Clothing packets take shape based on the avatar information in a biometric terminal. Insert a clothing packet into the terminal, and it wraps around your body in a form perfectly suited to your build, height, and size.

Convenient. No tedious dressing or undressing, and laundry is easy. You don't need to buy new clothes every time you grow or gain weight, either. They can wear out from prolonged use or become too damaged to use, but that goes for everything in this world.

The Military State's citizens became addicted to that convenience. The lack of opposition to the policy of inscribing every citizen with a biometric terminal owed more to its convenience than to the Military State's power. Most citizens willingly underwent the procedure, thinking the government was finally doing something useful for once.

The majority's tacit consent naturally led to persecution of the minority. At some point, not having a biometric terminal inscribed became a serious crime in the Military State.

And so the Military State gained the ability to restrain most of its citizens with a single packet.

"No!"

Fibers wind around Kanisen's body. He cannot pull them off or cut them away. They are forming directly above his skin, binding him.

Armor was clothing too, after all. The Military State had weaponized clothing packets by creating military armament. Naturally, it hadn't stopped there.

When I fell into the bottomless pit, I was wearing a restraint suit.

A restraint suit is clothing too.

So how had I put mine on?

That's right.

The Military State had abused clothing packets in another way as well.

A clothing packet you could no longer remove of your own accord once it was inserted. Living handcuffs. A restraint suit.

The Regressor had good reason to grind her teeth at the sight of a biometric terminal. Things might be different if you had a floating sword like Sky Cherry Blossom, or if your energy arts were advanced enough to reinforce your body.

But even a beast that could smash rocks and chew up people, bones and all, would be helpless in a trap. A human went without saying.

Well, anyway.

"Thank you for your cooperation. You were the best assistant I've ever had for a day."

It had been a pretty good magic show.

I called it a weakness, but was plugging a packet into someone's biometric terminal in the middle of a fight really easy? Slashing their wrist with a blade would be simpler. How were you supposed to tear open someone's sleeve and jam a packet inside while they were watching you?

It would have been impossible for anyone but a magician of my caliber, a former legendary pickpocket.

"Ngh! Ngh! Mmph!"

His arms were bound and fixed behind his back. His legs were restrained too, leaving him unable to move. Tough straps cinched tightly around each of his five fingers, while iron cuffs encircled his wrists, joined by metal links.

He couldn't even open his mouth. A custom-fitted gag assembled itself and mercilessly forced its way between his lower jaw and upper gums. A blindfold formed as well, blocking his vision.

Perfect restraint, enough to banish even the thought of resistance. Just what you'd expect from the Military State, I supposed. Its ergonomic design eliminated resistance at the source.

It was a little embarrassing, but even a magician of my caliber hadn't been able to escape it.

Didn't they say covering an agitated animal's eyes calmed it down? The principle applied to humans too.

Forced to turn his attention inward by the blindfold, Kanisen struggled for about a minute before he realized it. He lacked the ability to escape the restraint suit.

Closing your eyes and assuming an uncomfortable posture had long been widely known as a way to master the mind. Meditation, was it? Kanisen was currently practicing the finest meditation imaginable—in that he couldn't stop of his own accord—and soon calmed down and regained his senses.

'When... did he? Since when? Where was he hiding that packet? No, I... Why?'

Good. Now you were ready to appreciate the magic. Smiling, I went around behind him and removed the blindfold. Kanisen flared up at the sight of my smiling face, but soon relaxed. He had accepted defeat.

As I was always reminded, you had to give something to get something back. Look. I'd given him a restraint suit, and now he was much nicer.

"Now, watch closely. I don't reveal my tricks just any time."

Smiling, I held up the sharp spike. I flipped it over, turning it into a card, then opened both hands while keeping it concealed in my palm. In an instant, the long spike had vanished into my hand.

Kanisen's eyes widened.

'The thing I thought I'd made him drop...!'

"Correct! I only pretended to drop it. I actually turned it into a card and hid it! Then I used this to slice your sleeve and slip something inside! I love how quickly you catch on!"

A sharp-edged spike. A tool of the trade that any pickpocket carried.

Its tip was honed so finely that a gentle stroke across a bag, with the spike hidden in your hand, would expose everything concealed inside.

'I didn't notice. Damn it...!'

"Don't be too hard on yourself. I was a promising pickpocket once. I slit open so much leather that, for a while, leather bags practically stopped selling because of me. I washed my hands of it after that, but thankfully, it seems I haven't lost my touch."

'Damn... it... Just who the hell are you...!'

"Oh, that."

I was just about to say something when Gamma's tearful voice reached us faintly from far away.

"Boss? Boss? You're all right, aren't you?"

Kanisen's eyes flew wide.

'No. Gamma! Shut up! Plant the bombs and do some damage, however you can!'

But Kanisen's thoughts could not get past his gag. Unfortunately, Gamma wasn't a mind reader and couldn't read his wishes.

So, as luck would have it, I was the only one who could hear his thoughts. The very last person he wanted to share them with.

"Oh, right. Almost forgot about that one."

'No! Gamma, detonate the bombs! This is our last chance! Gamma!'

"I'd better deal with that first."

'Please! Gamma!'

I grabbed a strap on the restraint suit and dragged Kanisen away. He kept catching on debris scattered over the floor. The effort was irritating, but I pulled hard, trusting that hitting all that rubble hurt Kanisen more. Honestly, it was his own fault. Who told him to overturn all this wreckage?

I returned to the passage leading underground. The rope tied to a pillar swayed forlornly, like a fishing rod that had lost its owner.

It hung deep underground through the fractured opening. Gamma, who had been investigating below while tied to it, was now tugging on the rope and calling for Kanisen.

'Why isn't the Boss answering? After all the trouble I took to figure out Tantalus's structure... We need to plant the bombs quickly.'

Tantalus's structure?

About to cut the rope, I paused and read Gamma's thoughts. Now, then. How was this place put together?

Uh.

Hmm.

Huh? Seriously?

After a moment's thought, I left the rope alone and removed Kanisen's gag first. The fastener popped open, and the saliva-soaked gag fell to the ground. Kanisen failed to grasp what was happening for a moment, then immediately raised his voice and shouted.

Meanwhile, I settled onto a seat nearby and calmly read Gamma's thoughts.

"That's an order! Gamma, detonate the bombs!"

"W-what?"

Gamma shouted in bewilderment.

"Boss! Pull me up! There's nowhere to put my feet down here. I can't get up unless you pull on the rope!"

"I've been defeated! We have no other chance. Detonate the bombs now, before the rope gets cut!"

"B-but if I set them off here..."

"We have no other chance! Set them off right now!"

"Th-the bombs are on me."

"Yes! I'm telling you to detonate the bombs you're carrying! Right now!"

Gamma had been a technician named Wikrol. He had taken part in the Military State's dark dealings and seen tools made by his own hands used to take human lives. Unable to endure his overwhelming guilt, he had thrown himself into the Resistance. And so the promising engineer Wikrol became Gamma of the Resistance.

But even after joining the Resistance, Gamma remained a technician. However much he respected his Boss, he would not meekly obey an irrational order.

"Setting them off here won't accomplish anything! The blast will just escape downward!"

Gamma recalled what he had seen below.

An office littered with broken odds and ends. Move aside the broad desk with its broken legs, and beneath it lay a passage underground. The stairs had collapsed in the attack, so descending required a rope. Hanging from that single rope, Gamma had squeezed through the debris and gone farther and farther down.

He had arrived in a wide-open space, like looking out over a plain while standing on his head.

At that moment, Gamma had understood Tantalus's structure.

His first feeling had been an engineer's delight. That thrilling sensation when a mechanism of unfamiliar construction resolved itself around a single principle, everything clicking neatly into place. Then had come the exhilaration of destroying this prison the Military State must have labored so hard to create.

Only a single case of bombs. With that alone, the astronomical sum the Military State had spent building Tantalus would vanish, quite literally, down the bottomless pit. How efficient. An absurd rate of exchange. If Gamma had been a merchant, he would have been called the swindler of the century.

But his Boss, ignorant of technology, was forcing an utterly unacceptable order on him. Gamma shouted in outrage.

"Tantalus is built like a tray supported at both ends. It's not at the bottom of the bottomless pit. It's suspended across the middle!"

Breaking a plate resting across two supports was simple. Remove the points supporting it, and it would fall without your having to touch anything else. Mother Earth would take care of the rest.

"We have to split the explosives into three charges and set off one here and one at each end! Then Tantalus will lose its balance and fall! That's the only way to bring down something this huge!"

There was only one right answer. Nothing else mattered. Gamma desperately tried to persuade his Boss, but...

"How many times must I tell you we can't do that! Didn't you hear me tell you to set them off now, Gamma? Detonate them!"

"I'm telling you, that will only kill me!"

"I'm ordering you to die!"

"... What?"

Gamma's thoughts stopped for a moment.

"He's nearby! Set them off while you still can! It's the only way to strike even the slightest blow against the wicked Military State and the man who killed our comrades!"

"B-but these..."

"Set. Them. Off!"

Gamma looked around. He was hanging beneath Tantalus's floor. An explosion spread outward. Set one off in a place open on every side, and its force would simply dissipate into the depths below.

To inflict anything resembling real damage, he would have to climb the rope and detonate the bombs inside a crack. Even that would fall far short of bringing Tantalus down.

But more importantly...

Gamma confronted the fear enveloping him.

What if he brought Tantalus down? Gamma would die eventually too, but it wouldn't hurt much. This was a bottomless pit, so the fall would last forever, giving him time to calmly accept death. Perhaps he might even meet his friends as he fell. He would celebrate their success and enjoy their reunion, then hit something and die in an instant. There would be no time to feel pain. Mother Earth would take his body into her embrace, swiftly and warmly.

Perhaps, since this was a bottomless pit, the fall really would continue forever. Then he would talk with his friends, laugh until he had had enough, and finally fall asleep from exhaustion. And never wake again. He would meet a death that came like sleep in the darkness.

But what if he detonated the bombs? His body would shatter into pieces and scatter in every direction. The flash would blind him, the heat would burn his lungs, and the blast would tear his body to shreds and strew it through the bottomless pit.

Gamma's hands shook.

He had resolved to die the moment he came down here.

But he still wasn't ready.

I had just finished reading his thoughts. Gripping my spike tightly, I stood.

"Not ready? Then let me help you."

"No!"

Kanisen's shouts and Gamma's sobs grew louder. I shrugged as though there were nothing else I could do and said,

"I'll pay for this sin in hell."

Having expressed my intention to do whatever the fuck I wanted in the most religious way possible, I drew the spike across the rope. It snapped. An anguished scream escaped the Boss's mouth. Beyond Tantalus, too, a voice echoed, growing fainter and fainter in the distance.

And so Gamma became a lost soul in the bottomless pit. In this place forsaken by Mother Earth, he would wander an eternity until he died.

Until he had fully accepted death and took his own life.

Kanisen sobbed. No one could make him succeed now. No one could stop me from cutting out his ugly side and thrusting it before his eyes.

"Ugly, isn't it? To the very end, all you said was an order to throw away his life faster. Even while you were restrained beneath me, all you did was hound someone else to die."

"Kill me! Stop insulting me and just kill me!"

Only a handful of people were truly great. The rest were driven to a cliff's edge and leaped, pretending they had chosen it of their own free will. Lost children of their age, neither heroes nor ordinary citizens.

Unfortunately, Kanisen Riverwood was not among that handful. In the end, he too had simply been driven into the bottomless pit.

"Rationalizations. Excuses. Meaningless repentance and confession. Self-contradiction. And hypocrisy. You poured people and resources into a useless operation so you could console yourself that you'd done your best. What an extravagant suicide. Four young people were buried alive alongside you, and the rebels' assets became your grave goods."

"Just kill me instead!"

Kanisen slammed his face into the ground. Wriggling like a worm, he struck his head against it over and over.

That wasn't enough to kill him.

He put a stone in his mouth and bit down. Broken fragments tore through the inside of his mouth. He swallowed them, so the sharp shards would shred his insides.

That wasn't enough to kill him.

He bit through his tongue. His teeth severed the soft flesh, and blood gushed out.

Even that wasn't enough to kill him.

Wishing he could simply die, wishing he could be forgotten, Kanisen kept hurting himself.

But...

Even if he never entered the history books. Even if no spoken tale could engrave him upon the world.

I, who had read it all, could not forget him.

"I know you. The life you've lived, what you've seen and felt. How you lived, and what you lived for. I've read it all. Because I have, precisely because I have, I won't judge you."

I read.

Thoughts.

Lives.

Dreams.

That fleeting eternity of looking back on a life before death arrives.

I read every thought flickering through that final panorama and bind them into a single book.

"I am the world's smallest columbarium. A library commemorating those who will be forgotten. A columbarium does not judge the sins of the dead, and a library does not rank its books. They merely remember and preserve."

The Boss suddenly tensed his entire body. He spat one of the stone fragments in his mouth at me. Stained with blood and bits of flesh, it arced through the air... and landed at my feet.

This wasn't an attack. It was a protest.

A desperate protest begging me to kill him now, to end this pain.

If that was what he wanted.

Spike in hand, I went around behind him. I sat down on his back and raised the spike in a firm grip. Its point was chillingly sharp. Sharp enough to pierce a person with ease.

"Farewell, Kanisen Riverwood. Last knight, raised on dreams of romance by a beautiful riverbank. The whole world will forget you, and no one will know how you met your end. But I will remember you and the four young people who followed you."

When do you think a person dies?

Opinions might differ, but at least Kanisen Riverwood's death was decided now.

He had lost the will to live.

And I had no intention of letting him live.

Kanisen Riverwood closed his eyes and raised his head. He stretched out his neck, hoping I would put him to death quickly.

He had always been prepared to die. He had been prepared to kill others too. Whether he killed someone or someone killed him, he would not have batted an eye.

He simply hadn't been prepared to face his own ugliness.

There is no hell in this world. No heaven, either.

Only a single abandoned columbarium.

It isn't a comfortable place, but may you rest in peace all the same.

I placed the spike against his throat. Then pulled. The edge moves at an angle. A man's throat lies in its path. The skin splits, and red life flows out from within.

Whether he suffered as he died or found peace...

No one in the world would know.

Except me.

A brief pain and a lifetime of memories lasting an eternity flashed past. Before long, his thoughts ceased. What had been Kanisen's body became a corpse. Trivial and meaningless.

A small period marked the end of a book.