The Faraway Paladin
Prologue
My memories of death were indistinct and muddy. I had spent most of my days in a dim room. I had screwed up. Somewhere, I had screwed something up. It had become almost impossible for me to leave the house.
My family’s interactions with me were tepid. They did not scold, nor did they lament. They simply gave me vague smiles and troubled looks. They offered me platitudes, and treated me as if everything were normal. It may have been kindness, or perhaps that was all they knew how to do. But whatever it was, to me, it was poison.
Before long, a sense of restlessness burned me from the inside. Just when it had risen to the point that I wanted to tear myself open and rip it out… My home and my room, which provided me just slightly more comfort than discomfort; the fear and distress the outside world inspired in me; and my tolerant family, who remained forever kind—together, they made me hesitate to take that single step forward.
I might have been able to start over… the day after screwing up, or the day after that. Even a week, a month, a year, a decade after. If I had just taken that step, something might have changed. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
I lacked the courage to take that single step. It was like something I needed, something that would give me a push, was missing. Or maybe that was just my excuse. Every moment of inaction gave me another reason to give up.
“It’s too late.”
“What’s gone is gone.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“They’ll just laugh at me if I start now.”
The restlessness built up within me, but everything seemed like too much effort. I wanted to take action, but was too terrified to take it. I wanted to do something, but had no idea what to do. Life was suffering, and yet, I lacked the passion one needed to die.
I ate the food that was given to me, consumed cheap entertainment, and lived by inertia. I was like water that had gone stagnant. Afraid of failure, I averted my eyes from my approaching doom and gave myself over to folly, half-aware of the decision I had made.
The reason why my memories of death were so unclear—It was surely because my life itself had been so hopelessly muddied and indistinct. A dim room. A life where day and night are inverted. The light of a monitor. The clacking of a keyboard. Fragmentary and chaotic, the memories came and went.
And… This memory, which was slightly clearer than the others. The sound of a motor. A handcart trundled by, carrying a white coffin. A cold, mechanical sound accompanied the slow, inexorable closing of the incinerator door. It was one of the few vivid images left in my hazy memory: the deaths of my parents. I wondered, had I shed tears as I stood there, with my parents reduced to bone fragments and ash? All of it was shrouded by fog. There was one thing from that memory I could understand. That event had come far too late to be my stepping stone. The days blurred again. At some point, they had come to an end. My memories of my death were indistinct and muddy. It must have been because my life itself had been so hopelessly indistinct and muddy. Memories came and went. Pain tore at my heart from the inside. Tears spilled. I let out a groan. Soon, the pain silenced even that.
All faded to black
And at my last gasp, I thought I saw a faint flame.
“Wah…”
I awoke from my indistinct and muddy memories.
I made out a gloomy ceiling… and from the shadows, a skull loomed before me. Blue will-o’-the-wisps inhabited its vacant eye sockets. Jawbone clattering, the skeleton slowly stretched a hand toward me.
I screamed involuntarily. The sound that emerged from me seemed unnaturally high-pitched.
Like a young child’s, I thought. With a start, I realized that my voice wasn’t the only thing that felt out of place. The arm I had instinctively moved before me was curiously small and short. It was pudgy, short, and small, in fact. It was an arm that belonged to an infant.
Skull! Forget the arm! Focus on the skull! And where was I? What had happened?
My panicked thoughts bounded from place to place, refusing to settle. I decided to try to calm down for the moment. I wanted to remain cool and rationally observe the situation—
“■■■■…”
And then the skeleton traced a bony fingertip across my skin.
“Waaaahhhh?!” A part of my brain began to curse at me. We’re in a situation like this, and you expect me to stay calm?! I flailed about in an attempt to escape.
It was an ambulatory skeleton. A monster. An aberration. A thing not of this world.
A sudden encounter with this thing would have terrified anyone. I was no different.
And on top of all that, I seemed to be a lot smaller and younger than I remembered. My memories were vague, but I thought I could remember being lanky and a bit on the tall side. However, my memories didn’t match up with my current anatomy whatsoever. Imagine yourself, as an adult, sitting on a tricycle you played with as a small child. It felt like that, but taken to an extreme.
“■■■■…”
Seemingly at a loss for anything else to do with me, the skeleton pressed me against its breast with one arm, then began to rock me rhythmically back and forth. No matter how much I struggled in its arms, it kept on rocking me, its persistence unremitting.
“Ah…” At last, I realized. The skeleton’s clumsy swaying was fundamentally kind.
It was a rough ride. The skeleton appeared to have little experience with this sort of thing, and its bony arms were far from comfortable. Still, it didn’t seem to be contemplating, say, the best way to go about eating me. Well, it probably wasn’t.
Of course, I did not possess observational skill sufficient to read whatever passed for a skull’s facial expressions. I couldn’t exactly be confident when it came to my opinions, and neither could I drop my guard. But it seemed to me that this skeleton was acting in a distinctly loving fashion. When I looked closely at the blue will-o’-the-wisps bobbing in its eye sockets, I felt as if they might have a friendly warmth to them. The thought calmed me down a little.
Wondering what exactly was going on, I diverted my attention from the skeleton for the time being and focused on my surroundings.
My head couldn’t move freely, but I could see several large, majestic pillars, and numerous arches. There was an oculus in the middle of the domed ceiling, through which a faint light streamed. I felt pretty confident that I was indoors, but the place seemed terribly old-fashioned and imposing. I was reminded of the Pantheon of ancient Rome, which I had once seen in photos.
But I couldn’t tell any more than that.
Something that should have been dead was moving for some reason, and I seemed to have become a lot smaller and younger. I organized what I knew in the back of my mind, but before I could embark on a search for further clues, my thoughts started to become fuzzy. Moving around had tired me out.
The skeleton was still trying, in its own awkward way, to lull me to sleep.
My body swayed slowly, now feeling as if it was being rocked by gentle waves.
I let the waves take me, and I slowly drifted off.
When I woke up, a cranky old man with a hooked nose was staring at me. He was pale blue and semi-translucent. That is, I could halfway see through him. He was unmistakably a ghost.
I stifled a scream.
Then, I was being picked up. I looked up to see a woman who was all skin and bones, each as dry as the other. That is, she was a mummy.