Luca stood alone in the open-air training hall. Afternoon sunlight filtering through the leaves scattered over the wooden floor like gold dust. The pleasant smell of old timber and polishing oil hung in the air. Holding a ceremonial sword, Luca thought blankly,
Is this a dream?
His eyes slid down to take in his own appearance. The sleeves of his white robe fluttered gently in the wind. Between the folds he could see the right hand gripping the sword, and both legs planted firmly on the floor. The relief he felt at those perfectly natural limbs.
Haa, it must have been a dream.
A sigh escaped him on its own. Right, he must have had a horrible nightmare about losing his arms and legs. What had made him dream something so tragic?
With a relieved smile, Luca slowly raised the sword in his hand.
He took the first stance of the sword dance. Each time the tip cut the air, sunlight ran down the blade and glinted quietly, like a jewel.
It was less a martial art than a beautiful rite. The firm, smooth wood under the soles of his feet. The solid weight riding in the wrist that held the sword. And the steady beat of his own heart. Everything was perfect, and it seemed like it would last forever.
Unlike swinging a blade to survive, this was an act that brought calm and composure to his heart. The truth was, Luca liked the sword dance more than real combat swordsmanship. He’d never told anyone, too embarrassed to let that show.
I’m happy. I want to keep dancing like this, alone, forever.
Then, from beyond the steps leading up to the hall, came laughter he knew well.
“Luca! Still practicing? Come eat with us!”
His classmates from theology were waving, smiling brightly. Luca smiled back at them and moved to lower his sword.
But the peace that had seemed eternal overturned in an instant. The warm sunlight stained a ghastly blood red.
Rrrrrumble!
With a roar that shook the axis of the world, the floor of the training hall trembled and then shattered in a heartbeat. The wooden boards split horribly, and red blood gushed up through the cracks.
He tried to run, but his limbs wouldn’t move. When he looked down at himself, the arms and legs that had been whole were pulped and torn away from his body. The only thing left intact was his left hand.
Ah...
In an instant, tragedy stole Luca’s peace away.
Aaah...!
The horrific pain slashed through him more vividly than reality had. Red blood surged from the severed shoulder and thighs. That blood soon turned into a vast sea of flame that devoured the entire planet.
Everything broke, burned, and disappeared. The instant despair and terror rose to his throat, Luca couldn’t take it anymore and let out a single thunderclap of a scream.
“AAAAGH!”
He wrenched violently and opened his eyes. Damp with cold sweat, his pupils groped at empty air, unfocused.
“Hah, hah, huh...”
Cold air rushed deep into his lungs. Not the hot air of a blaze, but cool air carrying the scent of refined metal. There was no time to understand or adjust to the strange environment he’d suddenly woken into. The machines had begun blaring warnings.
“Patient is exhibiting extreme signs of distress. Appropriate measures are required.”
An artificial intelligence’s voice. Registering it belatedly, Luca panted like an animal and looked around.
Everything was foreign. Metal walls, metal floor, metal ceiling. Even the bed he lay on was cold metal. Not a single trace of the home he’d loved remained here.
The warm sunlight brushing through leaves, the smell of earth clinging to the tip of his nose, the cozy wooden floor of the training hall winding pleasantly under his soles, his friends’ laughter, even the arrogant voices of the royals and nobles he’d found so unbearable.
The scenery that had been familiar and natural no longer existed beside him, as though it had all been a dream. Everything was artificial and hard. As if he’d been swallowed alive into the belly of an enormous metal monster.
“How... what on earth is this...”
He’d survived. That single fact was the only certain thing. But Luca had no chance to enjoy the joy of surviving. His one remaining left hand fluttered convulsively as it felt over his body.
A catheter was attached to him. His upper body, exposed above sweat-damp sheets, was mottled with surgical marks and bruises. The needle holes where the IVs went in made him look less like a living creature than a laboratory specimen.
“Nngh, ah...”
At the tragedy that had befallen his body, only moans stripped of human language spilled out.
“Hh, nn, ah, ah...”
Tears ran from both eyes. Whether because his body was ruined or because of the shock of the moment his home was annihilated, he couldn’t tell. Only the thought that it was horrifying filled his head.
It felt like being handed a death sentence. If he’d just died, he wouldn’t have had the chance to feel like this. Reality was definitely more horrific than the death he’d vaguely wished for.
“Someone, someone, please...”
Thrashing his one remaining left hand, Luca scraped the words out in a low voice.
“Please, please... kill me, please...”
The nails of his left hand dug into his palm. Pain was the only thing that proved he was alive. Even that sensation was hateful. Gripping the stump of his shoulder with his hand, Luca howled like an animal.
“Aaaaah...!”
“Patient is exhibiting extreme signs of distress. Appropriate measures are required.”
An assistant medical machine came over to administer a sedative. But the moment he saw the sharp needle, Luca reached out with his left hand and seized the machine’s arm.
“The needle... please, stick it in my throat, please...”
Watching Luca beg to be killed, the artificial intelligence answered flatly.
“I am a medical machine that treats humans. Homicide is not possible.”
“Just give me the needle, I’ll handle dying myself...!”
“Distress levels have exceeded the threshold. Immediate measures will be taken.”
The machine easily subdued Luca as he thrashed with his one arm. Then it injected the drug into a vein in his left arm, not into the throat he’d offered up to be pierced.
“No...!”
Luca thrashed until he nearly slipped beneath the bed rail, and the machine caught him. The clattering fall was avoided, but the terror-stricken wish leaking out of his mouth didn’t change.
“Kill me, let me die, please, please...”
“Fall risk detected. Raising bed rail height by fifty centimeters for patient safety.”
“Please...!”
His voice grew fainter. As the drug circulated the pain subsided, and his consciousness clouded to the same degree. A mind that had lost its appetite for life withered, and he could no longer feel how time passed.
Luca scratched at the raised rail with his nails.
Screeeech.
The skin-crawling metal sound split the dark treatment room. It was as though it were laughing at him, at a state in which he’d never again feel his home’s soft leaves, the warm wind, the gritty sand carried in it.
“The patient’s distress is not subsiding. Shall I increase the dosage?”
A few minutes after that question, which seemed to want a decision from whoever was in charge, the door opened. Someone approached, muffling even his footsteps. A man who gave off the faint scent of juniper wood, so like the smell of the home Luca missed.
“...”
He said nothing. He didn’t ask, Does it hurt that much? Is there anything I can do? He offered no clumsy comfort. He only stood beside the bed and watched Luca quietly.
“Welcome, Captain. Shall I increase the patient’s dosage?”
The captain switched off the artificial intelligence and its repeated questions. Instead he slowly cupped Luca’s wet face in a large, warm hand.
His fingers wiped away the tears pooled at the corners of Luca’s eyes, then carefully stroked the cheeks chafed raw by them. The touch was as careful and reverent as when he’d lifted Luca out of the collapsing planet.
Luca hated that warmth, and at the same time it was that warmth that made him realize he was still alive. The man’s touch seemed to be telling him:
Even if you give up on yourself, I won’t give up on you.
Luca wanted to ask him,
Why me?
Out of all the people back home, why save him? Why treat him so devotedly, watch over him, care for him like this?
But right now even accepting his own situation was too much, and he had no room to look for meaning in someone else’s behavior. And in a state where all he wanted was to die, even a meaningful answer would be useless.
He could bury the question and play ignorant forever, for all he cared. He just wanted to die.
“Kill me, kill... hic...”
Luca mumbled it like a man with no other words available to him, and closed his eyes. He fell asleep as though losing consciousness. Unable to hold up even his own weight, he let his face rest in the man’s palm and simply let go.
The captain couldn’t solve Luca’s grief, but he didn’t withdraw his hand, as if to at least carry a share of that grief’s weight for a while.
After that, Luca struggled every night. Whenever the artificial intelligence’s alarm sounded, the captain came without fail and cupped that face in his hands. And in that palm, saying kill me over and over, Luca would finally reach the end of another despairing night.
A mere week. Still too short a time for Luca to accept the life he’d been changed into.
