음악 - 공의 경계 - 에필로그 Snow Is Falling

 

Good evening.

It's been a while, hasn't it, Kokuto?

So it's you, after all.

I had a feeling that I'd run into you.

Is Shiki sleeping now?

Yes, she is. It's just you and me now.

I see.

You're neither the female Shiki nor the male SHIKI...

So tell me, who are you?

I'm myself. Neither one nor the other Shiki.

I'm merely the one who exists inside the emptiness of my soul.

Or perhaps the empty soul itself is who I am?

I'm separate from the two personalities who were born inside this body.

The Shiki who affirms everything so as not to get hurt...

The Shiki who negates everything so as to get hurt...

Which was the male, and which was the female?

I don't know.

Not that it matters to me.

But I must say that Shiki was split too impeccably.

A heart that can only either affirm or negate may be perfect,

but it tends to be alienated.

That's who the two Shikis are.

Maybe this personality called "Shiki"

was like an apogee at the far end of a single foundation.

And there is nothing in between. 

That's why I occupy the space between them.

I see.

You are the one in the middle.

What should I call you, then?

I mean, is it all right to call you Shiki, too?

Oh, no, Shiki Ryogi is my name.

But I'd like it if you called me Shiki.

That alone would make having waited all this time worthwhile.

Tell me, when you and I met just like this four years ago...

Shiki doesn't remember that at all?

No, because we are different people.

SHIKI and Shiki are always side by side,

so they remember each other well.

I, on the other hand, am the "me" that neither of them can perceive.

So most likely, Shiki will have no recollection of this day, either.

I see.

Kokuto...

"I am all yours."

It's a pity, really, but that should be as far as this conversation should go.

After all, that's the reason why I appeared tonight.

What is it that you desire?

Tell me what you wish for, Kokuto.

I can grant just about anything that you could wish for, you know.

Since I can see that Shiki is fond of you...

I'm giving you the right to ask me.

So tell me, what is that you wish for?

Let's see...

No, thank you.

I see.

Yes, I could see that coming.

You're not Shiki, are you?

No.

Tell me, Kokuto...

Where would you find one's personality?

Let's see...

Well, the personality is actually one's intelligence,

so I guess it's housed in the mind.

In the mind...

Right, in the mind.

It's a conventional answer,

but since what we call intelligence comes from the activity in your brain...

No...

The soul dwells inside the brain.

If it were possible for the brain to survive on its own,

then humans wouldn't need physical bodies.

All you'd have to do is feed it electricity from an external source,

and the brain could go on dreaming for the rest of its life.

There was a mage who managed to create such a world.

He said the same thing as you.

That the personality was housed inside one's mind.

But that was just pure intelligence... 

not the human mind.

For example, Kokuto...

You, the person.

You, the personality.

You, the soul. 

What shapes you in all of those forms...

... is an intelligence that has weathered many journeys,

and a body that serves as your vessel.

It takes more than a brain that generates intelligence...

... to create a personality in human form.

That's right...

You can only come to know yourself by acquiring a physical body.

If all we needed to survive was our brains,

we wouldn't need anything else.

That's what the dead would say.

After all, the personality itself is just a bundle of contradictions, isn't it?

Something so superfluous

couldn't be created unless there was also a superfluous body.

First there's the body,

and then the perosonality is formed along with it.

People with an affinity for their own body

will likely have an outgoing personality,

while those who don't will likely have an introspective shadow hanging over them.

Humans can live with just their intelligence,

but a personality raised on intelligence alone 

will never learn to reflect on its self-identity...

... developing into something entirely different thatn the human mind.

And in that case, it's not a personality anymore,

but rather like a calculator, wouldn't you say?

It's not a matter of intelligence first, physical body later.

Rather, the physical body comes first, and then intelligence is born.

The physical body merely exists.

But even something that merely exists has its purpose.

After all, I was raised as a human along with the rest of you,

and created my own intelligence.

Yes...

I've heard of that.

The human is a life-form created from three things.

The psyche, the soul, and the physical body.

If the psyche comes from the brain, 

and the sould comes from the physical body,

Then you must be Shiki's true nature.

That's right. I'm not a personality that my brain dreamed up...

Rather, I'm a personality derived from my body itself.

At the end of the day, SHIKI and Shiki

were a pseronality swap that occurred inside the root character

called "Shiki Ryogi".

And it was "Shiki Ryogi" who presided over all of that.

Even though they were separate personalities,

they still shared the same thought processes,

because in the end, they were "the good and evil inside Shiki Ryogi."

I was the origin of all that,

and I was also the resolution.

Otherwise, those two with their conflicting tendencies...

... could never have co-existed.

I'm not sure that I follow.

So in the other words, you're the archetype for the two Shikis.

That's right. I'm Shiki Ryogi's true nature.

And I'm the true nature that never shows her face.

Being no more than a physical body,

I don't have the ability to think,

so by rights, I should have rotted away.

But the Ryogi family infused me, 

an empty vessel, with intelligence.

In order to turn Shiki Ryogi into an omnipotent human being,

they tried to insert various personalities into me.

That's how they produced me, the archetype.

And afterwards, since I needed to have a stronghold against everything...

... I created Shiki and SHIKI myself.

Yes, I remember Toko mentioning something once.

Shiki and SHIKI, Yin and Yang, Good and Evil.

She said that they didn't erparate because they were in conflict.

The reason they separated was

so that they could take on the maximum amount of attributes.

Ridiculous, isn't it?

I should have just perished as a premature baby,

yet I had the misfortune of acquiring my "self".

A newborn animal has the body of a baby,

and a proportionate, budding intelligence.

But those like me who were born with nothing...

Our only fate is to die sonn after, you see.

If I were to paraphrase that mage I mentioned,

I would say that my origin is "nothingness."

In other words, I was empty from the beginning.

Didn't Toko ever tell you this?

She said that human unconsciousness will never tolerate

a stain that threatens to obliterate their society.

This body of mine is one of those stains.

Normally, I never would have been born, 

and never would have awoken.

Life-forms such as I, who were generated directly from emptiness,

are doomed to perish inside our mothers' placentas.

Because it would be pointless for us to be born.

Since emptiness is nothingness,

then our intelligence is nothingness as well.

I was destined to live my life without ever perceiving the outside world.

But apparrently, the Ryogi family possessed the skill to take advantage of that.

And they awakened me.

Rather than instill me with a ready-made personality,

they actually awakened emptiness - my origin.

And when they exposed the outside world to me against my will,

I found it to be too much of a hassle,

and I decided to make Shiki handle everything after that.

Can you blame me?

Everything that happens in the outside world is so predictable to me.

It was just too boring.

But you have your own will.

Yes, I do. Every human houses a personality in their physical body,

but none of them ever perceives their own "self."

That's because before they can do that, the brain creates intelligence

to serve as a more reliable "self".

Intelligence born from activity in the brain develops into a personality,

which controls the physical body.

At that point, the personality housed in the physical body loses all purpose.

Although the brain is just a part of the body, 

the intelligence treats it as a special entity

because it was created from it, you see?

Even though they're the same thing.

The personality derived from intelligence knows nothing of the body 

which created it, believing that it comes from intelligence instead.

The only difference in my case was that the order was reversed.

Still, the fact that I'm standing here talking to you...

I can only talk because I have Shiki as a personality.

Without Shiki, I wouldn't even be able to understand words.

Because I'm no more than a physical body.

 

I see.

Without your Shiki personality,

you wouldn't be aware of the outside world.

That's right.

I'm a machine that sits unplugged,

and without my Shiki software,

I'd be nothing but a box.

A container that can only gaze inwardly, 

on a path toward death.

The mages said I was connected to the Origin,

but that meant absolutely nothing to me.

But just now, I felt that there might be a tiny bit of meaining.

Because it would be nothing for me to heal this wound of yours.

Because I could help someone in need,

and be involved in the outside world.

And yet, there's nothing that you desire.

Right, because Shiki's specialty is destroying things.

I'm scared to push my luck and end up even worse off than I am now.

You're right.

Becuase Shiki is only capable of destruction.

I guess I'm Shiki in your eyes, after all.

My origin is emptiness,

so Shiki, who possesses the body of emptiness, can see death.

For two years...

Shiki lay comatose, unable to see the outside world,

and was forced to gaze endlessly at the void that was Shiki Ryogi.

She learned what death felt like.

You see, all that time, 

Shiki was floating in a place called the Spiral of Origin.

All by herself... 

having taken on Shiki's form...

The Spiral of Origin...

Is that a place where there's nothing?

Like the sea at night, in total darkness?

That's a good metaphor, Kokuto.

Yes.

The sea at night... that brings back memories.

If it were the sea just before daybreak,

I'd find it a bit hearwarming.

Even if it were a sea devoid of all shapes, of all people.

So that's the nature of your soul, isn't it?

Nothingness was your shape.

That's why Shiki was able to kill everything without exception.

No matter how much the personality called Shiki denied it,

that was the archetype of the soul called Shiki Ryogi.

Because it was a void, 

its tendency was to hope for the death of all things...

That's right, that was Shiki's nature.

Just like Fujino Asagami,

she was a special channel able to see things differently than other people.

Special eyes able to glimse the Spiral of Origin

- a microcosm of the world.

But I myself can delve even further.

No...

Actually, I myself might be the Spiral.

A place where all causes swirl,

where everything is provided, 

and thus, where there's nothing.

That's my true identity.

We're merely connected, but I'm a part of it.

Doesn't that make us one and the same existence?

That's why I am capable of anything.

Yes,

I can restructure the laws of substances so minute they're imperceptible,

or I can even unravel the origin of this planet and change evolution.

I wouldn't be remaking the existing world.

Rather, I'd be crushing the old world in my hand with a new world.

But there'd be no point in doing that.

I'd only exhuast myself.

It would just be the same as dreaming something like that.

That's why I dream of seeing nothing,

thinking of nothing,

and not even dreaming of anything.

And yet, it seems that Shiki and I were dreaming of different things.

Shiki doesn't want to be alone.

Don't you think that's a boring dream?

Yes, how boring can Shiki be?

How boring can reality be?

How boring... can I be?

But I can't help it, you know.

Since I'm nothing but a physical body.

Even if it's pointless, I have to go along with her dream.

Shiki will look outside, while I'll continue staring at the inside,

just as we've always done.

Shiki Ryogi's body is connected to the Origin.

As I can only see the inside,

I already know of everything that's occurred.

And that was so painful, so boring, so pointless to me, 

that I just closed my eyes.

And since that's all I have to look forward to, 

nothing's changed at all from before.

I should just go on sleeping forever.

Never dreaming, thinking of nothing, forever.

When the day comes that this body disintegrates into nothingness,

I hope that I don't realize that the dream has ended.

Silly me...

Don't give what I just said another thought.

But you make me happy, so I think I'll give you another reward.

You see, it's not as if Shiki is yearning for death.

She's just misunderstanding the situation.

Because, after all, her murderous impulses come from me,

and that means it's not her preference to kill, right?

So you can rest assured, kokuto.

If a homicidal maniac exists, it's obviously me.

The one who longed to kill you...

it was none other than me.

Don't tell Shiki, okay?

I'll be on my way now.

Oh, Kokuto.

You really never wished for anything.

Even when you had that brush with death

during the confrontation with Lio Shirazumi,

you chose neutrality.

I could never understand that.

Don't you want a more enjoyable tomorrow than what you had today?

Well, I'm enjoying myself right now.

That's enough for me, you see.

I see.

To live, having no characteristics,

never wishing for yourself to become special.

You never hurt anyone else, 

so you never get hurt yourself.

You never steal from others,

so you never gain anything.

Never making any waves, 

you just blend into time and live an average life,

then quietly draw your last breath.

That's the kind of ordinary, 

neutral life that you all lead...

However...

That's just the end result, nothing more.

Most people don't lead that kind of life because they want it.

The result of trying to become special, only to fail...

That's the shape of a human who leads an ordinary life.

And that's why the most difficult task is

to try to live such a life from the start.

In my eyes, that's a special shape for a mind

- more so than anyone else's.

So special, I can't even touch it...

You're right.

At the end of the day,

there might not be a human being who isn't special.

We each have completely different purposes in life.

We huddle together as living beings...

We live to turn the gaps between us

when we don't see eye-to-eye into boundaries of emptiness.

Even though we know such a day will never come,

we go on living with that dream intact.

It must be the same for every one of us,

the one thing that seems natural to us.

Uniqueness that no one will ever understand,

universality that no one ever tries to understand.

Because he's so ordinary in everyone's eyes,

no one will ever try to really understand him.

Someone who will never be hated by others,

but will also never attract anyone.

He appears to be the crystallization of blissful days.

If that's true, then she's not the one who's actually all alone...

You're going to live, as a matter of course,

and then die, as a matter of course.

Oh,

How lonely...

Goodbye, Kokuto...

Silly me...

I know I'll see you again tomorrow.