Chapter 94: Alice in Wonderland Part 4

The demon could read human memories. That was why it could offer what its target most deeply desired.

And yet, what one truly desired was often something even they couldn’t fully understand.

That was what made the journey up to this point and this very moment so much more painful.

“Johan Damus.”

Mephistopheles spoke.

“You are a dreadful liar.”

It was a short sentence, yet it felt like a blade piercing through my heart.

“Everyone fails. Your failure was simply more fatal than most. But you’ve worked hard to overcome many things. No one can deny that.”

“…What are you trying to say?”

“But moments of failure build up. The impact of those failures, buried deep within your heart where even you couldn’t see them, began to poison you and made you lie.”

Mephistopheles was a demon.

Everything he said was meant to break me down.

“And so, you kept lying, saying you didn’t even remember the face of the one you still vividly remembered.”

“I never said that.”

“You did. You whispered it over and over inside your mind. As if trying to make excuses.”

“……”

“I pity you, Johan Damus. You probably had no other choice.”

It felt as though I had been stripped bare.

Something deep inside began to rise, making my chest churn.

“Someone as powerless as you had no choice but to lie like that. There was so little you could ever actually change.”

I was powerless. I didn’t need to be told that. I already knew.

“Not all efforts are rewarded. Sometimes, effort leads only to even more devastating outcomes.”

At some point, Mephistopheles had taken on his usual form. That of a puppy.

I hadn’t even noticed when it happened.

A demon in the form of a small puppy.

I couldn’t feel any difference between the transcendent being I had seen until now and the puppy I was now looking down at.

“No amount of regret can bring the past back. People say we learn from the past…but do we really?”

And only then did I understand why Mephistopheles had taken that form.

“No matter how hard you try, you can’t return to the past. No matter how much you try to hold things together, you can’t undo what’s done. Even if you glue a broken cup back together, the cracks will remain.”

It wasn’t that the demon had chosen a form that made it easier for him to act.

“That’s why you don’t need to try any harder.”

That form… it was me.

A mirror reflecting the powerless, insignificant version of myself.

“That’s why you don’t need to lie to yourself anymore.”

My stomach turned.

It felt like I was slowly starting to waver at the demon’s nonsense.

He had cunningly pointed not to what I wanted, but to what hurt me the most.

Because reaching for what you want is a choice, but running from what you fear is instinct.

And all of that temptation—

“You deserve to be happier than you are now. You have the right to be selfish.”

—almost sounded like comfort.

“So accept the contract.”

***

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I looked around at the frozen world.

Then, lost in thought, I carefully took a step forward.

Mephistopheles simply wagged his tail and followed me, never urging me on.

And then suddenly, my steps halted as a familiar scent tickled my nose. I found a rosemary flower.

“I always thought of Alice not so much as a fiancée, but more like a friend. Or maybe… I thought of her as a hero.”

She loved adventure and threw herself into everything with enthusiasm.

She led me by the hand, and over and over again, she showed me new worlds.

We once climbed a mountain in the middle of the night to try and get closer to the stars.

We picked wheat and barley from the fields, trying to make something of our own.

“Looking back now, I realize I was wrong.”

“Then what was she to you?”

The demon asked, as if genuinely curious, while gazing in the direction of my soul.

“Maybe… she was a coward. Just like me.”

I was always led by her hand. I received so much. I took her love and devotion for granted.

But now that I know she was living on limited time, I saw things differently.

She used what little time she had to leave behind as much proof as possible—

To fill our days with memories so I would remember her.

“She used to give me strange riddles every day, and she loved watching me rack my brain trying to solve them. One day, I got so fed up I decided to give her a riddle in return.”

“What kind of riddle?”

“What color is the rosemary flower?”

It was a spontaneous question.

I had just blurted it out while we were enjoying some herbal tea together, wondering aloud.

That’s why I didn’t know the answer myself.

It was just something that popped into my head, and I made it sound like a riddle.

So when Alice spent a long time thinking it over and finally asked me for the answer, I couldn’t give one.

“Then she said, ‘Show me one someday and tell me then’.”

“But you never could, could you?”

“No.”

Depending on the type, rosemary usually takes at least a year to bloom.

We spent so much time together, but Alice never got to see a rosemary flower.

If I had known that, I would have gone out and found one, no matter how far I had to go.

That small regret had been buried deep in my heart ever since.

“In the end, I was the one who killed what little time Alice had left.”

I fidgeted with the hat on my head.

So this is why I was given the role of the “Mad Hatter”.

A mad, insignificant coward—

And a prisoner who killed time.

“But if you want, I can give you the answer now.”

“Maybe you can.”

“That sounds like a refusal.”

“I’m not sure… Before I answer, there’s something I want to ask.”

“Go ahead.”

“Did you create this world? Did you assign the roles, too?”

“I created the world, yes. But the roles… you chose those yourself. Or more precisely, your unconscious mind did.”

“I see.”

There were a few things that felt… out of place.

There was probably only one prepared role here. The Queen of Hearts.

The other characters all appeared in ways that suited their respective roles.

Ariel and Yuna, who were drawn into this world, were no exception.

They were given roles connected to what I usually associated with them.

“Mephistopheles.”

“……”

“You made one mistake.”

The roles were decided by my unconscious.

If it weren’t for those words, I might have accepted the contract. Or rather, if Mephistopheles had set the roles from the start, none of this would’ve happened.

“The Red Queen isn’t a character from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

Alice’s story doesn’t end with Wonderland.

The Red Queen appears in its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass.

“Lobelia is the protagonist racing toward the end of the story.”

She symbolized the future.

She was someone who overcomes obstacles and reaches the conclusion.

That’s why she didn’t receive a role from Wonderland, but instead became the Red Queen of the Looking-Glass world.

Because she belongs not to the past of this moment, but to what lies beyond.

Then what about the others?

“Yuna and Ariel were characters meant to remain in the past.”

Originally, Ariel was fated to die without a cure for Transcendence Syndrome.

That’s why she became the White Rabbit.

Yuna too was a character who defeats one of the mid-tier bosses and then exits.

That’s why she became the Cheshire Cat.

No matter how things are now, both of them were people who, in my perception, were supposed to stay buried in the past.

The only one meant to reach the end of the story here was Lobelia.

Then what about me?

I was the reference point of this world.

“And I was someone trapped in the past.”

I remain frozen in the past.

I’m still waiting in front of the flower bed where we planted rosemary that day.

Just to tell Alice what color the flower was.

“But Alice escapes Wonderland and eventually heads for the Looking-Glass world. She isn’t a character confined to just one story.”

But that’s just in the story.

Alice was already gone.

Even so, what she left behind remains in my memory.

“When we planted the rosemary that day, I didn’t know the answer to the riddle.”

But now, things were different.

Time had passed, experiences had accumulated, and I had seen the results. I understood now.

“I’ll continue to learn things like this in the future. I can’t stay stuck in a moment from the past forever.”

“That’s your answer, then.”

“Still, I’m glad I had the chance to look back on those memories. Thank you.”

“A pity.”

Mephistopheles lowered his head.

Then, as if melting away, he began to fade into the darkness.

“This time, it’s my loss, Johan Damus. So next time, I’ll come to you with an offer you can’t refuse.”

“You really don’t know how to give up.”

“Well, we’re not such noble beings, after all. Isn’t ugliness the true virtue of demons?”

With those words, time that had been frozen began to flow again.

Magic, like starlight, shook the heavens and the earth, and the false world shattered.

And Alice, who had been casting the spell, vanished along with the world.

It was time to wake from the dream.

***

When I opened my eyes that morning,

I was lying in bed, and next to my pillow was the Lemegeton with its pages faded with age.

“…Well, I suppose it was impossible for a demon who hadn’t even sealed the contract to create an entire world.”

All of it had just been a fabricated world built through a dream as a medium. Even though it had closely resembled reality, it probably wasn’t made possible by Mephistopheles’s power alone.

“Perhaps Tillis had a hand in this as well.”

It must have absorbed the power of the librarians of Lemegeton who had chased us until we arrived at the territory.

I never did find out where that black current I saw had gone.

They weren’t ones who had signed a contract with a real demon anyway. They were librarians empowered by Tillis. For a demon lord like Mephistopheles, stealing power from them must have been an easy feat.

Or perhaps Tillis had allowed it to happen.

“…Everything really does snowball out of control.”

I let out a sigh, tucked the now-faded Lemegeton away somewhere appropriate, and left the room.

“Oh, Johan. You’re up early.”

And I ran into Lobelia just as she was returning from her morning workout.

She was wearing comfortable workout clothes and said with a slightly reluctant expression.

“Well done.”

“I was simply doing what needed to be done.”

So it seemed I wasn’t the only one who remembered what happened in the dream. Since Lobelia had figured out Alice’s true identity, she probably understood that all of this had started because of me.

“May I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you still investigating me?”

Ariel didn’t know anything about Alice’s true identity.

Considering how she once threw a melodramatic fit over my past, the gap in what each of them knew was impossible to ignore.

Why was it that Lobelia knew just from hearing a name, while Ariel remained completely in the dark?

Huh? Seriously, how did she know?

“Let’s just agree not to answer questions… for both our sakes. I’ll pretend I don’t know anything about what just happened.”

“……”

Was that a threat?

It seemed Lobelia had figured out this incident was related to a demon.

And that the demon was targeting me.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that the number of weaknesses Lobelia held over me was steadily growing and it scared me.

“Oh, Johan, I was just about to go eat. Care to join me?”

“No, thank you.”

“No need to feel pressured.”

“It’s not that. I have something I need to take care of first.”

“And that would be?”

“……”

I glanced out the hallway window, looking down at the backyard.

Clusters of purple flowers were nestled among the vines.

“I’m going to tend to the flowerbed.”

It was time to leave the past behind.