Turning time back just a little, to before the boy became aware of his past life.
"My brother is dead?"
Yul received word of his brother's death from the captain. The cause was a conflict between expedition teams that had erupted in the middle of an expedition. It was a fight brought on by the desire to seize a hunting ground in a better spot.
"What do you... what do you mean. Captain, how could my brother be dead?"
"...I could not stop him from falling into the sea. Try to understand."
The problem was that the union city of Thesenia was composed of islands.
Thesenia's hunting grounds therefore lay only above the sea, and expedition teams normally hunted mutants by flying over the water on Air Boats or Air Bikes.
In other words, if a clash between organizations broke out in the middle of a hunt, it came down to fighting above the sea.
"No, no. There's no way my brother is dead. There's no way he's—"
"Yul."
Dying while fighting atop an Air Boat or an Air Bike was the better case. At least then the body could be recovered.
But most people, at the end of a violent struggle, fell into the sea and were swallowed by those black waves.
It was the same for Yun, Yul's brother. He fell into the sea together with an enemy in the thick of a fierce fight. He had taken a gunshot wound early in the fight and had a blade lodged in his chest as he fell, so a search could not even be attempted.
Naturally, diving into a sea that would be swarming with mutants drawn by the smell of blood was as good as suicide.
"I will give you two days to pull yourself together."
But, but what of it? Twelve was far too young an age to accept a brother who had left without so much as a body behind.
"Your bookshelf... may I borrow your bookshelf?"
"...Do as you like. Just don't make a mess while I'm out."
Was there no way to bring his brother back somehow? Desperate enough in his scheming that he would end up rummaging even through the captain's bookshelf.
"The underworld... the underworld......."
In the office the captain had left, the boy rummaged wildly through the bookshelf. Of course, in a world where knowledge was treated as a form of property, the captain's bookshelf did not hold any plausible answer.
All the more so because the books the captain had gathered here and there were mostly comics or novels, and those that were not held nothing but common knowledge and common sense.
The lingering smell of the cigarettes the captain had left behind pressed endlessly at his breath.
"Elysion......?"
But Yul was more desperate than that, and history books were among the few that clearly mentioned the existence of the 'afterworld.'
Praising himself for recalling what he had learned from Horn at just the right moment, the boy hurriedly opened the history book. The underworld and Elysion were mentioned around the point where the author began dealing with unofficial histories.
"A paradise that only those who possess the qualifications may enter......."
The plain of Elysion. A field that exists behind the afterworld, that is, the world below, and an ideal land that only those acknowledged by the gods may enter.
And... the place entered together by Penelope, who had been the wife of the hero Odysseus, and Telegonos, the child Odysseus had gotten from Kirke.
"...Huh?"
Telegonos. The boy's eyelids trembled for a moment over this figure of history that even his magic teacher had never particularly taught him about. For some reason his head began to ache.
"Penel, ope."
Not only that, the name written alongside it also set the boy's chest ringing. His dizziness was so severe that he felt he might retch.
CLATTER!
The boy toppled backward with the history book in his grip. His backside and lower back stung sharply from the fall, but the boy's mind could not spare its attention for that alone.
⌈Telegonos, who failed to recognize his father Odysseus and killed him,...(abridged)...after marrying Penelope, entered Elysion with the blessing of his mother, Kirke......⌋
One of the unofficial histories concerning Elysion, the paradise of immortality and eternity. That was why the tale of Telegonos and Penelope lay open before his eyes.
"...It isn't so."
Ignoring the pain of his flesh, the boy all but buried his face in the book. Even so, the shadow cast by the desk made the letters hard to see, and Yul set the book back down on the desk at once. The light of the lamp told the boy his history one more time.
Telegonos, the son Odysseus fathered through his relations with Kirke, grows up, kills Odysseus, marries Penelope, who had been his wife, and sets foot upon the land of Elysion amid the blessing of his own mother, Kirke. Furthermore, Telemachos, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, cannot withstand the courtship of the goddess Kirke and is dragged away to her island.
The boy's hand crumpled the page of the book unconsciously.
"It isn't, so."
But, yes. The boy, no, Odysseus, had never had a child with Kirke. That woman with the blue-green hair had begged and pleaded and even gone as far as threats, and he had given her no more than a single night; with that woman he had absolutely never had a child.......
『I am Telegonos!』
A child.
『Son of the great hero Odysseus and the potent witch Kirke!』
...Could it be?
In that moment Yul, Odysseus, became aware of everything.
"I will kill him."
His life, which had not ended as mere lines of prose in a history book. That life, born in Ithake and breathing its last in Ithake.
...A life murdered by a young man with blue-green hair who looked just like Kirke.
"I will kill him without fail."
And Athena, the goddess who guarded that goddamn son of a bitch and played a part in killing him.
"Without fail, I will tear them apart and kill them. Telegonos, and Athena and Kirke......!"
And so Yul, Odysseus, swore.
That he would force his way into Elysion somehow, kill this damned piece of shit, and take back his love. That he would cut down both the goddess Athena, who had taken part in his death, and Kirke, who was said to have dragged off his son. That he would do so without fail.
The young boy's affection for his brother had, sadly, already been devoured by the ego of a man past fifty and had drifted faintly away.
***
Before investigating information, there was a need to put the situation in order first. Having spent a long while digesting his anger, Odysseus left the captain's office carrying three history books and several miscellaneous volumes for cross-verification.
"Oh, you're out already?"
But when he opened the door and stepped out, an unfamiliar face was there. Thanks to Yul's memories remaining, he could tell who it was, yet to the ego called Odysseus it was an entirely unfamiliar presence.
"...Yujin."
"There was a loud noise from inside, so... are you all right?"
"I am fine, so worry not. No. I'm fine."
"......?"
The same went for his eye level, which was now nothing but low. The other did not look particularly old either, and yet there was a full head of difference in height. And in the form where he was the smaller one, not the taller.
"Uh, are you really all right?"
"...Yes."
His manner of speech, too... his tongue felt rough and the words would not sit snugly in his mouth, but he could not behave however he pleased. The body he was handling now was not the body of a robust man but that of a frail boy.
"Look, you don't have to force yourself to say you're fine—"
"No."
The fact that the abruptly changed circumstances had left him carrying disadvantages such as ignorance was also a part he had to take into account. He did not know how he had come to wake again as a twelve-year-old child, but it had already happened. He needed time to grasp the situation and then adapt.
"I will go to my room now."
"Uh, sure."
Grateful that Yul's room was a single, that is to say a room of his own, Odysseus turned his steps toward it. It was not far either. A few floors up were the quarters for expedition members who had no homes.
CLACK, CLICK.
And when he reached that room, Odysseus locked the door before anything else. It was behavior born of worry that someone might come in.
RATTLE, RATTLE.
"Good. That will do."
Only once he judged the door thoroughly secured did he set the books down on the desk. He considered reading them at once, but now that he was in the room, rest became desperately necessary.
So instead of devouring the books immediately, he chose to sprawl on the bed and catch his breath. The texture of the bed Odysseus remembered overlapped with the bed Yul remembered, raising a strange gooseflesh.
"...Dreadful."
Thanks to Yul's memories remaining intact, there was no floundering about over where things were. But he could not bring himself to stop the odd sentiment that rose each time the two sets of memories overlapped.
That sentiment ran deeper still because a mattress with dead springs, the sort said to be used only by the lowest classes of the present day, was far more comfortable than his own bed as a king, which had used layer upon layer of hides.
Has the world developed this much since his death? Enough that even those positioned relatively at the bottom enjoy such conveniences?
And can scenery this different really be regarded as the same world? Is there a possibility that what he saw was in fact a delusion?
KNOCK, KNOCK.
"Yul, are you in there?"
Before his musings could sink any lower, the door rang with dull knocks. The voice that came through belonged to Horn, Yul's magic teacher.
"...Yes."
"So, would it be all right if I came in?"
According to the memories, Yul had been quite attached to Horn, who had been his magic teacher. That Horn happened to be a man a little past fifty, and that learning magic had required them to stick together all day long, both played a part in that bond.
Horn might be somewhat cantankerous, but he was not a wicked bastard who abused children, and Yul had lost his parents early and had no family besides his brother, so all the more so.
"...I'm sorry. I would like to be alone for now."
But Odysseus was different. Unlike Yul, he was neither desperate for affection nor feeling deep sorrow over a dead brother. That was so even though he knew everything of how much Yun had loved Yul and how many sacrifices he had borne for his sake.
The betrayal he had suffered at the end of his life and the existence of that goddamned Telegonos. Penelope, who must have been pressed into remarriage as countless women were in those days. The whereabouts of a son dragged away by a god... now that he had come to know all of it, Odysseus' ego was too strong for him to grieve over the existence of a biological brother.
"All right. Understood. Tell me whenever you have need of me."
"Yes."
And so he drove off Horn, who must have come to console him, and resumed his thinking. The main task was to organize Yul's memories and grasp the situation closely; the next was, naturally, to decide the direction of his future actions.
'First of all... this isn't an illusion produced by magic or sorcery. It's far too intricate and vivid for that.'
He checked his body once more in preparation for any eventuality. There was a full-length mirror across from the bed, so checking was not difficult.
A boy with navy hair grown long, wearing glasses, with unusually narrow eyes. The yellow-tinged skin and the small, neatly set features were different from his past appearance, far too different. It came across clearly enough that his very race had changed.
'So this really is reality, then.......'
Judging by the fact that pinching his cheek brought nothing but pain and no particular sign of anything else, it does not seem to be a dream either. After all, reality is the only answer.
'Then have I really been born again?'
But was it not the proper order of things that when a person died, they went to the afterworld and lived there forever? If that was true, why was he, having died, treading the surface rather than the palace of Hades? And wearing a body utterly different from the one he had in life, at that?
"Reincarnation......."
Yul's knowledge declares it: this is reincarnation or transmigration, roughly that sort of thing. It is only that he saw something shocking and so his past life came back to him.
At least, that is so if one follows the logic of a novel... that unreliable sort of prose.
"How absurd. Were they at a loss because the subjects of the underworld had grown too numerous?"
But it was the law of the afterworld that one who had died once was confined in the world below and could not come out. Unless Hades and Persephone, the masters of hell, permitted it, perhaps.
'No, this isn't what matters.'
On that point, whether they had truly acted on a whim, whether some upheaval had occurred in the underworld, or whether the system had been like this from the start, there was no way for him to know. Nor was there any means of finding out at once.
So he set aside for now what could not be known. The riddles heaped before him were as many as a mountain besides this one.
'If it's true that I've been born again, and this world is the same place as the land I once walked, and the passage I read this time is truly the truth.......'
And the most important among them were, of course, Penelope and Telemachos. Goddamn it, if the history book he had just read were false it would be some relief—not perfect relief, in fact, since a world without Penelope was no different from hell to him—but if it were true, then it would be no wonder that a thousand fires blazed inside him.
"Damn it. This won't do after all."
The witch who had cursed him, swearing she would bind him for life so that he could not even return home unless he gave her a single night, secretly bore a son. The rotten bastard of a son that witch bore killed him without even recognizing the master of the land he had arrived at. And when he realized his mistake right after, rather than clearing off obediently, he must have coveted his property, because he went and remarried his wife; on top of that, the only child he acknowledged was instead dragged off by the witch, unable to stop any of it.
The moment he recalled all that again, Odysseus could not help but rise from the bed.
There was a limit, after all, to cooling his head while lying down. This, before a subject like this, he simply could not rest. Odysseus' hand seized one of the miscellaneous cross-verification volumes on the desk.
"...This, fucking hell!"
SLAM!
But whatever book he looked at, whatever information he sought, the result was the same. Though the details differed slightly from author to author, these four things were included without exception: that Kirke's own son had killed him, that Telegonos and Penelope had married, that the two had entered Elysion, and that Kirke had dragged Telemachos away.
He had thought, as a last bastion, that perhaps one history book was pouring out lies, but even that denial of reality was miserably shattered. Odysseus' rage finally reached the crown of his head.
"...Fine, then I'll go and meet him."
Once more he swore to tear apart and kill Telegonos, the root cause of this affair.
It hardly mattered that the bastard was in Elysion, that is, in a corner of the underworld, together with Penelope. He was a man who had already been to the afterworld and back once alive and once dead.
"Ha! I'd be the first human to go down to the world below twice of his own will, wouldn't I?"
If there was one minor difficulty, it was that quite apart from having been there and back, the methods of reaching the afterworld were extremely limited.......
'First, going there by dying will have to be kept as a last resort.'
Dying right away to enter the underworld was the worst method. Ordinarily, a dead soul headed for the palace of Hades and could not go to Elysion.
The only people who could enter the plain of Elysion were those who had proven their qualification to enjoy glory after death, or those who had come to enjoy honor through the favor of a god.
And despite the feats he had accumulated as a war hero, Odysseus had not entered Elysion after his death. Strangely enough, he had no memory after stepping into the palace of the world below... but in any case, it was certain that he had never trodden a field full of flowers.
Then aim to cross over from the palace of Hades into that plain? Setting aside whether the kings of the afterworld would tolerate it, he was not even sure whether such a thing was possible. The afterworld was the most incomprehensible place there was to the living. Which meant it was far too dangerous to gamble on a chance that came only once.
'Getting permission from the gods... that won't work.'
Obtaining a god's permission was the comparatively easy... probably would have been the easy method, but it was blocked just the same. According to the knowledge in his head, the gods of this world, high or low in station, had all vanished after the Eschatosomachia Ἔσχατοςομαχία.
The Eschatosomachia, at that, was said to have been roughly a great war against foreign enemies who invaded from beyond the cosmos. Beyond that, well. Not much was known, so he did not know the details. It was not as though Yul had been particularly interested in history, either.
"Annihilated along with the foreign enemy......."
It was a fitting enough ending for something named the final war, but it did not sink in much.
The moments when the gods intervened in the affairs of the world were still vivid, and yet those immortal gods had vanished clean away without a single one remaining. As one who had lived in the Age of Myth, how could he understand it at once?
"But wait. If every god has vanished, then......?"
Then Odysseus realized. That every god had vanished meant that Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Kirke, goddess of magic, had fallen in battle as well.
In an instant, more than half of Odysseus' enemies had evaporated. That was a fairly foul thing.
"Goddamn it......."
Of course, looked at realistically, this was not the worst outcome. Considering that a mere human could never take revenge upon a god, it might even be a fine turn of fortune.
'.......'
But even so, the fact that his enemies had vanished overnight left a disappointment that hollowed out his chest. Rage at a god who had taken part in his death and then died as she pleased; the emptiness he felt over the loss of a being he had, in his own way, revered... he had never liked Kirke to begin with, so with her he felt nothing but disgust, but in any case. Roughly all such feelings had come to press down upon his chest.
'...This too will have to be endured in the end, I suppose.'
Still, Odysseus did not stay caught in that complicated, subtle sentiment for long. Clinging endlessly to what had already happened was not to his taste.
'Besides, if all the gods are dead, that means the kings of the afterworld are gone too. It might be far more to my advantage.'
If that was the case, then should he take the last resort and go to the underworld by dying, there would be room to work some sort of angle. Even so, that dying to reach the afterworld was the last resort did not change.
'Only, in that case the whereabouts of Telemachos, who was supposedly dragged off by Kirke, becomes a problem.......'
Odysseus chewed at his lip. It happened often enough that a human blessed by a god came to live an eternal life. But it was not something that always happened either, and it was not certain which of the two Telemachos would fall under.
'So there's only one method after all.'
If his whereabouts after being dragged away were vague, there was nothing to do but go to the last point and search for information. Kirke's island. Which meant he had to go to that damned witch's island.
"Ha. Goddamn Kirke. What good luck she has."
Fortunately or unfortunately, even setting Telemachos aside, Odysseus had business on that island. There was no helping it. If it was true that the gods had vanished, then the method of entering Elysion by piling up great feats was impossible as well. Naturally so, since however many achievements he stacked up, there was no being left to see them and grant recognition.
Therefore there was only one answer sheet the present him could choose.
"If she had been alive, I would have cut off her head while I was there looking for the directions to the underworld, you know?"
Somehow find the directions to the underworld that Kirke had possessed, and storm the underworld directly.
It was a perfect solution.