Immortality.
To put it simply, it is to neither age nor die.
Surely, no matter who they are, there is no one who has not wished for it at least once.
I, too, had wished for it desperately when faced with death.
Yet on the other hand, it is also something that no one can obtain.
Did not even Qin Shi Huang, who conquered all under heaven, fail to achieve immortality?
But how truly ironic it is.
It is something everyone yearns for, and I had yearned for it so desperately as well.
Yet now that it is in my hands, I find myself thinking that there is nothing quite so unnecessary.
◇
A very distant past that I can still faintly remember.
I suffered from an incurable disease of unknown cause, living each day in agony.
I underwent countless advanced examinations, yet the doctors could find no abnormality in my body.
Only, as time passed, my body gradually grew weaker.
When the symptoms first appeared around the age of ten, it was still manageable. Other than being prone to nightmares, having less stamina, and feeling slightly sluggish, there was nothing seriously wrong.
Because of that, both my parents and I simply brushed it off, thinking my body was just a little weak.
But the illness worsened by the day.
After a few years, I gradually staggered more and more when I walked, and when even writing became difficult, I realized this was a disease.
However, the only answer I received from the doctors was that they did not know the cause. The test results stated that everything was normal.
But contrary to the test results, my body grew weaker with each passing day. Because of that, I ended up dropping out of middle school, let alone attending high school.
My body became unable to walk, and after another three years, it deteriorated to the point where even sitting in a wheelchair was difficult.
Breathing became too difficult to do voluntarily, and living with an oxygen respirator became an everyday affair.
And yet, there was the absurdity of receiving a Grade 3 on my physical examination.
I somehow managed to obtain an exemption in the end, but in that short life, I do not think there was anything else quite so absurd.
To this day, I still remember that time quite vividly.
Still, I had thought that I would rather have been healthy enough to enlist, even if it meant serving in the military.
And only a few more years passed from then.
By then, even lying down made me breathless, and I almost always breathed through an oxygen respirator.
Of course, eating was impossible, and I was receiving nutrition through IV fluids. At that time, I was no different from a corpse that merely breathed.
Death approached so clearly that even I could feel it, yet it approached so slowly, choking me—it was terror itself.
Perhaps my only comfort was the desperate hope that death would at least end this pain.
Then one day, I quietly passed away alone in the intensive care unit.
How old I was at the time, I cannot even remember.
◇
When I, who had closed my eyes in pain, opened them again, many things had changed.
First, I had grown shorter. My black hair had turned white as well.
Above all, my gender had changed to the opposite.
It was a situation difficult to understand in many ways, but at the time, I think I was simply happy at the thought of being freed from pain.
Though I was in a state of being half a test subject, I did not particularly mind.
Then after some twists and turns, and overcoming major events, I was able to become a free person.
After that, I lived doing what I wanted to do.
I went to university, made many friends, and exercised diligently.
Demonology—to think there was such a thing, when it had never existed in the world I used to live in. I studied it so hard that I was dragged into graduate school several times, but I had no complaints.
Because I had all the time in the world.
As for romance, my body and mind were at odds, so it was too much, somehow. I suppose you could say I had become a body attracted to neither side.
If I were to describe the feeling, it was akin to an endless prolongation of that detached, clear-headed state one enters after the deed is done.
But those good times did not last long.
There were several eras of chaos, and many people died.
Only then did I truly come to feel the reality that I could not die.
Losing an arm or having my chest pierced was a trivial wound, and even if my limbs were torn apart, they regenerated in an instant.
Even if my entire body was disassembled at the atomic level, it regenerated as if nothing had happened.
Regardless of whether I wished for it or not.
Before long, a new era dawned, and from then on, I wandered the world.
It was also then that I, who had been no stronger than an ordinary person, began to build my strength.
Comrades were made. And not long after, they died.
More comrades were made. Again, not long after, they died.
Once more comrades were made. Once more, not long after, they died.
Except for me.
By that time, I had realized that a single person's lifetime was an all too brief moment to me.
After that, I hardly formed relationships that could be called companionship.
At times I adventured, and at times I took in disciples and raised them.
When sending off children I had raised from youth before me, if I were to say there was even a single time my heart did not ache, it would be a lie.
Even so, I gradually grew accustomed to it.
Because I enjoyed watching the children grow up healthily, something I had never experienced.
And so.
I lived a long time.
Yes, truly a long time.
When you think about it, "long" is ultimately relative.
Everyone says Old Man Hans from the village on the outskirts, who lived to be 100, lived a long life.
But to boast of living 100 years before an Elf would mean nothing more than a fleeting moment to them.
Because time is not given equally to everyone.
Orcs live 50 years, humans 80, dwarves 200. Elves perhaps around 2,000.
As for dragons, they might live for ten thousand years. To them, 100 years may be but an instant.
But I believe that if I asked all of them, I have lived long enough that anyone would say it has been a long time.
Naturally.
Because there is now no one in this world who has lived longer than I.