“......Are you all right?”
White ceiling. White sheets.
The eyes of a girl watching over me.
Ah―――it seems that I’d dreamt a fragmented dream.
“I’m glad.
I was at a loss as to what to do when
you’d collapsed by the exit.”
“Please be careful.
Even though fights within the school building is forbidden,
it’s still a battlefield.
“Wandering around without your Servant
is tantamount to suicide, you know?”
Without my Servant......?
At those words, for no particular reason, I checked my left hand.
And ―――all three of my Command Spells were there.
Without thinking, I let out a sigh of relief.
I don’t know either why I’d felt relieved at the simple fact that I had them, but I did.
But―――my Servant.
Who exactly was my Servant?
“Huh? Your Servant is of course.......hmm?
That’s strange, the search results aren’t......
hmmm.....?”
“U-um, your Servant is either Saber,
or Archer, or Caster,
one of these for sure!”
That’s it, of course.
After all, I had no other options to begin with.
”Anyways, congratulations on making it through the fifth round, Kishinami Hakuno-san.
“Hurry to the bulletin board, please.
It’s about time for your sixth opponent to be announced.
Please do your best.”
I thank the girl and rise from the bed.
Not much time remains in the Holy Grail War.
Now that I’ve come so far, I have no choice but to sprint full-throttle until the goal.
“I see that you have woken. Excellent.
If you had remained in that state,
there would have been nothing left that I could do.”
“Now that I have lost my Servant,
I need your strength.
I have no means of survival
but for you to obtain the Holy Grail.”
“…...I have talked for too long.
Later, I will make some tea good for recovering from fatigue,
a brew of my teacher’s.
By the way......it seems that
you have been holding something since earlier;
what is it?”
Holding something?
Come to think of it, since I’d been asleep,
there had been something clenched in my fist.
What could it be?
I gently open my hand.
“Is this......a cherry blossom petal?”
I don’t know why I’ve been holding such a thing.
I must’ve happened to grab onto it when I collapsed.
I turn my hand to discard it, but stopped and changed my mind.
It must be because a cherry blossom is rare in this school.
With no particular reason, I stow it away like it’s something precious.
―――out of nowhere,
I feel like I was called by someone.
An auditory hallucination of “senpai.”
When I turn around, of course, there’s no one there.
“Are you......crying?”
Before I’ve realized it, my eyes had welled up.
I rub my eyes and leave the entrance of the nurse’s office.
Holding in the slight sense of loss that had opened up in my chest,
I walk down the already familiar corridor.
…...A pale remnant of a memory.
…...The ashes of a burnt roll of film.
―――Like vestiges of days gone,
the final fragment of the heart of the girl who had dreamt of love.
I come to a stop in front of my room.
This is the room that I’d used during the Holy Grail War.
Together with my Servant......whose Class I can’t remember......
I’d prepared for battle countless times here.
But......what kind of Heroic Spirit was that Servant......?
My mind has been in a fog since I’ve woken.
My thought processes feel dulled.
It’s just I felt certain that, somehow―――-
I’ll open this door to find only ruins,
and I’ll be deleted by the Moon Cell in that moment,
and my Holy Grail War will end.
I had a premonition like that.
I’m not satisfied. I haven’t lost yet.
I’d made my way to the sixth round after triumphing over even Julius.
…....And yet, I found myself accepting that there was no other way.
Because really,
I should have perished somewhere else already.
…...I had simply been saved by an almost rule-breaking maneuver.
Breaking the rules is called a miracle precisely because it is one-time only.
There’s no second chance.
No exceptions.
The moment that I open this door, I will cease to exist within this timeline.
That’s fine.
That’s fine, I resolved.
I put my hand to the door.
A certain debt of mine will be repaid here.
…...And so.
Kishinami Hakuno’s Holy Grail War ended thus.
―――Wait.
What’s a nudist doing in my room......?
“Hmph. I’d come one step ahead of time to take a look,
but it seems your room here is squalid as well.
Humble as always, I see.”
“But well, I’ll not complain now of all times.
After all, I too had lost nine-tenths of my assets in coming here.
I shall consign myself to this temporary state of abject impoverishment.”
―――I remember. Now I remember―――-!
That thing there is the anomalous Servant
whom I’d contracted with in the Far Side, Gilgamesh......!
That’s right, at the Far Side,
we’d resolved the fiasco BB had caused......!
”Good, you’ve regained your memories easily.
As one who had contracted with someone originally belonging to the Far Side,
you are unlike other Masters.”
”Though the entire incident has already become a dream,
the battle that you had fought was for truth.
That is the only way that I am here.”
I―――I don’t really understand,
but weren’t you not supposed to be able to come to this side?!
“I destroyed that rule.
Since I’d woken anyhow, I set out with a leisurely trip in mind.
“In addition, I’d looked into your Servant on the Near Side.
A Berserker......”
“That one had immediately terminated your contract
upon losing sight of you.
You were abandoned by your own dog.”
“Even I had not anticipated that.
For you to drop out before losing miserably in the sixth round
would be a stain upon my reputation.”
“You are, in the end, one who had exchanged a contract with me.
You must fall only when you have failed in spite of having fought with all your strength.”
Gilgamesh says all this in an impassive tone.
For my part, I only stare dumbly at the hauteur that was all too familiar to me.
Along with surprise, I…...well,
I don’t know what it was exactly that welled up in my chest,
but I can’t help but start to grin a little.
“So, what will you do?
There does happen to be a Servant
sitting here with nothing on his hands.”
“If you say to aim for the summit together,
then take my hand.
Once more, the time has come for you to offer up your Command Spells.”
I shake the extended hand.
Leaving behind one, I use two Command Spells.
First, that we are on equal footing.
With the pledge of the Command Spell,
I promise the freedom of accepting, respecting, and, if necessary, opposing
each other’s beliefs.
And the second――――――
“―――I see. That is a fine pledge, Hakuno.”
“Let us go, Master. Our goal is the nexus of the Moon Cell,
the Angelica Cage. So long as I am here,
I’ll pulverize any ordinary outcome.”
―――That’s right.
I can’t stop here.
Once more, I look at the flower petal on my palm.
…...Though it’s all become a dream now,
I know that there had once been a girl.
A girl who’d tried to protect something, even if it doing so meant defying the Moon Cell.
No doubt I’ll learn what her wish was if I advance along this path.
The battle continues.
Until the day I reach the nexus of the moon that awaits at the end of the seven seas―――
Originally Posted by Rockxas
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“What is this?! No matter that BB had been restraining the Moon Cell;
“Agh……!
“To do away with this entire affair as a dream……
“A clever move.
“Rejoice, Hakuno.
