Johanna. Her hair color had changed from a neat brown to a brilliant silver, but I couldn't mistake that face.
Her face and name. Her scent and voice were just as I remembered.
"You're the Lupus living in the present, aren't you? Not the Assassin summoned to Chaldea."
Johanna, her expression brimming with emotion, took one step, then another, toward me.
"It's me. Johanna. You remember, right? If this feels like a dream, you can hold my hand. I am right here."
Behind her was Fujimaru Ritsuka. That meant Johanna had been summoned to Chaldea as a Servant.
It also meant the Holy Grail War had gone wrong, and I had failed yet again...
"I refuse."
A single, heavy voice settled over the hotel lobby. It was Draco.
She was likely trying to lower it as much as possible, but because of her characteristically high-pitched voice, it probably didn't have much effect.
What did have an effect was her magical energy. The intense magic, like that of a beast, froze everyone in the lobby.
"I refuse. Go away. Do not show your face before me."
"...Who are you?"
Johanna's face, which had frozen for a moment, relaxed as she approached Draco with a gentle voice.
But Draco glared at Johanna as if looking at her parents' murderer.
"Begone."
The killing intent was so powerful that my own legs, standing right next to her, nearly gave out.
Draco's hostility was immense. Out of respect for her, Johanna did not approach any further.
"Why do you hate me?"
"You are like them. The fools who did not lose their faith in God even as they died. I hate fools."
"You are someone who does not believe in God."
"Absurd. Where is this 'God' you speak of? If such a being existed, he would have saved his followers as they were being devoured by lions."
A small story of the past. Johanna seemed to have noticed something.
Just as Ritsuka's expression hardened with resolve, Draco unleashed her magical energy once more.
This time, it was strong. Johanna and Ritsuka, standing defenseless, were knocked backward. Draco fled without a single look back.
Of course, her hand was tightly gripping mine.
Draco's back was soaked in sweat.
"Are you okay?"
"...That is a question I should be asking you. Were you not tense?"
She misses nothing. It's common for my inner thoughts to be read, but this time, it was a bit embarrassing.
When I saw Johanna, I felt fear before any sense of welcome.
"My mind went blank. I should be happy to see her, but my hands were shaking... It's strange, isn't it?"
"It is only natural. If you could calmly approach that woman after what those around you did, this place would not be a Singularity... Ah."
Draco covered her mouth, as if she had misspoken.
"No need to hide it. I don't know why Chaldea is here, but the fact that they've come means this place is already a Singularity, right?"
"Is that so...?"
"More importantly. Shouldn't we get down soon?"
Draco and I were perched on the railing of the sidewalk, at the very edge of the Fuyuki Grand Bridge.
It was a perilous place where the wind howled every second. Optimal for cooling off, but a place that anyone without a death wish would hate to even approach.
"We...?"
"Us. You brought me out here. You did it on the empty streets, and just now at the hotel."
Draco sat pressed tightly against me, just as she had by the riverbank.
This time, I had sat down first, so it was definitely her who had moved closer.
"I do not believe in the word 'we'. Nor do I believe in 'together' or 'friendship'."
"You're a severe skeptic."
I wanted to lighten the mood, but it didn't seem to be the right time.
"Why do you..."
Draco's red gaze turned to me.
A crimson, burning gaze. Her sorrowful eyes, closer to a setting sun than a blazing one, were anticipating something, yet also fearing it.
"...I. I just..."
I used my sleeve to wipe the corner of her eye. A single, thick tear was rolling down.
Draco hadn't even realized it until I wiped it away.
That image truly made her feel like a genuine child.
A child who gets emotionally excited easily, whose mood changes constantly, and who bursts into tears at the drop of a hat.
This was my chance to ask.
"Are you... really my child?"
Draco fell silent.
She had said it herself. That she was the 'sole' (Yui) daughter who inherited a part of my soul and the Authority of the Beast.
Not one, but two.
But the child Johanna had given birth to was clearly only one person.
"Draco. Who are you, and why did you come to me?"
Draco looked crestfallen, like someone who had lost everything, but soon lifted her head to face me.
Her eyes were green.
She placed her hand on my cheek. At that moment, I lost consciousness.
**
I was in a vision. I was in a prosperous city filled with ancient architecture.
People were heading somewhere. Unable to fight the crowd, I was swept along with the flow.
It was a public square. A woman was standing on a platform, high above the dais.
Beautiful golden-blond hair, and a daring red dress cut so low it revealed her skin. Her attire was similar to Draco's, but slightly more refined (though still suggestive).
"Umu! Enjoy yourselves to the fullest! This is my overflowing party of love and passion!"
For a moment, I thought I had misheard.
That speech pattern was certainly no different from the small child who had been beside me.
The scene changed instantly. This time, I was standing in a resplendent palace.
I headed toward the voices and saw the woman from before, along with an unknown man.
"I am Nero. I love you. As your teacher, I have dedicated my life to you... but it seems I was wrong."
"Seneca. Why do you say such things?"
"You are a tyrant beyond saving. I should atone for the sin of raising you by killing you now, but I love you even more than that."
The man called Seneca dropped the sword he had hidden in his robes.
"I will leave. To a distant place where you are not. Do not try to stop me."
He was serious. Desperate. He was as dejected as a man whose life had been forsaken.
But in the woman he was speaking to, not a trace of understanding could be found.
"The world is mine, so where could you possibly go?"
A gap. A deep cliff, like a chasm, lay between the man and the woman.
Unable to understand, and unable to be understood.
"...In that case, I shall leave the world."
He turned and walked out the door. He almost collided with me, but he passed right through my body.
And other scenes kept appearing.
Nero killed people. She committed the countless evil deeds I knew of from my limited knowledge of history.
She captured Christians and threw them to the lions as feed, and burned them to death.
She did not forgive those who went against her word.
And then, she spoke of love.
It was a bizarre sight. Nero clearly loved the citizens. She loved her teacher, Seneca.
The innumerable scenes that flashed by supported this.
She pleased the citizens with bread and concerts. At the same time, she capriciously seized and killed people.
The citizens, faced with their Emperor's dual nature, gradually grew distant and came to hate her.
And then, the Great Fire of Rome. Nero stared blankly at the roaring flames.
She did not just stand still.
She gave orders to save people. But at the same time, she merely observed the burning citizens.
No one could read that inorganic expression. What was Nero truly thinking?
In the end, no one remained by her side.
She was dragged from the Emperor's throne and cast into the empty wilderness.
"Alone. There is no applause, nor is there anyone watching."
The setting sun. In the wilderness, beneath the setting sun, Nero was dying a lonely death.
A dagger in hand. She stood tall.
She saw hallucinations. She wandered, searching for a citizen who loved the Emperor, then suddenly collapsed.
The sun set once more.
She heard auditory hallucinations. Overcome by the sound of applause, she wandered the wilderness again.
The last sun. The third sun was now setting.
She finally resolved to die. She held the dagger to her own throat, trembling violently.
"My hand trembles so, I cannot aim it well."
Of course.
A death unwatched by anyone is just this cold.
"Is... Is anyone... Is there no one watching?"
This was Nero's memory, and Draco's memory.
I, merely exploring these memories, could be neither her confidant nor her audience.
"...I am going to die now. I said, I am going to die right now?!"
It was a sound close to a scream.
Crying, she pressed the dagger to her throat again and again. Red blood trickled down the blade, but her head never fell.
"I do not want to die. I......"
And the play came to an end.
In front of me was not an Emperor consumed by loneliness, but a terrified little child.
"...It's your memory, isn't it."
Nero, Draco, nodded.
I cannot fully understand her just by seeing these fragments. Perhaps if I had stood by her side as the Beast of Calamity, but...
If asked if she was a good Emperor, I would have nothing to say.
But if asked if she was simply a bad person, I don't know.
"It's a lonely memory."
What is certain is that Nero is a lonely person.
If so, what is Draco?
There was no proof or result in any of the scenes regarding her claim of inheriting my soul and the Authority of the Beast.
In response to my question, Draco already had an answer prepared.
"I was, indeed, born of parents. From the woman who envied me and tried to kill me."
"I saw. You eventually dealt with her with poison, right?"
"...Correct."
Nero told me her inner thoughts, which couldn't be known from the scenes alone.
"I am the daughter of Julia Agrippina, and the daughter of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus."
"Right."
"But I... lived my entire life thinking of the face of a certain Eastern man."
Draco stroked my face.
"As if he were my true father. Instead of the man whose face I didn't even know, I thought of an Eastern man, who I didn't even resemble, as my father."
Her touch on me was far from affectionate.
This was like a child pulling on their mother's cheek, playing.
"They say a mother's love is thicker than anything, compassionate, and devoted."
"Yours wasn't."
"Still, I gave love. Nothing came back."
Draco's voice was tinged with a raw loneliness.
"I think I loved the citizens."
"It seemed so."
"I was not loved."
"It seemed that way."
A Q&A session devoid of certainty. Neither of us was sure.
"I wanted to be loved. And when I did, I awoke in this place."
"...Is that so?"
A beast calls to a beast.
If my own malice called to her...
"I have a confession to make."
"Go ahead."
"...I was born bearing the Authority of the Beast. What I received from you was merely a fragment of soul I happened upon by chance. I was not born from that woman's womb, and the true Authority does not belong to me, but to your actual daughter."
Draco leaned her head against my chest.
"Even so, will you not call me daughter? Will you not tell me that you love me, Nero Claudius?"
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