Chapter 30: Miss Shiltina is Truly a Good Person
“A very special girl?”
The blonde girl’s hand, which had been holding her cup, paused mid-air.
“Is she very pretty? What’s her name?”
“Mm, her name is Shiltina. I’m not sure if that’s her real name, but judging by her personality, she probably doesn’t like using aliases.”
Emis’ hand trembled slightly, and the iced tea in her cup nearly spilled.
“Can you tell me the story between you and her?”
Rast nodded. “I first encountered her at the hotel I worked at. She was disguising her identity, but I was familiar with every guest who came during that time period, so I still noticed something off.”
“So, I used the excuse of serving drinks to test her…”
…
The wind blowing across the hillside was warm and gentle.
The afternoon sunlight slanted through the treetops, casting dappled shadows on the ground.
Rast lay on the grass, telling his story, while the blonde girl sat beside him, listening.
She was truly a good listener.
When Rast began to speak, she would earnestly adopt the posture of someone paying attention, occasionally nodding obediently and asking questions without ever appearing perfunctory.
The golden-hued tranquil time passed quietly just like that.
“And then, Shiltina pulled me up from the icy seawater.”
“She held onto me as we floated in the ocean, dodging the shockwaves from the chain explosions, and didn’t let go until everything was over.”
Rast smiled. “To be honest, when Shiltina first came to save me, I was actually pretty annoyed, because it disrupted my plan…”
“Everything that happened before that had been within my expectations. Every detail in Deep Blue Port, every point in time, I had it all clearly in mind and under control.”
“But after that, everything spiraled out of control, racing toward a direction that no one could predict.”
“Luckily, the ending turned out fairly well.”
“Yes… thank goodness.” Emis blinked, and her sky-blue eyes still held a trace of lingering fear.
As if she herself had been there, trapped atop the watchtower, surrounded by the tides of the Iron Cross, with no way to escape.
“But… Miss Shiltina really is a good person.”
“Oh?” Rast raised his head. “Why do you say that?”
Just earlier, when she had first heard Shiltina’s name, Emis had shown a certain inexplicable hostility toward her.
Yet now, after hearing Rast’s story with Shiltina, the wariness and guardedness in the blonde girl’s eyes had noticeably faded.
“This might sound a bit selfish… but I’m truly grateful to Miss Shiltina.”
“If it weren’t for her, you would’ve been stuck in Deep Blue Port again, trapped in that endless time loop.”
The sky-blue eyes of the blonde girl shimmered with light.
“Even though it seemed like just a dream to me, you said that everything in Deep Blue Port was no different from the real world to you.”
“In fact, the time you actually experienced over there might have been longer than what you spent in Canaan.”
Emis let out a gentle sigh and looked at Rast with a touch of helplessness. “You’ve always been like this since you were little, never knowing how to cherish yourself.”
“But the world you went to… I couldn’t go with you. I couldn’t stay by your side, couldn’t keep an eye on you, couldn’t stop you from messing around and wearing yourself out.”
She blinked. “Thank goodness you met Miss Shiltina.”
“Listening to your story, Miss Shiltina seems very reliable, someone you can really trust…”
“With her around, even in that world where I’m not, you won’t be left without someone to look after you.”
Rast couldn’t help but give a bitter smile.
Emis’ words made it sound like he was a burdensome child who always needed someone to care for him.
“What a shame I can’t meet Miss Shiltina. Otherwise, I’d definitely bring her one of my homemade apple pies as a greeting gift, and ask her to keep a closer eye on you from now on.”
“Ah, is it already that late?”
As she spoke, Emis seemed to have noticed the approaching dusk, and hurriedly stood up.
“It’s almost time for dinner, and I had a pot of porridge stewing earlier…”
…
The two of them stepped over fallen leaves and wild grass, walking down the hillside bathed in sunset.
The descent was sometimes interrupted by small streams, and Emis would lift the hem of her plain white skirt, hold Rast’s hand, and step across the smooth, rounded stones of the creek to cross.
Soon, the small frontier town nestled at the foot of the mountains, with its white windmill, came into view in the distance.
Rast and Emis walked along the gravel path, watching the smoke rising from the chimneys of every household in the town, and gradually, a sense of peace returned to Rast’s heart, releasing him from the tension of Deep Blue Port.
The blood and fire of the port district, the evil gods, the corruption, the pursuit of the Iron Cross…
Everything that had happened recently in Deep Blue Port now felt infinitely distant, no longer important.
They soon entered the town.
Along the way, some townsfolk paused their chores to greet them, and Emis would politely respond, still holding Rast’s hand.
Rast looked at the scenery of the town, at the peaceful faces of the townspeople, and felt an odd sense of intimacy and familiarity, though he couldn’t quite recall the details.
Their steps came to a stop in front of a wooden cottage.
The interior of the cottage was simple, but very clean, radiating a particular warmth.
In the kitchen, a bronze pot of porridge that had been overcooked was bubbling away.
“Ah, good thing we made it in time.”
Emis rushed over to lift the pot and began bustling about in the kitchen.
Cured meat, bean pie, pudding, lean meat porridge, black bread stuffed with cheese… All kinds of dishes soon filled the table before Rast.
Looking at the blonde girl busy in the kitchen and the modest but neatly arranged furniture in the room, that feeling of both familiarity and strangeness in Rast’s mind deepened.
His memory had always been incomplete.
To borrow a phrase from a famous detective novel from his past life: human memory is like a small attic, and once it’s full, anything new added would push the old things out.
Of course, most people couldn’t fill that attic with all they learned and experienced in their lifetime, but Rast was different.
He had gone through tens of thousands of loops in Deep Blue Port, living for hundreds of years — far more than several lifetimes of an ordinary person.
So many fragmented memories and experiences had filled his mental attic to the brim, causing his memories to break down, even threatening his mental stability, leading him toward personality collapse.
The only reason Rast could still think like a normal person now was because he had learned self-hypnosis and mental suggestion during his time in Deep Blue Port.
Using self-suggestion, he had forcibly erased most of the useless memories from the loop, retaining only the valuable ones.
However, before he learned how to organize his memory attic with mental suggestion…
Some memories had already been lost.
Or perhaps not completely forgotten — they were just misplaced deep in the corners of that attic, nearly impossible to retrieve, surfacing only as fleeting senses of familiarity at random moments.
Like the things that happened before he entered Deep Blue Port.
Or this small frontier town called Canaan.
And the blonde girl before him, named Emis.