"Déjà vu was a strange phenomenon where a person felt as if they'd seen or experienced something before, even though they hadn't. The term originated in France and had since turned into a popular expression in stories.
Right now, I was being hit with the strongest sense of déjà vu I had ever felt.
We had ridden Honda and arrived at the place that must have been the flugels's ancestral home, where Naru had been born and raised… Vanaheim.
Up on top of the mountain, both the air and mana were sparse. Thanks to the geography, it was hard to walk anywhere. Liking places such as this must have been instinctual for flugels, given how Gjallarhorn was similar.
How strange. I feel nostalgic. I've never been here before, but I feel both nostalgia and revulsion for such an unfamiliar place.
I noticed a crumbling bakery. I had been kicked by the owner there, as he'd refused to sell me anything.
I saw another building, half destroyed. I had stones thrown at me by the brats who'd lived there.
There was a large mansion which had once been quite splendid. Hinata had lived there, and I'd always looked at the building with envy.
…None of these memories are good…
It seems that this town stirs up a lot of memories in a bad way, ones that my inner self never knew about.
Even though I'd never experienced any of these memories, I was beset by the urge to hit these ruins with an AoE attack and destroy them even further.
"Umm… Lady Naru…? Are you okay? You look pale."
"Yes, We're fine. Let's go. First, We should head to our house."
I realized that my expression had stiffened up when Fiona pointed it out.
This won't do. The number of times I've started to become affected by 'Naru' has increased recently, and being here in this town is only making it worse. If this keeps happening, I may lose sense of who I am soon.
Wait. Has it already been lost? It's already terrible that I can't say for sure. And I'm not really feeling any discomfort about it, either. I might actually be going crazy.
…Anyway, let's go see Naru's house first.
Kushina's ghost might be there, and it might hold a hint to Naru's actions before she had been sealed as well.
"So this is where Master Naru was born? This place is nice."
"Though it seems this place holds a lot of bitter memories for us. There are too many memories of neighborhood children throwing stones at us," I replied lightly to Penny's statement. But as soon as I did so, the house I was gazing at suddenly disappeared in time with an explosion.
I saw that Penny, Fiona, and Tayuya all had their fists pointing at the house, and I came to the painful realization that they had all attacked it.
Hey, what the hell? What do you guys think you're doing?
"I rescind my earlier remark. This town is the worst cesspool possible." Penny spat out words that showed her 180 degree attitude shift while spinning her hand around like a drill. That turnaround was so stark I could only be impressed.
Fiona and Tayuya also nodded in agreement, taking away anything I had left to say.
As I was busy feeling exasperated, Haruka, who had walked up next to me, started writing in the air. It looked like she was gathering magic in her fingers to actually write in the air. It showed how dexterous she was.
"Do you have your avatar's memories?"
I nodded silently in response. The reason why I didn't speak was because Penny would hear me if I did. Of course, that was only if she were paying attention, seeing as how she was shooting lasers from her eyes at Hinata's house.
Actually, Penny, just stop already.
You, too, Fiona. Stop trampling everything in your monster form. Tayuya, stop smashing everything you can get your hands on. You're all scaring Wendy.
"It's not good to be so affected by your avatar. Your sense of self might disappear. If you feel that it's dangerous, please consider leaving this place immediately."
I nodded once again in agreement after reading Haruka's advice. I'd certainly like to pass on losing myself. She suggested retreating. I should probably keep that in mind.
"Hey, now. Stop, all of you. We haven't come here to break this place."
I clapped loudly to get the trio of fools to stop what they were doing. If I'd left them to their own devices, they might have broken something important with all their fervor.
After scolding the three berserkers, I walked through the town that had been rendered into a huge set of ruins. Strangely enough, I knew exactly where to go. It was as if I'd been living here until just yesterday. My legs took me where I wanted. I moved as the memories of 'Naru' instructed, and I eventually arrived at a certain house.
It had fallen into heavy disrepair, but it was still clear that it used to be a splendid house.
"Oh? What a nice building. This used to be your house, Master Naru?"
"Hm… Yeah, you could say that. Though, We can count on our hands how many times We've actually been inside," I replied lightly to Tayuya and passed by the mansion.
It was true that this had been my family's house. Naru's father and mother had lived here. My memories told me that much. But this wasn't 'Naru's' house. My (Naru's) house was… It was a small shack off to the side.
"Th-this is…"
"It's just what you think. Looks like a storage shed, right? Well, it really was a storage shed."
It seemed that this place, which used to be a storage shack, was where Naru had actually been raised. The tiny shack was infested with cobwebs. Even a doghouse would have been better.
Of course, there was no way I knew of this backstory, and the reason I had Naru wear this fancy dress was just for its effects and fashion. I wasn't really thinking anything when I put the dress on Naru. But the Naru in this world… She might have worn this outfit as a reaction to her poor circumstances during her childhood. Like, she admired the upper crust. So, she constantly looked upward, craving and envying the good life. As soon as she gained power, she started collecting glamorous clothing and shiny things like she was fulfilling her childhood dreams…
…No, I'm probably just reading too far into things.
"Our father despised us for being born with black wings. He probably even wanted to kill us, if possible. However, he was stopped from doing so by his need to keep up appearances because of his status and our mother's desperate pleas. Because of that, he instead chose the option to isolate us in this shack."
I started talking about a past I had no actual clue about, as if I'd actually experienced it. I'd heard somewhere that memories never truly disappeared, and that they simply got stored somewhere deep and were hard for a person to access. In other words, memories that had been forgotten could come back all at once due to some sort of stimulus.
Since this body was Naru's, there were memories left deep inside. I guess these memories have been coming up and overflowing due to us coming to this town.
"…Master, please give me permission to slaughter your father."
I thought about my father, and the knowledge that he was dead just floated up in my mind.
"That would be impossible. He is already dead."
I feel like it's becoming easier to pull out Naru's memories.
At any rate, I calmed Penny down from her dangerous state and stopped Fiona, who was trying to set fire to the mansion. There might be some important clues in there. Please don't break it.
"If Kushina is still around, she'd most likely be nearby."
I don't remember if I ever told her where my house was, but she probably found out over these past thousand years.
Also, there might be more of Naru's past buried here that I don't know about. Well, even if there isn't, I'll be happy as long as we find some clues.
As long as we find a clue, I should be able to bring out Naru's memories.
I stepped into the shack. What an awful place.
I couldn't believe this place had been livable. There was only a single small bed and a bunch of junk, the purpose of which I couldn't even begin to guess.
I guess they stored things here, since this was a storage shack.
That wasn't a mistake. But all this junk was clearly just trash my father threw in here to punish Naru and make himself feel better.
Well, whatever.
The important thing was to find something that could connect to the Goddess's Script which Naru found out about one thousand years ago. But I didn't find anything of the sort, and I felt a little disappointed.
…Well, thinking about this more carefully, Naru did only spend her early childhood here.
She only started aiming for the eradication of the grimmfolk after she'd become an adventurer and had gotten to level 1000. No matter how I considered things, she wouldn't have figured anything out as a child. Meaning, there was no way there'd be any hints about the Goddess's Script here…
I just did all this for nothing.
"…The Goddess's Script, huh?" I muttered to myself.
Everyone other than Haruka looked at me with confused expressions. They were simply reacting to what I said. It didn't look like they had any idea of what I was talking about. On the other hand, Haruka didn't react at all. I thought she might have known something, but apparently she didn't, either.
"Lady Naru, what is the Goddess's Script?"
"Oh. It was something the Grimm King talked about the other day. He claimed that this world was moving according to the 'Goddess's Script.' Have you all never heard of it?"
Everyone shook their heads in response, indicating that they didn't know. Naru must have played it really close to the chest one thousand years ago
if even the Twelve Zodiac's Guardians didn't know. What the hell were you thinking, Naru? Tell Penny, at the very least.
There's no one who knows.
As soon as I thought that, I heard the voice of a young girl from the entrance of the shack.
"Let me answer that question."
But the voice sounded strange. It was as if it were reverberating directly inside my head. It was hard to describe exactly how it sounded. If I were to compare it to something, it would be like putting on some cheap earphones and hearing a really heavily clipped voice… At the very least, it wasn't how a flesh-and-blood person would sound.
A half-transparent girl stood in the entrance. I could see through her body to the other side. She clearly wasn't corporeal. She's… young. At the very least, she looked no older than 15 years old. Her red hair was arranged in twin buns with hair pins in them and three clips in the front. She had a green rhombus marking on her forehead, and she wore a red and white shrine maiden's robes, which drew all of our attention.
"It's been a long time, Lady Naru. You haven't changed in one thousand years. You've given this old woman some relief. My my, I'm still so jealous of the flugels's lifespan, even though I've passed through being old and am a ghost now! Cackle! Cackle!"
In contrast to her young appearance, her speech patterns were calm and slow, like that of a grandma.
"My oh my. These past one thousand years have been long, you know. I've been doing as you asked all this time, keeping Vanaheim exactly as it used to be, believing your word that you'd return one day. But a few years ago, I choked on some fruit and met my unceremonious end."
The ghost stood in front of me, laughing dryly, to which I could only respond with a dumbstruck, "Huh?"
Wait. Just… wait a second.
What did she just say? Is she seriously claiming she was over one thousand years old? And she also said that she'd been maintaining Vanaheim. Putting that all together, that meant…
"Oh? What's wrong, Mistress? You couldn't have forgotten this old grandma's face, could you? I even rushed to recreate how I used to look since I learned that you'd revived."
"W-w-wait a second! That speech pattern… And one thousand years…? …Is that you, Grandma Kushina?" Wendy asked before I could respond, while pointing at the ghost with a trembling finger. The fact that Wendy didn't recognize her meant that she'd probably aged normally when she was alive.
The girl who talked like an old lady cackled before answering. "What's wrong, my granddaughter? Did you not recognize me just because I changed my appearance a little?"
"N-no, this isn't just a little…"
Wendy's expression was stiff as the ghostly girl in front of her puffed out her chest. Then, the ends of the ghost's mouth curled upwards as she looked at all of us and boldly introduced herself.
Her name was exactly as I expected. She was exactly the person we'd been looking for—
"I am Kushina of Virgo Constellation, one of the Twelve Zodiac's Guardians, those who stand next to the Black Empress. In order to once again be of service to Lady Naru, I refused to ascend to heaven and instead stayed here.