For the first month after he disappeared, “we” thought of it as nothing more than a simple prank. We believed he would return, smiling as he always did.
But even as time passed, our partner did not return. Not a trace of him could be felt anywhere in the world.
“We” grew angry with one another.
The “us” our partner had gathered were, every one of us, defective goods. Once he, our center, vanished, we fought as if we meant to kill each other.
We hurled at one another the words we had all kept tucked away in some corner of our hearts.
You goddamn bitch, cursed thing, you should never have been born, you vile pleasure-killer, die, you damned heap of scrap metal. Because of you, because of all of you... No... because of... me...
The defective goods fought one another, and in the end, every one of them blamed themselves.
One raged. Hating herself, she repeated self-destruction without end.
One accepted it. She left the world because of a defect that could not be fixed.
One denied it. She believed that if she followed his traces, someday he would return.
And lastly, she despaired.
If her partner was nowhere in the world, then where could he be?
“Cough—! Cough...”
Coughs came one after another.
Black blood trickled down from the corner of her mouth. Haze wiped it away with practiced ease.
It was the result of continually pushing herself too far in search of the partner who had vanished without a word.
Even if she possessed the greatest sensitivity in elven history and had special eyes, going in and out of the Netherworld for nearly fifty years was more than she could endure.
If Haze had not been a High Elf of sacred blood, if she had not possessed the Eyes of Death, her soul would already have perished.
Even now, Haze’s soul was in a perilous state. As a result of repeatedly entering and leaving the Netherworld, her soul had grown closer to the Netherworld than to the world of Adenia.
One wrong step, and there was a high chance she would be unable to return to Adenia, left to wander the Netherworld forever.
Even so.
Haze did not stop going in and out of the Netherworld. No, she could not stop.
Because she could not feel anywhere the soul of the precious partner who had saved her.
She was afraid that the partner who had disappeared without a word might be in the Netherworld.
Even as death drew near, she did not give up exploring it.
This exploration of the Netherworld, too, yielded no trace of her partner’s soul.
Haze was relieved that her partner’s soul was not in the Netherworld. At the same time, she grieved.
What if, hiding his soul, he was still alive and had simply abandoned us?
Smack—!
Haze struck her own cheek. A vivid red mark appeared on her snow-white skin.
Perhaps she had used too much force, because blood began to flow from her nose.
After wiping away the blood, Haze lowered her head.
As the years passed, dreadful thoughts came to her more and more often.
“...I’m tired.”
She did not want to think. There was only pain.
Haze struggled toward “home.” To keep from thinking negative thoughts, she focused on her steps.
Drip— drip—
Each time she moved her feet, red-black drops of blood left a trail.
Barely making it home, Haze lay down on the bed.
“...”
She had to sleep. She had to replenish her mana and open the entrance to the Netherworld again tomorrow.
Haze forced her eyes shut.
Sleep did not come. It was not because of her stinging cheek or the unpleasant blood.
Anxious thoughts surged in like waves. Had he truly abandoned us after all?
After saving the world, a pile of defective goods had become useless.
Horrible, negative thoughts bobbed like buoys.
“...Stop.”
Because of those negative thoughts, sleep would not come. Haze tried to recall happy memories.
The days she had spent with her partner, saving the world together.
Just bringing them to mind lessened her anxiety.
Still, sleep did not come.
Sssrk—
“—! Kehk—!”
She strangled herself.
She could not breathe, and it hurt. Even so, she had to endure it. She had to sleep, even by force, for her mana to recover.
Thud—! Thud—!
As oxygen ran short, her body instinctively flailed its legs in an effort to survive.
Her eyes rolled upward on their own, and her consciousness began to sink.
Within her fading mind, the sea of memory flowed backward. Memories of the past began to play.
The day she first opened the Netherworld, the day he came to the Shadow Forest, the day after he disappeared when the defective goods fought among themselves.
And then.
The day they saved the world and he smiled. His voice. His face... The words that had saved her. They made her happy, if only for a moment.
At the very end of her sinking consciousness, the first memory of her life as a defective good surfaced.
***
Long ago, there had been a prophecy from the first daughter of the Mother World Tree.
A prophecy that an elf with the Eyes of Death would lead Adenia to destruction.
The elves were a race that styled themselves guardians of the world. They were those who had fought desperate battles against the Abyss to protect Adenia.
To protect the world, the elves decided to prevent the first daughter’s prophecy from coming to pass.
They would eliminate the elf with the Eyes of Death who would someday be born.
However.
Even by elven standards, a long time passed without the Eyes of Death appearing.
Even after the priests who could communicate with the Mother World Tree after the first daughter returned to the Mother’s embrace.
The Eyes of Death did not appear.
And so, even among the elves, the prophecy became an oral tale, treated as nothing more than a legend.
Then, in the Delphia family, an elf with the Eyes of Death was born.
Haze El Delphia.
Ironically, the reason she did not die was because of her bloodline and the passage of time.
There were few left who remembered the first daughter’s prophecy.
And her bloodline, the Delphia family, was special even within elven society.
High Elves of sacred blood; among them, the Delphia family had produced numerous priests.
Priests were special beings who could communicate with the Mother World Tree.
On top of that, the great first daughter had also been of the Delphia family, so their prestige was immense.
Yet Haze’s life was not blessed.
Originally, she would have lived a blessed life, loved by many.
If not for the prophecy.
There were elves who still remembered the old prophecy, even if it had become nothing more than a tale passed down by word of mouth. They were the elders.
The elders rose up, insisting that Haze, who possessed the Eyes of Death, had to be killed at once.
Elven society seethed at Haze’s birth.
Over how she should be treated, elven society began to split into a faction in favor and a faction opposed.
The faction in favor, led by the elders, confronted the matter with orthodox arguments, saying tradition had to be upheld and that they must not forget their mission as guardians.
“Kill the cursed being at once and preserve the peace of Adenia. As guardians of the world, we must eliminate the source of the prophecy of destruction.”
The opposing faction argued that killing one of the few High Elves over a mere old legend was absurd. They insisted that, after so much time had passed, they had to change.
“How could we kill a High Elf of sacred blood, and one from a priestly family at that? The elders are too old and trapped in old ways of thinking.”
The two sides clashed. The opinions of the elves never narrowed to the very end.
Yet no one pitied Haze.
For it was true that she had been born with the ominous Eyes of Death.
The Delphia family was sacred and special, but Haze was treated as a cursed being.
As the battle between the factions intensified to the point that civil war threatened to break out, the Delphia family proposed a compromise.
Deep within the Great Forest, in a place where the mana of life did not escape and had grown excessive, Haze would be confined.
It was a choice to pass the matter of how she should be treated on to later generations instead of deciding it themselves.
All the elves cheered that decision.
The faction in favor was pleased that they could put off a troublesome problem.
They agreed to Haze’s confinement.
The opposing faction was relieved that they would not have to kill a High Elf in their era.
They, too, agreed to Haze’s confinement.
Haze did not agree.
And so, she was abandoned by the elves.
***
Deep within the vast Great Forest, there was a place filled with trees larger than those elsewhere.
This place, overflowing with the mana of life, was paradoxically a place where life could not live.
Even though the elves had planted special trees to relieve the excess of life, they could not stop it.
Regardless of a being’s will, the overflowing life endlessly poured power into it.
Because of the excessive vitality, the cells of living beings were ceaselessly activated and made to proliferate.
In this place designated as a special sealed zone, the elves confined Haze.
The elves even cast a special barrier so that no one could come here, and so that, should it happen, she could not leave.
This place of life was dreadful.
Trees whose roots tangled with one another like a maze towered high.
The roots of those dreadful trees jutted out of the ground, intertwining like a labyrinth.
Their soaring branches formed a sky of leaves, greedy to seize every bit of sunlight pouring down.
The only light there was seeped through the gaps between the leaves.
“...”
In that maze filled with life and darkness, Haze merely existed without strength.
Not even she knew how long she had been in this dreadful place.
From the moment she became conscious, all she could see were trees she wanted to burn to ash.
Her life had begun here, and here it would end.
A life of simply existing, unable even to die, flowing along as it would.
A life that could not even leave behind proof that she had ever existed in this world.
At some point, she began to wish the end would come instead.
Rustle...
Her ears perked up.
The sound of underbrush shaking. It was surely some beast that had lost its way.
Because no one would ever come looking for her in this place filled with dreadful life.
She buried her face in her knees.
Rustle... rustle...! ...!
The underbrush shook again and again, and then the sound vanished.
As expected, it had been nothing.
No one came for her. Even though that hope had long since disappeared.
Perhaps, in one worn-down corner of her heart, she had still been wishing for someone.
“...I don’t want this anymore.”
She covered her ears. She gave up.
...
“You don’t? What don’t you want?”
A voice?
No. It had to be an auditory hallucination.
From time to time, vague beings were drawn to her cursed eyes and came to her.
It must be them.
“Your hair is definitely pure white, so it should be right. It was hard enough to find you, so please tell me I’m right. Hey, you’re the Nether King, aren’t you? I don’t remember your name very well—what was it again...”
The voice, tinged with fatigue, was clear. It had a clarity that could not come from those vague beings.
It’s... not a hallucination...?
“...Uht!?”
The owner of the voice took hold of her chin, which had been buried against her knees, and lifted it.
It was the first time she had ever felt someone touch her body. At the strange sensation, Haze was flustered.
“Looking at your eyes, you are the Nether King. Hey, Nether King, what’s your name?”
“...”
Haze’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open.
It was a living being. Someone truly had come to find her.
“Huh? You’re crying all of a sudden? No... I haven’t even done anything yet.”
Her mind went completely blank, and she could not do anything.
She looked at the one who had lifted her chin.
An elf with short ears wiped away her tears with his other hand.
She had never known another person’s body heat could be so warm.
“Stop crying, you punk. You and I have a lot to do. Anyway, what’s your name?”
“...Haze.”
Her voice leaked out. Because she had not spoken for so long, it sounded like metal scraping against her throat.
For some reason, she felt embarrassed, and her face flushed red.
It was the first time she had ever felt embarrassment, too. Everything was new.
“Haze... Ah, right. That was it. I’m Evan.”
The one who introduced himself as Evan smiled.
It was her unforgettable first meeting with her partner.