Eve was preparing for a driver’s license test with Dante.
“......!”
The memory of riding the bike that other day remained so joyful for both of them.
In the end, because they couldn’t drive properly, it turned into a mess.
After that day, whenever she saw a bike, Eve would sneak a glance at Dante, and Dante would nag that she needed a license.
'Then. License. Get one.'
“......”
Thus began the preparation for the driver’s license test!
However, lying before them were difficulties scattered like landmines.......
“You have to know letters. Letters.”
“......??”
Eve didn’t know how to read.
For reference, at this point Eve had again become a citizen of Hiaka, and had even been restored to noble status as the daughter of Baron Lemontree. But her other social advancement was still at a dismal level.
Because the game settings used [Hangul] for script, Dante ended up teaching her the ABCs from scratch, which he hadn’t planned to do.
[ Eve ]
In this way she learned how to write her name.
[ mom. dad. apple. banana. pig. driver’s license test. professor. horn. ]
Starting with what children learn, they picked up words the two of them needed.
[ I am, feeling, good ]
Particles, nouns, adjectives—they learned them one by one.
[ dream ]
She began to learn things that couldn’t be seen. That increased the resolution of Eve’s life.
“???”
As it happened, when sleeping Eve would sometimes go back to the moment in the mountains when she first saw Dante.
[ Hello? ]
At the end of ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) that, for the first time Eve spoke to Dante not with sign language but with language.
[ Eve is a pig ]
[ is you ]
[ ;; ]
They even had childish spats.
[ love ]
And she learned a word she didn’t know.
[ What is love? ]
Eve’s question flustered Dante, but in a way it was only natural. Among people living in society, who doesn’t know love? In the past, tied up with Hero and Demon King, she’d had no reason to be interested.
For quite some time he explained it to Eve with various words and phrases: that it meant “the best feeling a person can hold for something else.”
Then Eve asked back,
[ Do you love me? ]
Dante couldn’t answer readily, and Eve was about to let it slide. Then Dante wrote and asked back,
[ Do you love me? ]
Eve blinked. She stared holes in the man, then her eyes converged and turned up to the ceiling. As if thinking of something. Then she smiled brightly and wrote,
[ No ]
Meanwhile, Eve studied really hard. To Dante’s eyes, her concentration was tremendous. Someone who had lived like a squirrel with no thoughts was now like a robot living all day thinking only about the driver’s license.
Studying even in the bathroom. Studying when she woke up from sleep. Studying while eating.
It looked like a kind of obsession.
⋮
After learning letters, she had to prepare for the driver’s license exam. What others did in two weeks to a month, Eve had to spend much longer to master and learn. It was time spent learning basic common sense.
And so—she passed the written test on the fifth try!
“......!!”
“Good! Well done!”
Next came the practical. She needed training such as road driving. Dante kept helping with his own car. And the two of them fought a lot in the driver’s seat.
“Whoa, whoa. Hey. Eve. Step on the brake. Brake!”
“??,, ....... ...!!!?”
“Urgh! Why are you accelerating... no, no! Not the gas, the brake! Not the gas, the brake!!”
“......!?!?!?”
“BRAKE!!!! CRASH Agh! Hey, you, out now! Don’t drive! Just give it up!”
......They really fought a lot. Eve got smacked on the head many times, and Dante, after being pinched like crazy, had cheeks so swollen they puffed up.
'Just. Illegal. Ride anyway?'
It got so bad the professor was about to recommend being an unlicensed rider.
'You. Mind. Lost?'
But socially adjusted Eve scolded that Dante instead.
“Okay. Let’s try it again, properly.”
“......!”
In the midst of such ups and downs, after wrecking about three cars, Eve went to take her first road test.
'Do well. I’ll be back.'
'Okay!'
With Dante’s cheer, the test began.
And she failed like a dog.
“.......”
Eve came back dejected after being scolded by the examiner.
“It’s okay.”
But now there was no reason to be bound by time.
In the past they had to use time densely before and after the main story started, but now, who cared?
The sun would rise tomorrow as well. The two were healthy. And even if like a grub she was slow, Eve’s driving skill was steadily improving.
'Next time you can do better. Didn’t you even do reverse parking this time?'
'mm-hmm....'
Let’s go. To eat something tasty.
Eve stopped for a moment and looked at Dante’s back walking ahead. Broad, wide back. A form stretching straight without the least stoop. And even the back hair that curled like waves.
Staring at every one of those forms,
“.......”
she quietly followed behind him.
***
The cadets regained a place of laughter and competition. The professors were able to concentrate again on lectures and research.
A school where everyone was happy.
Beautiful Hiaka Academy.
And a world that had become perfect in all things.
“I’m sorry....”
And, inside the huge glass-tube chamber, Dante’s heart at last completely stopped.
“Constellation...!”
“I’m sorry. It won’t do. No way.”
Song Chien closed his eyes.
Among all things in the world, for which birth and death are but an instant, there are things that rarely continue forever.
Maintaining that is precisely the power of Eternity ∞. Yet even with that he could not find a way to revive Dante, whose heart was stopping on its own.
“Is it because of the Demon King?”
“No. The Demon King is already dead.”
For that, Abraxas had sacrificed himself, Kaiser had moved the continent, and finally Dante had sacrificed himself.
“Then why?”
Adele burst out, her voice catching.
“Why on earth did it end up like this? Professor clearly said he would return of his own accord...!”
“......Summerneken’s 『Curse of Forgetting』 has encroached on the mind of Dante Hiakapo. And the aftershock of that curse is far too strong beyond common sense.”
“Even so, if it’s you, Constellation—”
“No. This isn’t at the level of a Constellation. This can’t be. The world is ordered only by the values permitted to Transcendent Star✯, but this surpasses those values by a vast margin.”
“What is that? What even is that? Why does that kind of crap have to be happening here now?”
A hand touched Adele’s shoulder as she choked up. It was Ran.
“......A bug.”
Song Chien did not question it, as if he knew what Ran meant. Adele also knew about the disparities scattered through the world.
A bug. The thing that had been tripping them from the very beginning was, in the end, strengthening the curse at the last and seizing them again.
Ran gazed blankly at Dante, floating half-naked inside the glass tube.
His handsome eyes were closed, and he wore a peaceful expression. Do I remember him? For now, yes.
『Curse of Being Forgotten』....
How ironic.
Because this is a world where all kinds of symbolic elements act as gods.
'Professor once said this was a world inside a video game...... in the end, as time passes, we’ll be forgotten by the users, won’t we.'
A passing travel destination. One of the countless worlds you stop by for a moment and then pass on. Hiaka Academy is no different. That is the context of the curse that Summerneken dug into.
Existence lives by memory. One who is forgotten is no different from dead. As that mental state projects, Dante’s body is dying.
Ran narrowed their eyes.
'Now that the heart has stopped completely, the time this device can maintain survival is, at most, 100 days.......'
Because the soul belongs to the body, once the body collapses, there is no way to survive.
“We will find a way.”
“Me too! I’ll do anything...!”
Ran, Adele, and Song Chien went outside and began to search for a way.
After that, three months passed.
No one found a solution.
None of the Constellations Song Chien met knew a solution about the bug.
Adele discovered nothing beyond the fact that the 『Curse of Forgetting』 was a bug in [Ver.2.3].
The 「System⧉」 Ran contacted wasn’t exactly working hard to fix bugs in a world already “complete.”
“Then are you telling Professor Dante to die.”
Ran asked System⧉.
⧉
Then a mental reply returned. If the context were spelled out in letters, it would be as follows.
— We will repay you with a more entertaining next title.
“.......”
Ran stopped communicating.
Ran thought that symbolized this world.
That they were nothing more than people left behind in a past game.
'So this is how we part.'
Even so, for now the situation was fine.
In truth, it was a fine situation Dante had built.
The world did not know Dante had disappeared.
'You plan to live like illusion to the very end. You do.'
The three here would keep silent about his death; at some point the curse would come and even the three of them would begin to forget, and in the end he would be forgotten by all.
At some point they had asked his opinion about that. Professor Dante had said it was fine. Now an almost perfect “Illusion Dante” would grow old by their side and make everyone happy.
That Dante had a few regrets, such as not being able to carry on a line, but he would remember, act, grow old, and love his people a little more diligently.
'Is that enough?'
The professor had offered that as the answer. And Professor Dante was never wrong. In practice, many were living content with that.
'Balmung and Elize, Kaiser, Gray... none of them doubt their relationships. And Princess Rebecca looked happy too.'
As Ran knew, the Dante sent only to Princess Rebecca was made a Dante a little more “gentle” than the real Dante.
Though he used to dislike her so much, apparently he didn’t hate her all that much.
'The royal family keeps calling....... But that place has nothing to do with Professor anyway.'
Lastly.
'Eve....... You said you were getting your licenses together.'
If so, then it was as Dante said—a world where everything was perfect.
......Truly, is that enough?
Yet after watching his corpse for close to ninety days, for the first time Ran began not to like his answer.
Even though the world was perfect in all things.
“.......”
It was time to sleep.
Ran returned to the room and lay down, and their gaze moved. To the teddy bear placed in the corner of the room. It had a function that asked to be hugged. For the first time in a while, they picked up the bear and hugged it.
Soft. Slightly rough. That synthetic fur warms as body heat transfers.
Perhaps it was that they felt so. Perhaps it was that they wanted to feel so.
“.......”
The reason someone feels cozy while hugging something that isn’t alive is because they project their heart onto it.
You know the teddy bear is dead, but because you want to believe it’s alive, you feel warmth.
Thus, in countless works of film, novels, and such, dolls move and interact with people.
Ran did not know whether they had a heart. But if something was being projected, it was not onto Dante-made-by-illusion. Regrettably, Dante was wrong. That Dante was, in the end, a false Dante.
......In a world where everything is perfect, you have to be there too.
So Ran thought.
In the end, this world was not perfect.
⋮
But even as a few more days passed, Ran could not find an answer.
***
“Eve. You passed!”
“......!!”
When at last, on the fifth try at road driving, Eve finally passed the driver’s license test, Dante tried to hug her. Then he stopped, his chest blocked by Eve’s hand held out in front of him.
When Dante fell silent and held still, Eve moved her hand and began to speak something.
Like a cat she placed a fist near her cheek. She raised her index finger and waggled it a little, then dropped her hand as if catching an apple in the air.
It was the question Eve had long wanted to ask but had somehow held back.
But now she had to. Because she had gotten her license.
'Where is the human?'