In France, eleven hours behind Hawaii in the United States, it was early morning.
Having just completed another round of medical examinations, Paul Verlaine returned to his temporary residence in Paris.
They had drawn a considerable amount of his blood. His complexion was slightly pale, yet his tall, elegant figure remained irresistibly eye-catching as he walked along Rue Saint-Jacques.
Only he knew that beneath his flawless appearance, his body harbored hidden defects.
How could an artificially created weapon possibly be perfect?
When humanity dared trespass into the domain of the gods and sought to create a "god," their ambition and relentless perseverance ultimately succeeded. But the "god" they brought into existence was stripped of all dignity, cast down into the mortal world, and burdened with an affliction that should never have existed.
Paul Verlaine had been born incapable of engaging in normal sexual intercourse as a man.
From a medical standpoint, he suffered from a complex disorder affecting both body and mind. It left him profoundly deficient in emotional capacity and made it difficult for him to experience intense or sustained sexual desire.
In matters of sex, he was naturally the passive partner.
That alone was enough to suggest that his very genes rejected the idea of producing offspring.
As though a god instinctively recoiled from touching mortals.
He possessed the extraordinary body that humans could only envy. From the moment of his birth, he had awakened an Ability on the level of a Transcendent.
Yet the heart within that body was empty.
A piece of it had been carved away.
He could perceive the emotions others conveyed to him, but he could never hold on to them. They slipped through his fingers, vanishing as quickly as they came.
As he passed Hôtel de Massa at No. 38 rue du Fabourg Saint-Jacques, Paul Verlaine glanced at it in passing. The words "Société des gens de lettres de France" stood out prominently on the building's façade, and beside it was a large bookstore.
This had once been the residence of his fellow Transcendent, Honoré de Balzac.
Now, countless people came here to pay their respects.
Why would people come to pay their respects?
A fair question.
That fellow Transcendent had died during the war at the age of fifty-one.
He worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day, lived with his days and nights reversed, and there was always a cup of coffee on his desk. It was his habit to begin working in the afternoon and continue straight through to the next day. In the end, the cause of his death came as no surprise: overwork and chronic caffeine poisoning.
Rumor had it that Honoré de Balzac had consumed fifty thousand cups of coffee in his lifetime.
The French government was too embarrassed to bring up the matter and refused to posthumously honor him as a war hero.
The truth of the matter was even more absurd.
He hadn't worked himself to death fighting in the Great War.
He had worked himself to death writing novels.
Although Honoré de Balzac was a Transcendent-level Ability user, his true passion was writing fiction. Over the course of his life, he completed ninety-one novels, laying an unshakable foundation for French literature.
During the war, determined to keep writing while fulfilling his wartime duties, the Transcendent had literally worked himself to death.
Paul Verlaine had been stunned when he first learned of the incident.
France's enemies had barely managed to kill anyone.
Instead, France had lost two of its own.
Arthur Rimbaud and Honoré de Balzac.
With the loss of two Transcendents, France became the laughingstock of Britain and the other victorious nations after the Great War ended.
Amused by the sheer absurdity of it all, Paul Verlaine stepped into a nearby bookstore and bought several of his late colleague's works, including Eugénie Grandet and Le Père Goriot. He wanted to see for himself what this supposedly legendary school of literary realism was all about.
He wasn't the only one.
Many Ability users who knew the author's true identity had come to buy his books out of curiosity as well.
These were the enduring masterpieces of a Transcendent.
Just as he was about to leave the bookstore, Paul Verlaine's gaze swept across the section for newly imported foreign releases. By pure coincidence, he caught sight of a promotional display.
[The latest poetry collection by Jean Nicolas!]
Verlaine was about to walk away, but after a brief moment of hesitation, he turned back and wandered over to that section instead.
At the checkout counter, the clerk unexpectedly recognized him.
"Monsieur Verlaine! It's been a long time since you've come to Rue Jacques."
"I've been busy with work," Paul Verlaine replied with a faint smile as he handed over the books he had selected.
The clerk sighed. "Well, a gentleman like you shouldn't stay in one place for too long. You give me the impression of the open sea—always drifting from place to place. You must travel abroad on business quite often, don't you?"
Paul Verlaine said nothing.
Beneath the sleeve of his coat, the tiny puncture wound from the blood draw had already healed.
The emptiness in his heart, however, remained stubbornly unhealed.
"Oh, so you're buying this novel." The clerk was remarkably talkative, chatting away as he rang up the purchase. "You must be here for Monsieur Jean Nicolas, just like everyone else. That poet appeared out of nowhere, then vanished just as suddenly. After such a long silence, he finally published a new poem—but it was written as a companion piece for a novel."
Carrying a bag filled with the books he had bought on a whim, Paul Verlaine made his way to 289 Rue Saint-Jacques.
He took out a key he had not used in a very long time and slid it into the front door's lock.
A layer of dust shook loose.
Covering his nose and mouth, he looked around the house, which had stood empty for years. He didn't seem to mind its neglected state. With a swift motion, he pulled open the curtains that had long shut out the daylight, then pushed the windows wide open.
Fresh air streamed inside, carrying with it the bustling sights and sounds of the street below.
"So nothing's changed."
Paul Verlaine pulled the dust covers off the furniture and settled onto the square sofa where he used to sit and read. As soon as he sat down, he instinctively stretched his long legs onto the footstool in front of him.
He was too tall to sit comfortably on a low sofa without somewhere to prop up his legs.
The blonde-haired young man hummed an off-key tune as he opened the bag of newly purchased books. He immediately set aside the works of his fellow Transcendent and reached instead for the poems of a poet he had admired in the past.
"Which page was it on...?"
He flipped through the book but couldn't find it, so he resigned himself to starting from the beginning.
"The protagonist is Japanese? He lost his memory?
He became a fashion designer after losing his memory at seventeen? What kind of story is this...?"
Determined to appreciate the poem, Paul Verlaine patiently continued reading.
Gradually, he came to understand Shibukawa Ryuuji.
The protagonist was like a block of ice—someone whom no one could ever truly move.
He devoted himself to art for one reason alone: his extraordinarily refined sense of beauty and his inhuman nature.
Yes... Inhuman.
At a glance, Paul Verlaine recognized that the personality the author had given the protagonist was not one any ordinary human could possess.
The emptiness.
The confusion.
The cold indifference.
The quiet pride.
It all reminded him of himself when he had first come into existence.
There was a hollow place inside his own heart, just like Shibukawa Ryuuji's.
In fact, his emptiness ran even deeper.
Shibukawa Ryuuji could still find a measure of fulfillment through fashion design. Traveling the world and exchanging artistic ideas allowed him to discover flashes of inspiration from the Muses.
Paul Verlaine could do no such thing.
He had no interest in art. As long as the clothes he bought fit well and looked presentable, he never asked for more. As one of France's Transcendents, he possessed more than enough wealth to indulge himself, which was precisely why he never grew attached to the luxury goods he treated as disposable.
A trace of loneliness gradually crept into Paul Verlaine's eyes.
He turned another page and came upon a poem in which Jean Nicolas wrote about the life of a seventeen-year-old.
[At seventeen years of age, one cares about nothing.
A lovely evening. In the café, cups and glasses mingle together, while light and shadow shimmer amid the noise of conversation!
—Off we go for a stroll beneath the green linden trees.
The linden blossoms are fragrant on a charming June night!]
Paul Verlaine's fingertips trembled.
The linden grove...
He remembered it.
Along with the scenery he had seen so many years ago.
He had met the sixteen-year-old Arthur Rimbaud when he himself was eighteen, and afterward the two had become partners.
When Arthur Rimbaud turned seventeen, Verlaine had spent several days in his hometown.
He had remarked that the streets were too noisy.
So Rimbaud's family and friends had taken him to the linden grove to clear his mind.
He could no longer remember how he had felt back then.
Yet this "god," whose memory preserved every scene with perfect clarity, could still almost smell the aroma of wine drifting from the roadside and the sweet fragrance of the linden blossoms.
Only later did he learn that the government had not originally intended to assign Arthur Rimbaud as his partner.
Someone else had been chosen.
But Arthur Rimbaud's teacher, Monsieur Baudelaire, had recommended him as Verlaine's guide, believing that Arthur Rimbaud—who possessed a spatial Ability as well—was the most suitable person to lead him.
And afterward...
How had things ended up like this...?
To everyone else, they had been the closest of partners.
The kind who entrusted each other with their backs, with their lives, and who together stole countless priceless pieces of intelligence from nations around the world.
They ventured together through one dangerous mission after another, unleashing their Abilities without ever concealing their true selves.
They had shared a bed.
Arthur Rimbaud had held him in his arms.
A faint melancholy settled over Paul Verlaine's eyes as his fingertips brushed over those lines.
In the novel, Shibukawa Ryuuji spent his life searching for his lost memories, believing that if he could recover them, he would finally fill the empty place in his heart where snow fell without end.
Paul Verlaine knew it was useless.
Memories were only memories.
If you could not grasp your own emotions, nothing could ever fill that emptiness.
In the end...
You would still be alone.
In the novel, a traveler told Shibukawa Ryuuji that love could fill the void in a person's heart.
Paul Verlaine wanted to scoff. "What good is love? It's only temporary..."
["When you feel another person's love, when the warmth of that love moves you, little by little, its warmth will reach the depths of your heart and melt the ice and snow within."]
["If you're incapable of loving someone else, then find someone who loves you enough."]
["Let that person's love fill you completely."]
["When the image of the one who loves you becomes someone you can no longer forget..."]
["...you will have changed."]
["It doesn't matter what kind of love it is. As long as it is sincere and untainted, if they never give up on you, and you don't retreat, you will find happiness."]
The blonde-haired young man's hand froze on the page.
...What was he doing?
Reading a novel.
A novel by the poet Mallarmé had once described as every bit as beautiful as Rimbaud.
Where...
Where was he now?
Inside No. 289 Rue Saint-Jacques—the house that had once belonged to someone precious to him.
Had he ever been loved?
Yes.
He had.
A love that had gone beyond friendship.
And it was him who had personally killed the partner who had trusted him so completely. After that brief moment of elation, he had believed he had preserved that person forever at the most beautiful moment of his life.
Whenever he recalled the look on his partner's face at the moment of betrayal, a faint thrill of excitement and pleasure would stir within him.
But that kind of pleasure could never satisfy him.
The endless tedium of his days had only continued to accumulate...
Far more than before.
There was no one left who truly understood him.
No one left who trusted him.
No one who would hold him through the night, kiss his ear, and whisper in a gentle voice,
"Paul... do you love me?"
Why...
Why would you ask me that?
I could never love anyone!
The book resting on Paul Verlaine's lap slipped to the floor.
As he bent down to pick it up, his eyes caught sight of a ring lying on the dust-covered floorboards—a ring that had been flung away during one of their fierce arguments.
It had rolled into a corner.
Silent and forgotten.
There had been countless conflicts between them. Neither of them had ever been willing to yield.
Yet the trust they had forged by facing life and death together had sustained their relationship.
And wasn't a relationship itself another name for the bond between two hearts?
Without realizing it, tears began to stream down Paul Verlaine's face.
Before he had torn that trust apart...
Had he really once been so close to happiness?
How utterly ridiculous.
Arthur Rimbaud...
You loved your country more than you loved me.
And yet... am I really rejoicing in and suffering because of the fragment of love you gave me...?
When all I wanted... was that "unknown energy mass" that resonated with my own kind.
You were the one who refused to give it to me.
You insisted on handing it over to France.
That's why I struck you from behind.
My friend...
I won't regret it.
Go to hell and offer your loyalty to your country there.
If you couldn't give me all of your love—
Then it was worthless.