Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [319]
Zophie was all of fifteen years old. She was the daughter of the emperor, yet in many ways she was still just a little girl. She was as giddy and talkative as any girl one might meet in the town. Mitsuru, in general, spoke little, taking in all that she said while making the occasional requisite comment or murmur of approval.
On occasion he would smile or nod, be surprised or impressed. She seemed to revel in Mitsuru’s every gesture, and seem quite pleased that she’d found this clever fellow to enjoy conversation with—even if he was a shade on the young side. Mitsuru, for his part, enjoyed these times for his own private reason, which he could never tell her.
When he first went to meet with the emperor’s daughter, he’d been so surprised his breath was taken away. Her face looked like someone he knew. They were almost identical.
The woman was his aunt—his father’s youngest sister.
After Mitsuru’s father, enraged at his wife’s infidelity, had killed Mitsuru’s mother and his little sister, then taken his own life, Mitsuru had been shuttled around between various relatives, eventually ending up with his young aunt. In truth, he’d been pressed on her. Here was a young woman, just graduated from college, who doubtlessly sympathized with Mitsuru, yet certainly lacked the means and wherewithal to raise a young boy. She tried being nice to him and that failed, and when she tried to control him, she lost control of herself and ended up crying and screaming.
She was not, in general, a happy person. Her eyes always had a sad, forlorn look to them.
Mitsuru grew to hate his father. Had he not committed suicide, Mitsuru would have killed him with his own bare hands. That all-consuming rage opened the Porta Nectere. It provided Mitsuru the chance to enter Vision.
Everything about the emperor’s daughter reminded him of his aunt. Her little affectations. The shifts in her expression. The timbre of her voice. Everything. He thought his aunt must have been like this when she was a high school student, beautiful and unafraid of what lay ahead.
The Watcher of the gate, Wayfinder Lau, told Mitsuru he would encounter people in Vision who closely resembled those he knew in the real world.
—Even though they may look like two peas in a pod, the people you meet here are not who they are in the real world. They may have not a single thing in common. It is merely your own energy that causes them to appear the way they do.
Mitsuru had taken Wayfinder Lau’s words to heart, and, for better or for worse, he hadn’t yet met anyone resembling someone from the real world in his travels until now. Lady Zophie was the first.
And now, staring at her face from such a close distance, he began to wonder if Vision wasn’t really more than just something created by the surplus imaginative energies of people in the real world. Perhaps the real world and Vision were like two sides of a coin, each complementing the other. Making the other whole.
What had been discarded in the real world, what had never seen form, those dreams that never came true, these were what made Vision.That was why Halnera required a sacrifice from both worlds.
If this were the case, then Zophie’s easy smile and unfettered happiness belonged by all rights to his aunt back in the real world. Mitsuru would reach the Tower of Destiny and straighten out his twisted fate. On the morning he returned to the real world, all the happiness that had been Zophie’s would be returned to his aunt. This he promised himself.
It made the task before Mitsuru quite simple. The relationship between his aunt and Zophie was a perfect example. He would merely apply the same principle to his mother, his little sister, and himself.
Perhaps this is why, before he claimed the final gemstone, he had been confronted with this challenge and forced to do a little self-reflection. The Tower of Destiny had given him this encounter with Lady Zophie to prepare him.
That is why, in Zophie’s mindless prattle, he felt the weight of his