287 – Incomplete Communication
Pure White Woman.
The Goddess of Time looked up at the sky blankly.
At the Sky Temple built on top of the clouds, even when I looked up, I couldn’t see a single cloud.
A very clear and clean blue sky. And only the sun shining brightly.
A very different landscape from what we have seen on earth for a thousand years.
That’s right. Here, the sky is blue and the sun burns brightly, 365 days a year, even after thousands of years.
A boring world where there is no such thing as changeable weather, with dark clouds, heavy rain, and heavy snow.
Perhaps he will never be able to go down to earth again.
“From now on, we will begin the trial regarding the disposition of defendant Eterna.”
The trial was held at the Sky Temple.
Her gods surrounded her with her handcuffed Eterna and looked down upon her with hostile gazes.
This whole situation still felt like a dream.
He should definitely take a leisurely stroll through the forest, as he has always done for a thousand years, then return to the cabin and watch over the boy.
Everything changed in just one moment.
Boys, household members, and even older sisters. We lost the three most precious things together.
“Her sins are obviously serious and vicious, but the realm of time that she oversees is so important that it is difficult for anyone to replace it.”
The gods around her talked about various things about her treatment, but none of their words were heard by her.
In my head, only the moment of betrayal was constantly replayed.
Her older sister betrayed her.
No matter how many times I think about it, I cannot understand it. However, the more you look back, the more it becomes a firm truth that leaves no room for change.
Why on earth? The same question had no particular meaning now.
No matter what her intentions are, it doesn’t change the fact that she betrayed herself.
“We must also consider that her initial descent to earth was due to her sister, the Goddess of Lies. The Goddess of Lies deliberately left her own brother behind on her land to establish her cause to come down to her land from time to time. “Is this true?”
The gods asked her something, but she just looked up at the sky with her blank eyes.
A dull and boring skyscape. We must remain trapped forever in a space where only day and night repeat.
“I make a judgment. Defendant Eterna is on indefinite probation in the pure white temple, the deepest temple in the sky.”
The Temple of Pure White is literally a temple built entirely of pure white marble.
There is nothing there. There is no means of observing Middle Earth. Other gods also do not step in.
A space where you can spend time alone and doing nothing.
A place where you can only wait for time to pass day by day.
Is all we can do is look up at the sky?
All you can do is look at the boring sky, which remains blue 365 days a year, even after a thousand years.
Eterna was imprisoned in the pure white temple.
“···Ah.”
If she wasn’t the goddess of time, she wouldn’t even know how much time had passed here.
At first, she could only feel the passing of time.
Anyway, no matter how long the time is to her, it is just a moment. But in this pure white temple, nothing changes no matter how many years pass.
Not changing was like time not passing. One Sanga Eater realized that it was meaningless to count how long she had been trapped here.
For the rest of my life anyway.
Because I will be here forever, unable to do anything, looking up at the sky.
There is only one reason to live and not die. It’s just because if she disappears, the flow of time will be ruined.
The other gods were not particularly worried about Eterna. For her, the punishment was not physical pain but eternal waiting. She decided that the Goddess of Time would be fine.
It wasn’t particularly wrong. If Eater had gone down to earth and met her boy, and she had waited day after day for him to wake up, and not realized how special that waiting had been.
He may have accepted the punishment of being imprisoned in a pure white temple and being placed under indefinite probation without hesitation.
At some point, she began reminiscing about her past with her eyes closed all day.
Ignoring the meaningless present and future that were limited to the space of the pure white temple, I clung only to the brilliant and happy past.
She replayed her encounter with the boy countless times.
I thought over and over again the thousand years of waiting for the boy.
The moment I met the boy. I remembered the exciting moment when I first went down to the ground.
And then she realized something about her that she had forgotten.
The intangible gaze that looked at oneself from her temple.
She recalled the strange observer watching from beyond the timeline. She opened her eyes for the first time in a very long time and returned to her present.
In a pure white temple surrounded only by pure white marble, she opened her mouth and let out her voice for the first time in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.
“Are you still watching me?”
After a while. I once again felt invisible eyes right in front of me.
Pitifully, she felt glad. After so many years of living completely disconnected from the outside world and immersed in the past, I meet someone for the first time in a long time.
Although it was a suspicious entity whose identity was unknown, it was a great comfort just to have someone by my side.
“Have you been watching from then until now?”
There was no answer.
In the first place, that gaze never once answered her own question.
“Can’t we communicate?”
There was a deep sense of regret. I wanted to communicate, even if it was a very short and simple conversation.
Talk alone into the air is something you can do at any time, even if there is no one else around.
After thinking for a moment, she soon came up with a clever idea.
As long as she could make herself aware of her partner’s presence, she had very limited means of communicating with her.
“I will ask you a question, so if the answer is ‘yes’, stay the same, and if the answer is ‘no’, please disappear and then reappear. “Can you say ‘no’ just as a test?”
Then the gaze disappeared for a moment and then reappeared.
She was happy that communication seemed to be possible as she had thought, and thought about what to ask.
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“Who are you? “Are you God?”
I forgot. As the presence disappeared and appeared, I realized that the identity of the gaze was not God.
“Then… “Do you know me?”
It won’t disappear this time. In other words, her opponent was someone she knew.
I wanted to ask who it was, but since I could only choose between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, it was virtually impossible.
“Are you watching me from across the timeline from the distant future?”
This time, the correct answer was ‘yes’.
Since this was something she had easily guessed in the first place, she immediately continued with the next question.
“Then, I have one question. If you’ve been watching me, you probably know about the boy I met in the woods, right?”
Feeling relieved that her gaze was still not disappearing, I cautiously asked a question.
“That child will be in the future… “What happened?”
Although she is the goddess of time, she could not perfectly read the boy’s future, which was surrounded by uncertainty. To be precise, no matter what future she reads, it is meaningless because it is distorted by uncertainty.
But the sight in front of her is a being directly from the future.
For him, the future is like the past. Unlike the ever-changing future, the past once decided does not change.
So, this unknown person can know what kind of future the boy will face.
“Oh, I guess I can’t answer the question of what happened. Then change the question… Is she still alive?”
The answer is ‘yes’.
In fact, she gave an answer that there was no basis for believing, but that alone made me shed tears and feel relieved.
However, the answer also had connotations that made it difficult to feel reassured.
A long time has passed since she was imprisoned in the Temple of Pure White. However, the fact that the boy is still awake makes no sense considering the lifespan of an ordinary human being.
In other words, the boy did not die of old age while enjoying a normal life.
Then there are only two possibilities that can come to mind.
Either their original plan came true and they were reborn as beings close to gods, throwing off the limitations of their lifespan, or they were still stuck in a long, never-ending dream and could not wake up.
After a long time, I remembered her older sister who betrayed her.
Her undiluted desire for revenge persisted even after nearly eons of time, but even stronger than that, her hope that her older sister had safely awakened her boy coexisted with her.
“···Is the child awake now?”
I forgot.
The answer was ‘no’.
As soon as she saw that, my face became frowning.
If she betrayed herself and had the boy all to herself, why didn’t she wake her up earlier?
It felt like she was rotting inside and about to break down at her sister’s betrayal, which she couldn’t understand.
“Is her older sister keeping that child by her side?”
I forgot this time too.
The gaze disappeared and reappeared, denying her question.
···No way. Is the older sister planning to leave the boy sleeping like this forever?
That shouldn’t be the case. On the day when the gods discover the boy’s existence…
Afterwards, I felt a strong sense of crisis that she couldn’t just stay like this.
But there is no way she could escape the Pure White Temple…
She paused for a moment, then looked into her eyes and asked carefully.
“Do you know how to escape from here?”
His eyes stared at her calmly, without blinking.