17

Nelly woke up on the sofa in a guest room of Ezra’s manor.

“My… To think I would cause Ezra-sama such great trouble.”

“Nelly-sama, you were tired. It is good that you were able to sleep well. Besides, someone falls asleep in the float every day, so please do not worry and take your time. My mother also fell asleep inside the float when she came to visit last week. That place truly is a comfortable place.”

Nelly was shaken that she had fallen asleep inside the float and caused trouble for Ezra, but apparently, it was a common occurrence.

Ezra’s maid smiled and kindly comforted Nelly after she woke.

Come to think of it, Nelly’s sleep had always been shallow for the past several years.

Even when she lay down in bed, she had only had shallow sleep and bad dreams, and had never once slept in a way that truly let her rest.

But now, in her body that had awakened from deep sleep, she felt as though strength had returned from deep within her body.

“How was it? This year, there is no doubt that I will win, is there?”

Ezra, who seemed to have come to check on Nelly, approached and sat down in the chair beside her.

“Ezra-sama. The Spirit Forest is unfair.”

Nelly raised both hands and made a joking gesture of surrender.

Ezra said, “Is it not?” and chuckled happily, and then this great magician called a sage looked at Nelly with gentle eyes and spoke quietly to her.

“Most of human suffering, you see, comes from the pain of carrying the roles given in the human world. Husband, wife, teacher, student. General, king, rich person, poor person. People become bound hand and foot by the roles that bear those names, and the more roles they have, the more they suffer. When such humans enter a realm that is not the human realm, they become free of all the ties of the human world. They become free of their responsibilities, duties, and suffering in the human world, and return to being mere lives.”

“When anyone enters the Spirit Forest, they forget that they are human and return to being the existence of mere life. Then they remember that before any role, they are the existence of mere life. Once they remember that, people are healed, and they can return to the human world again. That is what I think.”

Nelly, who had listened quietly to Ezra’s words, looked into her own heart.

Indeed, not a single one of the problems in Nelly’s life had been solved, but she felt that her heart had become very light.

Those particles of light she had seen in that forest.

Living and dying, humans and non-humans. Things that existed and things that did not exist peacefully coexisted, and the boundary lines of the world were very thin.

Nelly breathed in deeply and breathed out, just as she had in the Spirit Forest.

(I am alive.)

And then she realized it.

She was alive.

(I will live with gratitude.)

For the precious life, the same as the light that had rustled in that forest, had been granted to the existence that was herself.

And for the great blessing that a life as a human had been granted to her.

Nelly, who had cursed her own misfortune until now, now felt almost dazzled by the tremendous fortune she had been given.

Before her, a cute girl with reddish-brown hair had come over.

She smiled and served tea, then immediately withdrew.

The tea had a mysterious taste of thick milk, ginger, cardamom, and pepper.

When she drank it, she felt as though something was being put in order, as though it was recovering, from the deepest part of her mind and body.

(I might be able to change.)

All throughout her life until now, she had lived desperately and ran desperately.

She felt as though she had finally been permitted to stop for a little while.

(It may already be too late, though.)

But even if it was belated, she wanted to try conveying her gratitude to her children and to her husband.

Her gratitude for making her his wife. Her gratitude that they had been born. Her gratitude that they had spent this life together with her.

(And I will try letting go.)

Her husband, her children, her body, her roles, her life—after she let go of all of it, what remained would be those particles of light.

No matter how much Nelly clung to her husband’s love, or tried to control and bind her children’s lives, it was probably meaningless. There was no higher or lower among particles of light. There was no strong or weak. No one could bind them.

When Nelly thought that in her heart, she fearfully recalled the happiness her childhood friend Marie had seized.

Now, even when Nelly thought of Marie’s happiness, no ugly feelings welled up.

She had simply become able to rejoice in her childhood friend’s happiness with all her heart.

A tear slipped from Nelly’s eyes.

(I am glad.)

The ugliness of herself, who had become unable to sincerely rejoice even in the happiness of a dear friend, had hurt and tormented Nelly the most.

Nelly let out a great sigh.

She felt as though all her worries and suffering had dissolved within that sigh and left her body.

With her mind clearer than it had been in the past several years, Nelly turned toward Ezra and bowed deeply.

“Yes. It certainly was a truly wonderful place. In that place, I feel that I remembered something important to me as a human being. I thank you, Ezra-sama.”

“There is no need to thank me. I merely deployed illusion magic. What you saw there and what you felt from it depended on your own heart.”

“Ezra-sama. By what mechanism was I able to go to that place? The Spirit Forest is not a place ordinary humans can simply visit so easily.”

Nelly voiced her question.

There was no doubt that it had been illusion magic, but that forest had been crafted in magnificent detail, down to the taste of the air and the scent of the forest. Its reproduction was so complete that it felt as though she had stepped into a forest that truly existed.

Ezra happily revealed the trick.

“If an ordinary human truly entered the Spirit Forest, they would lose their way and never come out again, you see. I created an illusion from the memories of a girl named Beth, who actually enters and leaves the Spirit Forest often, and brought only the consciousness of the humans who entered the float there. That girl’s heart is clear, you see, so even the world of spirits, seen through that child’s eyes, remains beautiful, almost as if one were looking through glass.”

Ezra said it was an application of illusion magic that had been used in wartime to reproduce the state of enemy camps from soldiers who had returned from spying on them. Since it showed the world as seen through the eyes of a person’s heart, the scenery often changed depending on the owner of that heart.

“Beth?”