From ANOTHER STORY, by yasu
The next place the girl, the Halfling, and the animal traveled to was the Land of Flames. In this land, pillars of flame blazed everywhere-- above the ground, everything was ablaze. Fire burned all the way to the lake, drying up all the water, leaving everyone in need of just something to drink. The people here lived around a gigantic campfire, in a huge crowd on the one patch of earth the flames could not reach.
"Oh, it's so hot! I don't have the will to do anything, for the love of..." The Left-Sided Servant grumbled to the others.
"Where could the music box be, I wonder?" The miraculous map was telling them that the "Melody of Courage" was nearby, in a place called "The Gates of Flame". The girl went over to the place where all the people were gathered, and joined the group. Once there, within the people gathered around the campfire, she met a man who knew about the Gates of Flame.
"Over those three mountains from here, there is a place called the Gates of Flame. It seems that there is a treasure of some kind around the gates. There are tales of two angry, fire-breathing dragons guarding it. Ah, but every bit of it is probably a lie. It's not as if anyone has actually seen them," the man said.
"That's right. I suppose it's because no one has the courage to leap over the flames. Or maybe it's that someone with that amount of courage is also a gigantic fool...really, there hasn't even been one?" said another man.
"Oh, yeah, there was that huge moron who tried it...you met him, didn't you?" asked the first man, turning toward the one next to him.
"Ah, right, there was a guy who did become the most courageous. I don't know what became of him, though. But, after that, he never came back here..." While saying this, the man looked to the Left-Sided Servant, who was standing next to the girl. "Come to think of it, I have the feeling that he looked something like you."
"Really, didn't he have a bit more of a masculine face?" asked another man nearby.
"A...ah, but, didn't he have only half of his body, like me?" The Left-Sided Servant asked, growing increasingly agitated.
"That's right, he was a Halfling. More than that, he really was the strongest of us."
Hearing this, the girl turned toward the Left-Sided Servant. "Surely, that's the Right-Sided Servant, right?"
"Maybe. It certainly sounds like him." The Left-Sided Servant's face twisted into a disgusted expression.
"So, shall we get going?"
"Go? Where?"
"Over there, of course!" The girl pointed in the direction of the roaring flames. "Over those flames, then to the Gates of Flame from there. Surely, the music box is hidden there..."
"I just can't discipline you, can I? Even though we almost died in the Land of Sound, you're still going to go into the flames?" The Left-Sided Servant said, sitting down right where he was. The girl, as ever, pressed on, coming closer and closer to the flames...
"You'll fall, so watch carefully," the girl said, while keeping her own eyes on the flames. "See, look at that pillar of flames right in the middle, there. It grows bigger, and then it gets smaller, right?"
Sure enough, the flames, on their own rhythm, grew bigger, and then grew smaller. This was the huge soul of the flames that roared all throughout the land without dying away. The girl noticed the pillar of flame drawn quite obviously on the mysterious map. And, looking at the pillars of flame in this land, she knew that they flared up conventionally, according to a specific rhythm.
"If we time it right, to when the pillar of flame is smallest, we can jump over."
"How foolish! If it were one or two, maybe, but we'll be roasted alive before we even make it to the Gate of Flames."
"Eh, what happens, happens. Let's go!"
"How reckless! A reckless, foolish plan! What an optimist you are!!" The Left-Sided Servant chided.
"Any other words for me?"
"Recklessly blind, shameless, stubborn, narrow-minded, one husband to many wives, survival of the fittest, a grilled-meat meal, temperance, no smoking..."
"Are you finished? Though those last few really didn't have anything to do with it..." The girl, saying only this, leapt over the flames, watching her timing. The Left-Sided Servant, too, since it was going to flare up again, hopped over the flames, still spewing four-word phrases.
For some reason, the girl called out when she was jumping over the third pillar. "The Puni-Puni isn't here!" When she looked back, she saw the shape of the Puni-Puni, dancing against the flames.
"So he's learned how to time it, huh..."
"Him again?! Can it be that he can just walk right through the flames?" The Left-Sided Servant said, watching the dog basking in the flames.
"He's our companion! Isn't that to be expected?"
"It would be fine to leave him behind! If he wasn't here, it'd be one less life to look after, right?" The Left-Sided Servant, not sure if he was done saying everything or not, once again stepped back into the flames of the last pillar they had been through. He could no longer stand the heat of the flames, and so, reluctantly, the Left-Sided Servant fell behind the girl.
"So, Puni-Puni, shall we go together?" The girl said to it, holding out her hand.
After the girl had turned around, the Left-Sided Servant gave the Puni-Puni a little slap on the head, while whispering "Over here," in secret, as if the girl hadn't seen him.
Then, after making it over the three mountains, naturally they came to be able to see the Gates of Flame. The flames could not reach the ground around them.
"Oh, good...there are no flames here." The hair on the Left-Sided Servant's head was frizzy from all the heat. While he was trying to smooth it down, of course, the dragons standing at either side of the gates breathed fire.
"Hot hot hot hot!!" The Left-Sided Servant, facing the gates completely unprepared, jumped back. Then, as in response, fire from the dragons yet again. The Left-Sided Servant looked back behind him without thinking. The giant pillars of flame blazed even higher and more violently than they had before. There was no way he could possibly go back.
"Aaah, we're trapped in the flames!"
"Are you going forward? Are you turning back?" At the sound of the girl's voice from ahead, the Left-Sided Servant let out a relieved sigh. Then, he saw something dark out of the corner of his eye.
"Someone's fallen!" The Left-Sided Servant yelled, not being able to see that close. The one who had fallen was the Right-Sided Servant.
"..." The Left-Sided Servant's voice trailed away. Always dashing, the Right-Sided Servant had fallen into a heap, his gaudy gown torn, his face covered in soot. His eyes burning, he ran over, as if to help him up.
"Oh. It's you. What could've happened, for such a coward to show up in this place?" The Right-Sided Servant said chidingly, lifting up the upper half of his body.
"You say I'm a coward! Well, I guess you always were that cruel, weren't you? I didn't want to come here, you know. Anyway, somehow I was dragged here, I really had no choice...more importantly, I could ask the same of you. What happened to you?"
"Me? I had heard that if the "Flames of Courage" that the dragons spew from their mouths kissed a blade, it would become a blade unrivaled under heaven. So, that's why I came this far."
"So, do you have your Flame Blade, then?"
"Yeah. Here," the Right-Sided Servant drew the blade gracefully, slicing it before the Left-Sided Servant's eyes, a bright red blade with small flames leaping off of it.
"Ah, isn't that dangerous?" The Left-Sided Servant stepped back, and seeing this, the Right-Sided Servant once again returned the blade to its sheath.
"Though I can take the blade in my hand, whenever I do so, my leg gets burned. Even though I've wanted it for a long time, it doesn't do me a bit of good not being able to move like this. It's really something, isn't it? Ah, you say so...I guess it's impossible, isn't it?"
"If you do that, it'd be easy!" The girl said, cutting in to their conversation.
"Who the hell is that?" The Right-Sided Servant said, noticing the girl for the first time.
"They call her the Messiah..."
"Messiah? This little girl?"
"That's right, since I'm going to save this world!"
"Ha...ha-ha-ha! This little girl, she's a strange one, isn't she?" The Right-Sided Servant said, laughing like a bit of a fool.
"Honestly, in the beginning, I thought that way too, but it seems that she carries some kind of mysterious power. She left on a quest to find the five music boxes, and already has two of them."
"Eh? That's a surprise. If it's true, surely you'd be able to fix this wretched condition we find ourselves in quite easily, eh, Miss?" The Right-Sided Servant said, turning toward the girl.
"That's right, very easily. And if you were together again, you could walk, too."
Hearing this, the Right-Sided Servant looked utterly disgusted. "Join together again with him, you say? How stupid! He's a coward, and whenever I thought I wanted to go somewhere, he'd always be dragging his feet, and because of that I couldn't even move a little! With him around, of course, I couldn't even change anything, not even being unable to move!"
"...that's right. I guess there's nothing in it for you to have anything to do with me." The Left-Sided Servant confirmed, briefly.
"That's not true. If you joined up with the Right Side again, you could move forward, just like before. After that, let's all go to that side of the Gates, and get the Melody of Courage!" The girl looked at the Left-Sided Servant, honestly.
"It's impossible for me to do that..."
"It'll be fine! You've been lucky enough to come along with me so far, right? The person you are now is different!"
"I don't need him." The Right-Sided Servant said.
The girl ignored those words, and declared, "Okay, I'm going."
The girl and the two Halflings stopped at the base of the Gates. It seemed that the Right-Sided Servant was seeing the Left-Sided Servant as a burden, but not enough to wish that they were joined together again. The girl looked ahead to the Gates of Flame before her eyes. The gates themselves were opening and closing, and the dragons on either side were spewing flame left and right. Even if the flames were to be stopped, one could not pass through the gates.
"I don't have any reason to go on! It's okay if you use me as bait for the dragon!"
"Surely, there has to be some rule governing things here, too. What could it be..."
"That's not it! See, they're blowing flames from left to right!"
"Be quiet!" Scolding the lamenting Left-Sided Servant, the girl once again looked hard at the dragons at the gates. She looked at the gates. "One, two, three..."
She looked at the dragon on the right. "One, two, three, four..."
She looked at the dragon on the left. "One, two, three, four..."
Finally understanding the rhythms of the three sections, the girl cried out suddenly. "I've got it!"
Her voice surprised the Left-Sided Servant, causing his hair to be singed yet again by the flames of the dragon to the right.
"Look, the dragons breathe their flames in four-beat time, and the gates open and close on three."
"Eh? What are you talking about?" said the two Halflings at the same time.
The girl, while gazing intently at the dragons and their flames, explained herself. First, the way the dragons breathe fire is determined by a four beat measure. First, the dragon on the right breathes one plume of flame. Whoosh. Then the one on the left breathes two. Whoosh, whoosh. Then the one on the right breathes one again. Whoosh. That's the first four-beat measure. Then in the second, it goes right, left, right, left. The third, left, right, right, left. Finally, in the last measure, it goes left, right, left, followed by a four measure rest. Then, it goes back to that first measure, and it repeats. As for the gates, they repeat the same three beat measure of closed, closed, open. Closed, closed, open.
As a result, the dragons stop breathing fire for a total of 16 beats, and the gates are open every third. If this keeps repeating, that means that on the 48th beat, the fire from the dragons has stopped, and the gates are open. So, that means, if our timing is right, we should be able to get past the dragons and through the gates, the girl explained.
"Just be careful that you're paying close attention to the time I tell you, and if you don't hesitate, you'll be fine," The girl said before beginning to count the measures in her head again. After the pattern had repeated twice, she said "Now!" her voice already becoming smaller as she broke into a sprint. Just as she had said, there was only one beat where the gates were open and the dragons had stopped breathing fire, as far as timing was concerned.
The girl, sticking to the time perfectly, was able to pass through the gates. "All right! Now it's your turn!"
On the other side of the gate, the Left-Sided and Right-Sided Servants were glaring daggers at one another. "So, what are we going to do? It's a bit of a shame if you and I end up in a double suicide," said the Right-Sided Servant, to which the Left-Sided Servant replied, "I know how to do it...but...if I mess up my timing, I strike out..."
It was time. From behind them, there was a noise like a loud explosion. BANG! Both the Left and the Right, startled, looked around them.
"Aah, aah, this isn't good...!" They said, at the same time. Immediately behind them came the sound of a new pillar of flame roaring up, and an explosion of flame. If they didn't run to the gates now, they would become the prey of the fire pillars instead.
As the two were standing there completely dumbfounded...
"Pu-Pu, Puni-Puni!"
As if to say "You can't wait any longer!" the Puni-Puni ran toward the gates...though perhaps because its timing was a little fast, it had been singed a cute brown color...
"Quick! Come quickly!" shouted the girl.
"Right, left, left, right...one, two, three, four...oh, I lost count..." The Left-Sided Servant called out, as emotionlessly as usual. The flames grew closer and closer.
The Right-Sided Servant, thinking he should get up, managed to get his upper body upright again, but being unable to take it any longer, collapsed again. The pillars of flame were even closer.
The Left-Sided Servant, inevitably, pressed on, while fanning himself.
"If you don't come quickly, you'll be burned by the flames!" the girl called out.
"Even if you didn't keep telling me, I'd know that! Um...right, left, right...as I told you, I don't know!" The Left-Sided Servant said. The time had come. The dragon's gigantic flame engulfed the Right-Sided Servant.
"Uwaaaaa!" His screams could be heard from within the flames. Seeing that within those flames, the Left-Sided Servant did something. The Left-Sided Servant, who had until that point never taken the dangerous road of his own will, leapt into the flames without thinking.
......
The girl and the Puni-Puni drew in a single breath. Bravely sacrificing his own body, the Left-Sided Servant was fighting to save the Right-Sided Servant. At that time, before his eyes appeared a message, carved into the flames.
The Left-Sided Servant read each syllable aloud. "Pro...gress...thr...ough...the...in...fer...no...and...dem...on...strate...your...cour...age...at...once? Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once!"
With that, the dragon's flame grew smaller, and the girl was able to see the left and right Halflings, who had withstood the flames. No, they weren't left and right any longer, they had become of one body, an adult human, again.
"Are you all right?!" called the girl's voice to the Servant.
The Right Side answered that he was all right, but the Left Side, as if cursed, just kept chanting the same thing over and over again, not answering the question at all.
"Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once..."
"H...hey! Are you sure you're all right?!" The Left-Sided Servant was chanting something, just as he was when he was gazing into the flames.
"Hey, is it possible that the flames could have driven him completely mad?"
While still chanting as if cursed, slowly, he offered up his hand. It looked as if he was giving the Right-Sided Servant some kind of sign, as if to say "So, let's go!" Taking a huge step forward with his left leg, his gaze was still firmly fixed on the Gates of Flame.
"Hey, you're all right, aren't you?" The Right-Sided Servant said, but the Left-Sided Servant thought that he would try believing in his uncanny sense of spirit instead.
"Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once..." The Left and Right started chanting together, and then ran toward the Gate of Flames at a sprint. While the right foot was slightly behind, it was a powerful sprint. Desperately, desperately, they ran. "Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once..."
However, they had only reached the front of the gates. The adult had completely exhausted itself. But, only their gaze could not reach beyond the flames, for they were far behind them.
"Don't give up!" The girl shouted from nearby. The adult suddenly stood up again, and began running once more, not even paying attention to the fresh blood flowing from his skinned knees.
"Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once..." It was just a little farther to the gates themselves.
"Ah... late...all right!! You're all right!! Just like this!! With this timing!!"
"Progress through the inferno! Demonstrate your courage at once!!" He put his right foot in front of his left, right, left...then jumped with all his might.
It had turned completely dark, and made it so that Nozomi could no longer read the words in the book. Wondering if there was something in the room that could produce light, Nozomi looked around.
"Even a flashlight would be fine..." There should be something like that around here somewhere. Looking around the room that used to belong to the old man, she found several, slightly damp, candles.
"They look pretty old...I wonder if I can use them?" She lit one of the candles, and it just barely stayed lit.
Then, she lit a cigarette with the flame from the candle. With a sigh, Nozomi exhaled smoke. While she looked around, she lit two, three candles surrounding her. The shadows cast by the things in the room wavered in the flickering light of the three candles. The face of the clock, faithfully ticking away the last five hours in this day called today, reliably had its own flitting shadows.
"...The Land of Flames, huh..."
Taking her nearly finished cigarette, she snuffed it out in the ground next to her feet, rolling it between her fingers.
Nozomi's eyes, within the flickering candlelight, once again fell into the book.
Thud!!
"You did it!" called the girl, jumping up and down as he collapsed in front of her eyes.
"We did it!"
"You did it!"
The Servant grasped both hands, now having both a left and right hand, against his chest. The interior of the gates was covered in green, a park covered with the fallen petals of all kinds of flowers.
"Oh, what's that?" The girl pointed at a large statue within the park. It wore clothing that looked like it was made from a set of drapes, and a crown of flames. Its face looked surprisingly fierce. Its entire body was covered in soot, dying it a deep black. In its upturned hand, it held a box—it was the Music Box of Courage.
"It's the Music Box of Courage!" the girl said, running up to the front of the statue. She slowly opened the box. The flames of the dragons disappeared, as did the pillars of flame that had been blazing all the way to the front of the gates. The flames that stretched to the sky, far and wide, went out as well.
"It seems that thanks to the Left-Sided Servant, I'll be able to live a long time," said the Right-Sided Servant, to which the Left-Sided Servant replied, "Oh, no, it wasn't just because of me."
"Ah, either way, we've finally been able to become one again. It figures, to me the Left-Sided Servant is important after all..."
"Ha, ha, ha..." The Left-Sided Servant laughed cheerfully.
"But, I do have pretty good timing, right? I taught you guys well, didn't I?" The girl asked.
"Could be!" said the Left-Sided Servant.
"Hey, hey! Don't you have that backwards?" said the Right-Sided Servant.
"Aah, but you still listened to the words written on the door very well. "Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once, Progress through the inferno, and demonstrate your courage at once"...if that's how it works, then of course, every third time, the gates would be open, wouldn't they?" The girl said while pointing upward. "Pro...gress...thr...ough...the...in...fer...no...and...dem...on...strate...your...cour...age...at...once...progress through the inferno and demonstrate your courage at once...of course! Since the line itself is sixteen syllables, along with the opening and closing of the doors, the ‘once' at the end of the third line would be on the 48th beat of the measure, now wouldn't it?"
"????? Until now, I didn't know anything about that, though I was thinking I couldn't do it, so I wasn't looking at the gate the whole time. As difficult as that was! Maybe if I would have had courage to begin with, I would have been able to think of that!" The Left-Sided Servant said with a smile.
"So, shall we depart to the next land, Right-Sided Servant and Left-Sided Servant, now become one again?" said the girl.
"It's quite ambitious, isn't it? Well, whatever comes our way, I'll strike them down with this blade!" He drew his blade with his right hand, while the left made a gesture as if to tell him to wait.
"Are you going again? Surely if you go off that way, you'll honestly die."
"What, are you still just as much of a coward?"
"No, it's not that...okay, I get it. Should we just go wherever, then?"
The left side of the Servant grumbled on for a while, but as night set in and courage once again flowed through the land, it was as if a new morning had come. It was if the place was truly free of everything. The red moon, that had been watching the journey the whole way through, shone strongly as if it, too, blessed them.
Turning his back on the misty sky, the Servant started walking. He never looked back.
"When I was a kid, I really thought like this, didn't I...but the me of today doesn't have that kind of courage..."
Nozomi, at this age, had had the world of the book stolen from within her heart. It was as if that tiny flame from her recently extinguished cigarette had flared up with the wind and smoldered on top of the novel's pages, without her noticing...