CHAPTER~08
Useless Things
The whole world wavered and blurred, as if the surface of the sea itself were trembling.
In an instant, her vision faded into pitch black, until she could see nothing at all.
Amid the dimming consciousness, like sinking beneath the water, Airi suddenly came face to face with N’s weary, blood-stained expression.
* * *
— Please stop now, Princess.
It was a day from her childhood, when fragments of a shattered ship poured down like a torrential rain beneath the sea.
— What would His Majesty the King say if he were to see this?
A hand suddenly reached out, blocking the letters written on the wall.
Airi was clutching a stone the size of her fist, engraving the human language she had learned from N onto the surface.
— It’s all right.
— I wrote it lightly enough that the currents will wash it away.
— Father will never notice.
— If it is going to be erased anyway, why carve it so earnestly?
— Because if I don’t, I’ll forget…….
— Forgetting a language you will never use is only natural, Princess.
N’s eyes seemed to say that he could not understand her at all.
Her father and her brothers were the same.
Even after the room where she had carved human words all over the walls was destroyed by her father’s hand, Airi continued to study.
She knew nothing would change, yet she persisted.
— This has no meaning at all, Princess.
— What could memorizing letters you will never use possibly change?
— …….
— Why do you go this far?
— If you are caught again, even this room will be completely destroyed.
Why go this far.
Airi stared for a long time at the faint letters left behind where N’s hand had been.
In truth, it was an obsession even she herself could not fully understand.
I.
— You must not hate humans.
— They are the same as us.
What is it that I want to do?
— Airi, I still think about it.
— If only they had known our language, perhaps we truly could have spoken to one another.
— That is why your mother never wasted her life on something meaningless.
The voice of her deceased eldest brother drifted by her ears and faded away.
Airi turned her head and gazed down the empty palace corridor.
Even after her eldest brother’s death, the war continued without end.
Airi, who was in charge of healing, remained in the safest corner of the palace to tend to her wounded kin.
Most of the soldiers whose deeply embedded bullets she had barely managed to remove either returned as cold corpses or vanished without a trace.
As she obeyed her father’s request not to leave the palace, the more time she spent recalling those who had departed, the more nauseous she felt.
Despite being underwater, breathing became difficult, and dizziness frequently overtook her.
— N, I…….
— …….
The words she barely managed to force out were only that.
— I want to go outside.
It was her first act of rebellion in years spent confined within the palace.
Following N, Airi left the palace and, for the first time in a long while, swam up to shallow waters to look at the light filtering through the surface.
Just gazing at it made her feel the blood rushing through her body and her heart pounding vividly.
She could not move from that spot for a long time.
— Princess, His Majesty the King will be returning soon.
— …….
— ……Princess?
Even at N’s urging, Airi kept her eyes fixed upward.
The words she murmured without realizing slipped from her lips like bubbles.
“I’m sorry, N.”
“I don’t want to go back yet.”
To that place where she could do nothing and change nothing.
To that place where she could only watch someone die, and then watch someone else leave to kill again.
The truth was—
“I don’t want to go back…….”
The bubbles shattering above her head were like her words, fading away unheard.
Airi watched for a long time as the breath that left her mouth struggled upward toward the surface.
Then, as if possessed, she began swimming upward.
As though something were chasing her, Airi kept pursuing her own breath as it drifted farther away.
It was not because she was certain of anything.
Perhaps she simply wanted to escape the icy depths.
While stitching fins pierced by bullets, palms torn open, and arms where bone fragments were visible, she had learned that being able to breathe did not necessarily mean being alive.
What was more frightening than death was always life.
A life where one could only watch a future rot like a corpse in a place devoid of light.
A life where she forgot who she was and what she wished to live for, sinking as each day swept over her like a wave.
She swam desperately toward the surface.
Escaping the life that waited below with bared teeth, she hurled herself toward the waves shimmering with pure white light.
At the instant her breath stopped amid the sound of water scattering, sunlight poured down from above, soaking her completely.
As cherished faces flashed past her mind like a revolving lantern, the face of a boy resembling light brushed before her eyes.
A nameless hope she had once saved with her own hands.
A face whose eye color she did not know, whose life or death she could not even confirm.
As even that face began to fade beneath the blazing sun, her blocked breath suddenly burst free with a splash, and the world was once again swallowed by waves.
— Princess!
When she opened her eyes, N’s face was before her.
N, who had dragged her back underwater, seemed slightly angry.
— Why did you do that, Princess?
— You haven’t forgotten, have you?
— Sirens cannot breathe outside the water.
— I know.
— Then why?
— I just wanted to know how it felt.
N, about to retort in disbelief, stopped mid-sentence.
Airi lowered her gaze to the wrist he was holding.
— I wondered what it feels like to have to go out there every day.
— To a place where you cannot even breathe.
— How frightening, miserable, and painful that must be.
— It felt like I was the only one in that palace who didn’t know.
— Like I would keep living without ever knowing.
Silence flowed between them like a current.
N’s lips remained parted, frozen in place, as light poured down above their heads.
— The faces that followed that light and never returned no longer come to mind.
— And yet, there was nothing I could do.
— So I wanted to remember something, anything.
— That’s probably why I kept writing.
— Even knowing it was meaningless.
— …….
— Because I was afraid of forgetting.
The words crawled out, breaking into bubbles beyond her lips.
— ……I was so afraid.
N silently released the wrist he had been holding.
As Airi lifted her head to look at the surface again, sunlight poured over her cheeks.
Why do living beings chase warmth?
Why do things long gone matter?
Why does fleeting warmth matter?
In a world where those she loved were still alive, why did she want to keep seeing faces that had faded?
What was light?
What was sunlight?
What was brightness?
— When we find a warm place where light comes in, let’s rest there.
— Let’s take naps together in the sunlight every day.
Had her mother kept approaching that dangerous surface?
If one day she went outside the water, would she come to understand that feeling?
If she could speak the words her mother could not say at the edge of the rock that day, beneath that sunlight.
If she could live while remembering forever the feelings she never wanted to forget.
“You know, N.”
“I have a request.”
And so, the girl left the sea.
Airi’s departure from the ocean was a tremendous leap that changed not only her life, but the lives of all the Siren clan beneath the sea.
After the princess disappeared, the King could no longer attack ships drifting on the surface.
All because of a single absurd message his daughter left behind, saying she would seek love above the water and hoped they might meet someday on a ship.
The endless war came to a halt.
Through her solitude alone, peace came to the entire sea.
When the sirens ceased their attacks, humans no longer stirred up those beneath the waves.
The young boys forced onto the battlefield also disappeared.
Settling in a sunlit coastal village, Airi often went out to the shore to watch children running across the sand.
The more she reflected on what she had left behind in the brilliant light, the more forgotten faces slowly returned.
Each evening, she buried the names she could no longer call in the sunset.
Each night, she sent them away on the sound of the waves.
The final turn was always given to the boy whose fate remained unknown.
A boy whose name she did not even know, and thus could not call.
It was a strange thing.
She had no memories worth calling memories, yet she could not forget that day.
That brief moment when she looked down at his face with eyes closed beneath the blazing sun.
She thought she recalled him whenever bright sunlight poured down simply because he resembled light.
But at some point, she began thinking of him even after the sun had set.
All she knew was that his clothing had been more splendid than that of the boys strolling along the beach.
If he had lived, he might have grown into a sturdy young man by now.
“Judging by his attire, he was likely a noble.”
“Then there may be a way to meet him.”
“A ball will be held soon, and the sailors at the docks said that every noble in this land will gather in Toledo.”
“If it troubles you that much, would you like to go and see?”
At N’s words, spoken after returning from outside one day, Airi’s eyes widened.
