"Maybe the hardest part isn't letting go, but realizing that you were never really holding on."
—Unknown
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「 ✦ Hajime Nagumo ✦ 」
Geniuses have no connection to the struggles of the ordinary—I knew that for most of my life. Hell, I've lived that. Felt that. Even then, seeing what was happening in front of me was enough to give me a sense of just... wanting to give up—if that made sense.
Which was strange as hell.
He was our objective. Our goal to match and surpass. We weren't even remotely close to halfway there, and the bastard over here evolved into an even stronger existence—basically trampling over all our efforts and determination like they were nothing more than dust under his feet.
The irony wasn't lost on me. Here I was, someone who'd clawed his way up from the bottom of the abyss, who'd eaten monsters and discarded his humanity piece by piece to gain power, and I was still looking up at someone who made it all seem effortless. Like a kid watching adults play a game I'd never understand.
But I guess this was a wake-up call to, once and for all, set my sights on a single direction that is to find the way home. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else should have ever mattered.
"I won't do anything pointless—" Is what I resolved myself to the moment I steeled myself for the journey home.
But looking back, everything we—no, I—had done in concern to this guy had been nothing short of pointless. I should've ignored him, stayed away from him or made a run for it every time I came across him. Should've stuck to my guns and focused on what actually mattered instead of getting caught up in some stupid rivalry that only existed in my head.
But a power I so desperately envied stood before me that time in the abyss. A power so great it seemed like everything I needed to find a way home. And like an idiot, I thought I could just... take it. Use it. Make it mine.
He had been one of the three factors of the original change that happened to me—the other being Yue and the Orcus Labyrinth itself. At least, I thought so until now. I told myself that witnessing his strength had been necessary, that it had driven me to grow, to innovate, to break through my limits. But maybe that was just another lie I told myself to justify my own stupidity.
The fucking futility of it all.
I wanted to discredit it. To surpass and crush it. The overwhelming power that humiliated me when it was what I desired most. I acted for self-affirmation, not for any practical purpose. And I deviated from my true self, strayed away, and wasted time and effort that would've been useful in literally anything concerning what should've been my absolute, single priority.
I even dragged the people I cared about into this mess with me—to this pointless endeavor. I dragged Yue and Shea into my own personal hell because I couldn't swallow my pride. Selfish and fucked up didn't even begin to cover it.
The worst part was that they'd never called me out on it. Never told me I was being an idiot. They'd just followed. Trusted me to know what I was doing even when I clearly didn't. I had always been destined to lose the moment I stupidly resolved to chase after him.
"I thought I had set aside such petty pride," I muttered to myself. Yue beside me gripped my hand tighter, bringing a familiar sense of easiness to my otherwise tumultuous mind.
She didn't say anything, but she didn't need to. The slight squeeze of her fingers was enough. It said what we both knew—that she'd follow me anywhere, even into my own stupidity. That thought made the shame burn even hotter.
To be proud neither of myself nor what I can do—and to focus only on the way home.
I chose that path the moment I ate a monster for the first time, didn't I? The moment I decided that survival trumped everything else, including my own humanity. So why had I forgotten it? Why had I let myself get distracted by something as meaningless as competition?
That's why, seeing the cocoon of blinding golden light floating amidst a blackened wasteland—branching in gentle tendrils to its surroundings like semi-solar flares—I felt like I had woken up from a nightmare I didn't even know I was having.
The light was beautiful and terrible all at once. It pulsed with a resonance that felt almost alive, almost conscious. Waves of energy rippled outward from its center, and I could feel my senses tingling in response to the sheer magical density in the air.
And yet, even now—even with all this washing over me—there was still that dark, intrusive thought clawing at the back of my mind. The impulsive desire to charge up my guns, to aim it at that vulnerable cocoon, and just... end it. Right here, right now, while he couldn't fight back.
It would be so easy. One shot, and I could finally quench this desire that had been eating at me for months. The thought made me sick. Because that's exactly what it was—petty and pathetic. The same thinking that had led me down this path in the first place.
I had no intention of being that pathetic again.
"So this is why he wanted an escort," Kaori muttered not far from me. There was something like awe in her tone, mixed with what might have been relief.
She was right, though. This whole deal on having us come along—it hadn't been about showing off or proving a point. It was practical and logical and reasonable—everything I should have been but wasn't.
"It's beautiful..." Taniguchi whispered to herself, but everyone heard it anyway. She put her palm against the floor-to-ceiling glass and admired the view, her breath fogging the surface. She wasn't wrong, and everyone was united by the same thought—even me.
It was beautiful. Terrifyingly, impossibly beautiful—and completely out of reach. Like watching a star being born, knowing you'd never be able to touch it.
Yaegashi looked the most emotional. She was crying silently, tears falling nonstop from her eyes and dripping down onto the floor. She didn't bother wiping them away. Her gaze was locked on the light. She had a complicated look—in a good way.
I found myself wondering what she was thinking. What any of them were thinking, really. Did they feel the same sense of insignificance I did? The same crushing realization that no matter how hard they tried, some people were just beyond them? Or maybe that was just me.
Just outside my Fenrir aircraft was Rimuru evolving after all. He looked nothing like he usually did. Instead, he was nothing more than an amorphous bundle of brilliant golden and black motes, bouncing against one another and looking like a god being born.
The motes moved in patterns that hurt to follow, swirling and combining and separating again. Sometimes they'd cluster together, forming shapes that looked familiar before dissolving again. It was hypnotic. Mesmerizing in a way that made it hard to look away.
"Hajime-san," Shea said softly from behind me. "Are you alright?"
I almost laughed. Was I alright? I was watching someone transcend the very concept of limits while coming to terms with my own petty obsessions. So, yeah, I was fine. Just peachy, if nothing else.
"Yeah," I said instead, because the truth was too complicated and this wasn't the time for self-pity. "Just thinking."
She didn't push, which I was grateful for.
No other words were uttered for a long while. The remaining hero party, my own group, as well as the royal family with their assorted lapdogs—they all could not take their eyes off the immaculate wonder happening before them.
And frankly, I couldn't blame them.
Hell, I couldn't blame myself either.
What was happening out there, it was the kind of thing you only got to see once in a lifetime. Maybe once in a dozen lifetimes.
"How long do you think it'll take?" Yue asked quietly.
I shook my head. "No idea. Could be minutes, could be hours." I paused, watching the motes swirl in increasingly complex patterns. "Could be days."
The thought of waiting here for days while Rimuru completed whatever cosmic process he was going through should have been annoying. Should have made me impatient to get moving, to get back to the important business of finding our way home.
Instead, I found myself oddly at peace with the idea. Maybe it was the spectacle itself, or maybe it was the clarity that was slowly settling over my thoughts, but for some reason, I wasn't in a hurry to be anywhere else.
I had time to think. Time to really examine what I'd been doing and why. Time to figure out how to be better—for Yue and for Shea who'd decided to follow me despite my inconspicuous recklessness. Time to remember what actually mattered.
Maybe this detour wasn't so pointless after all.
Because I finally understood what I'd been missing.
I didn't need to be him.
I didn't need to surpass him or prove myself against him.
There was no need for any of that all along.
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"He was everything I wasn't. But I turned that into an excuse for everything I failed to be. And that's where I lost."
—Hajime Nagumo
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