Chapter 1[แก้ไข]
Part 1[แก้ไข]
“……..What a bad dream that was.”
Yō tossed around on the thatched straw bed, mumbling. The street lights had dimmed, and it was late in the night. In Underwood’s underground city, there is always a cool breeze from the riverside, but at night it becomes a bit chilly. It was probably for this reason that the harvest festival’s main game was held in the daytime. Tomorrow would be the eve of the festival when the main game, ‘The Horsemen of Hippo Camp’, would be hosted. So she wanted to get as much rest as possible, but that dream was badly timed.
(………Wanting to be friends with a gryphon, huh? )
Remembering her last conversation with her father, she gripped her pendant. It’s been 3 years since that night of a full moon. Although back then, she didn’t really bring it up much after people around her had scoffed at her story, but now she could say it with confidence for the dream had just confirmed it— The place her father had travelled to is of this world, the world of Little Garden.
(─────,)
Breaking into a smile, she let out a sigh and tried going back to sleep. Indeed, she had said that she wanted to see the ‘outside world’, but not even in her dreams that she thought of had it as anything more than a metaphor. Her relatives said that her father was a vagrant, but to think he’d leave his daughter to go wandering around in a parallel universe, she was so far beyond anger that she couldn’t help but laugh. As she bitterly smiled, Calico, who was on the pillow, sleepily lifted his neck.
“………Ojou? Wus’ wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Sorry I woke you up.”
She apologized as she rubbed Calico’s neck. Calico purred in content and curled up into a ball.
(If I told Calico about what happened to Dad………would he say that we should look for him? )
She lowered her eyelids and silently grasped her pendant. But that would be impossible, Yō thought. There were three big reasons why Yō didn’t go looking for her father after coming to the Little Garden. The biggest reason was that Yō and the others were all summoned from different eras. Being summoned from any era suggested that there was the possibility of being summoned into the Little Garden at any time period. If Yō were to pinpoint her position on the time line, she wouldn’t know if her father existed in the ‘past Little Garden’ or the ‘future Little Garden’. If that was the case, there would be no way she could look for him. Another big reason was………indeed, the aforementioned invitation.
‘Cast aside your family, your friends, your belongings, and the world, and come to the Little Garden.’
Cast aside your past, your family, and your identity, and come; that one sentence swayed her heart, and was why she was here in the Little Garden. To cast aside the Yō that distanced herself from other people, and only conveyed her heart to animals, for new relationships………to make new friends was the reason she came here.
Izayoi and Asuka also probably cast aside the same things to answer their summons. But she was the only one dragging around her past, which slowed her down. Moreover, this time she’d tried to cheer on Izayoi, causing issues for the community. She wanted to avoid causing anymore trouble than this.
(………Come to think of it, Izayoi was supposed to come over tonight, wasn’t he.)
Yō got up from the bed and picked up the cat ear headphones next to the candlestick.
(……..As I thought, makeshift headphones won’t do the job. I should at least win the gift from tomorrow’s ‘Horsemen of Hippo Camp’ as a present………)
And she’d apologize. They might not forgive her even if she did, but it was a rule of the herd to follow through with one’s ideals.
(It seems Ayesha will also be participating, but I can’t afford to lose this time. Tomorrow, the first thing I'll do in the morning , is to go find a Hippocamp I can rely on.)
She tightened her grip on the cat ear headphones and slipped back into bed.
………But maybe because she was overflowing with motivation, she was so excited that she couldn’t sleep. While she thought about how to get to sleep, she heard the sound of heartstrings loudly out of nowhere.
(………Nn……)
*Bolin*[1], the relaxing sound stimulated her eardrums. It was a sound she’d heard somewhere before, but she was too tired to care. Yō’s eyelids became heavy at that moment, and she fell into a deep slumber. Entrusting herself to a gentle Sandman[2], her consciousness faded and then.
A streak of lightning flashed as the lodge collapsed in a cloud of dust along with the ground.
“Fugyaa!?”
“W-wha………!!?”
Lightning poured down, ripping up the ground. The blast sent Yō and Calico into mid-air towards Underwood’s steep cliffs, nearly falling down the cliff where the huge waterfall leap off edge to the depths below. Righting her stance and with all traces of her drowsiness gone, Yō immediately started thinking to get a grasp of the situation.
(That sound just now………! That’s the sound of the harp that was stolen yesterday………!?)
Heartstrings that steal one’s consciousness. It was the [Golden Harp] that Yō took from her opponent. It took no time for her to realize that for some sort of reason, it was safe to assume that it was retaken by the enemy. Shaking off the Sandman, Yō immediately decided upon the course of action to meet up with the other [No Name] members. But the lightning showered down again and again, burning the roots of the trees and caused the ground to cave in.
Just like a cascade from a waterfall, the debris and shattered stones rained down after the initial explosions that launched them into the air. While skillfully maneuvering to dodge the rocks, Yō spotted a Kodama girl out of the corner of her eye.
“Kyaa!?”
“Look out!”
Summoning the wind and taking flight, she pulled the Kodama girl’s hand out from the caving ground. Dodging the burning roots of a falling tree, Yō was surprised by the girl she had just rescued.
“Are you alright………e,eh? Aren’t you the receptionist at the harvest festival?”
“Ye, Yeas. I’m Kirino. You are [No Name]’s……”
“Mhm. I’d like to have us introduce ourselves to each other, but let’s save that for later.”
“A-alright.”
The Kodama girl who called herself Kirino lowered her head in a bow as her flowered hair ornament rocked about. Yō hugged Kirino as she flew through the wreckage. Meanwhile, the rumbling of the thunder echoed throughout Underwood. To get as much information as possible, Yō raised her hearing to the maximum and tuned in to her surroundings. When she did, she heard a suspicious conversation from the watch tower.
“B-bad news! The Titans are also coming this way!!”
“What’d you say!?”
“Dammit, they’re coming out of the woodwork at a time like this………!!!”
No sooner had Yō heard of this before the bells started to ring to warn the people about the Titans’ attack. In the midst of the whirling pandemonium, there just had to be more bad news to top it off.
“The bell that signals an invasion………! It can’t be, even the Titans have appeared………!?”
Kirino let out a desperate cry as she trembled, holding onto Yō. But Yō’s problem laid elsewhere.
(………The Titans, too? )
She furrowed her brow in uneasiness and it was soon after that black sealed letters began to fall from the sky. Upon grabbing the black letter that brushed the tip of her nose, Yō suddenly turned pale,
“Ku………A sealed black Geass Roll letter!? It can’t be─────!?”
Touching down to the ground to drop Kirino off, Yō cut the seal with a nervous look.