Volume 1 - Chapter 3.0 - The Forest of The Black & White, Prologue
685 Words
I suppose I need to get around talking about the principal of the Imperial Knights Academy. I probably had a duty to do so. During my tenth birthday on Year XX87, six years ago, where I lost my parents— I met him.
It was a shocking meeting, and it was a catastrophic one. In any case, I must have had bad luck. Even if I somehow had, I doubt someone else would have met that fate. It actually seems extremely irresponsible to talk about my bad luck here. Maybe I should just be upfront and say that it was my fault.
In the end, I think it was a chain of events only made possible because it was me.
A chain of events.
Actually, while I used those words just now without giving them any particular thoughts, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what events bookend this chain. Where the incident began, what path it took, or how it ended— I can’t declare the precise truth of the matter. It could be that it has yet to end, even now, or perhaps it hasn’t even started. And I say that not as a form of pretension or wordplay’ that is what I honestly believe.
Ultimately, I can only observe the incident from my own perspective, and also from what they told me, so I will never be able to know what the chain of events truly meant to anyone else— or what it didn’t mean. Asking them may allow me to come to some degree of understanding of the circumstances, but even then, there’s no way for me to know if their words are true.
What I have is not the truth, but an understanding.
And perhaps that’s enough.
But to begin with (and this is the one thing I can say definitively), such as the nature of the man at the centre of this all— the principal of the Imperial Knights Academy.
Still, three days before my tenth birthday.
My parents left.
And it was due to the stupidity of none but yours truly that I ended up experiencing one week of hell.
If it was one big joke, it sure felt like hell; if it was hell, it sure felt like one big joke.
Like I said earlier, it will forever be a mystery to me when this chain of events began, where and how it transpired, and in what manner it ended. But while that may be an unsolvable dilemma, I am absolutely certain when my own personal hell began and then it ended.
July 15th to August 15th.
Exactly one month.
I would come to experience hell for one week, and I would come to learn that person.
While telling you about him would, by necessity, entail fully exposing my own stupidity— an act you may see as masochistic— I do think I have to talk about that man.
About the story of how I saved him.
About the story of how he saved me.
I have to talk about it.
I have a duty to speak.
That is my responsibility.
This preamble has gotten quite long, but I’d like to ask for your understanding here—though I’ve pompously gone on about responsibility and whatnot, it’s merely the responsibility of a stupid jester. There’s no telling when I’ll founder—while it’s a timid thing to say, I honestly do not have the confidence to finish telling this story. That is why I’ve been dragging out these proper-like preliminary remarks.
Even so, I couldn’t possibly go any longer. And after I finally begin the story, it could become like a rock rolling down a hill so that it’ll be harder to stop. But to be sure, just in case it turns out that I lack the resolve, allow me to divulge how it ends here in advance.
This story is about a boy who ended up in the Imperial Knights Academy.
And that’s just the hell’s ending. The chain of events may not be over, and in any case, my responsibility to him will still continue to be a three years-long affair.
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- Writer
