EP.83 What Is Your Name
The interim interrogation was conducted very quickly and simply. While Tir feigned ignorance and averted her gaze, Shea, who had brought over a desk and chair, sat across from him, interlacing her fingers and resting her chin on them.
"Now. First. I haven't been able to ask because there hasn't been an opportunity until now."
Faced with Shea's sharp gaze, he looked at Tir anxiously, but Tir only kept her mouth shut and lowered her parasol to hide her eyes.
Left alone with him, Shea stared at him and asked.
"What is your name?"
Pressured by Shea's imposing demeanor, he glanced around nervously before answering with difficulty.
"Tir."
"Hmm? Did you call me?"
Tir raised her parasol slightly. Shea waved her hand.
"No. I guess you misunderstood my question."
Shea glared at him once more and asked more articulately.
"No, I mean your name."
"Tir...."
If the first time could be considered a mistake, from the second time onward it was inevitable. When he introduced himself as Tir twice in a row, Tir approached with puzzlement.
"Could it be that you share my name? Tir? What an incredible coincidence."
"I don't think so. It seems you're just confused from hearing the name Tir just now. Hold on."
Shea grabbed the Tian'ying and held it upright with its side facing forward.
Heavenly Sword Qi, Heavenly Mirror (天鏡).
A mirage is the shadow of the earth reflected in the sky. Sufficiently spread uneven air bends light this way and that.
The Tian'ying, which was compressed space itself, refracted the light and reflected his face exactly. Shea pointed at his reflection in the mirror and said.
"Now. Look! Not Tir, this person! I mean you in the mirror!"
"I... my, name."
In that moment, his eyes widened. It was the first intense change to appear on his face. He covered his pain-stricken face with his hands and sharply drew in his breath.
Shea didn't rush him and quietly watched him. Unable to bear it, Tir stepped in.
"Let's stop here. It seems our hearts ran too far ahead of ourselves. If there's something to ask, let's find out slowly with more leisure."
But Shea shook her head firmly.
"Wait. He'll definitely remember. Even if he's lost his sense of self, he won't easily forget information as old and frequently used as a name. If he's forgotten his name to the point of forgetting it entirely, he would have forgotten language too."
"But..."
"And asking his name is necessary to find other memories. A name is the most important element that constitutes the self."
Knowledge gives certainty, and certainty creates confidence.
Since Shea's words were unexpectedly logical and confident, Tir couldn't say anything and stepped back. Instead, wishing for his wellbeing, she only worried with her hands clasped tightly together.
After quite some time had passed, with groans that seemed about to break off, while Tir's heart burned black like a fuse.
Breaking the long silence, he struggled to spit out a single word.
"...Hu."
The two weren't sure if that was a word that came from thinking, or just a groan he let out. Realizing that the groaning had stopped after that, Tir asked back.
"Did you say, Hu?"
He nodded. Belatedly realizing that was his name, Shea looked puzzled.
"Hu? That's your name?"
Another nod followed. Shea examined his face for a moment and fell into thought.
'No surname? Ah, he said he was an orphan. Still, high-ranking military officials usually create surnames... Though surnames lost much of their meaning after the kingdom fell. Is there no attachment because he made the name himself?'
As Shea fell silent while pondering, Tir approached carefully and called his name.
"Hu?"
When his name was called, he turned his head toward the source of the sound. He had responded to his name.
Tir smiled warmly and responded to him.
"Hu, so that's your name. I learned it too late. If I had known earlier, I would have called it more often."
Compared to Tir who accepted it without a shred of doubt, Shea still couldn't rid herself of suspicion.
'Seeing him respond, it seems like it really is his name. It's not an alias, is it? No, if I even think like that, there's no end to it.'
Shea furrowed her brow and traced over that name for a long time. To find even a similar name within her memories of regression.
"Hu. Hu. Hura..."
"Do you know the name?"
"Wait. Humanist, heuristic, Hu... No way."
"No way?"
After pondering for a while, Shea eventually shook her head.
"Never heard it. Couldn't find a similar name either."
Tir answered in a deflated voice.
"Then why drag it out so much? If you don't know, you should have said you don't know from the start."
"It makes it even more suspicious. A name I don't know? If he was a fairly important figure, especially a military instructor, I'd probably know almost all of them..."
From Shea's perspective, it was a reasonable statement.
Having gone through 13 regressions, and having clashed with the military nation in about half of them, she remembered most of the famous military figures. If he was an instructor with such remarkable abilities, there was no way she wouldn't remember him.
'That's assuming he didn't die a lonely death in the Abyss...'
However, Tir, who heard Shea's muttering, glanced around nervously. Because through the golem's statement, she had learned the fact that he was not an instructor.
Tir herself didn't care about it at all, but unsure whether she should tell Shea, she forcefully changed the subject.
"The world is so wide. There must be many people you don't know. Now, more importantly."
Tir put away her parasol and approached with quick steps.
"Hu."
He turned his head to look at Tir. Tir called that name again as if enjoying it.
"Hu."
"Yes."
"Hu."
Just the name twice without any business. Once in a slightly higher pitch, once with a slightly lower tone.
When she called his name as if singing, he also tilted his head and called the name of the caller.
"...Tir."
"Hehe. So this is your name, Hu."
As if satisfied just by knowing his name, Tir was absorbed in calling his name. If left alone, it seemed she would spend the entire day just calling his name.
But they couldn't wait until Tir, who didn't know boredom, had enjoyed herself completely. Shea stopped Tir who was about to call his name again and asked.
"Alright, Hu? I don't know if it's real, but at least I know what to call you. Then what's your rank?"
That question made Tir wipe the smile from her lips and glance around nervously. He, receiving Shea's question, wore an expression of incomprehension.
"Rank?"
"If you're a real instructor, you'd have a rank, wouldn't you?"
"Uh..."
When he couldn't answer and hesitated, Tir hastily interjected and shielded him.
"Rank, you say. Is such a trivial thing important? It only confuses things unnecessarily and isn't even important."
"But to know his position in the military nation, nothing is as important as rank."
"Ranks change depending on circumstances, do they not? Such unstable memories could have been forgotten. Let's move on to something else. Hu?"
Having quickly passed over the question, Tir called him before Shea could ask again. However, since she hadn't thought about what question to ask beforehand, she blurted out the question that came to mind.
"Do you have any food you like?"
The world is relative; to someone it could be a very important matter, but at minimum it wasn't Shea's interest. Shea expressed her dissatisfaction.
"What kind of question is that? You said rank wasn't important, but now you're asking an even more useless question."
"You're not the only one asking questions."
"No, come to think of it, aside from the name, I haven't really asked much either..."
"You're chattering so noisily. Are you going to nitpick everything about your master's business?"
"Only at times like this do you call yourself master..."
After silencing Shea with her stubbornness, Tir quietly waited for his answer. He thought deeply and then spat out a single word.
"Beans."
"Beans?"
When it came to beans, it was the canned goods that were piled up in the cafeteria. Tir was delighted. At least she could prepare plenty of the food he liked.
Then an unexpected question popped up from an unexpected place.
"No matter how I think about it, it's weird!"
"What is?"
"Liking beans! It doesn't make sense!"
"How strange. Why would liking beans be a problem?"
The beans Tir knew were a very useful grain.
But Shea spoke as if hating beans was common sense for everyone in the world.
"The raw material of the military nation's canned beans is one of the military nation's seven great inventions, the planting fertilizer 'Chimera Beans.' They're planted in fallow fields, and once planted, the land becomes fertile enough to bring bumper crops for farming even the year after next."
"Bumper crops. Then isn't that a very good thing?"
"That's right. As fertilizer, it's good, but that bean, no. Absolutely not as food."
As if getting goosebumps just recalling it, Shea shuddered and cried out.
"It might be a food where the fertilizer is better. When you plant Chimera Beans, huge beans fill the fields, but compared to the large beans, the taste is absolutely filthy. The texture is similar to mud, it has a fishy and harsh smell, and it sticks to your tongue so much that you can't swallow it without water. It's so bad that there's even a saying that a cow starving for three days would refuse it!"
They said even a cow starving for three days would refuse it, yet the canned goods in the cafeteria were piled like mountains.
Tir tilted her head.
"Despite that, it seems everyone often eats the beans inside the cans."
"That's because that enormous amount of Chimera Beans are collected by the military nation and then rationed out! Making them into canned goods makes the taste a hundred times better. Without that, the military nation would have been overthrown several times already. It's a great invention, but as food, it's torture!"
"...So is that why you're the only one who hasn't been eating the canned beans?"
"Huh? Well, that's true..."
Tir let out a deep sigh and scolded Shea.
"I can't say much since I didn't know either... but hearing the story, I think you've gone too far. Shea, didn't you share even your food?"
"Huh?"
In other words, it was an interrogation of whether she had eaten delicious food alone while others were eating beans.
Blinking her eyes, Shea waved her hands and made excuses.
"No. I told Aji several times to eat together! It's just that my items use strong spices and salt, so it wouldn't suit Aji!"
"Then you never once offered to Hu either, did you."
"Uh? Yeah..."
Shea nodded passively. Tir's gaze grew even colder. Shea got a little scared and shrank back.
Letting out a small sigh, Tir put down the parasol she had been holding and stood before him.
"Let's stop here. To wring answers out of someone whose heart is in pain. It shouldn't have been like this from the start."
"Huh? We haven't even finished asking about his abilities yet..."
"Have you forgotten the contents of the note? Didn't it emphasize not to provoke him even if his state becomes strange? We were already distant enough not to share food normally, so what right do we have to expect answers?"
"That's true, but there's no need to strictly follow that..."
"It's a matter of trust. If you can't even follow the note placed in your hands, what face will you use to look at him? Will you keep facing him with a mask on?"
Tir's words were sound reasoning. So perfect that there was no need to point it out.
However, Shea also had something to say. Shea, rarely raising her voice toward Tir, shouted.
"That guy is the one wearing a mask!"
While he blinked blankly at being suddenly pointed out, Shea cried out as if spitting fire from her eyes.
"Has he ever properly opened up and told us anything? I didn't even know his name until he said it today! Tell me honestly. If we were really to see each other without masks as you say! Shouldn't he have told us that from the beginning?"
"Shea."
"And right now he's hiding something! If we resolve that, I think I'll feel a bit more at ease! When we're curious, he doesn't chase us away, when we ask, he says it's a secret, when we try to press him, he says he's lost his memory. I can't help but be suspicious!"
Shea didn't want to suspect him either.
They had fought several times, been mocked, and even cooperated in battle together.
In the process, though she didn't want to admit it, she had grown somewhat attached to him.
But to someone who had seen the future, who had peered beyond the veil..., the present was an powder keg filled with fuses everywhere, ready to explode at any moment.
Because he, by that name, was an instructor of the military nation, Shea always had to remain on guard against him. Perhaps he could even be the very person who had corrupted all these fragments of endings.
"If you don't want to be suspected, you should have been honest from the start! After doing all sorts of questionable things...! I want to believe in you too!"
"If you want to believe, rather than interrogating like this, shouldn't you approach step by step and earn trust?"
"It's meaningless! Anyway...!"
'I'll go back.'
Shea swallowed her remaining words.
Tir looked at Shea anew. Though her appearance wasn't much different from Tir's... that body was of a much younger age.
She had thought she was young several times, but Shea was young both objectively and subjectively.
Having calmed her mind, Tir reasoned with Shea with a much calmer attitude.
"There's bound to be at least one thing that's hard for either of us to talk about. Judging from what was written in the note, he didn't want himself to be revealed. Won't you wait a little?"
"...Hmph. Fine. The things we've found out aren't reliable anyway. He calls himself Tir, and says his favorite food is beans."
Shea turned her body sharply.
"I'm leaving now. Do what you want with the rest."
Shea's body disappeared into that room. With a bang, the door slammed shut violently. The firmly closed door showed no signs of opening.
All they had found out was the single name 'Hu.' Along with the fact that he liked beans, by the way.
Tir was satisfied enough with just that... but the still unresolved question didn't leave a corner of her mind.
"Hu. Why did you tell such a lie from the very beginning?"
Tir asked him that.
Naturally, he couldn't answer.