.............
　.........................
　.............................. .......

　Before I knew it, the 'concubine' was standing in a world with only two colors.

　It is a world bordered by the horizon, divided by grass and sky blue.　
　Under the blue sky, a grassy field full of openness spreads out.

　Dude, where is "here" ......?
　As I recall, the mistress was fighting.
　Not in this place, but in a more stifling place, fighting the whirlpool wave.
　So why is she here?
　Why is the concubine in 'here' ......?

　I looked around to remind myself of this, and found a child (straw man) sitting alone in the grass.

　The child was smiling.
　When I saw it, all my thoughts were interrupted.
　Everything, including the fight, flew from my mind and I was drawn to the child's expression.

　Her body was thin, her hair was the color of young grass, and she was a girl with small wings on her back.
　I feel like I've seen her somewhere before.
　But I can't seem to remember the girl's name.

　--dare I say, who is ......?

　As he observed closely, he noticed that the child was staring at something and laughing.
　The child was looking into both palms of his hands.

　And in the palm of his hand was a small stone.

　The corners were round and translucent, with a greenish color. Not as clear as a gemstone, but if you shine it in the sun, it will show you a unique shine.
　To an adult it is just a stone, but it has an interesting shape that a small child would enjoy.

　In fact, children seem to think of them as treasures.
　He looked happier and more debauched than an adult staring at a gem.

'Hey, child, ....... Will you show it to your mistress ......?

　His mouth was moving of its own accord, driven by a strange impulse.
　However, the child who was called out to me shook his shoulders with a freak out, then stood up and started to get scared. He turned his head towards us and began to tremble with an uneasy look on his face.

　That's it.
　He was suddenly approached by a strange adult and asked to show me his prized treasure. There's no point in being frightened.

I'm sorry. I'm not trying to steal it, but I just wanted to have a look at it. I just wanted to show you a few things: ......

　excuses.
　But the frightened child didn't listen to it, but showed his back and started running.
　He begins to run through this wide open meadow.

'Oi!　You don't run that fast, you'll crash!

　Sure enough, the child falls down in the middle of nowhere.
　And he drops a stone in his hand.

　The treasure he cherishes so dearly--

　The child opened his mouth to say, "Oh," and then went after it.

'Well, wait!'

　A child chases after a rolling stone.
　But he is running and running and running and running after it - and yet, for some reason, he can't catch up with it for any length of time.

　The mistress, who has been watching from a distance, realizes the reason for this.
　This endless meadow was a slight but sloping slope.
　Therefore, the pebbles continued to move away from it in an unnatural trajectory, one after the other.

　Naturally, the child continued to chase it frantically.
　When the mistress saw this scene, she felt her blood boil.
　She senses an unusual deadliness in the child's back and lets out a scream-like voice from the back of her throat.

'Wait!　Don't go!　And after that--

　After that--in the abyss (・・・・).

“--?

　As you are about to say that, you realize what the child is.

　How do you know what is waiting for the child to go?
　Of course.
　Because that path has been taken by a concubine.

　In the past, when she was a child, she ran across these plains.
　There is a vague memory of it at .......
　It is indeed there.

　That's the 'straw'.
　That's the straw of my childhood.

　That's the straw that I ran through when I was a child.
　This meadow.
　Therefore, it is only natural that he knows what is waiting for him.

　When he realized this, his high perspective suddenly became low.
　I should have been following the back of the running child, but before I knew it, my concubine was following the beautiful stone that rolled down the road.
　The concubine had become a child and was running through the meadow.

　Oh, oh ......, I'm remembering .......
　This is the life of a strawman.
　Long ago, Warawa dropped it.
　That precious treasure .......
　So I chased after it.
　I chased it desperately .......

　And Warawa knows that it is useless to keep running and running and chasing and chasing.
　He knows that those beautiful stones were never going to come back, never again.

　Because the slope of this meadow is gradually getting tighter and tighter.
　As if to prove it, the more I chase after the stone, the steeper the slope gets and the further away the beautiful stone gets.

　Finally, the beautiful stones disappear from sight.
　By this time, the grassland had become a fine slope.
　The slope is so steep that if you gain too much momentum to run, it becomes difficult to stop.

　So, even if the strawberry loses sight of a beautiful stone, he keeps running.

　He can't stop, even though he knows that if he keeps running, the slope will get even harder. Gradually the running speed increases, while the slope of the hill gets even steeper.

　-- accelerating.

　At the end of the day, they fell down the slope, which was like a precipice, and then they fell, and then they fell -- and Warawa hit the abyss and fell down.

　With many scrapes all over her body and tears in her eyes, Warawa got up.

　She fell to the bottom of a hole surrounded by a wall of rocky surfaces.
　The ground was also rocky, and there was nothing else to see. No, if you look closely, you can see all sorts of stones falling down. But every one of them is just a stone.
　I pick them up and stare at them, and then pick them up and stare at them, thinking that there might be some treasures that I dropped. But each one was a little different from the beautiful stone that was the treasure.
　None of the stones have the sparkle I saw that day.

　Some of the stones lying around here are similar to the ones I saw that day. With a little bit of patience and searching, I'm sure I'll find one that looks exactly like the beautiful stone I saw in the past.
　But I will never find that "beautiful stone" again.

　There is no such thing as an exact duplicate in the world.
　That's how the world is made up.

'No!　No ......!　Why not ......!!!!

　-- but not wanting to admit it, Warawa searched desperately for it.

　He searched endlessly, but he could not find his treasure.

Why can't you find it: ......

　After decades and hundreds of years of searching, he finally stops.
　Then he turns his eyes upward from the bottom of the earth.　
　Looking up from the bottom of the hole to the gaping, round sky, Warawa finally understands.

　That beautiful stone was a treasure that could only be obtained in that meadow at that time. Once you become an adult, you will never find it no matter what.
　I realized and my face contorted as I realized.

'Ugh, ugh, ugh ......!

　But no matter how sad I am, I can never go back to that time again.
　I tumbled down too far.
　Before I knew it, the grassland had become a slope, and the slope had become a wall.
　There was no way I could ever climb it.

　I couldn't help but cry at the sight of such a heartless world.
　I am alone in the depths of the earth, crying.
　I keep crying and crying and crying and crying, but my voice doesn't reach anyone.

　As it is - a thousand years (...).
　It was enough time to go crazy.

　So.
　That's the end of Warawa's life.
　At the bottom of the abyss - the dark 'hell' where neither life nor death is allowed - is the world of Warawa.

　In that hell, a weak child with a big body is crying because he doesn't want to be alone.
　Painful and bitter, heartbroken and lonely, his heart is broken and he can't hold himself together, and finally he starts laughing in the hole .......
　That's the straw and ......, the concubine.

　She's the only one in 'here' and she'll never get out of it - she'll never get out of it.


No.


　--but there was an unknown voice at the bottom of the hole.
　But I can't even understand it anymore.
　I've been here too long to think about it.

　Still, the voice speaks to me persistently.

"-Lord, remember.
That's not possible ....... I don't know anything else .......

　I shake my head.
　I don't even know what to remember anymore.

'-- even if you can't, you have to do it. Just take it, just take it.
'Picking up ......?　What ......?
Pick it up and read it: ......
Read ......, then ......?

　I don't even know what to read.
　There's nothing to read here in the first place.
　There's nothing here, that's why she's like this.

"I'm devoting my life to the reconstruction of that book. Even if you don't like it, you'll read it.

　There is nothing here - and yet, in this nothingness, I found a book. It was tucked away in a corner at the bottom of the hole.

　The book had too much of a presence. Because it was an empty world, the mistress was drawn to the foreign object and picked it up.
　Then she traces her finger across its cover, opens the pages, and sees its table of contents.

　There were four words, "The King Who Rules".
　The title of the chapter was "The Awakening of the Governing King".

　The King who rules?　"The Lord who rules"?

　No, no, no, no.
　No, no, no.

　My concubine's name is--, her name is--!

Oh, no... And it's not the bottom of a cliff. You think it's a cliff, but it's just a flat road--!

　Concubine, straw, straw, straw!
　
　You're wrong!

　Walla's name is ......--










　--And so the pages open and the chapter, "The Awakening of the Lord King" begins.
　It's the heroic tale of The Lord, the history of the North.

　A King's Story.