Some say that people from the North are strong. Because it is a place where winter never ends, they say that one cannot endure without being strong. That's half true.
Nature enthusiasts say that nature makes humans strong, but not the North. This place offers no respite. Only humans born strong survive in the North.
When it snows, it piles up higher than one's head, and it is common for the snow that fell last year not to melt until the following summer. Monsters that have existed since before history roam day and night, even crossing fortresses. Weakness cannot exist. Because that is death.
However, there is an error in that statement. Summer does come to the Northern lands as well. Summer comes naturally or artificially. But it only shows its face and disappears, so crops do not ripen.
Occasionally, very occasionally, once every few decades, there is a year when summer descends enough to dry the land. The last of those years was more than fifty years ago. As much as a person's lifetime in the past. But I remember that time clearly.
A memory riddled with holes due to forgetfulness, perhaps distorted by memories. What is clear is that I was not alone that year, and she was by my side.
"Ulrich."
She, Hilde, called me.
"You don't age, do you?"
We were walking in the field.
As the snow that had covered the field white melted, sprouts emitting a green light rose from between the soil, as if after a dew. The scent of grass, hard to smell in the North, tickled my nose. The sky, which had been gloomy with clouds all year round, was blue, and the wind carrying the snow was warm.
"I don't age."
"Nor do you die."
I was curious what Hilde was going to say. Why would she suddenly ask such an obvious question? She knew that I had lived a very long time, even though I was not a hybrid of human and fairy.
"Isn't it painful?"
But that was the first time she had asked about eternal life. I had never considered it a secret, but she had been tight-lipped as if it were a huge secret. But why ask now?
I stopped walking. She, who had been walking side by side with me, stopped a step late and stood in front of me, turning her body to face me. Her eyes trembled slightly.
"Was I rude?"
Perhaps she was unsettled by my silence, she asked cautiously.
"No."
"You don't have to tell me if it's difficult."
"That's not it."
I was just at a loss for how to answer.
"As you know, I neither age nor die. Time always flows past me. Even fairies, who seem to possess eternal life, eventually crumble before the passage of time. All they have is the right not to age, so they slowly face death."
"······."
"The same goes for dragons. When the Third Human Empire rose, the first dragon became soil in that distant land. Of course, they were born before me... but today I have lived longer than them. And look at me. Is there anything different between the old me you remember and the current me?"
Hilde shook her head, saying there wasn't.
"I have sent many people away. And I will continue to do so. The pain you are asking about must be this. You're asking if it's painful to send others away and be left alone."
"That's right. I think you are—"
"If you ask if it's painful, of course it's painful."
I raised my hand and stopped her words.
"But life is not painful. Fortunately, I also have forgetfulness. Memories are erased and become reminiscences. You know what I mean, right? The present always becomes the past, but recalling the past is not always painful."
She swallowed what she was about to say. And after hesitating for a moment, she opened her mouth again. Her voice trembled unsteadily, like her eyes looking up at me.
"Someday, I will become your memory too, right?"
"Yes."
"Shouldn't you say that you will remember then?"
"I suppose so."
"A cold person······."
Hilde smiled faintly.
"So? What's the reason for bringing up this story?"
"Can I ask you a favor?"
A favor?
"When I die, I want you to take over the territory."
"Inherit the title?"
"Yes. Not anyone else, but you."
Only then did I see her true intentions. But I pretended not to know and asked.
"Don't you plan to pass it on to your relatives?"
"You know what I think of those wretches."
Yes, I know very well.
She inherited the title at the age of eight, and I was the one who took care of her by her side. I knew too well, as I was the one who prevented the evil hands from trying to take the title from the young her.
"Please."
Hilde grabbed my right hand with both of her hands.
Her gaunt hands, the fine wrinkles, stopped my words. It made it really difficult for me, who was about to answer that it was difficult. How many times had she asked me for a favor?
I knew the intention behind her request. I also knew that her request was no different from a will. I was not such a heartless person as to coldly dismiss those two things.
#
The man awoke from his reverie.
What kind of conversation did we have after this? Even when rummaging through his memories, nothing came to mind. The memories right before this were so vivid that he could even recall the scent of grass, but not a single word came to mind from the memories after that.
Forgetfulness may be stronger than death, he thought. It is so difficult to protect memories like this.
- Hilde Ditmarsken
Amidst the winter wind carrying snow, he was looking down at the tombstone. It was what had briefly trapped him in his reverie, and as he knelt down and brushed the snow off the tombstone, her name was revealed.
He was the one who engraved the name. He was also the one who put her in the coffin, the one who watched over her deathbed, and the one who inherited the title.
"······."
Hilde died towards the end of that summer. She became soil, as everyone he had a relationship with had done. And spring had passed fifty-three times. During that time, summer had come many times, but a summer as long as that one had not come.
"You didn't care about your relatives at all."
He smiled, placing his hand on the tombstone.
The reason she passed the title to him was that she wanted him not to forget her. At least as long as he was the lord of Ditmarsken, as long as he stayed in the mansion where she was born, where she grew up, and where she died, he would not forget her.
He was such a person. And she knew him well.
The time he spent with her was only a fleeting moment compared to his entire life. It was a past that would inevitably be forgotten someday. That's why, or perhaps despite that, she wanted to be remembered for a long time.
"Lord Ulrich."
The sound of stepping on snow, sabak, sabak, grew closer.
"It's cold. Please come inside."
The one called Ulrich turned his head.
The old butler was standing behind him. His name was Hohenlohe. He had been taken as a servant by Hilde seven years before her death, and now he was an old man.
He was worried about his master, but the one who should be worried about was the old man. His face, losing blood from the cold, and his body trembling weakly, were like a gaunt thorn bush. If even he leaves, there will be no one left who served her.
When everyone who shares memories with him disappears like this, and the day comes when even the memories with her become faint, he will leave. The promise is up to that point. It has always been like that.
"Yes, I should."
He got up and left the cemetery, thinking of the old days.
He was born when the gods built a palace in the sky and resided there. He also saw the dwarves building towers as high as the sky after the gods left. There was also an era when the collapsed towers were covered in vines and called the World Tree.
Three eras have ended, and today is when the human era has collapsed and risen again twice in a row. Even though the world has undergone so many changes, he still had the same old appearance. His heart seems to have changed many times. But he himself did not know about that change. Because that change happens gradually, not in an instant.
He lives in time that flows past him day by day. Because even death avoids him, all he can do is accept life.
Still, life does not only consist of pain, he thought. Even though it is sad to send off relationships and be left alone, other relationships will come in time. Some say that death is a gift from God and immortality is a curse, but that is not necessarily the case.
His name is Ulrich, now Ulrich of Ditmarsken.
A hundred years ago, he used the name Césare de Guise, and even earlier than that, he used the name Arturus Magnus. But those are just some of this man's many names. There is no need to know them now.