The rain Merlin created was not natural. The magically induced downpour came without dark clouds: thick sheets of rain pouring from a clear sky, a bizarre phenomenon.

Yet once the rain began, something stranger still began to happen.

Dark clouds suddenly gathered overhead. Rather than clouds gathering before the rain, the rain came first, and the clouds followed. Merlin had nothing to do with this. The world had simply begun to behave that way.

The voices filling the streets abruptly vanished. The merchants selling bread in the market, the other vendors, and the customers bargaining with them all disappeared in an instant. The wide-open shop doors closed without a sound.

In an instant, the streets fell silent.

'On rainy days, people disappear from the streets, the bells don't ring, and Ladon doesn't appear.'

That was the rule Najin had discovered in this dream.

He did not know why such a rule existed. He could only conjecture that Ladon had failed to appear on some rainy day, and that the scene from that day had left a deep impression on Viola Ordina's memory.

Najin turned that rule to his advantage. His prediction proved correct: artificially creating the prerequisite—a rainy day—would bring about the consequences. In the end, this was a dream, not reality. The world could change in any number of ways depending on how its owner felt.

"Well? Do I look a little more great and mighty now?"

Merlin swept back her rain-soaked hair with a confident smile. Najin chuckled and nodded.

"Of course. But what do you mean, now? You've always been great, Merlin."

Her shoulders twitched.

Standing rooted to the spot, she murmured, "Always...?" and let out a rather disquieting chuckle. Najin slipped halfway out of his coat, spread it like an umbrella, and beckoned her closer.

"Let's go, Merlin."

"Huh? Oh, right!"

They ran through the rain-drenched streets, using his coat as an umbrella. The rain was deafening, but another sound rang through the streets, one even the downpour could not conceal.

'On rainy days, Ladon doesn't appear.'

And on days when Ladon did not appear...

'She plays the piano in the old tavern.'

Before the dream had returned to its beginning, their meeting had been a coincidence. Not this time.

RATTLE.

The two opened the old tavern's door and stepped inside. A woman sat at the piano. Her hair had not yet turned entirely black; half was white, and half black.

She finished her piece as though she paid Najin and Merlin no mind, turning her head only when she heard applause.

"Oh, I have guests?"

Then she made the same request: would they listen to her play? Would they stay until the rain stopped?

"I'd certainly enjoy listening. But..."

This time, Najin gave a different answer.

"Why don't we play together instead?"

He walked over to the instruments lying about the old tavern, picked one up, and brushed off the accumulated dust.

2.

On that earlier day, when they had listened to her play, Merlin had said:

["The seventh movement of Leconte's concerto, right?"]

She had asked whether the piece the woman was playing was a concerto.

Najin knew little about music, but he did know that an ensemble was not something one could perform alone.

A concerto: a piece in which several performers played in harmony.

Why had this woman, who introduced herself as Violet, been playing a concerto here? Why, when she could have chosen a solo piece she could complete alone? Only after the dream reset did Najin find the answer.

["Her Ladyship..."]

["That is, the woman who was once my sister loved playing the piano. She especially loved playing with others, because she used to play with our mother when she was young."]

Mirentz, Viola Ordina's younger sister.

She had spent her childhood with Viola before Viola was adopted into House Ordina. Unlike the ageless Viola, she had grown into an old woman. Najin had visited her and heard stories about Viola.

["Mother played the cello. I remember her playing with her black hair neatly pinned up. My sister played the piano, and I played the violin."]

["I remember it. It was an old establishment, with a piano inside. My sister loved that tavern. She would smile so brightly whenever she played."]

["Now I mustn't even dare think of those days. She is no longer my sister, but the hero who sustains this country."]

The instrument Najin had picked up was a violin.

["You want me to play for you?"]

["Well, it was so long ago, I'm not sure I can. My fingers aren't what they used to be, either. What good would listening to an old woman's playing do you?"]

["If you insist..."]

The old woman had reluctantly played the violin. Najin watched her performance closely.

Then he visited several musicians and watched them play: how they held the violin in place, how they moved the bow, the angles, the moments they exhaled, how they made the strings vibrate.

He saw it all. And once he had seen it, imitation was not difficult.

Holding the violin in place, Najin moved the bow in his hand. The first note, and the next, were clumsy, but he soon got a feel for it and began to play skillfully.

He glanced at Merlin. She dusted off a cello, settled into a seat, and raised her bow. She was clumsier than Najin, who had picked up a violin for the first time that very day. At the sight, he burst out laughing.

"What's this? You said you could play! Didn't you say you were good at the cello?"

"Th-that was over a thousand years ago!"

Even as she shrieked, Merlin gradually adjusted her notes. Apparently her claim that she could play the cello had not been a lie; as she searched her memory, she too began to get the hang of it.

Violet stared blankly at Najin and Merlin, listening to the notes they built upon one another.

The seventh movement of Leconte's concerto.

The piece she had played with her mother and younger sister.

This was its opening, and it was the very piece she had been about to play. Violet's eyes wavered for a moment. Then she let out a short breath and laid her fingers on the keys.

Stepping onto the musical stairway Najin and Merlin had prepared for her, Violet began to play.

The piano, violin, and cello each began producing sounds of their own accord. It was a clumsy performance, closer to three solos than a harmony. Still, because they were playing together, it just barely qualified as an ensemble.

"Tsk. Merlin..."

"Hey, you're the strange one! How does it make sense that you can play like that after watching once?! I-I can do well too, if I practice a little more!"

When Najin gave her a pointed look, Merlin yelled back. Watching them, Violet could no longer suppress her laughter. She covered her mouth, lowered her head, and shook with silent mirth before finally bursting out laughing.

"Ah, ahaha!"

It was neither Viola Ordina's perpetually gloomy expression nor Violet's occasional wistful smile, but light, comfortable laughter. The kind that put anyone watching at ease.

Najin and Merlin stopped bickering, shrugged, and took up their instruments again.

"I'm Najin. This is Merlin."

Najin asked her, "What's your name?"

"Violet. My name is Violet."

She smiled.

"Would you two play with me? Until the rain stops... No, I don't think one day would be enough."

It was a different request from last time. She extended her hand toward Najin and Merlin.

"Would you come here whenever it rains?"

Najin took her outstretched hand.

Though it did not show on the surface, he knew the moment he touched her. Violet's fingers were covered in wounds, blistered and callused. These were not injuries made by playing the piano.

They were the wounds left on someone who gripped and swung a sword. Marks of actions repeated until they scarred even a transcendent body that did not retain scars. Only up close could he see certain things.

'It's not just her fingers.'

Najin could see beyond the veil of starlight Violet had wrapped around herself to hide the truth: a transcendent being battered and covered in wounds, with not one part of her left intact. At the sight of a Constellation worn down over sixty-seven years, he fell silent for a moment.

Then he gave her a brief answer.

"We will."

It was hardly a difficult request.

3.

In her true form, Merlin could probably have made it rain all day, every day of the year. But now she had been reduced to a level similar to Najin's.

Making it rain daily was impossible. Once a week was her limit. In addition, rain fell naturally in the Kingdom of Kassel about once a week.

That gave them two days off out of every seven.

Najin devoted those two days entirely to Violet. On rainy days, she sat on the piano bench waiting for him and Merlin, greeting Najin with a radiant smile whenever he opened the door.

"Welcome, Najin!"

Instruction books and sheet music she seemed to have collected in great quantities from somewhere were piled in one corner of the tavern. Chairs, wiped spotless for Najin and Merlin, stood ready for them.

"Here, you should press the bow like this. Like so. That way of playing is fine for a solo, but this is an ensemble, isn't it? In that case, lower the note a little..."

She offered Najin advice, then clapped her hands excitedly when he immediately took it and adjusted his playing. Watching Violet exclaim, "Yes, that's it!" sometimes struck him as strange.

Had she always been so expressive?

It was hard to believe she was the same Viola who sat at the grand temple with such an utterly gloomy expression. Perhaps this was closer to her original personality, Najin thought.

"Say..."

On a day without rain, Merlin asked a question as they walked through the streets.

"Will this be enough?"

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't difficult, is it? Of course, making it rain is extremely difficult... But at most, we're just joining her to play whenever it rains."

"That's right."

"Will something like this really change anything?"

"Yes," Najin replied. "It will. Definitely."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because it did for me."

Najin shrugged and looked at Merlin.

"You know what? You don't need some grand, lofty goal just to live through a day—to get through it."

He spoke as they walked.

"This is from when I lived in the underground city... Living there was pretty shitty, you know? And I was a collector, so I got tangled up with all sorts of scumbags."

People who were garbage. Streets strewn with garbage. A city with no future in sight, where people could be as cruel as necessary just to put food on the table that day.

"Six days out of the week were hard and shitty. I wanted to quit right then and there. More times than I could count, I wished everything would just fuck off... But surprisingly, what got me through that life was something really small."

"What was it?"

"Every weekend, Ivan always took me to a tavern. He'd drink and tell me stories about the world above. Along with plenty of boasting about all the things he'd done."

Najin chuckled.

"I really enjoyed that. Just listening made the shitty things from the past six days feel a little less awful. Before I knew it, I was getting through the week just looking forward to that day."

No matter how shitty or difficult life was, he could endure it by imagining one enjoyable day. It was nothing special. Simply chatting in a tavern—something so small—had given Najin the strength to get through each day.

"Grand goals and ambitions make you look far ahead and keep moving... But to get through tomorrow, those little pleasures are enough."

"That's what I mean," he added, letting out a long breath.

"About that Constellation, Viola Ordina... I think I might understand why she ended up that way."

To other Constellations, Viola Ordina's corruption might seem laughable. Compared with the many heroes recorded in history, the reason for her corruption might seem trivial.

The knight in a helmet who had resisted erosion for a hundred and fifty years. The Knight of Silence who had sought only to move endlessly forward. The knight of starfire who had been bound by duty for so long.

Compared with their lives, Viola's had been relatively peaceful. Yet Najin had no intention whatsoever of dismissing her life as insignificant or contemptible.

'Because she's a different kind of person from them.'

Not everyone in the world could become a hero. Not everyone could live with the same strength of will and conviction as those knights. Most people lived by compromising, submitting, and sometimes deceiving themselves.

Viola Ordina was no different.

She had not wanted to be a hero. She probably had not even considered herself one. Yet she had been forced to become one. The country had all but compelled her into heroism, and she had not welcomed it in the least.

"That's why she must have separated herself."

"Separated herself?"

"Into 'Viola Ordina,' the hero people wanted, and 'Violet,' the person she believed herself to be."

She did not consider herself a hero. Viola Ordina could never be her true self. Thus, she regarded the hero Viola Ordina not as herself, but as a separate existence detached from her.

She was not the hero, Viola Ordina. She was the musician, Violet.

To her, Viola Ordina was nothing but an empty shell. Her self did not reside there. Her true self was a humble musician who played the piano in an old tavern on rainy days and found contentment in that alone.

"And so, when she could no longer play..."

When the endless erosion of her battles with Ladon left her fingers so rotten and ruined that she could no longer touch the keys. When she could no longer preserve her identity as the musician Violet. When her one remaining refuge was taken away.

"She must have become empty."

There was something Najin had learned while investigating Viola Ordina as a person. Viola Ordina was not her original name. House Ordina, having recognized her talent, had adopted her and given her the name Viola.

The name Viola meant nothing to her. She did not consider it her own. Thus, the name might as well not have existed. Remove Viola, and what remained was the family name Ordina—spelled Oldina.

["Glory to Ordina."]

["Honor to Ordina."]

House Ordina had existed since the founding of the Kingdom of Kassel. It was an illustrious house that had produced countless knights and heroes. From ancient times, everyone bearing the name Ordina had become a knight or a hero.

To her, Ordina was the name that forced her to be a hero, the essence of her heroic identity.

But as her battles with Ladon continued, as erosion wore her down again and again, her self grew fainter. At last, it disappeared completely.

The self—"I"—vanished from Oldina.

Those who lose themselves collapse. The moment she lost the center of her existence, everything that composed her fell into disarray. Normally, she should have crumbled and become one of the Lost... But she was not even given the chance to go mad.

Ladon took possession of her empty shell and rearranged the things that composed her.

With the "I" removed, Oldina became Oldna. The evil dragon rearranged those letters into its own name: Ladon.

That was the truth behind this dream.

"In that case, the solution is simple too."

Najin stopped walking.

"We just need to strengthen Violet rather than Ordina, so she can hold on to herself. Restore the tipped scales to balance—or better yet, tip them entirely to this side..."

Just then, the bells rang. Cracks spread across the sky, and Ladon appeared, breaking through the glass. Najin pointed at the dragon.

"Ladon will weaken on its own."

The Ladon that had broken through the sky was noticeably smaller than when they first saw it.