Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [224]
Wataru wrapped his arms around his shoulders. It’s true. I forgot. I was having so much fun here in Vision, I forgot why I came in the first place.
I forgot about my mother.
“But, but I…” Wataru began, his voice choked. “How can I let the sacrifices continue if I have a choice?”
“Even if it has nothing to do with you?”
“It does have something to do with me!” he said, suddenly shouting. “I’ve been through a lot since I came here. I’ve seen a lot. Some things have been scary, and some cruel, but I’ve also met lots of kind, gentle people. They’re my friends! What goes on here in Vision does have something to do with me!”
“More than your mother does?” the voice said, her words like tiny needles on Wataru’s skin. “You have a choice, but you can choose only one. What will you do? Can you just tell your mother sorry, you can’t help? Can you tell her to just accept her fate?”
“I…”
“Would you sacrifice your mother’s happiness for people you’ll never meet again in a world you’ll never visit twice? Would that make you happy? Would that make your mother happy? Would she be proud to have you as a son?”
Wataru clapped his hands over his ears. “Stop! Don’t say those things.”
“But you have to hear them,” the syrupy voice echoed in his mind just as loud as before. She sounded almost happy at the consternation she was causing Wataru. “You either choose Vision, or you choose your mother. Choose Vision, and you must go back home and apologize to your mother. I think I know what she’ll say. She’ll say she’s happy she raised you to be so kind, that you would help others before you help yourself. Of course, she’d be lying. You know how she really feels…”
“Shut up!”
The sweet voice continued: “Inside, she’ll be torn to pieces. All that time I spent raising you, oh, what a cold, cold son, she’ll say. Never thinking of his mother’s happiness, always wanting to please the crowd, and secretly never reaching out to the one who needs his help most—when it was so easy. He had a chance!”
“I said shut up! My mom’s not like that! You’re wrong!”
“Oh? Are you so sure? Your father just betrayed you, didn’t he? You didn’t think he was capable of doing that, and yet he did. Just. Like. That. You were discarded, Wataru. Tossed aside—baggage, unwanted litter. That’s how people are and your mother’s no different.”
Wataru could no longer hear the whispering of the waves. That horrible sweet voice echoed in his ears, lodging itself in his head.
“Think about it. You’re the same too,” the voice said. Wataru swore he could hear her grinning.
“I’m the same?”
“Yes. You came here to change your destiny, no? You wanted your father to abandon his lover, abandon the child she would bear for him, to come back to you and your mother.”
That’s true. What he had done was wrong. Wataru just wanted to set it straight again.
“But what about his lover then? Have you thought about her? Or the child? If you had your way, they’d be the ones abandoned. Or would you try to change things earlier, so she’d never met your father in the first place, perhaps? That still wouldn’t change how he felt. It wouldn’t fill that hole in his heart that cried out because he’d never met the one he truly loved. Would you ask him to make that sacrifice just so you and your mother could be happy? Would that be true happiness?”
Wataru felt his strength—his will—draining into the sand on the beach. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t even lift his head. It was all he could do to slouch there, pummeled by the sweet voice’s words over and over again.
“You’re just as selfish as he is,” she said crisply.
“So…what are you telling me to do then?” Wataru asked, his voice weak.
“Ah hah! I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that. Destroy the Goddess. Then you can become Lord of Vision. I don’t know what foolishness Wayfinder Lau told you, but I know the truth. The real world and Vision are like two sides of the same coin. How else could the Goddess affect the destinies of people in your