"Ah, so you write 6 like an S." She awed at the novelty of our script, "Fascinating."
"You got it the other way around." I sighed with a smirk, "You guys write your Ss like a 6."
"Don't be close-minded. The world doesn't revolve around you, Nelly."
"Then how about you take your own advice, huh?!"
Right now, Showa and I are in the process of learning and teaching each other our own respective scripts. Honestly though, she's right about the fascinating part. We use the same language, and yet thanks to I assume a complete isolation from the rest of the world's influence, we've somehow managed to differentiate our ways of writing to such a degree. As I said, their script contains letters above words, and in that sense it's read sort of like a sentence in and of itself, though you read the entire block from bottom to top. It certainly saves on space, but I'm not sure about how tidy it looks. Apparently such cases only exist with nouns, and the words above and below are the nouns' auxiliary words.
"This is fun. Hey, so then if I write something like this..." She wrote on the spare notebook I had spawned in with Misfortune, "Is this right?"
"Hmm... "Hello, I'm Showa, nice to meet you". Wow, you got it down already." I smiled, "How about mine?"
"I'm the Nelly of beautiful super-duper?" She recoiled as she read it, "I don't think you got the order down..."
"It should've been "I'm the super-duper beautiful Nelly", damn..." I sulked on my chair a bit, "Wait, where'd you get the 'of' from, anyway?"
Surprisingly, we had gotten along way smoother than I had expected. These guys don't have clocks, so I can't know for sure how much time has passed, but I've certainly spent more time in the hospital room today than I did any other day that came before it. Guess it really is easier to kill time with friends.
"Gah, it's impossible. It's just too difficult for me to grasp." I whined, "Who invented this script, anyways?"
"Beats me. Years of accumulated evolution, I guess." She shrugged, "That old bastard did revolutionize it quite a bit once he came here though. I honestly hate having to praise him, but credit where credit is due."
"You must really distrust him, huh Showa?"
Her unserious and relaxed demeanor from before had suddenly shifted to a rather frightened one. As if she was even scared to say anything, she blinked strongly at me a few times to grab my attention before tapping at the bedside table, all the while continuing to talk in a carefree tone. It was quite impressive, but I didn't have time to praise her, since she immediately started to "write" on the table a message meant solely for my Eyes. A message she took the extra effort to write with our script this time.
"Old... man..." I read the letters she drew one by one in my head, "Don't... trust... Believe... Yourself... Only."
"Hey, you listening?" She then snapped her fingers in front of my face to indicate she was done and redirect my attention back to her voice, "Like I said, he's kind of a prick, but he did a lot for us. Do you get what I mean?"
"A-Ah, I get it." I nodded vigorously.
Yeah, I get it alright. In truth, she has something she wants to tell me, but doesn't want Olya to find out about it. That being the case, if she had just said it to me verbally or written it down on paper, the message would've shown up for Olya on the Book of Fortune. That's why she did it like this, in such a roundabout way. Honestly though, mad props.
"...Yawn~!" She stretched before getting up, "I need to sleep. Think about what I taught you today."
"Yeah, thanks for teaching me." I nodded knowingly, "Good night, and see you tomorrow."
Waving her off as she left to go home, I couldn't help but sit there in silence, absent-mindedly staring at the walls and only occassionally looking over to Lem to check if he was alright. Don't trust the old man, huh? He basically said that to me as well when he grabbed my hand that time. That makes two of my friends who are both adamant about me not going along with Olya's plans. I don't know, he doesn't seem like a good guy at all, but is it really wrong to not help someone revive his friends? You can tell from his voice that he lies about almost anything, and I've grown accustomed to that tone that gives him away. But at the very least, the one topic he never lies about is his end goal with all this. It really does seem like he truly only wants to see his friends again.
"If I was in his position." I kept looking at Lem to avoid suspicion, "What would I do?"
I would... try my best to live without the lost loved ones. It happened once before with dad, and I somehow managed even after he died. Still, I'm sure Olya must've been seething when he saw dad revived whilst his friends couldn't.
Believe yourself only... I recalled the words of advice Showa gave me, "I understand."
Popping open the Book, I had written in something rather rash. It was dangerous, reckless, and went directly against Olya's warnings. He said he had two friends. Schnell was trapped in Hell, and apparently Olya needs my dad for him to get rescued, but...
"Shaid on the other hand..." I clicked the pen open, "Will get revived in front of the protagonist precisely 10 seconds after she clicked her pen."
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Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Each and every second felt longer than an hour, yet counting down, I had felt an incredible wave of relief and excitement wash over me. For the first time, I had actively chosen to disobey Olya's rules. I felt a change in the air around me, something big was on the brink of happening, and yet all the same, I could hardly even breathe from the anxiety. Will this work? What will happen if it doesn't? Between every second, I reread the prompt over and over again until it hit zero, and not once could I find a feasible reason for error. If I messed up though, everything will be the same. No, not the same, but worse. Regardless of the outcome, I will have already made an irreversible decision. I assume Olya has already read about what I had just done with the Book of Fortune. Who knows, he might already be rushing to get here and try to stop me. Then there are those words of encouragement he gave me that almost paradoxically align with just this kind of rash decision. "Experiment with the Books' powers", he would tell me, and never once did he hand out anything else but praise for when I did. Maybe he'll be thrilled that I thought of this? Or won't he? Wait, before anything, I should probably figure out why nothing's happened yet in the first place.
"Bahhhhhhh!!!" A shriek of terror and fear scared the crap out of me from behind, "AHHHHH!!!"
"What the hell-!?" I turned around to see a man with short slicked back hair and a goatee, desperately trying to yank Lem's blanket off of him to cover his naked body, "Oh my God!"
"Send me back, right the fuck now!" He only slightly calmed down to shout at me directly, "My friends are in danger!"
"Send you back? No wait, first off—Who the hell are you?" I pointed, "Are you really... Shai-?"
"Yes!" He desperately begged, "I don't know who you are, though, and neither your unconscious amigo here, but right now I need to go back to Sibirus to help my friends!"
So frightened, his hairs are practically all standing on edge. What does he mean by helping his friends? Could he be talking about the battle with Ouroboras that killed him? He's still panicking even now, but he doesn't even realize the battle he's talking about ended a thousand years ago...
"It's..." I tried to explain, "Too late for that, I'm afraid. Eep-!"
Without hesitation or mercy, he grabbed me by the neck and lifted me straight up. My feet dangled high above the ground, and I was so scared I started to choke as I fruitlessly hit his arm, begging him to let me go.
"You brat!" He didn't budge a bit, "It's not over 'til I say it's over, got it!? We were in the middle of the fight, things were just starting to ramp up! If you hadn't teleported me away to safety, I could have-!"
"No!" I squirmed about, short on breath, "D-Dead! You died back then, I revived you just now! You're in the far future!"
Taking a moment to glance around the room he was in, he certainly noticed all the high-tech gadgetry around Lem's bed, which I assume convinced him thoroughly that I at least wasn't lying about the latter half. Still, he kept frowning at me without releasing me from his grasp.
"The far future, eh..." He smirked, "Could've come up with a more believable lie, no?"
"Khak! P-Please...!" I begged him to believe me, "Olya is... Olya...!"
At the mere mention of his old friend, the man dropped me hard on the ground. I laid there in front of him, gasping and coughing for a while as he posed his next question.
"How do you know that fatty's name?" He frowned, "You better start explaining from the top, otherwise I'm gonna kill you and find a way back by myself."
Thankfully during the commotion, he never recognized the Book of Misfortune I previously held in my hands before he lifted me up. Now that I think about it, Olya said they only had Fortune back then, so I got lucky on that front. If it was Fortune he saw me with, he would have for sure killed me and taken it for himself without hesitation. I see now... The true reason Olya gave me Misfortune specifically. He wanted me to revive Shaid from the start, and despite my best efforts, I continued to dance perfectly in the palm of his hands.
"It's the year 1035." I spoke slowly and carefully, "The battle you fought was long lost. The Sun God killed you and Schnell."
"That's just not possible!" He fussed, "We died from that tanned shortstack? Phah, don't make me laugh! We're the unstoppable dream team! We fought a Bjorn and didn't even break a sweat while doing it! The Sun God's tantrum won't stop Schnell, that's for sure."
"If you don't believe me, ask Olya yourself." I shook my head, "Cause unlike you two, he survived to this day."
"Huh...!?" He looked nervous for a second, but quickly brushed it off, "No, that's an obvious lie, amigo. You said to ask Olya, but he would've croaked of old age hundreds of years ago if that was the case!"
"That's exactly why I revived you, after all this time." I looked him in the Eyes, "To figure out why exactly he didn't."
In front of me stood a mistake. Someone I shouldn't have summoned in when I did, if at all. He was nervous and confused, and seemed to be of a triggerhappy era. This was a bad move after all. Just one wrong word and he'll choke me to death the next time he grapples me by the neck. Showa, you and Lem give the worst advice, you know, cause this didn't improve anything at all!