of revelry, and pierce her true self hidden behind those masks. I tried it once, and it did meaningful damage.”

He ran his hand over the sword secured at his waist.

“When she lost those stars to me, she screamed, unlike when her other masks were broken. She coughed up blood and glared at me. She quickly produced new masks, but I clearly saw the cracks in her soul. The constellation connecting the five new stars was unstable, too.”

“Then you really...”

“Yes. If I hadn’t lost all my stars there, I could have finished it.”

Najin stopped dead.

The Helmeted Knight gave a bitter smile, as though realizing his slip.

“Anyway, that’s where we’re heading. The place where I brought down five of the Emperor of Revelry’s stars.”

He added,

“It’s also where I last performed that sword technique.”

It had originally been the Emperor of Revelry’s territory, but the Helmeted Knight and the Order of the Golden Horn had finally wrested it back. That, he said, was where they were going now.

“The Order of the Golden Horn is buried there, too. I should bury Krünbel’s horn there. Wouldn’t he be upset if we left only him out? It’s taken a while, but I should bury it with the others, even now. And...”

The Helmeted Knight trailed off.

He did not finish, but Najin realized what he meant to say.

You intend to be buried there, too.

You want that place to be your final destination.

Najin understood, but did not point it out. He had already had some inkling ever since the Helmeted Knight had set that thirty-day limit—or perhaps even earlier.

“...”

But knowing did nothing to stop his steps from growing heavy. The lighter the Helmeted Knight’s steps became, the heavier Najin’s grew. As though that weight had passed to him.

Najin walked, remembering the past.

Ivan. Lately, Ivan’s end kept flickering before his eyes. His voice lingered in Najin’s ears, shouting, [“Go on.”] with his back turned to him.

3.

People who sensed their end approaching often showed certain traits. Having spent years working as a collector and executioner in the underground city, Najin knew those traits well.

They put their affairs in order. They began giving their possessions to acquaintances or disposing of them. Some struggled desperately to evade or deny their situation... but when Najin blocked all their attempts, they would laugh in resignation.

Such light laughter.

Najin had seen that laughter so many times. Heard it. That was why he could tell that the Helmeted Knight’s laughter resembled theirs. The peculiar, detached laughter of someone preparing to close out his life.

But the Helmeted Knight was not yet entirely free of weight. He still had lingering attachments. Was it because Najin had not yet fully learned his swordsmanship? No, it did not seem to be just that. Najin could not tell exactly what those attachments were...

But he could guess that they would be resolved the moment they reached their destination. That knowledge weighed down his steps.

“...”

He wanted to stop him. He wanted him not to do it.

The journey with the Helmeted Knight had been enjoyable. While they were together, Najin felt as though he were with Ivan.

A master and a senior, yet also a friend he could talk to easily.

When they chatted, Najin smiled naturally and spoke lightly, without any weight on him. Just as he had in the past, chatting freely with Ivan. He could not deny how enjoyable that time had been, how precious.

Najin clenched his fist tightly.

Watching his master prepare for his end filled him with conflicting emotions. But he could not stop the Helmeted Knight. The Helmeted Knight wished to be a knight. Najin could not halt him as he prepared to die as one. That would violate his own convictions.

Reason and emotion chose different paths.

His convictions told him this was right, but his emotions wished the Helmeted Knight would not do it. Wished he would live a little longer.

“You look like you have a lot on your mind.”

The Helmeted Knight smiled at Najin. His smile was still light. As though it might scatter at any moment.

“Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t pity me, either. I don’t want my end dressed up in such cheap emotions.”

“I know.”

“Yes, you’re clever. Of course you know. But knowing doesn’t mean you can control it, does it?”

“...”

“That’s how life is. It’s easy to judge what’s right. But you can’t go through life choosing the right answer every time.”

He said,

“A life lived and ended according to one’s romantic ideals is beautiful. But reality rarely is. Life is filthy and muddy, nothing goes your way, and even when you try to remain beautiful, it smears mud on you from every direction.”

“Still,” he continued.

“Still, isn’t it precisely because of that that the flower blooming at the end is beautiful?”

He wanted his end to be beautiful.

Like so many heroes, like the endings of countless heroic tales, he wanted his final moments to mean something.

HA HA!

But as he himself had said.

HA HA HA! BWAHAHA! HEH, HIC! AHAHAHAHAHA!

A beautiful life was impossible in reality. That was how the world worked. The world was not a work of fiction, much less a heroic tale. Nothing went according to plan, and far more people met miserable, insignificant ends than beautiful ones.

Laughter came from somewhere.

The laughter grew louder.

Manic laughter, mocking laughter, incredulous chuckles, roaring guffaws... every kind of laughter echoed. Music made of laughter resounded across the empty wasteland.

And then.

“Applause!”

Applause thundered. Alongside cheers, clapping loud enough to shake the earth echoed out.

Someone stood at the heart of those cheers. He wore armor reminiscent of a ridiculous jester. Clad in armor adorned with garish red, blue, yellow, and green, he mounted a horse.

No, it was not a warhorse. It was not a horse at all. It was a shabby, pitiful, even grotesque magical beast. Astride that donkey-like beast, he raised his lance.

“For the actor who has taken the stage, applause, cheers, wild acclaim, and something greater still...”

A one-eyed knight.

A human stripped of every emotion but laughter.

A jester who could express himself only through laughter.

“Mockery.”

A Constellation with seven stars.

The star that mocked knights, the Star of Scorn.

Quixote, the Knight of Revelry, charged.