Suppose there was someone capable of running.
How should that person live in a world where everyone else could only walk?
Should he continue walking forever, matching his pace to everyone around him?
Naturally, he would find it frustrating.
While everyone else trudged forward at a leisurely pace, he could run ahead and travel far into the distance.
He could immediately see the scenery waiting up ahead.
He could see it sooner than anyone else.
But what if everyone around him could only walk, forcing him to do the same because he feared drawing attention by racing ahead of them?
Could he endure it?
“You must.”
The café manager answered decisively.
“At least until you learn how to conceal your speed from everyone else.”
And so, the immature prophet was confined to the floor above the tarot café.
“It’s still too early for you to deal with customers.”
What he lacked most was conversational skill.
It was the minimum requirement needed to avoid repeating the foolish mistake of saving a high school girl’s life only to earn the world’s suspicious gaze.
“More importantly, you must learn how to fill in the missing pieces.”
Seeing a single aspect of something didn’t reveal everything.
He needed to fill in what lay behind it, connect the pieces, and construct some degree of coherence.
“Let’s begin by developing your imagination.”
Novels would be a good place to start.
With those words, the café manager filled a large bookcase with books.
“It may feel somewhat old-fashioned, but begin with classic novels and literary fiction. If you find those boring, you can move on to fantasy that seems utterly absurd. Stories filled with the author’s imagination would be useful. Manga and genre fiction as well. Games you can enjoy alone would also be good. Masterpieces or failures, stories containing vast philosophies or those that forcibly preach some trivial idea—experience all of them.”
The fact that he mentioned games last seemed to be the café manager’s way of showing consideration.
The child had enjoyed them since his ignorant younger days, only to become abruptly incapable of playing them at the time when he had enjoyed them most.
Paradoxically, games were also what he could enjoy most wholeheartedly.
“This should provide you with the minimum preparation.”
“Preparation?”
“You’ll gain at least a rough understanding of imagination that transcends reality, the patterns of worlds hardened into clichés, and the countless ways those patterns can be twisted.”
If the selections made by the café manager could truly grant someone something so impressive, the world should have possessed far more than one or two sages.
Even while thinking that, the child obeyed.
The experience wasn’t unpleasant.
“Once you begin here, you can start gathering a wider range of information. We live in a wonderful world. Once you connect to the internet, you can obtain virtually any knowledge you desire.”
The coherence of reality.
The clichés of fiction.
Which stories captured people’s interest, which provoked rejection, and which drew them in despite their desire to look away.
“Now that you’ve completed the minimum preparation, shall we begin welcoming customers?”
That would allow him to hear the real stories of people living in the world.
Even while remaining inside this building, he could steadily accumulate more lives and stories than anyone else.
Following the café manager’s guidance, the once-ignorant child gradually assimilated into the currents of the one-eyed society.
All the while suppressing the desire boiling inside him.
***
“It sounds like a disaster.”
The café manager spoke as his eyes curved gently behind his glasses.
“It had been a while. Though I did find it strange that you agreed to the interview in the first place.”
“It appears the reporter is affiliated with two different outlets. I was under the impression that it would be a serious academic interview.”
“He laid his trap well.”
The café manager wore a faint smile as he inhaled the aroma of the coffee he had brewed himself.
“I noticed that you had taken out the painkillers.”
“......”
He said nothing more.
Although he was certain I had seen something, he didn’t ask what choice I had made.
The café manager had always been like that.
He stopped me from reaching out recklessly, yet he never interfered with my final choice.
Because he understood that we were alike yet different.
It was kindness.
And that kindness had allowed the immature child to become somewhat calmer.
“Your aunt was furious.”
“She spent the entire day fuming.”
“Ha ha.”
I narrowed my eyes at the café manager’s laughter.
It was an involuntary smile—the sort one made when thinking of someone so endearing that the emotion couldn’t be contained.
I had seen it since I was young. It had irritated me at first, but now I accepted it as natural.
And so, for the first time, I asked him directly.
“Why don’t you ask my aunt to date you?”
“......Cough!”
The café manager had been bringing the coffee to his lips with a smile, only to choke and begin coughing painfully.
It was a question whose answer was obvious, yet one we had all deliberately ignored.
I knew.
The café manager himself knew.
My aunt probably knew as well.
Perhaps everyone around them knew.
“If you were hesitating because she came with baggage, I’m already an adult.”
“......Is that what you were worried about?”
The café manager adjusted his glasses in an attempt to regain his composure, then sighed.
“That’s an unnecessary concern. I’ve never cared about anything like that, and you’re my son as well.”
“......Would you be angry if I said that gave me goosebumps?”
“......I might not become angry, but I would feel the need to drink alone.”
Grumbling, the café manager pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Hmm. Perhaps it’s finally time to discuss this. I’ve never explained it to you properly. Although you’ve probably...... already guessed.”
“Guessed what?”
“I once performed a reading for myself.”
“......Was it a romantic reading involving my aunt?”
“Yes. I was young then. Your aunt was also dating someone at the time. She seemed like an unattainable flower.”
“My aunt is attractive, but that description is a little......”
“......In any case, I saw something during that reading.”
What had he seen?
I could guess before hearing the answer.
The present situation, in which years continued to pass without the café manager courting my aunt, made it obvious.
It was rooted in the nature of a prophet who chose to observe what he had seen without deliberately changing it.
“I saw your aunt and me enjoying a happy marriage.”
“......”
Anyone without our experiences might have asked why they weren’t already together.
I understood immediately.
“Manager, you......”
He had seen it.
Perhaps he had seen himself and my aunt happily married in their forties.
Perhaps they had been even older.
“......Yes. I’m a coward.”
Or perhaps he had witnessed their wedding at that age.
That possibility seemed more likely.
It had not been happiness achieved at the time of the reading, but a joyful moment his future self would barely obtain after many years.
And because of that, he had become unable to move.
“The moment I saw it, I became terrified. That happiness was so dazzling that I feared reaching for it now might make it collapse. I was afraid that something I could obtain merely by waiting would become something forever beyond my grasp.”
“My aunt still had a boyfriend when she took me in.”
“She did.”
“I think they broke up because of me.”
“To be honest, I’m grateful to you for that.”
“......”
Depending on one’s perspective, perhaps I should have become angry.
But the air surrounding the café manager made that impossible.
Perhaps I had simply lost the energy to react after hearing such a frustrating story—one I found difficult to understand yet couldn’t help understanding.
What did it feel like?
To spend years merely watching the person you loved remain beside someone else, all for the sake of a happy marriage awaiting you in old age.
“......I think my aunt knows.”
“......In truth, your aunt has probably known for a very long time.”
What kind of relationship was that?
Perhaps my aunt had even asked him to date her.
That suited her personality.
But if that had happened, the café manager must have rejected her.
Because he had been afraid.
Despite that, their friendship had survived until now.
More precisely, it had once been severed, only for a certain child to reconnect them.
What kind of relationship could possibly be described that way?
“Perhaps this is the price I must pay.”
“......”
“My life has been held hostage by a single reading that I can’t even prove was real rather than a dream or delusion.”
That ended the conversation.
Even so, I understood.
The café manager hadn’t explained it in detail, but the same principle was entwined throughout this frustrating situation.
Every prophecy demanded a price.
And that price was probably different for every prophet.
In that case......
‘I don’t know.’
My aunt was undoubtedly the most precious person in the café manager’s life.
Perhaps that was precisely why he had become even more firmly bound.
The consequences might not end with the destruction of a future that had once been within his reach.
In the worst case, the future in which they were together might disappear entirely.
That was the nature of prophecy, the distortions it created, and the price it demanded.
The prophet, still young at the time, had witnessed a prophecy.
A fragment of the future he desired and longed for more than anything else.
That was why he hadn’t dared to touch it.
He couldn’t know how it might become distorted.
And so, the prophet made his choice.
He would never alter his prophecies.
But what of the other prophet who studied beneath him?
“Your circumstances are different from mine.”
“......”
“Everything about them is different.”
Love—glimpsing a single happy moment.
Death—glimpsing the final moment.
The desires those visions stirred and the intensity of those desires were entirely different.
That was why the café manager taught me without ever forcing me.
He merely guided me toward ways of handling my power safely.
He wanted me to think and deliberate for myself.
“......How much longer?”
“I’m not sure. Compared to the time I’ve already spent waiting, it should be very short.”
The moment they eventually reached would undoubtedly be beautiful.
They would undoubtedly be happy.
I had no choice but to believe that.
I hoped I would be there to bless them.
And I desperately hoped......
That nothing had become distorted because of me.
I watched the café manager drink his coffee with a faint smile.
Hadn’t he wanted to force me?
To command me never to alter anything I saw, no matter what it was?
Hadn’t he feared that the distortions caused by the immature prophet recklessly seizing and shaking the future might even twist the future he himself had witnessed so long ago?
That the happy moment he had awaited for so many years might be ruined by an ignorant child and reduced to nothing more than an illusion?
Yet he had never forced me.
If anything, that was precisely why I couldn’t act recklessly.
I had no choice but to respect him.
Because if I had been in his position, I could never have done the same.
That was where I often felt the difference between us.
He had never tightened a leash around my neck and oppressed me with an order not to interfere.
“Do you......”
Do you hate me?
Do you despise me?
Are you afraid of me?
I couldn’t bring myself to ask and closed my mouth.
Even so, the gentle gaze accompanying his customary warm smile gave me the answer.
All I could do was hope.
I desperately hoped that the café manager’s prophecy wouldn’t go astray.
“That damned reporter! Does he think I’ll leave him alone just because he suddenly lowered his head and apologized?!”
“Please calm down, Attorney......”
“Argh! No, more importantly, how long are you going to keep calling me ‘Attorney’?”
“What? Well......”
My aunt and the regular customer opened the café door.
My aunt’s rage had diminished from an erupting volcano to one rumbling ominously beneath the surface.
Their arrival signaled the end of the time shared by only the two two-eyed men.
“Still, since we’ve already brought up the subject......”
“Yes?”
“I taught you myself, so I fully understand your decision to avoid others and maintain your distance. However......”
Perhaps that very choice is proof in itself.
Unlike his usual gentle smile, the café manager grinned broadly and approached my aunt.
He offered a warm smile to the woman he loved, whose fierce expression showed that her anger had yet to fade.
I saw my aunt’s sullen face—still youthful and beautiful—brighten slightly.
“Phew. I’m finally free. Oh, give me a tarot reading!”
Leaving the two of them behind, the regular customer approached me.
She made the same request as always.
She sat at the same table as she did during our usual routine.
And she smiled brightly.
“......Your romantic fortune?”
“Yep!”
She asked me to perform the same reading yet again.
In truth, to people who practiced genuine prophecy through an entirely different method, tarot cards were nothing more than a smokescreen.
But......
***
I had determined what kinds of futures I could see.
I had also determined the price of those prophecies.
And so, I now understood.
I knew what I needed to do in order to make a choice.
I knew what I needed to do to become someone who changed the future he witnessed, unlike the café manager.
The minimum requirement.
After seeing the future, I had to move.
Rather than collapsing unconscious beneath the approaching price, I had to endure it somehow and remain capable of acting.
Just as I had when I saw the kitten I had merely found cute.
Just as I had when I saw the high school girl who had meant nothing to me.
Just as I had when I saw the thoroughly unlikeable reporter.
Therefore, I didn’t need anyone close to me.
No one besides the cat, my aunt, and the café manager.
That way, even if I saw something, I would still be capable of making a choice.
Ironically, maintaining that distance also allowed me to face the moment of choice without agitation or emotion.
So......
“How’s my romantic fortune looking this week?”
......I wished she wouldn’t ask me while looking at me like that.
***