"One ship carries three hundred people. The other carries two hundred."
"...What?"
Hearing his own voice narrating from the old television, Kiritsugu Emiya froze.
"There are five hundred people in total aboard the two ships."
"Now suppose these five hundred people—and you, Kiritsugu Emiya—are the only humans left in the world."
"Both ships simultaneously suffer catastrophic hull breaches that will inevitably sink them."
"You are the only person capable of repairing a ship."
"So tell me..."
"Which ship do you save?"
The narrator's question struck directly at his conscience.
"The one carrying three hundred people."
Kiritsugu answered without hesitation.
"Very well."
"After you've made your decision, the two hundred people aboard the other ship capture you and demand that you repair their vessel first."
"What do you do then?"
The narrator asked again.
"..."
"I would..."
Kiritsugu hesitated.
Without realizing it, his hands loosened from around Maiya Hisau's neck.
Reason gradually returned to his hollow black eyes.
Just as he was about to answer—
Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!
The sharp report of submachine-gun fire erupted from beyond the white curtains covering the window.
Kiritsugu instinctively sensed something was wrong.
He sprang away from the silent Maiya, rushed to the window, and yanked the curtains open.
"...!!"
The sight before him shattered the calm he had only just regained.
Disbelief filled his eyes.
The world had changed.
He now stood aboard the ship carrying two hundred people.
Bodies riddled with bullets lay strewn across the deck.
The dark wooden planks had been stained crimson.
Every one of the ship's two hundred passengers and crew had been slaughtered.
By Kiritsugu Emiya.
Branded as the "evil" that had to be eliminated.
This...
...was the inevitable conclusion of the justice he had always upheld.
Kiritsugu stood frozen.
Though he remained on the deck, he could see every corner of the vessel with impossible clarity—
The bridge.
The passenger cabins.
The vehicle bay.
Everywhere he looked...
There were only silent corpses.
He blinked.
The scene shifted once more.
He was back inside the hotel room, still standing before the open curtains.
Maiya had vanished.
The narrator, still speaking in Kiritsugu's own voice from the old television, calmly supplied the answer to the earlier question.
"You kill all two hundred people."
"Correct."
"That is exactly the choice Kiritsugu Emiya would make."
There was unmistakable satisfaction in the narrator's tone.
At a certain level...
Absolute justice and absolute evil were disturbingly compatible.
The irony delighted it.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A flip phone suddenly appeared in Kiritsugu's hand.
It began ringing.
He answered almost mechanically, pressing it to his ear as he walked toward the door.
His own voice continued from the other end.
"The surviving three hundred people abandon their damaged vessel and board two new ships."
"This time, one carries two hundred people."
"The other carries one hundred."
"Then both ships spring leaks once again."
Click.
Kiritsugu quietly listened while opening the door.
Instead of endless darkness, a familiar hotel corridor stretched before him.
The narration continued.
"This time, the one hundred people aboard the smaller ship capture you and demand that you repair their ship first."
"What do you do?"
"I..."
"But..."
Standing alone in the corridor, Kiritsugu found himself unable to answer.
He already knew the answer.
Yet...
He couldn't bring himself to say it aloud.
His conscience condemned him.
Justice clashed violently against his ideals.
The unbearable pressure gnawed away at his heart.
His lips turned pale.
Cold sweat soaked his body.
No answer came.
BEEEEEP—
A piercing electronic tone suddenly blasted from the phone.
Kiritsugu frowned and lowered it.
The screen now displayed only:
NO SIGNAL
When he looked up—
The world had changed yet again.
This time, he stood among endless rows of shipping containers.
Before he could take in his surroundings—
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted behind him.
He spun around.
Near the harbor, a ship on the verge of docking had exploded into flames.
Scarlet fire engulfed its hull.
Columns of black smoke climbed into the sky like the manifestation of humanity's sins.
"...!!"
Kiritsugu's pupils contracted violently.
This time, the narrator needed no medium.
The voice whispered directly into his ear.
"That's right."
"You made the correct choice."
"Correct?!"
"What kind of sick joke is this?!"
Kiritsugu roared.
"How is this possibly correct?!"
"Only two hundred people survived!"
"Three hundred died to save them!"
"The scales are completely backwards!"
Grinding his teeth, he searched frantically in every direction for the unseen speaker.
"No."
"The calculation is correct."
"You chose to sacrifice the minority in order to save the majority."
"Isn't that exactly what you've always done, Kiritsugu Emiya?"
His own voice echoed from every corner of empty space.
It was everywhere.
And nowhere.
No matter how desperately he searched—
He could not find it.
"You have always buried those who failed to tip the scales in their favor."
"Even if mountains of corpses were the result..."
"As long as more lives were saved, then those lives were worth protecting."
Bang!
A single gunshot rang out.
It was fired...
...by the Kiritsugu of the past.
The world shifted again.
He found himself back on the familiar shoreline.
Behind him lay Alimango Island, swallowed by an unnatural darkness that admitted not even the slightest ray of light.
Before him stretched an endless black sea.
Above—
The black moon hung in the sky, weeping streams of pitch-black tears that poured continuously into the ocean of sin below.
"...Is this..."
"...what you wanted me to see?"
Kiritsugu asked, his voice trembling.
"Yes."
"This is your truth."
"The answer that exists within Kiritsugu Emiya."
The unseen voice replied calmly.
"In other words..."
"This is precisely how the Holy Grail, as a wish-granting device, would fulfill your wish."
"No!"
Kiritsugu rejected it outright.
"That's not what I wanted!"
"I wanted there to be another way!"
"That's why..."
"...I placed my hopes in a miracle."
Frustration twisted across his face.
"You cannot include a method that even you yourself do not know within your wish."
The voice answered without emotion.
"If your wish is to save the world..."
"Then it can only be realized through methods that already exist within your own understanding."
"Don't be ridiculous!"
Kiritsugu shouted.
"How can something like this..."
"...possibly be called a miracle?!"
"Of course it is."
The voice remained unwavering.
"It is the great ideal you once swore to achieve..."
"...yet failed to accomplish through your own power."
"The Holy Grail merely completes it on a scale beyond human capability."
"Human beings have limits."
"Miracles do not."
"This..."
"...is the undeniable truth of your world."
"If this is not a miracle..."
"Then tell me."
"What is?"
"...?!"
Just as Kiritsugu struggled to answer—
A sharp instinctive warning surged through him.
He spun around, handgun already drawn.
What met his eyes...
...was the very origin of every happiness he had ever known—
And every tragedy that had followed.
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