WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 146: Javert’s Iron and Justice (13)
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[S#.37 Main Building, Second-Floor Corridor (Night)]
Grandia Academy’s partially destroyed main building.
Rubble from the collapsed structure lay scattered everywhere.
At the center of the murky scene, Javert sat slumped on the ground.
Javert: What on earth have I done...?
Masses of flesh clad in school uniforms lay around her.
It looked like the aftermath of a one-sided massacre.
Javert was drenched in blood from head to toe.
Her vacant eyes roamed over the scene around her.
Javert: Ah.
The light faded from Javert’s eyes.
They trembled as if foretelling despair.
A gloomy background track slowly faded in.
Javert: I... did all of this...
Javert’s hand trembled.
The angle changed.
The view gradually pulled away from above her.
The surrounding scene filled the overhead shot.
Javert: ...
The corridor was a mess.
Roughly thirty bodies lay around Javert.
Every one of them wore a school uniform.
Javert: I...
Javert muttered.
The background music intensified.
The screen gradually darkened.
Javert: This isn’t what I wanted...
Javert’s expressionless face slowly crumbled.
The screen focused on her lower face.
A single tear ran down her cheek.
The screen went dark for a moment, and a short message appeared.
[Principles.]
The screen flickered.
Harsh noise joined the background music.
The sound became increasingly chaotic and grotesque.
It reflected Javert’s state of mind.
[I thought principles were everything.]
A glitch effect appeared on the screen.
The screen went dark again.
[Now.]
[I don’t know anything anymore.]
The screen turned back on.
Javert held a dagger in her hand.
Its sharp point was aimed at her own throat.
Javert: ...I’m sorry.
Words offered to someone unknown.
The hand gripping the dagger filled the screen.
Javert’s face was reflected in the clean blade.
A few teardrops appeared on its surface. Then the screen went completely black.
-Stab!
The sound of something being pierced rang out.
The background music stopped, and the glitch effect vanished as well.
Silence lasted for five seconds.
[I’m sorry.]
The message appeared in small letters.
Then the darkened screen returned to normal.
Javert lay collapsed beside the students.
The sound of a dry wind echoed.
The silence deepened as the camera slowly moved away from them.
[EP47. Blue Night Side A]
-Javert’s Iron and Justice-
[End]
The ending credits rolled.
The video ended.
* * *
Who was Javert?
Most players would likely give the same answer to that question.
‘Javert Droit.’
Valter Droit’s adopted daughter and the de facto second-in-command of Grandia Academy.
At the same time, a monster who had built an immense record as an Inquisition investigator.
A woman never left out whenever people spoke of the strong.
‘And...’
A character who committed suicide in every route.
A supporting character with no ending where she survived and found happiness.
‘Someone who can’t be saved.’
Javert was an unsalvageable character.
The original work had been praised for its vast story and dozens of branching endings.
Yet among all those routes and endings, there wasn’t a single one where Javert survived.
An unavoidable bad ending.
The cause of death was always the same: suicide.
No matter what path the player took, Javert died midway through the original story.
Maybe the developers had thought death was the only way to bring her narrative to an end...
‘Because that’s the kind of person Javert is.’
Strong, but fragile.
Javert was someone so precarious that she looked as though she might shatter at any moment.
‘She held such ruthless convictions, yet her heart was gentle and warm...’
In a way, she resembled Alice.
The difference was that Javert hid herself.
She killed her own emotions, then hid behind a shell of armor.
-Perhaps there’s someone under that robe who shouldn’t be there?
-Do you wish I wasn’t your student?
What I had done was break that shell.
I kept striking at the woman until her armor cracked.
I went after her most vulnerable point.
‘Selflessness.’
A heart that cares for others.
A heart that wishes to treasure what is precious.
‘You may think you lost that when you were young, but...’
I knew.
You had only hidden away. You had never disappeared.
Beyond that solid armor, fourteen-year-old Javert still remained.
“Investigator.”
“...”
I looked down at the woman before me.
Beyond the darkness, I could faintly see her disheveled red hair.
“...Student Viktor?”
Her green eyes looked up at me.
Her complexion had grown haggard over the past few days.
Blank questions flickered in her gaze.
How had I entered this heavily guarded underground prison?
Why had I appeared before her, and why had I taken the dagger from her just now?
“...”
“...”
A brief silence lingered between us.
My hand tightly gripped Javert’s dagger.
The form forged from light held intense heat.
My palm was being cooked in real time.
Sizzle.
A searing pain spread through it.
I didn’t care.
Burns had been lifelong friends of mine, after all.
Without changing my expression, I casually said a few words.
“This is rather hot.”
“...Please let go.”
Javert muttered.
Of course, I had no intention of letting it go.
As if defying her, I tightened my grip.
Squeeze.
“I won’t.”
“No, your hand...”
“Please put it away yourself, Investigator.”
“...”
I pulled the dagger closer to myself.
It looked as though I was ready to burn my face along with my hand.
Was she overwhelmed by that determination?
Javert dismissed the dagger.
The fiercely sharpened light returned to particles and scattered.
The flashing radiance faded, and darkness filled the solitary cell again.
“Ahem, thank you.”
“...”
My hand throbbed.
Still, I smiled as though it was nothing.
Javert asked, “...Why did you come here?”
“I came to see you, Professor.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you might do this.”
“...”
A woman who had lost the will to live.
Her pupils were dark and lifeless.
“Why are you stopping me?”
“Investigator.”
“Didn’t I let you go? Didn’t I let you run free? Do as you please, Student Viktor.”
“Investigator.”
“I’m telling you not to interfere in my business.”
“I can’t, if that business is suicide.”
Grab.
The woman’s hand roughly seized my collar.
I didn’t resist. I let her shake me.
“Why?”
“Goodness.”
“Didn’t you make me this way, Student Viktor?”
“That’s wrong. It was all your choice.”
“If you hadn’t meddled with Purgatory, none of this would have...”
“But you were the one who chose to let me go, Professor.”
“I’m making a choice this time too. Let me do as I please.”
“I can’t.”
“Then why...”
“Because you matter to me.”
“...”
I placed my hand over the one gripping my collar.
I warmed her cold skin with my own.
“...I...”
Javert lowered her head.
Her expressionless mask had broken, and fragments of emotion seeped through the cracks.
“Not anymore... I don’t know why I should stay alive...”
Watery lines ran down her pale cheeks.
Clear tears fell, crumpling the woman’s coldness into something pitiful.
“I want to stop now.”
Her voice was full of resignation.
Javert cried without sobbing.
She looked like a broken doll.
Nothing remained of the usually cold chief investigator.
She could only wither like an annual flower in December.
“I want to end it.”
“...”
The petals gave a painful answer.
Quietly, I listened to her.
‘Yes...’
This was the kind of person you were.
Though you wore a shell, at your core, you were kinder than anyone.
You were so kind that you were hurt all the more deeply, and hid yourself to keep from being hurt again.
“Investigator.”
A girl hiding in a wardrobe.
That was you.
“You don’t have to live by principles alone.”
“I can’t. I, of all people, can’t do that.”
“You’re only afraid, Professor.”
“If I don’t uphold my principles, everything will become a mess.”
“That won’t always be true. Principles can’t always be the right answer.”
There was something I wanted to tell you, who had met tragic endings across hundreds and thousands of stories.
To the hand that had held the dagger, and the throat it had pierced.
“No matter how important principles are, you can’t become human if you live by them alone.”
No human lives by orthodoxy alone.
Orthodoxy.
It is merely a line drawn so humans do not degenerate into beasts.
Not becoming a beast did not mean one had become human.
You couldn’t become human by following orthodoxy alone.
Sometimes, you had to cultivate heterodoxy too.
And the value of such reversible things might be rather precious.
‘You still don’t know.’
Steel coated the woman’s heart like a shell.
That was why I couldn’t see the color of her heart.
Javert seemed to believe her own heart was silver.
But I believed her heart was red, just like everyone else’s.
“I’ll show you.”
I quietly held out my hand.
Its skin had been peeled away while stopping the woman.
“Just once.”
“...”
“Please hold my hand, just once.”
“...”
My palm was a complete mess.
Javert blankly looked down at it.
As though she couldn’t understand, she murmured through her tears.
“What could this possibly mean...?”
The woman asked for meaning.
So I gave her an honest answer.
“There isn’t any.”
“...”
“So I’m going to make one now.”
“Make meaning? What does that...”
Grab.
Javert only hesitated in silence.
I didn’t wait for her.
I reached out first.
Then I laced my fingers with hers.
“Hold on tight.”
“Ah, wait...”
Wait.
I had no intention of waiting for words like that.
I came here today to completely shatter Javert’s trauma.
“Then, down we go.”
Whoosh.
My foot had been tapping against the floor the whole time.
Suddenly, the heel of my shoe sank through the ground.
Our bodies were swallowed up in an instant.
I pulled Javert close and held her in my arms.
Caught in a Wall Clipping bug, the two of us fell downward.
“...?!”
Javert was startled.
As if everything was fine, I wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
The wind battered us.
A route leading straight to Purgatory.
I grinned and looked up at the blue screen.
[Sub Quest]
-Title: On the Things We Regret.
-Details: Clear Floors 81-90 of Purgatory.
-Penalty upon Failure: None
-Reward upon Success: ???
[Time Limit: Before the Final Destruction Arrives]
Memory.
Recollection.
Imagination.
[Floors 81 through 90 are treated as a single stage.]
[Therefore, clearing Floor 81 and clearing through Floor 90 occur simultaneously.]
We fell through the gap between them.
The next moment, my consciousness went dark and a message appeared.
Ding!
[You enter the prepared space, Purgatory, Floor 81.]
[The phenomenon ‘Regret (SS-)’ occurs.]
[Your trauma is recreated on this floor.]
Footnotes:
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