So in our last chapter, we've started to see Asch slowly adapt to his "New Old Life," but it's not exactly what he thought it would be, is it? We are beginning to see that Asch's life can never be what it was before. And while a part of him knows this, he is desperate for validation of his own struggles up to this point. Right now, Asch is in deep denial, looking at his world with tunnel-vision, not open to anything other than his own wants and what he thinks he deserves. But Asch hasn't realized that the rest of the world won't think or feel how they "should" (or rather, his definition of that. Asch has quite a big ego, doesn't he?).
Side note: the inspiration for this chapter's name was inspired by a vocaloid song of the same name.
When Asch had arrived back at the manor, he meandered through the halls, hoping to find something to occupy his time. He had only been in town with Natalia for a little more than an hour and a half, and now it wasn't even noon yet. As he walked, her words filtered through his mind on repeat. He wondered what she had meant when she said that it would 'pass by tomorrow.' The way she said it implied that today was somehow significant to her. But it wasn't anyone's birthday, or the anniversary of any notable event. As far as he knew, at least. In any case, it seemed to him that she wouldn't be up to anyone's company for the rest of the day, with the way she had stomped away from him so resolutely. Meaning that once again, he was left to occupy himself in the monotony of the manor. The more he thought about it, he didn't feel much like being around anyone else, either. So he kept weaving through the halls of the manor, drawing further away from the sounds of the servants' footsteps, until he found himself at the door to the basement that he had forgotten about years ago. After all, it was mainly used for storage purposes. Hardly anyone ever went down there, especially himself. It was mostly full of old boxes, spare furniture, and the like. It was probably dark and filthy, but at least it was something different, he supposed.
Obviously, no one else had bothered to enter the basement in some time, either – metal grinded on metal as he turned the stiff doorknob, and the hinges creaked loudly. He tried to peer inside, but it was dark. Luckily, there was a small table near the door with a candle on it. Making his way to the candle, he stumbled over something hidden in the darkness, causing him to lose his balance. In a flash, he found himself on the floor after hearing a thud behind him, and when he turned around, he found that the door was now closed.
"Damn it!" He bit out. Why the hell had he come in here, again?
He cautiously made his way to where he remembered the candle being, and summoned a small amount of the fifth fonon in his palm. The small concentration of energy soon became a flame when transferred to the wick, and he used the new light to observe his surroundings. The door was now shut as he'd suspected, considering his sudden lack of outside light. Turning to the rest of the room, he was rather unimpressed. One wall was lined with mostly empty bookshelves, covered in dust. Some small tables were shoved into the corner, chairs sitting upside down on them. There were wooden barrels and crates, old chamber pots – (He shuddered, giving them a wide berth) – and decorative odds and ends lying about as far as he could see. Mostly, it was spare furniture that was used to decorate servants' quarters, or occasional guests from many years ago. Although, much of it was now unkempt. Going into the room further, he found that the room was much larger than he thought. The items had been stacked around the room in rows, making the basement into what seemed like a maze of junk. As he reached what seemed to be the end, he realized that there were some items in the corner that looked decidedly different from the rest. His suspicions were confirmed as he brought the candle closer. It was a set of bedroom furniture – a large, opulent bed that looked quite comfortable, a dresser, two lamps, two phonographs, and a serving cart. His steps echoed softly through the stone as he walked closer to examine. Why was this nice furniture in here? Surely, it could get better use in a guest room – it didn't look nearly as old as the other furniture in here. As he moved the light around, something in his peripheral vision caught his eye, a journal. So, did that mean this stuff had belonged to someone specific? He picked up the journal and opened it, placing the light over its pages just as the puzzle pieces clicked together in his mind.
"Remday, Rem-Decan 23, ND2018
Looks like it's going to be another boring day. Not one thing has gone right over the seven years since my kidnapping, I lose my memory..."
With a grunt of disgust, he tossed the book to the ground. Of course, the damn replica's things… After his order for them to be gotten rid of, he hadn't given them another thought. He never imagined they might still be around. After all, his father had agreed to dispose of them… But suddenly, he remembered the face his mother had made upon his request, something that had slipped his mind after. She had always been softhearted. He knew, without a doubt, that she must have arranged for these things to be kept. Asch's chest tightened uncomfortably at the thought. He was her son, her real son. The replica was just a replacement, a place holder, nothing but an imitation. He was worthless! How could his mother treat that thing like he was her son, too? The idea of it made him sick. He clenched his fists and angrily made his way back to the door. Another second in this room would be a second too many.
His hand clamped around the doorknob, and twisted it with agitated force. But the knob stuck, unmoving. He paused, dumbfounded. Again, he tried.
It didn't budge.
His heart began to pound in frustration, and a small amount of panic. Again, he tried, pulling the knob up and down while toggling it. A little to the right, the left. Surely, he just had to work with it a little bit and it would unstick. But no matter what he tried, it didn't move. Taking a deep breath, he stood back. He hadn't wanted to damage anything in his own manor, but it seemed his only choice was to try and break the door. It couldn't be that hard. After all, he was an accomplished soldier. He centered his gravity, and kicked as hard as he could.
But there wasn't even a crack in the wood. Now that he examined it, it seemed to be a very thick door. For the first time in his life, he resented the opulence that came with having money and important social status. He then remembered his teachers telling him about the security measures in the manor. One of which was the then-newly-designed very thick doors, imbued with a thick layer of metal inside, to keep attackers out should someone try to storm the manor with weapons. After House Fende was infiltrated, many royal families around the world began to take more precaution in their safety measures. As for the manor, the basement was to be a last-ditch emergency safe-room, if needed.
In other words, there was no way he would be getting through that door any time soon.
"Son of a bitch…!" He gritted his teeth. "Hello?!" He called out. "HELLOOOO!"
Surely, someone would hear him, right? But he remembered how on his way here, he had seen so few servants. Worse, he had come down here specifically because he knew no one ever did. He groaned and pounded on the door, hoping someone would hear. He had no idea how long he continued to call for help, as he had no way of telling the time. Eventually his voice became hoarse from yelling, and his tired arms dropped. It had to have at least been a few hours by now. How long would it be before someone noticed he was missing? His mother and father probably assumed he would be eating lunch with Natalia in town, so they wouldn't be expecting him. At least by dinner, they would probably start to wonder where he was. He hoped. He would rather not spend the night in here. Where would he even sleep? The spare beds had been disassembled and stripped of their linens and pillows, and all the chairs were too small for him to try to curl up in. That only left…he scowled.
"I'd rather sleep on the floor…" He muttered to himself as he sighed and leaned against the door. His eyes darted around the room, looking for something to occupy his mind while he waited. The bookshelves on the side wall contained about a dozen books, at least that would be somewhere to start. So he grabbed one and settled into one of the wooden chairs. But when he opened the book, he found that the first few pages had been torn out. So he grabbed another, only to find that parchment worms had eaten away the inside. The next two were just empty journals, then two import logs, a cookbook, three books written in what looked to be an older dialect of Ancient Ispanian, one book that was so waterlogged he couldn't make out the words, a history of the royal family line (which he already knew by heart), and the last was a detailed account of how to birth a child without medical intervention – complete with illustrations. He closed the book quickly and pushed the stack away, pinching his brow with one hand while drumming his fingers with the other. The minutes went by like hours, and eventually his boredom began to eat away at him.
He tried calling again, to no avail. He pressed his ear to the crack of the door, trying to make out any sign of someone being close by. But the silence roared in his ears, and the room seemed to get smaller and smaller. His stomach growled. Perhaps he could try reading one of the books again, to occupy his mind. But the cookbook would only make him hungrier, and thereby more agitated. With reluctance, he picked up the book on childbirth. After all, it would be useful to know about childbirth, he reasoned. He might have kids of his own someday, after all. Besides, birth was a natural bodily process. He'd encountered many a gruesome sight on the battlefield, this couldn't possibly be any worse.
A few dozen pages in, he set the book down, feeling oddly dizzy and nauseous. No more of that, then. He gazed around the room once more, hoping to find something even a little bit interesting. His eyes fell on the journal he had thrown down earlier. He scoffed. Counting dead bugs would be more entertaining. Obviously, it was just a personal journal, meaning that there couldn't be anything interesting or worth reading in it. Hell, it would probably be full of spelling and grammatical errors. It was probably badly written, too. If anything, it would only be something to make fun of while pointing out all the mistakes. Just to pass the time. He wasn't curious or anything, of course. His eyes darted to the door, as though expecting someone to burst through as if sensing his thoughts. But no one was there, he was completely alone.
As he read, he became more engrossed in the narrative than he thought he would. He had quickly discovered that this particular journal chronicled the events from the replica's disappearance from the manor onwards. Come to think of it, he had never really known how the replica had come to meet his traveling companions, especially the fon master. He hadn't known that his meeting with Tear had caused a hyperresonance, either. What wasn't surprising of course, was to see written proof of just how clueless and useless he was. The dumbass apparently didn't even know how money worked! Asch occasionally found himself snorting at some of what was written – he was laughing at the replica, of course. It was baffling that his friends were so attached to him, when here he was describing them as having a "wretched personality" in Tear's case, "a four-eyed guy" in reference to Jade, and a violent attitude towards cheagles. Seriously, why did anyone like him at all? He was bratty, entitled, and ignorant like a little kid. He'd almost stopped reading in annoyance, but the next entry had some interesting information on how the cheagles used the sorcerer's ring. He found himself smirking as he read further about how Tear and the replica had been captured by Malkuth soldiers under Jade's command, and rolled his eyes at the simply-worded, "I guess it would be pretty bad if a war did break out, so in the end, I decided to help." His eyes continued to scan the page as his opinion of the replica dropped lower by the second, which he thought impossible. He didn't know anything at all about how the world worked – not the Order of Lorelei, basic fonic concepts, or critical thinking, by the looks of it. Eventually it became almost incredulously comical. Finally, the idiot made a decision to at least try to take responsibility for himself, but not after Tear had apparently been injured protecting him because he was too much of a wimp to fight. True to his weak character, the dreck had also stopped Jade from killing Arietta, despite the fact that she'd attacked them multiple times. How had he even managed to live as long as he did? The words of the next entry were what truly caught his attention.
"…But then we were suddenly attacked by Asch, one of the Six God-Generals. I got taken by surprise, but then Master Van appeared-he'd been looking for me! I guess Asch must've been afraid of Van, because he ran away, but then Tear looked like she was going to kill him. When are things finally going to calm down?!.."
"'Afraid of Van,' my ass!" He yelled out in indignation.
He read on, scoffing at the blatant hero-worship of Van littered throughout the next few passages. Towards the end of one of them some of what was written puzzled him.
"…Choral Castle is a place east of here that belongs to Father. Apparently it's where I was found after Malkuth kidnapped me, not that I remember it or anything."
He shuddered at the memory, a bright neon green light, the whirring of that strange machine, being tied down. How in the world could he not remember it? In an attempt to shove away the unpleasant thoughts, he continued. He found an answer to his confusion shortly after.
"…I still don't really know what a Seventh Fonist is. I mean, they came up in my studies, but back then I had so much else to learn-my parents' faces, the language... I'd even forgotten how to walk. I guess I just didn't have time to think about the rest of the world..."
It felt like his thoughts were moving in slow motion. It reminded him of a term he'd once heard – 'tabula rasa.' As he thought back to his experience with other replicas, like the ones at the tower of Rem, he realized that it must be normal for replicas to be like that; like blank pieces of paper. Of course. He'd never really thought about it before; he never thought about replicas more than he had to. He knew how they were made, but it wasn't like he spent time studying them. Suddenly all the immaturity and ignorance made a little more sense. Not that it was any less annoying. As he got to the end of the passage, his shock grew and then morphed into disgust as he began to read between the lines. Van's use of isolating the replica, lying to him, manipulating him…It must have been easy to do that to someone who had the functionality of a young child. Truthfully, he would have only lived for seven years at that point. But Asch still thought that his replica had been too naïve, had never asked the right questions. Van had groomed him to be used, Asch acknowledged that. But he still firmly believed that if the replica had only been more pragmatic, a lot of disaster could have been avoided. After all, he wasn't so petulant when he was seven himself. He raised his eyes from the book, and saw that the candle didn't have much left to burn. After another unsuccessful attempt to get someone's attention, he caved and decided to lay on top of the bed, exhausted. It was likely sometime well into the night now, he may as well sleep to pass time. Blowing out the candle, he laid down.