S1034A

Meanwhile, vast stretches of time passed within the department store.

I was certain that the Chaplain intended to keep Meursault here until he submitted to the Grand Magasin.

He would lock him up in the corner of that lightless room. The room where his ailing mother had hidden herself away, once.

He must be desperate to leave.

He must be desperate to make the pain stop.

I could see how exhausted Meursault was - how he was hurting.

Meursault, O Sinful One. There is an easy way to end that pain.

Regret. Repent.

.......

Your mother is enjoying a fleeting respite in that room.

Open that door again, and your sin will repeat.

Leave the door shut if you have even a trace of regret in your heart. Stop where you are. Repent.

The voice is overbearing,

but Meursault opens the door anyway.

Screaming is all that ever comes from inside the room.

I can feel that Meursault is steeped head to toe in fatigue and fear, but his face is as expressionless as a blank slate.

Yet he opens the door still, living through the pain again.

They are... always hard to understand.

They try to assign their own meanings to the world. Different meanings through arbitrary means.

... No. The fact is...

The fact is that I do understand them. That is the precise reason that I am consumed by this unending vertigo.

Mother told me that assigning meanings is the only way for human beings to endure this world.

One, however, cannot hope to assign meanings to everything, as the world is too vast and formidable to allow such a thing.

And so they entrust themselves to the inertia that the City has created in the name of civilization and culture. Some drift like buoys on waves, without even knowing where the current flows.

Nailed in place with no one but myself, I keep on watching them, my vision swimming with dizziness.

They will continue to change and waver even amid those waves.

What was once believed to be a revelation, an enlightenment, is overturned in an instant. What is believed to be right will change with the passing of time.

... I know.

Do I look like I'm going to stay this way forever?

I might let blind rage swing my blade again. Might get sick of all of this, or might even start hurting again.

But...

Right now, this is where I've chosen to stay.

If the clock keeps yapping, I'll clean out my ears. If this damn scabbard gets in my way, I'll just have to keep it pacified. That's all I need to do.

I do not understand.

The countless gazes, the meanings that fall apart, the possibility of being wrong, the existence of this world...

... they all frighten me.

How do they endure this fear?

<... I'll be honest, I'm feeling a bit lost. I don't have any clues... let alone any hope of finding one.>

<I'm sure it won't be our last, either.>

<I know we might just end up proving Jeanne right, with nothing changing from our last attempt. But we can cross that bridge when we get to it.>

<I know. I just thought having a choice might make the whole thing more fun for Pwie.>

These people also lack certainty in their own judgment.

Why, then, do they repeat actions that even they themselves fail to understand?

I am in a world in which one must fathom the unfathomable to endure one's existence.

It is a world that, for that very reason, tortured Mother all her life.

And her suffering was passed down to me, like an inheritance.

I put all of that behind.

Without even fully understanding what is pushing me to act...

I open the door to Mother's room.

.......

So, in the end... You choose that interminable suffering once again.