＃Regressor’s Notebook Episode 2
Rediscovery (1)
The political system of the nation ‘Edsilla’ is a parliamentary cabinet system. At the same time, it is nominally an equality system, but in reality, this is merely for show; a powerful class system still pervades society.
The position with the most authority in Edsilla is the ‘Councilor,’ of which there are ninety-nine seats. However, their selection is accomplished not through votes, but through politics, deals, and secret struggles between noble houses.
Therefore, the Councilors—who can be called the representatives of the nobility—are each worthy of being called pillars of the nation and the glory of their houses, and the master of the nation who controls all of them and looks down upon them from above is none other than the ‘Speaker.’
……The throne that looks down upon sea and land from the highest place on the continent.
The thousand-year-old house Libra seeks to reclaim that seat, which it shall descend upon before long.
“The return on these wards is declining.”
A gloved hand turns the page of a document. The movements are sharp without any wasted motion, and the cold, composed tone is relaxed.
“I apologize.”
On the other hand, the man standing before him is anxious. He bows repeatedly, gauging the mood of the man who is the likely next Family Head.
“It is not your fault. How easy is it to find a usable tool in a garbage can?”
For two hundred years, Libra has been operating an ‘orphanage’ under the family name.
They gather orphans and bastards who show signs of awakening a ‘Spectrum,’ or who seem likely to possess such talent; they feed and house them with Libra’s money, train them, and temper them into tools—but in reality, it is no different from a welfare project that throws money into the wind.
If it were a talent that would shine from the very beginning, someone would snatch it away before it could even be tempered. In the end, what remains is only trash and pebbles.
“We cannot keep raising useless ones forever. Better to lead a camel out of the desert or find a pearl in the sea.”
Brushing back his blue hair—little different from a symbol of his bloodline—the eldest son, Jedric, smoothly turns the page of the register.
[Sion Ascal……]
He does not even glance over the orphans’ names with his eyes. As if they are not worth a single moment of his time.
“Evict them all in the near future.”
The current succession structure of Libra seems skewed, yet it is taut. The eldest son, the second son, and the eldest daughter—these three have been engaged in a tiresome tug-of-war for several years.
Of course, justification and time are on the side of the eldest son, Jedric, but the forces protecting the second son and the eldest daughter are no trivial matter either.
The only one who can be trusted—no, the only one who does not need to be guarded against, at the very least—is the youngest.
There is no leeway to waste assets on something like this orphanage.
“Build up the justification on your own. I shall speak to the Family Head when the time comes.”
In the eldest son’s study, Jedric ends the interview. He turns and sits down, as if he has no intention of listening to opposing opinions.
“……Yes. I understand. I shall relay it as such.”
Henry neatly bows with the decorum of a butler.
* * *
“……Sion Ascal.”
The capital, Edsilla. The consultation room of Libra Orphanage.
A senior knight dispatched from the main house calls my name.
“Sion Ascal.”
I look at him with slightly dazed eyes.
Even now, it still doesn’t quite feel real.
“Sion Ascal. Answer!”
“Why.”
“……Why?”
The knight furrows his brow. Then he reads the document with my record written on it in a loud voice.
“Fine. Entered the orphanage at seven, brain tumor at eight? Leukemia at thirteen, Endex Magic High Sch…… wait, leukemia?”
The voice that had been booming at first grows gradually quieter.
Well, a life like mine isn’t very common.
“Hmm……”
The knight, who had closed his mouth for a moment, soon speaks as if organizing his thoughts.
“So Libra saved you. You couldn’t have afforded all these hospital bills, could you?”
A common misconception.
Twelve years ago, I too thought so, and was loyal to this damned house.
“It was treated with my father’s salary, severance pay, and death benefits.”
“Father?”
“Yes. He was a knight. Of Libra.”
“……”
The knight’s face becomes ambiguous.
I add one more thing.
“A junior knight.”
“Didn’t even graduate college?”
“Yes.”
Then he nods his head as if acknowledging something. He also seems relieved.
So he’s a college-graduated knight, huh.
“Anyway. You’re eighteen this year, right? You were eventually cured, weren’t you?”
“The ones on there.”
There is still something worse remaining, but the rest were all judged to be in complete remission.
“Then that’s fine. Has your Spectrum awakened yet?”
Seeing him ask about ‘Spectrum,’ it finally feels real.
It really is 2013.
Not 2025, but 2013 without an inch of error.
I have traveled back across twelve years of time, returning to this damned point in time.
“Answer.”
The knight urges, stroking his mustache.
“No.”
I shake my head. Twelve years ago—that is, before the regression—I had answered the same way.
In truth, it had already awakened.
Not 2012, but 2010.
“Still not?”
I just couldn’t say it because it was embarrassing.
My Spectrum is a Notebook! I can write diaries in it! I can jot down supplies so I don’t forget them, fuck.
“Useless, aren’t you.”
“I suppose so.”
Sigh.
The knight sighs and then changes his expression to a stern one.
“The main house is greatly disappointed in you all. This orphanage was not built for you to play around in. Tuition, meal costs, book costs, education expenses, children’s allowances, teachers’ salaries, and so on amount to sixty to seventy million Ren per year. Haven’t you all not contributed a single penny here?”
I don’t remember the mustached knight’s name, but what he says next is still vivid.
Because it had been quite a shock to my young self.
“The orphanage will be closing.”
At this moment, if it were the old me, I would have widened my eyes in shock. I would have grabbed the mustached knight’s pant leg, almost in tears.
The mustached knight seemed to expect such a reaction.
“……Well, are you alright?”
“Yes.”
But now, it doesn’t matter.
“Uh…… yes. Don’t despair too much. There is still a chance. Young Master Jedric is a very generous man.”
Young Master. That word choice is somehow funny. The actual Family Head probably isn’t even thinking of passing down his seat.
Mustache says, fiddling with his mustache.
“I hear that the most promising ones in the orphanage number about ten, including you?”
“Me?”
“You attend Endex, you bastard. It’s a prestigious school even I couldn’t graduate from. Anyway, there will be a ‘match.’”
“……Ah~”
I nod my head.
Of course I know this story. Because it is a future I have already experienced.
“If you prove your talent, this orphanage will survive.”
It’s a lie.
The orphanage will not survive.
It cannot.
“It is a kind of proficiency test. If you have worked hard enough until now, we will arrange opponents you can defeat. Will that be fine?”
“Yes. That’s so fucking reasonable.”
I answer immediately and rise from my seat. Staying any longer would be a waste of time.
“……So? Did you say so?”
Ignoring the mustached knight trying to nitpick, I turn and leave.
* * *
「Libra Orphanage」.
Not far from downtown Edsilla, this place where clear winds blow from the forest and stream is a welfare facility with a 150-year tradition.
As it is operated by the great house Libra, its scale is considerable. Dormitories, cafeterias, playgrounds, sports fields, parks, and other facilities comparable to an average school line the premises.
“So it really is 2012.”
Now, having ended that meaningless interview in the consultation room of the orphanage in my memories.
I sit on a park bench, looking at the dark horizon.
“It’s amazing.”
It is amazing that I can take in this night sky with my eyes. It is amazing that I can move my hands.
It is amazing that I am alive and breathing.
Surely, I died on some day in 2025, not 2013, and it feels like barely a week ago. My body must have become a skewer from a werewolf’s cage-like claws.
“Should I be glad.”
I am also curious.
Did I really regress?
No, even if I did, is this regression a good thing for me?
I still have diseases in my body, and it is uncertain whether current medical technology can overcome them.
Might it not be merely a repetition of unrecoverable suffering?
“Why now of all times.”
For that reason, I can’t help but complain despite having survived.
Like asking why they saved me so late after pulling me from the water.
……My dantian is strange.
I slightly lift my upper garment. There is a scar like a burn.
Starting from slightly above the navel and rising to the chest—evidence of dantian damage. The cancer of cancers—dantian cancer—that requires treatment until the moment of death.
Exactly one year ago, this cancer did not exist.
If only I had come one year earlier.
Fucking son of a bitch.
“Hey, Sion!”
My name suddenly pierces my ears. On the orphanage’s sports field, a shirtless man is calling out to me.
“Aren’t you going to train?! Didn’t you hear?! If we lose the match against the mercenaries, our orphanage is done for!”
“……Yeah, okay.”
Training? There’s no need.
In that ‘match,’ active-duty knights disguised as a mercenary company will come.
We can’t win even if we die trying.
The orphanage will be closed, and the more than seven hundred children raised here will scatter in all directions…….
What will become of ‘me’?
Before the regression, I probably blamed myself. The closing of the orphanage, the failures that followed, even the dantian cancer—I thought they were all my fault.
I shifted all the blame onto my ‘unlucky’ self—this trifling talent that couldn’t help Libra, this shitty bad luck that dragged disease along with it—and yet, because I wanted to live, I worked desperately at odd jobs like deliveryman, driver, and so on to earn money, was hospitalized, and fought the disease——
Until I learned a certain fact.
That the house called ‘Libra’ was, in truth, the root cause that had ruined my entire life.
“Ah, forget it. The rest of us just have to win. That Sion bastard is so fucking irresponsible these days!”
But what was his name again?
Anyway, he runs. But the world is cold. Not everything is solved by running well. If you fall while running, only you get hurt.
I bury myself in the bench.
Blankly, I open my ‘Notebook.’
On the very first page, there is a diary.
“……Was it really because of this?”
A diary that gives me a rough idea of the reason ‘why I regressed to 2013 of all times.’
[February 14, 2013]
I’m going to write a diary starting today. I’m going to record my everyday life. Why? Yesterday, I just had a stomachache and thought it was indigestion, so I went to the hospital, but they said dantian cancer was suspected and told me to go to a bigger hospital……
Monday, February 14, 2013.
It is the first day I wrote a diary after only jotting down things to do tomorrow, supply lists, cheat sheets, and the like in my ‘Notebook’ all this time. It is also the day I received a diagnosis at the hospital that dantian cancer was suspected.
Precisely that day is the point in time to which I have regressed and returned.
“Then did the Notebook make me regress too?”
The potential of the ‘Notebook’ was to this extent?
Hard to believe.
“Sigh.”
I close the diary. Then the screen changes to [File List].
[30 / 100]
■ Diary
■ Memory
For reference, I made these classifications myself. My ‘Notebook’ has a capacity, of all things, so if I don’t organize it from time to time, it gets full.
Of course, it has never been full. Just chunks of text—
“……What, 30, huh? What’s this now?”
But the capacity was far too filled, and a folder that hadn’t been there before caught my eye.
■ Memory
Memory.
I have no memory of making such a folder.
Where did it suddenly come from?
“Memory…… what is this?”
It remembers? Remembers what? Where’s the object, did you pawn it off somewhere?
I open the folder for now.
└Untitled
There is some file inside.
I open that ‘Untitled’ as well.
The method is simple. You just think ‘open—’ in your mind. It is such a simple Spectrum that the usage is simple too.
‘Open—.’
The moment I think that—
“—Ugh?!”
My dantian suddenly reacts. The deepest part of my body trembles.
“Kuk!”
A fierce energy surges and swells. Springing forth from the dantian and spreading through the blood vessels…… a feeling as if my whole body is being amplified?
I urgently cut off my dantian.
“What.”
Even so, my body is already hot, and my blood vessels turn red as if they will burst. My vision spins dizzily.
“What on earth……”
I am bewildered, but soon my spine grows cold. In my chilled mind, certain scenes flash by like a revolving lantern.
The moment before I regress—that is, the moment ‘right before death.’
“……Perion?”
Back then, I devoured Perion. To be precise, it was the ‘mother body’ of Perion, a 100-gram crystal in which only the essence had been purely separated and compressed.
Immediately after consuming it, my neck was pierced by a wolf’s claws, and when I opened my eyes, it was 2013.
If so, what is this current phenomenon?
What is the reason for this effect that seems as if the Perion I swallowed before the regression is being ‘summoned’ into my body?
“Memory……”
The ‘■Memory’ folder of the ‘Notebook.’
If I infer from the memory folder that I have no memory of making.
“The Notebook…… remembers.”
Could it be that my ‘Notebook’ remembers that Perion I swallowed whole before dying?
Why is it that, as if saving some file into the ‘Notebook,’ the Perion was saved too?
[30 / 100]
■ Diary
■ Memory
└Untitled
“What the hell is this.”
The ‘Notebook,’ which had always been pathetic, which I had thought was pathetic. It hasn’t…… it hasn’t been completely useless in my life, huh.
Honestly, there were times I put it to good use, but it was a Spectrum that couldn’t dramatically change my life.
That has suddenly changed.
But why on earth?
Did it get amplified from the influence of the Perion I ate before dying too?
Or did it just suddenly? On a whim?
……Whatever.
I rub my chin and mutter.
“The Notebook remembers.”
Let’s add one more sentence after that.
“If it remembers, it can be recalled at any time……”
Rubbing my chin and thinking deeply, I change the file name of [．Untitled].
[30 / 100]
■ Diary
■ Memory
└Perion
It became a bit more worth looking at.