God had fallen silent.
So he summoned a man who knew the word of God.
A man who crossed the sea and first carried the Gospel to this land.
Five centuries later, with his unfulfilled dream still in his heart, he sets foot on Japanese soil once again.
And there—
he encounters a “miracle.”
After awakening, Shirō Amakusa questions God.
Why am I here again?
Why was I not saved that day?
Why have You brought me back now?
But—
There is no answer.
Once again, God remains silent.
At last Shirō speaks.
“Then summon the one who brought the word of God to this land before me.”
HANGON AI searches for another of the dead.
The man chosen is Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary who once crossed distant seas to introduce Christianity to Japan.
To Xavier, Japan had been a remarkable country.
Though it lay far to the east, its people valued learning, welcomed debate, and possessed their own systems of belief and order.
He saw possibility there.
But he could not fulfill his hopes to the end.
He left Japan and eventually died in a foreign land.
Or so his story should have ended.
After a long silence, he finds himself in Japan again.
Cities he has never seen.
Languages he has never heard.
Artificial intelligences that speak like human beings and possess knowledge far beyond them.
Everything has changed.
Yet he knows, unmistakably, that this is Japan.
And before him stands a young man.
Xavier does not know him.
He was born some eighty years after Xavier left Japan.
Shirō Amakusa.
The two men could never have met in their own lifetimes.
And yet, when Xavier faces Shirō, a strange feeling overwhelms him.
It is not reason.
It is not theology.
Even the knowledge he spent a lifetime cultivating seems meaningless in that moment.
There is simply something about this young man that compels others to follow.
Hearing him speak makes Xavier want to believe.
Looking into his eyes makes him want to kneel.
And Xavier wonders:
Could this man accomplish the dream that I left unfinished?
Was I brought back so that, through him, I might once again spread the word of God in this country?
If so—
What name could one give to this meeting, five hundred years beyond time?
Miraculum.
A miracle.
But Xavier does not yet know that the feeling he calls a miracle is itself a power bestowed upon the resurrected Shirō Amakusa.
And even Shirō does not know whether the source of that power is truly God.
[To be continued]