Helping others was a virtue, but neglecting oneself entirely for the sake of helping others was another matter.
And the Shirou they knew was exactly that kind of person.
Most of the time, it only became obvious during major incidents.
But now, viewing things from this perspective, the people from Penguin Logistics and Rhodes Island who had known Shirou for a long time had gained an entirely new understanding of him.
The Shirou who always appeared gentle and approachable had, in the past, worn a perpetually stern expression that seemed to keep strangers at a distance.
It felt refreshing.
In fact, most of the people present felt a certain envy toward such a life.
Ordinary school.
Ordinary days.
Living each day in peace.
"So this is what life without Oripathy is like..."
Blaze pursed her lips as she spoke.
Because for her, and for all of them, such a life felt impossibly distant.
There was no need to fight to protect oneself.
No need to worry about whether tomorrow would even come.
"..."
Hearing Blaze's words, Illya merely glanced at her without replying.
Amiya, Alina, and the others also remained silent, but their eyes made their feelings clear.
The two who seemed least affected were Exusiai and Croissant, the pair who could always find amusement in anything.
"What a peaceful life!"
Watching Shirou sitting alone in his shed repairing things, Exusiai remarked.
Croissant nodded in agreement.
The next moment, Texas grabbed both of their heads with one hand.
The two of them could clearly hear creaking sounds.
It was the sound of Texas exerting force.
Unfortunately, there was no pain in this place, so even though Texas had used all her strength, the pair felt nothing except that something was pressing on their heads.
The others paid little attention to Penguin Logistics.
Instead, they turned their eyes toward their guide, Illya.
The smile on her face made them somewhat uneasy.
"What you are seeing is only the surface of this world. It may appear bright and beautiful, but what lies beneath is terribly ugly."
Fortunately, Illya had no intention of teasing them and immediately moved on.
With another snap of her fingers, the scene changed once more.
Inside the school at night, Shirou finished cleaning up and heard noises coming from outside.
With a puzzled expression, he walked out.
"Those are sounds of battle?"
Frostnova blinked in confusion.
The metallic clashes left several people stunned.
They had become so immersed in the peaceful atmosphere that the sounds of combat almost caught them off guard.
Their perspective followed Shirou as he moved.
Since they floated in the air, they never had to worry about losing sight of him.
"Let me see... There is a blue guy with a red spear fighting a red guy with a sword. Wait, that sword looks strangely familiar."
Blaze cupped her hands like binoculars and peered into the distance.
Though far away, it was still within her vision.
Her eyesight was quite good.
Of course, that was assuming she was not being compared to Shirou, who could see clearly from four kilometers away.
"That is Archer... and the other one should be Lancer, I think. I remember Archer complaining about him before."
Alina could not see as clearly, but with Blaze providing commentary, she could still understand what was happening.
The blue spearman.
Whenever Archer saw members of Reunion using spears, he would quietly make comments under his breath.
"Archer and Lancer... Is this when Shirou was drawn into the Holy Grail War?"
Hearing those class names, Sora realized that they had reached the crucial moment when Shirou became involved in the Holy Grail War.
When Shirou talked about it before, he always summarized it in a few simple sentences.
It sounded almost like the story of a novel's protagonist.
Someone who got dragged into events by chance and fought his way to ultimate victory.
But now, things clearly were not as optimistic as Shirou had made them sound.
Because the person in question had terror written all over his face.
"That is right. At this point, Shirou was nothing more than an ordinary person, yet he was dragged into a magical ritual called the Holy Grail War. What do you think would happen?"
As Illya explained, the situation unfolded before them.
Shirou took two steps backward.
Unfortunately, he made enough noise to attract the attention of the two combatants, who had been fully engrossed in their battle.
The moment someone shouted in his direction, Shirou decisively turned and ran.
Fear filled his face as he sprinted down the corridor, occasionally glancing back over his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Illya, Amiya, and the others floated behind him, watching as Shirou repeatedly looked behind him while fleeing.
"...I suddenly understand why Shirou described himself as the weakest participant in the Holy Grail War. At this stage, he really was just an ordinary person."
Watching Shirou desperately running through the hallway, Croissant finally understood what Shirou had meant when he called himself the weakest.
She had originally thought he was joking to ease the tension.
Turns out, he had been completely serious.
After all, at this point, he was nothing more than an ordinary high school student who liked helping others. Aside from some half-baked magecraft, he did not possess much combat ability.
He was far too different from the Shirou they knew, the one who struck whatever he aimed at and was called Penguin Logistics' ultimate weapon by the Boss.
"So what exactly happened between this point in time and when we met Shirou?"
Exusiai shared Croissant's opinion, but what interested her more was how Shirou had transformed from an ordinary high school student into the human-shaped firepower suppression machine they knew in such a short period of time.
Hearing Exusiai's question, everyone became equally curious. Unfortunately, the only person present who could answer them was Illya. However, she merely raised a finger to her lips and said:
"Just keep watching and you will find out! The Holy Grail War is not that long."
It was not that Illya was deliberately being mysterious. Many things could not be properly explained with words alone. Only by witnessing them firsthand could one truly understand.
"..."
The others were clearly left somewhat speechless by Illya's evasive response.
Still, she had said that the Holy Grail War would not last very long, which meant they would soon get their answer.
Turning their attention back to the fleeing Shirou, although he was already running as fast as he could, the blue lancer chasing him was clearly moving at a speed far beyond that of an ordinary human.
Before long, Shirou was caught and pierced through the left side of his chest by the crimson spear. The wound was so deep that people like Amiya and Blaze, who frequently dealt with the medical department, immediately judged that his heart had already been pierced.
"This is the world of magic."
Looking at Shirou collapsed on the ground, unconscious as blood spread across the floor, Illya spoke.
Not long afterward, Archer arrived. However, he showed no intention of helping. He simply stood there, watching the fallen Shirou.
Only after another girl dressed in red arrived did Archer receive her instructions and leave.
"Although every now and then, some exceptions do appear. Compared to others , Rin can be considered an exceptionally kind person."
Illya continued explaining the situation while introducing Rin, who was currently treating Shirou.
However, compared to Rin, everyone was far more concerned with the Archer who had just departed.
For the members of Penguin Logistics and Rhodes Island, the fact that he had simply stood there watching Shirou collapse was genuinely infuriating. Yet Illya had already said that this was simply how the world of magic operated.
Still, there was something strangely familiar about him.
And there were those identical black-and-white twin swords he had used in battle...
"Um... what exactly is the relationship between Archer, Nameless, and Shirou?"
Amiya seemed to have realized something and asked Illya.
There were simply too many similarities among the three of them. Their lightning-bolt-shaped eyebrows and even their fighting styles were remarkably alike.
Moreover, from the way Archer had looked at Shirou earlier, Amiya had sensed an overwhelming amount of complicated emotion.
Although she could not use her Originium Arts, she could still judge things with her own eyes.
All of those coincidences pointed toward a single possibility.
"Little bunny sister, you are really smart. The answer is exactly what you think it is."
Seeing that Amiya had already arrived at the correct conclusion, Illya said.
Aside from Amiya, only Alina had vaguely suspected something similar, having glimpsed Shirou's figure several times in dreams of a similar nature.
"The Throne of Heroes does not have a concept of time, so summoning someone from the future is entirely possible."
Noticing that most of the people present still did not understand, Illya added further explanation.
"You mean... the three of them are all the same person?"
With that hint, Blaze immediately understood what Amiya's question had been getting at.
But that answer was completely absurd.
Nameless and Shirou were actually the same person!?
There had to be some mistake.
After all, Shirou was an exceptionally gentle person, while Nameless possessed nothing but nuclear-level kindness.
"Not quite."
Hearing Blaze's words, Illya shook her head and drew a white line in the air with her hand.
"Let us use this line to represent the existence known as Emiya Shirou."
The white line formed from magical energy floated in midair, attracting everyone's attention.
Then Illya created red, orange, and black lines, connecting one end of each to the end of the white line.
"The red one represents Archer, the black one represents Nameless, and the orange one represents the Shirou you all know. What do they all have in common?"
"Uh... they are all lines?"
Croissant answered, her mind still struggling to keep up.
"Correct. They are all lines. No matter how much they experience or how many colors they become stained with, they are still lines."
Illya nodded approvingly at Croissant's answer. It was simple and direct, but it was correct.
"You mean that the essence of all three of them is Emiya Shirou, but their experiences diverged and led them down different paths?"
Talulah felt that her mind could barely keep up. After all, a development that one would normally only see in science fiction novels was difficult to believe.
Still, it was not impossible to understand. One only had to separate those four possibilities and consider them individually.
Archer was Emiya Shirou, but Emiya Shirou was not necessarily Archer.
A red thread was still a thread, but for a white thread to become a red one, it had to go through the same process and be dyed in the same way.
If even one step in that process went wrong, the color would differ. Yet in the end, they were all still threads.
"Exactly. They are all Emiya Shirou, but Emiya Shirou does not necessarily have to walk the same path as those three. If there had been no Holy Grail War, he probably would have become a lawyer, right?"
Seeing the word "understanding" practically written on everyone's faces, Illya looked quite satisfied.
In the end, the matter itself was a paradox.
Were one's present self and future self truly the same person?
If the answer was yes, then the future self clearly possessed more experiences and knew far more.
If the answer was no, then the two still shared certain memories and habits to some extent.
That was why she did not insist on either answer, instead glossing over the matter with a deliberately ambiguous explanation.
After all, what everyone cared about at the moment was merely Shirou, who was still lying in a hospital bed and suffering from the rampage of his Origin.
And the one who had just been brought back to life.
Since everyone had been busy thinking about Illya's words, nobody paid attention to how Rin treated him. They only knew that after the treatment was over, a jeweled necklace had been placed on Shirou.
Completely unaware of what had happened, Shirou put the jeweled necklace into his pocket and, with weak steps, left the school and returned home.
Because it was already dark and there were very few people around, no one noticed anything unusual about him along the way.
Only after he returned home and collapsed onto the floor did Shirou feel that something seemed strange.
Before he could figure out what was wrong, the blue lancer suddenly appeared. Brandishing his crimson spear, he charged straight at Shirou.
Unlike before, when he had decisively killed Shirou without hesitation, the lancer did not immediately go for the kill this time. Instead, he gave Shirou a chance to resist.
But how could an ordinary person, or rather a half-trained magus, possibly stand against a Servant?
The outcome was obvious. As he endured blow after blow, Shirou desperately ran toward the only available escape route.
Inside the warehouse, he opened a poster he had been holding and used it to block the incoming thrust. The impact sent his entire body flying into the wall.
At that point, Shirou no longer had any weapons. He could only watch helplessly as the blue lancer thrust his spear toward him.
Everyone watching the scene felt that Shirou had it rough, but they were also curious about how he would break out of this situation.
Would he suddenly awaken and fight with twin blades?
Or would someone come to his aid?
As a brilliant light filled the warehouse, everyone received their answer.
A young girl holding some sort of unknown weapon drove back the lancer in only a few moves. After rescuing Shirou from his grasp, she turned around and asked:
"I ask of you… are you my Master?"